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Payment channel networks are an approach to improve the scalability of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. The Lightning Network is a payment channel network built for Bitcoin that is already used in practice. Because the Lightning Network…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network (BLN), a so-called "second layer" payment protocol, was launched in 2018 to scale up the number of transactions between Bitcoin owners. In this paper, we analyse the structure of the BLN over a period of 18…
Off-chain transaction networks can mitigate the scalability issues of today's trustless electronic cash systems such as Bitcoin. However, these peer-to-peer networks also introduce a new attack surface which is not well-understood today.…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a Layer 2 payment protocol that addresses Bitcoin's scalability by facilitating quick and cost effective transactions through payment channels. This research explores the feasibility of using machine…
Micropayment channels are the most prominent solution to the limitation on transaction throughput in current blockchain systems. However, in practice channels are risky because participants have to be online constantly to avoid fraud, and…
We study tolerance and topology of random scale-free networks under attack and defense strategies that depend on the degree k of the nodes. This situation occurs, for example, when the robustness of a node depends on its degree or in an…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network, launched in 2018, serves as a layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin. The Lightning Network allows users to establish channels between each other and subsequently exchange off-chain payments. Together, these…
The Lightning Network (LN) is a second-layer protocol for Bitcoin designed to enable fast and cost-efficient off-chain transactions. Channels in the LN can be closed either by mutual agreement or unilaterally through a forced closure, which…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) is designed to improve the scalability of blockchain systems by using off-chain payment paths to settle transactions in a faster, cheaper, and more private manner. This work aims to empirically study LN's…
Off-chain transaction channels represent one of the leading techniques to scale the transaction throughput in cryptocurrencies. However, the economic effect of transaction channels on the system has not been explored much until now. We…
Payment channel networks (PCN) enable scalable blockchain transactions without fundamentally changing the underlying distributed ledger algorithm. However, routing a payment via multiple channels in a PCN requires locking collateral for…
As Lightning network payments are neither broadcasted nor publicly stored. Thus LN has been seen not only as scalability but also as privacy solution for Bitcoin. The protocol guarantees that only the latest channel state can be confirmed…
Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a promising technology to improve the scalability of cryptocurrencies. PCNs, however, face the challenge that the frequent usage of certain routes may deplete channels in one direction, and hence prevent…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a layer 2 protocol designed to facilitate fast and inexpensive Bitcoin transactions. It operates by establishing channels between users, where Bitcoin is locked and transactions are conducted off-chain until…
From transportation networks to complex infrastructures, and to social and economic networks, a large variety of systems can be described in terms of multiplex networks formed by a set of nodes interacting through different network layers.…
Today, payment paths in Bitcoin's Lightning Network are found by searching for shortest paths on the fee graph. We enhance this approach in two dimensions. Firstly, we take into account the probability of a payment actually being possible…
Cryptocurrency off-chain networks such as Lightning (e.g., Bitcoin) or Raiden (e.g., Ethereum) aim to increase the scalability of traditional on-chain transactions. To support nodes in learning about possible paths to route their…
While being decentralized, secure, and reliable, Bitcoin and many other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies suffer from scalability issues. One of the promising proposals to address this problem is off-chain payment channels. Since, not all…
Air travel is one of the most widely used transportation services in the United States. This paper analyzes the U.S. Flight Network (USFN) using complex network theory by exploring how the network's topology contributes to its efficiency…
We introduce a family of PCNs (Payment Channel Networks) characterized by a semi-hierarchical topology and a custom set of channel rebalancing strategies. This family exhibits two interesting benefits, if used as a platform for large-scale,…