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Informational 20 Bitcoin

Add a method to avoid re-persisting monitors during startup

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Matt Corallo

85/100 · Strong
Add a method to avoid re-persisting monitors during startup

Prior to LDK 0.1, in rare cases we could replay payment claims to
`ChannelMonitor`s on startup, which we then expected to be
persisted prior to normal node operation. This required
re-persisting `ChannelMonitor`s after deserializing the
`ChannelManager`, delaying startup in some cases substantially.

In 0.1 we fixed this, moving claim replays to the background to run
after the `ChannelManager` starts operating (and only
updating/persisting changes to the `ChannelMonitor`s which need
it). However, we didn't actually enable this meaningfully in our
API - nearly all users use our `ChainMonitor` and the only way to
get a chanel into `ChainMonitor` is through the normal flow which
expects to persist.

Here we add a simple method to load `ChannelMonitor`s into the
`ChainMonitor` without persisting them.
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context✓ Explains rationale or failure mode
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit adds a new startup-only API method that lets LDK nodes load already-saved channel monitors without rewriting them to disk. It is a performance and reliability improvement, not a security fix, and does not change how normal channel watching works.

Recommended action

No security action required. Reviewers may want to confirm that load_existing_monitor is not exposed in a way that allows callers to skip persistence for monitors that have actually changed, and that the written_by_0_1_or_later heuristic correctly identifies all post-0.1 serializations.

Security signals we found

01

No memory-safety, cryptographic, or authorization changes

02

New API is additive and does not remove or weaken existing watch_channel behavior

03

Pre-0.1 monitors are explicitly forced through the old persistence path

04

Documentation warns against using the method if the monitor state was directly mutated outside LDK

Risk score

Why this scored 20/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 2/30
Exploitability 0/25
Stealth signal 0/15
Affected reach 5/15
Confidence 9/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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