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Related papers: A Centrality Analysis of the Lightning Network

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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…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2018-12-03 Georgia Avarikioti , Felix Laufenberg , Jakub Sliwinski , Yuyi Wang , Roger Wattenhofer

Payment channels allow transactions between participants of the blockchain to be executed securely off-chain, and thus provide a promising solution for the scalability problem of popular blockchains. We study the online network design…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-08-02 Georgia Avarikioti , Kenan Besic , Yuyi Wang , Roger Wattenhofer

Following in the footsteps of pioneer Bitcoin, many altcoins as well as coloured coins have been being developed and merchandised adopting blockchain as the core enabling technology. However, since interoperability and scalability, due to…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-07-01 Mahdi H. Miraz , David C. Donald

Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a promising approach to making cryptocurrency transactions faster and more scalable. At their core, PCNs bypass the blockchain by routing transactions through intermediary channels. However, a channel can…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Marcin Bienkowski , Julien Dallot , Dominik Danelski , Maciej Pacut , Stefan Schmid

The Bitcoin Lightning Network (BLN) was launched in 2018 to scale up the number of transactions between Bitcoin owners. Although several contributions concerning the analysis of the BLN binary structure have recently appeared in the…

Physics and Society · Physics 2023-01-02 Jian-Hong Lin , Emiliano Marchese , Claudio J. Tessone , Tiziano Squartini

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…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-04-02 Sergei Tikhomirov , Rene Pickhardt , Alex Biryukov , Mariusz Nowostawski

Payment channel networks are supposed to overcome technical scalability limitations of blockchain infrastructure by employing a special overlay network with fast payment confirmation and only sporadic settlement of netted transactions on…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2017-11-08 Felix Engelmann , Florian Glaser , Henning Kopp , Frank Kargl , Christof Weinhardt

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.…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-09-17 Saar Tochner , Stefan Schmid , Aviv Zohar

Bitcoin blockchain faces the bitcoin scalability problem, for which bitcoin's blocks contain the transactions on the bitcoin network. The on-chain transaction processing capacity of the bitcoin network is limited by the average block…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-08-14 Changting Lin , Ning Ma , Xun Wang , Zhenguang Liu , Jianhai Chen , Shouling Ji

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…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2025-12-30 Taki E. M. Abedesselam , Fabio Giacomelli , Francesco Pasquale , Michele Salvi

The Lightning Network (LN) is one of the most promising off-chain scaling solutions for Bitcoin, as it enables off-chain payments which are not subject to the well-known blockchain scalability limit. In this work, we introduce CLoTH, a…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-12-27 Marco Conoscenti , Antonio Vetrò , Juan Carlos De Martin , Federico Spini , Fabio Castaldo , Sebastiano Scròfina

Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies received a lot of attention recently for their applications in many domains. IoT domain is one of such applications, which can utilize cryptocur-rencies for micro payments without compromising their payment…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Suat Mercan , Enes Erdin , Kemal Akkaya

The Lightning Network (LN) has enjoyed rapid growth over recent years, and has become the most popular scaling solution for the Bitcoin blockchain. The security of the LN relies on the ability of the nodes to close a channel by settling…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-03-21 Cosimo Sguanci , Anastasios Sidiropoulos

Payment channel networks (PCNs) have been designed and utilized to address the scalability challenge and throughput limitation of blockchains. Routing is a core problem of PCNs. An ideal PCN routing method needs to achieve 1) high…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2021-09-27 Xiaoxue Zhang , Shouqian Shi , Chen Qian

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…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Rene Pickhardt , Stefan Richter

The last decade has experienced a vast interest in Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies with a specific focus on the applications of this technology. However, slow confirmation times of transactions and unforeseeable high fees hamper their…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Suat Mercan , Enes Erdin , Kemal Akkaya

Bitcoin rise has put blockchain technology into the mainstream, amplifying its potential and broad utility. While Bitcoin has become incredibly famous, its transaction rate has not match such a corresponding increase. It still takes…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Han Song , Zhongche Qu , Yihao Wei

Bitcoin is undoubtedly a great alternative to today's existing digital payment systems. Even though Bitcoin's scalability has been debated for a long time, we see that it is no longer a concern thanks to its layer-2 solution Lightning…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-05-01 Ahmet Kurt , Abdulhadi Sahin , Ricardo Harrilal-Parchment , Kemal Akkaya

Payment channels are the most prominent solution to the blockchain scalability problem. We introduce the problem of network design with fees for payment channels from the perspective of a Payment Service Provider (PSP). Given a set of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-10-18 Georgia Avarikioti , Gerrit Janssen , Yuyi Wang , Roger Wattenhofer

Blockchain technology relies on decentralization to resist faults and attacks while operating without trusted intermediaries. Although industry experts have touted decentralization as central to their promise and disruptive potential, it is…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Harang Ju , Ehsan Valavi , Madhav Kumar , Sinan Aral