Boosting Payment Channel Network Liquidity with Topology Optimization and Transaction Selection

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Křišťan, Jan Matyáš, Schmid, Stefan, Svoboda, Jakub, Yeo, Michelle
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Chatterjee, Krishnendu
Křišťan, Jan Matyáš
Schmid, Stefan
Svoboda, Jakub
Yeo, Michelle
author_facet Chatterjee, Krishnendu
Křišťan, Jan Matyáš
Schmid, Stefan
Svoboda, Jakub
Yeo, Michelle
contents Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a promising technology that alleviates blockchain scalability by shifting the transaction load from the blockchain to the PCN. Nevertheless, the network topology has to be carefully designed to maximise the transaction throughput in PCNs. Additionally, users in PCNs also have to make optimal decisions on which transactions to forward and which to reject to prolong the lifetime of their channels. In this work, we consider an input sequence of transactions over $p$ parties. Each transaction consists of a transaction size, source, and target, and can be either accepted or rejected (entailing a cost). The goal is to design a PCN topology among the $p$ cooperating parties, along with the channel capacities, and then output a decision for each transaction in the sequence to minimise the cost of creating and augmenting channels, as well as the cost of rejecting transactions. Our main contribution is an $\mathcal{O}(p)$ approximation algorithm for the problem with $p$ parties. We further show that with some assumptions on the distribution of transactions, we can reduce the approximation ratio to $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{p})$. We complement our theoretical analysis with an empirical study of our assumptions and approach in the context of the Lightning Network.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_14524
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Boosting Payment Channel Network Liquidity with Topology Optimization and Transaction Selection
Chatterjee, Krishnendu
Křišťan, Jan Matyáš
Schmid, Stefan
Svoboda, Jakub
Yeo, Michelle
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Cryptography and Security
Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a promising technology that alleviates blockchain scalability by shifting the transaction load from the blockchain to the PCN. Nevertheless, the network topology has to be carefully designed to maximise the transaction throughput in PCNs. Additionally, users in PCNs also have to make optimal decisions on which transactions to forward and which to reject to prolong the lifetime of their channels. In this work, we consider an input sequence of transactions over $p$ parties. Each transaction consists of a transaction size, source, and target, and can be either accepted or rejected (entailing a cost). The goal is to design a PCN topology among the $p$ cooperating parties, along with the channel capacities, and then output a decision for each transaction in the sequence to minimise the cost of creating and augmenting channels, as well as the cost of rejecting transactions. Our main contribution is an $\mathcal{O}(p)$ approximation algorithm for the problem with $p$ parties. We further show that with some assumptions on the distribution of transactions, we can reduce the approximation ratio to $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{p})$. We complement our theoretical analysis with an empirical study of our assumptions and approach in the context of the Lightning Network.
title Boosting Payment Channel Network Liquidity with Topology Optimization and Transaction Selection
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14524