TGSBM: Transformer-Guided Stochastic Block Model for Link Prediction

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Hauptverfasser: Yang, Zhejian, Zhao, Songwei, Zhao, Zilin, Chen, Hechang
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Yang, Zhejian
Zhao, Songwei
Zhao, Zilin
Chen, Hechang
author_facet Yang, Zhejian
Zhao, Songwei
Zhao, Zilin
Chen, Hechang
contents Link prediction is a cornerstone of the Web ecosystem, powering applications from recommendation and search to knowledge graph completion and collaboration forecasting. However, large-scale networks present unique challenges: they contain hundreds of thousands of nodes and edges with heterogeneous and overlapping community structures that evolve over time. Existing approaches face notable limitations: traditional graph neural networks struggle to capture global structural dependencies, while recent graph transformers achieve strong performance but incur quadratic complexity and lack interpretable latent structure. We propose \textbf{TGSBM} (Transformer-Guided Stochastic Block Model), a framework that integrates the principled generative structure of Overlapping Stochastic Block Models with the representational power of sparse Graph Transformers. TGSBM comprises three main components: (i) \emph{expander-augmented sparse attention} that enables near-linear complexity and efficient global mixing, (ii) a \emph{neural variational encoder} that infers structured posteriors over community memberships and strengths, and (iii) a \emph{neural edge decoder} that reconstructs links via OSBM's generative process, preserving interpretability. Experiments across diverse benchmarks demonstrate competitive performance (mean rank 1.6 under HeaRT protocol), superior scalability (up to $6\times$ faster training), and interpretable community structures. These results position TGSBM as a practical approach that strikes a balance between accuracy, efficiency, and transparency for large-scale link prediction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_20646
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TGSBM: Transformer-Guided Stochastic Block Model for Link Prediction
Yang, Zhejian
Zhao, Songwei
Zhao, Zilin
Chen, Hechang
Social and Information Networks
Information Retrieval
Link prediction is a cornerstone of the Web ecosystem, powering applications from recommendation and search to knowledge graph completion and collaboration forecasting. However, large-scale networks present unique challenges: they contain hundreds of thousands of nodes and edges with heterogeneous and overlapping community structures that evolve over time. Existing approaches face notable limitations: traditional graph neural networks struggle to capture global structural dependencies, while recent graph transformers achieve strong performance but incur quadratic complexity and lack interpretable latent structure. We propose \textbf{TGSBM} (Transformer-Guided Stochastic Block Model), a framework that integrates the principled generative structure of Overlapping Stochastic Block Models with the representational power of sparse Graph Transformers. TGSBM comprises three main components: (i) \emph{expander-augmented sparse attention} that enables near-linear complexity and efficient global mixing, (ii) a \emph{neural variational encoder} that infers structured posteriors over community memberships and strengths, and (iii) a \emph{neural edge decoder} that reconstructs links via OSBM's generative process, preserving interpretability. Experiments across diverse benchmarks demonstrate competitive performance (mean rank 1.6 under HeaRT protocol), superior scalability (up to $6\times$ faster training), and interpretable community structures. These results position TGSBM as a practical approach that strikes a balance between accuracy, efficiency, and transparency for large-scale link prediction.
title TGSBM: Transformer-Guided Stochastic Block Model for Link Prediction
topic Social and Information Networks
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20646