Coordinated Landmark-based Routing for Blockchain Offline Channels

Abstract

Blockchain offline channels such as the Bitcoin Lightning Network will improve the scalability of blockchains by reducing the number of transactions needed to be recorded in the blockchain. Uncoordinated payment transfer in channel networks including path-based fund transfer may overuse few channels. This will lead to imbalanced channel networks where the channel balance of few channels is too low to remain operational. In this paper, we propose a coordination method for a landmark-based routing algorithm for fund transfer in offline channels. Our procedure allows the landmarks to route funds in complementary and non-overlapping paths which balances channel values in a bi-directional channel network. Using experimental evaluation with Bitcoin Lightning network data we prove that the proposed coordinated landmark-based routing algorithm keeps a better balance of the channels and significantly improves the success rate of fund transfer compared with existing landmark-based routing algorithms.