On the Selection of the LN Client Implementation Parameters

The Lightning Network (LN) is a payment network deployed on top of Bitcoin. In the LN, the payer and the payee do not need to have an open direct channel to transact: they can transact through channels by means of other users of the network, that act as intermediaries for the payments. The parameters of the contracts being used in these multihop payments determine the level of security offered, but also the usefulness of the LN as a payment network. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of tuning the parameters of the contracts for the security and performance of the payment network, and provide recommendations on the values for those parameters, taking into account the trade-off between network utility and security.