Routing Payments on the Lightning Network
Routing Payments on the Lightning Network
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在闪电网络上路由支付
DOI：
10.1109/cybermatics_2018.2018.00209
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
G. Ventre
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Giovanni Di Stasi;S. Avallone;R. Canonico;G. Ventre
比特币是一种新的数字货币，其目的是去中心化、点对点、抗审查、无国界、稀缺、快速和廉价。由于比特币的主要运作方式是基于广播通信，例如所有货币的交易都到达所有网络节点，因此如何实现可扩展性是其实现广泛使用的最重要问题之一。提高其可扩展性的建议之一采用闪电网络（LN）的形式，该网络由基础比特币层之上的覆盖网络组成。这种覆盖允许执行一种新的区块链外交易，即不向整个网络广播的交易，与以前的区块链外解决方案不同，不需要信任任何第三方实体。LN的重要开放问题是i)定义支付应该如何路由，ii)确定中间节点应该应用哪些费用政策来转发支付。这项工作的贡献是双重的：我们首先提出了一种新的、更通用的方式，让节点为转发支付申请费用，这可以保持网络的平衡，并在长期内提高其性能。其次，我们提出了一种新的多路径路由支付方案，该方案基于原子多路径支付方法，能够显著降低用户支付的费用，同时速度快，并且能够保持网络的平衡。
Bitcoin is a new digital currency created with the aim of being decentralized, peer-to-peer, censorship-resistant, borderless, scarce, fast and cheap to use. Since Bitcoin main way of operating is based on broadcast communications, e.g. all transactions of the currency reach all network peers, how to achieve scalability is one of the most important concerns for it to achieve wide usage. One of the proposals to improve its scalability takes the form of the Lightning Network (LN) which consists of an overlay network on top of the base Bitcoin layer. Such an overlay allows to perform a new kind of off-blockchain transactions, i.e. transactions not broadcast to the entire network, that, differently from previous off-blockchain solutions, do not require to put trust in any third entity. Important open problems of the LN are i) defining how payments should be routed and ii) establishing which fee policies intermediate nodes should apply for forwarding payments. The contributions of this work are twofold: we first propose a new, more general, way for nodes to apply fees for forwarding payments which allows to keep the network balanced and improve its performance in the long term. Secondly, we propose a new multipath routing payment scheme, based on the atomic multipath payment method, which is able to significantly reduce the fees paid by users, while being fast and also able to keep the network balanced.