SIP-0005: Fund Ephemeral Account RPC
Fund Ephemeral Account RPC
Description
Ephemeral accounts are a service offered by hosts that allow users to connect a balance to a pubkey. Users can deposit funds into an ephemeral account with a host and then later use the funds to transact with the host. The most common transactions will be uploading and downloading data, however any RPC that requires payment will support receiving payment from an ephemeral account.
To deposit funds into an ephemeral account, the host provides a fund ephemeral account RPC. This RPC ties in with the forward payment RPC. By combining both fund and forward RPC requests it will be possible to route payment to a host with which you don't share an immediate payment link. This forms the basis for payment routing.
Motivation
Ephemeral accounts are motivated mainly by download latency. By allowing money to be put into an ephemeral account, from which you can spend and pay for subsequent RPC requests, we eliminate said latency.