Last week rbrunner7 argued that future Monero transactions should not be able to set custom timelocks. This proposal was discussed in this week’s Monero Research Lab meeting.

Monero’s timelocks have been a “solution in search of a problem” for a long time. However, Alex from Local Monero said he had a special use for them:

Sometimes, we ban a certain user permanently from our platform. Sometimes, that user tries to return to the platform. We catch them and warn them not to return again or there will be consequences. They ignore us and return to our platform. In these cases, we take the XMR that they placed in the arbitration bond and send it to them in a timelocked transaction to disincentivize them from trying to return again.

The rough result of the meeting was to evaluate time lock puzzles as an off-chain replacement for custom unlock times. xFFFC0000, a new Monero dev, said that he would investigate time lock puzzles soon.