SoK: Layer-Two Blockchain Protocols

Gudgeon, Lewis; Moreno-Sanchez, Pedro; Roos, Stefanie; McCorry, Patrick; Gervais, Arthur

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-51280-4_12

Cited by 181 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Although not officially standardized, a widely accepted hierarchy is the following, shown also in Fig. 1 (adapted from [5]): The base layer is the hardware layer, which comprises of either regular computers, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) or trusted hardware. On top of the hardware operate the nodes, which are connected in a global peer-to-peer (P2P) communication network; this is layer 0.…”

Section: ) the Layer 1 Scalability Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…only valid transactions will be included in the blockchain, and eventual synchronicity with an upper time bound, i.e. every valid transaction will eventually be added to the ledger [5].…”

Section: ) Payment Channels As a Scalability Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Layer 2 protocols other than channels also exist, for example commit-chains and protocols for refereed delegation. The interested reader is referred to [5] for more details. In this article, we focus on payment https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd 3 https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair 4 https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning channels, since they introduce many interesting research problems of a networking flavor.…”

Section: ) Payment Channels As a Scalability Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The channel is established via a so-called MULTISIG Bitcoin transaction, namely a transaction output that requires signatures from multiple parties in order to be spent. Alice and Bob, who want to open a channel, create a transaction that they both sign and where they deposit some initial balances 5 . The sum of these balances is the channel capacity, and cannot change for the lifetime of the channel (the channel has a "conservation of capacity" property).…”

Section: A Payment Channel Operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Blockchain-Based Payment Channel Networks: Challenges and Recent Advances

Papadis

2020

IEEE Access

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Section: ) the Layer 1 Scalability Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…only valid transactions will be included in the blockchain, and eventual synchronicity with an upper time bound, i.e. every valid transaction will eventually be added to the ledger [5].…”

Section: ) Payment Channels As a Scalability Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ) Payment Channels As a Scalability Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Payment Channel Operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Blockchain-Based Payment Channel Networks: Challenges and Recent Advances

Papadis

2020

IEEE Access

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“…Many aspects of the Lightning Network have been extensively studied. A wide survey on second-layer solutions was done in [10]. A technical review of the building blocks of the Lightning Network is presented in [19].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flood & Loot

Harris

Zohar

2020

Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies

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The Lightning Network promises to alleviate Bitcoin's known scalability problems. The operation of such second layer approaches relies on the ability of participants to turn to the blockchain to claim funds at any time, which is assumed to happen rarely. One of the risks that was identified early on is that of a wide systemic attack on the protocol, in which an attacker triggers the closure of many Lightning channels at once. The resulting high volume of transactions in the blockchain will not allow for the proper settlement of all debts, and attackers may get away with stealing some funds. This paper explores the details of such an attack and evaluates its cost and overall impact on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Specifically, we show that an attacker is able to simultaneously cause victim nodes to overload the Bitcoin blockchain with requests and to steal funds that were locked in channels. We go on to examine the interaction of Lightning nodes with the fee estimation mechanism and show that the attacker can continuously lower the fee of transactions that will later be used by the victim in its attempts to recover funds-eventually reaching a state in which only low fractions of the block are available for lightning transactions. Our attack is made easier even further as the Lightning protocol allows the attacker to increase the fee offered by his own transactions. We show that the vast majority of nodes agree to channel opening requests from unknown sources and are therefore susceptible to this attack. We highlight differences between various implementations of the Lightning Network protocol and review the susceptibility of each one to the attack. Finally, we propose mitigation strategies to lower the systemic attack risk of the network. CCS CONCEPTS • Security and privacy → Distributed systems security.

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Blockchain Applications

2021

From Traditional Fault Tolerance to Blockchain

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is a distinguished expert in blockchain technologies and system modeling. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences and has successfully initiated and participated in numerous projects, displaying exceptional skills as a concept designer, data architect, and agile manager. His expertise extends to blockchain, data processing, nonlinear systems modeling, and fintech. Currently holding positions at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Dr. Chernyshenko continues to contribute to the evolution of blockchain technologies by supervising young researchers and collaborating with academia in quantitative finance, business analysis, and data modeling. He leads research projects, develops distributed database solutions and predictive models for oil cargo transportation analytics, and supervises a startup focused on AI-based forestry assessment.

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SoK: Layer-Two Blockchain Protocols

Cited by 181 publications

References 53 publications

Blockchain-Based Payment Channel Networks: Challenges and Recent Advances

Blockchain-Based Payment Channel Networks: Challenges and Recent Advances

Flood & Loot

Blockchain Applications

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