State Channel Exit Games
In the previous post, we introduced the concept of a state channel outcome: a piece of data that instructs the chain as to how to move the funds held in a state channel. In order for the chain to act on the outcome, the outcome must first be finalized.
Today we’re going to be looking at this other half of the process: how participants go from the states in the hand, to finalized outcomes on-chain. Another way of saying this, is that we’re going to be looking at the ‘exit game’ of a state channel. Understanding this process is key to the off-chain funding we saw last week. Participants need to be able to understand which outcomes could be finalized, in order to construct the equivalent outcomes necessary to fund/defund channels entirely off-chain.
This will involve looking at the format of the off-chain states, the possible states of the on-chain storage, and how participants can use the states they hold to drive the chain from one state to another.
