Throughput Limitation of the Off-chain Payment Networks

Shayan Hamidi Dehshali; Seyed Mahdi Hosseini; Soheil Zibakhsh Shabgahi; Behnam Bahrak

Paper 2022/1614

Throughput Limitation of the Off-chain Payment Networks

Shayan Hamidi Dehshali

, University of Tehran

Seyed Mahdi Hosseini

, University of Tehran

Soheil Zibakhsh Shabgahi, University of Tehran

Behnam Bahrak

, University of Tehran

Abstract

Off-chain payment channels were introduced as one of the solutions to the blockchain scalability problem. The channels shape a network, where parties have to lock funds for their creation. A channel is expected to route a limited number of transactions before it becomes unbalanced, when all of the funds are devoted to one of the parties. Since an on-chain transaction is often necessary to establish, rebalance, or close a channel, the off-chain network is bounded to the throughput of the blockchain. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to formulate limitation on the throughput of an off-chain payment network. As a case study, we show the limitation of the Lightning Network, in comparison with popular banking systems. Our results show that theoretically, the throughput of the Lightning Network can reach the order of 10000 transactions per second, close to the average throughput of centralized banking systems.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Applications
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: Bitcoin Blockchain Payment Channels Channel Rebalancing
Contact author(s): shayanhamidi2000 @ gmail com
smahdihosseini4 @ gmail com
soheil zibakhsh @ gmail com
bahrak @ ut ac ir
History: 2022-11-21: approved; 2022-11-19: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2022/1614
License: CC0

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/1614,
      author = {Shayan Hamidi Dehshali and Seyed Mahdi Hosseini and Soheil Zibakhsh Shabgahi and Behnam Bahrak},
      title = {Throughput Limitation of the Off-chain Payment Networks},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2022/1614},
      year = {2022},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1614}
}