As a decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin builds on the blockchain by distributing the ledger among peers to share a global awareness of transactions made on the network without relying on intermediaries. However, the recording of transactions on the blockchain lacks dynamism and is far from the speed offered by well-established commercial payment systems such as Visa and Paypal. Due to the discouragement of adopting Bitcoin as a payment method, a novel parallel payment network, referred to as the Lightning Network (LN) for Bitcoin, burst onto the scene to boost on-chain transactionality by making off-chain payment transactions fast and scalable. LN therefore overcomes the hurdles of scalability and dynamic financial processing, as well as lessening the burden on the Bitcoin network chain. Transitioning this restricted Bitcoin network into a viable payment method depends on how LN compares to traditional payment systems. We aim to analyze LN and propose improvements on two fronts. First, we provide an analytical approach to define the value of some contract parameters. Finally, we determine alternative metrics to evaluate the centrality of this peer-to-peer network (P2P). Thus, to provide an improvement to LN, we evaluated the impact of adjusting the contract parameters used in multi-hop payments into the security and performance of the network. Also, we proposed a graph-based model for the LN, and a set of centrality metrics to measure node centrality within this model. Hence, the main goal behind this research is to enhance the reliability of well-established protocols deployed on the LN.
Layer 2 protocols in bitcoin
Oleas Chávez, L. (Author). 6 Nov 2024
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis