Avoiding Deadlocks in Payment Channel Networks

Shira Werman*, Aviv Zohar

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Payment transaction channels are one of the main proposed approaches to scaling cryptocurrency payment systems. Recent work by Malavolta et al. [7] has shown that the privacy of the protocol may conflict with its concurrent nature and may lead to deadlocks. In this paper we ask the natural question: Can payments in routing networks be routed so as to avoid deadlocks altogether? Our results show that it is in general NP-complete to determine whether a deadlock-free routing exists in a given payment graph. On the other hand, Given some fixed routing, we propose another way to resolve the problem of deadlocks. We offer a modification of the protocols in lightning network and in Fulgor [7] that pre-locks edges in an order that guarantees progress, while still maintaining the protocol’s privacy requirements.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationData Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology - ESORICS 2018 International Workshops, DPM 2018 and CBT 2018, Proceedings
EditorsJoaquin Garcia-Alfaro, Jordi Herrera-Joancomartí, Giovanni Livraga, Ruben Rios
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages175-187
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783030003043
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018
Event2nd International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology, CBT 2018 held in conjunction with the 23rd European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2018 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 6 Sep 20187 Sep 2018

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11025 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference2nd International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology, CBT 2018 held in conjunction with the 23rd European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2018
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period6/09/187/09/18

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018.

Keywords

  • Bitcoin
  • Lightning Network
  • Payment Channels
  • Payment Network
  • Payment Routing

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