Assessing the Topological Vulnerabilities of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: Robustness Against Random Failures and Targeted Attacks (Published)
The Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) provides an innovative solution for scaling Bitcoin transactions by enabling off-chain payments with minimal fees and near-instantaneous settlement. LN’s structure consists of interlinked payment channels, forming a decentralized network to facilitate efficient and secure transaction routing. This article investigates the topological characteristics of LN and examines its resilience to random and targeted disruptions. The Lightning Network can be modeled as a weighted, undirected graph to analyze various metrics such as clustering coefficients, degree distribution, and centrality. Results reveal that LN exhibits scale-free properties, contributing to robustness against random node failures. However, the network’s reliance on high-degree nodes also makes it vulnerable to targeted attacks, which can fragment the network and impair transaction routing. These insights highlight the need for network design optimizations to enhance LN’s security and scalability. Future considerations could focus on strategic topology adjustments to fortify LN against adversarial threats, ensuring more reliable off-chain transaction capabilities.
Keywords: Bitcoin, lightning network, network topology, robustness analysis, scale-free networks
Implementation of Blockchain Technology in Africa (Published)
Africa is currently tackling challenges to technologies and innovation in its suitable development agenda.in the journey to embracing the blockchain technology, ICT plays a very vital role in addressing the challenges. The introduction of internet technology and the World Wide Web has brought with it changes in the interactive nature of people. One of the most outspoken changes is “Blockchain”, a smart technology that allows people to transact without the need for an intermediary. In Africa, Blockchain is known as “the trusted machine” because one can be sure of doing clean transactions using blockchain. The technology behind “bitcoin” is the decentralized databases and cryptocurrency and its major merits are decentralization, security, and transparency, resistance to outages and efficiency. Almost all the sectors are using this technology some of which are; health, education, governance, financial institutions industries and IT. According to the firm Research and Markets 3 from the United States of America, the worldwide cryptocurrency and blockchain technology market will grow by 35.2 percent during the forecast period 2016–, to touch an aggregate of $42.16 billion by 2022. Most of this growth, however, will take place in the United States, followed by Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and India.
Keywords: Bitcoin, Block chain, Cryptocurrencies