Related papers: Optimizing Closed Payment Networks on the Lightnin…
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…
Cryptocurrencies are distributed systems that allow exchanges of native (and non-) tokens among participants. The complete historical bookkeeping and its wide availability opens up an unprecedented possibility, i.e. that of understanding…
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…
Payment channels were introduced to solve various eminent cryptocurrency scalability issues. Multiple payment channels build a network on top of a blockchain, the so-called layer 2. In this work, we analyze payment networks through the lens…
Payment networks, also known as channels, are a most promising solution to the throughput problem of cryptocurrencies. In this paper we study the design of capital-efficient payment networks, offline as well as online variants. We want to…
Nodes in the Lightning Network synchronise routing information through a gossip protocol that makes use of a staggered broadcast mechanism. In this work, we show that the convergence delay in the network is larger than what would be…
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,…
In PCNs, nodes that forward payments between a source and a receiver are paid a small fee if the payment is successful. The fee is a compensation for temporarily committing funds to the payment. However, payments may fail due to…
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…
Blockchain networks are facing increasingly heterogeneous computational demands, and in response, protocol designers have started building specialized infrastructure to supply that demand. This paper introduces Resonance: a new kind of…
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…
Blockchain protocols are inherently limited in transaction throughput and latency. Recent efforts to address performance and scale blockchains have focused on off-chain payment channels. While such channels can achieve low latency and high…
A major challenge in blockchain sharding protocols is that more than 95% transactions are cross-shard. Not only those cross-shard transactions degrade the system throughput but also double the confirmation time, and exhaust an already…
Cryptocurrencies redefined how money can be stored and transferred among users. However, independent of the amount being sent, public blockchain-based cryptocurrencies suffer from high transaction waiting times and fees. These drawbacks…
Lightning Network (LN) is a widely-used network of payment channels enabling faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions. In this paper, we outline three ways an attacker can steal funds from honest LN users. The attacks require dilating the…
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…
While blockchains initially gained popularity in the realm of cryptocurrencies, their widespread adoption is expanding beyond conventional applications, driven by the imperative need for enhanced data security. Despite providing a secure…
In this paper, we propose a technique for rebalancing link weights in decentralized credit networks. Credit networks are peer-to-peer trust-based networks that enable fast and inexpensive cross-currency transactions compared to traditional…
Blockchain technology, while revolutionary in enabling decentralized transactions, faces scalability challenges as the ledger must be replicated across all nodes of the chain, limiting throughput and efficiency. Sharding, which divides the…
Most permissionless blockchain networks run on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which offer flexibility and decentralization at the expense of performance (e.g., network latency). Historically, this tradeoff has not been a bottleneck for most…