Payment-failure times for random Lightning paths
Abstract
We study a random process over graphs inspired by the way payments are executed in the Lightning Network, the main layer-two solution on top of Bitcoin. We first prove almost tight upper and lower bounds on the time it takes for a payment failure to occur, as a function of the number of nodes and the edge capacities, when the underlying graph is complete. Then, we show how such a random process is related to the edge-betweenness centrality measure and we prove upper and lower bounds for arbitrary graphs as a function of edge-betweenness and capacity. Finally, we validate our theoretical results by running extensive simulations over some classes of graphs, including snapshots of the real Lightning Network.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.16376,
title = {Payment-failure times for random Lightning paths},
author = {Taki E. M. Abedesselam and Fabio Giacomelli and Francesco Pasquale and Michele Salvi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.16376},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
To be published in Proceedings of the 7th Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services (BRAINS 2025), IEEE, 2025