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R2: Boosting Liquidity in Payment Channel Networks with Online Admission Control

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Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13950))

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Abstract

Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a promising technology to improve the scalability of cryptocurrencies. PCNs, however, face the challenge that the frequent usage of certain routes may deplete channels in one direction, and hence prevent further transactions. In order to reap the full potential of PCNs, recharging and rebalancing mechanisms are required to provision channels, as well as an admission control logic to decide which transactions to reject in case capacity is insufficient. This paper presents a formal model of this optimisation problem. In particular, we consider an online algorithms perspective, where transactions arrive over time in an unpredictable manner. Our main contributions are competitive online algorithms which come with provable guarantees over time. We empirically evaluate our algorithms on randomly generated transactions to compare the average performance of our algorithms to our theoretical bounds. We also show how this model and approach differs from related problems in classic communication networks.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/rebalance.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/bitromortac/lndmanage.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant 16KISK020K (6G-RIC), 2021–2025, and ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Mahsa Bastankhah

  2. ISTA, Klosterneuburg, Austria

    Krishnendu Chatterjee, Jakub Svoboda & Michelle Yeo

  3. University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA

    Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali

  4. TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Stefan Schmid

Authors
  1. Mahsa Bastankhah
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  2. Krishnendu Chatterjee
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  3. Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali
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  4. Stefan Schmid
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  5. Jakub Svoboda
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  6. Michelle Yeo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mahsa Bastankhah .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Foteini Baldimtsi

  2. University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Cachin

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© 2024 International Financial Cryptography Association

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Bastankhah, M., Chatterjee, K., Maddah-Ali, M.A., Schmid, S., Svoboda, J., Yeo, M. (2024). R2: Boosting Liquidity in Payment Channel Networks with Online Admission Control. In: Baldimtsi, F., Cachin, C. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13950. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47754-6_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47754-6_18

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-47753-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-47754-6

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