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http://dx.doi.org/10.13089/JKIISC.2018.28.4.1009

A Study on the Robustness of the Bitcoin Lightning Network  

Lee, Seung-jin (Sungkyunkwan University)
Kim, Hyoung-shick (Sungkyunkwan University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology / v.28, no.4, 2018 , pp. 1009-1019 More about this Journal
Abstract
Bitcoin is the first application utilizing the blockchain, but it has limitations in terms of scalability. The concept of Lightning Network was recently introduced to address the scalability problem of Bitcoin. In this paper, we found that the real-world Bitcoin Lightning Network shows the scale-free property. Therefore, the Bitcoin Lightning Network can be vulnerable to the intentional attacks targeting some specific nodes in the network while it is still robust to the random node failures. We experimentally analyze the robustness of the Bitcoin's Lightning Network via the simulation of network attack model. Our simulation results demonstrate that the real-world Lightning Network is vulnerable to target attacks that destroy a few nodes with high degree.
Keywords
Lightning Network; Network robustness; Network attack; Network failure;
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