Non-Intrusive and High-Efficient Balance Tomography in the Lightning Network
Yan Qiao, Kui Wu, Majid Khabbazian · 2021
The Lightning Network (LN) is a second layer technology for solving the scalability problem of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The LN nodes (i.e., LN users), linked by payment channels, can make payments to each other directly or through multiple hops of payment channels, subject to the available balances of the serving channels. In current LN implementation, the channel capacity (i.e., the sum of the bidirectional balances in the channel) is open to the public, but the bidirectional balances are kept secret for privacy concerns. Nevertheless, the balances can be directly measured by conducting multiple fake payments to probe the precise value of the balance. Such a method, while effective, creates many fake invoices and incurs high cost when used for discovering balances for multiple users.