A Study on the Robustness of the Bitcoin Lightning Network

Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 1009-1019, Jul. 2018
10.13089/JKIISC.2018.28.4.1009, Full Text:
Keywords: Lightning Network, Network robustness, Network attack, Network failure
Abstract

Bitcoin is the first application utilizing the blockchain, but it has limitations in terms of scalability. The concept ofLightning Network was recently introduced to address the scalability problem of Bitcoin. In this paper, we found that thereal-world Bitcoin Lightning Network shows the scale-free property. Therefore, the Bitcoin Lightning Network can bevulnerable to the intentional attacks targeting some specific nodes in the network while it is still robust to the random nodefailures. We experimentally analyze the robustness of the Bitcoin's Lightning Network via the simulation of network attackmodel. Our simulation results demonstrate that the real-world Lightning Network is vulnerable to target attacks that destroy afew nodes with high degree.

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Cite this article
[IEEE Style]
이승진 and 김형식, "A Study on the Robustness of the Bitcoin Lightning Network," Journal of The Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptology, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 1009-1019, 2018. DOI: 10.13089/JKIISC.2018.28.4.1009.

[ACM Style]
이승진 and 김형식. 2018. A Study on the Robustness of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Journal of The Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptology, 28, 4, (2018), 1009-1019. DOI: 10.13089/JKIISC.2018.28.4.1009.