Mathematics

Feng Fu & Martin Tassy

Mathematical modeling of blockchain payment channels

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One of the major challenges that public blockchains such as Bitcoin or Vechain are currently facing is finding how to become scalable on a global level. Whether the set of transaction validators is permitted or not, it is impossible with the current state of the technology to deal efficiently with the throughput associated to the number of transactions which would occur in the case of global worldwide mass adoption. Amongst the different solutions proposed to solve this problem Payment Channels such as the Bitcoin lightning network and the Ethereum raiden network have been advertised as one of the most promising alternatives. The underlying idea behind those networks is to establish bidirectional asset transfer channels between participants which would harvest their security from the main chain. The purpose of the proposed research is two-fold: First, collect and use the empirical data available on real life payment channels in order to build an accurate mathematical modeling of those networks. Secondly, the team seeks to quantify the robustness and the decentralization of those networks under the proposed modeling.