PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks
Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a viable solution to the issue of blockchain scalability by offering off-chain transactions between two untrusted peers, without committing each transaction to the blockchain. The payment channel cannot be used when its deposit is depleted, which hinders the payme...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IEEE
2025-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Access |
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| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10835102/ |
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| author | Anan Jin Yuhang Ye Brian Lee Xiang Li Yuansong Qiao |
| author_facet | Anan Jin Yuhang Ye Brian Lee Xiang Li Yuansong Qiao |
| author_sort | Anan Jin |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Payment channel networks (PCNs) are a viable solution to the issue of blockchain scalability by offering off-chain transactions between two untrusted peers, without committing each transaction to the blockchain. The payment channel cannot be used when its deposit is depleted, which hinders the payment completion, such as it is overly utilized in one direction. However, they cannot migrate the deposit from one channel to another to facilitate payment completion when a depletion in the channel deposit arises. This limitation arises from the basic design assumption of payment channels, i.e., each channel is independent from others. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes PaySwitch, inspired by the traditional network switch, to enable connecting multiple payment channels through one PaySwitch smart contract. PaySwitch is designed to enable any peer in the PaySwitch to dynamically reallocate the deposits in their payment channels while maintaining the independence of each other to ensure the trustworthiness of the channel. This paper presents the security definition of PaySwitch and formally proves its security using the UC-framework. To demonstrate the feasibility of PaySwitch, this paper applies it to several routing algorithms. The experimental results show that PaySwitch is capable of improving the transaction success rate and throughput compared with the traditional payment channel based approaches. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-b6369fc973dc4a6eb5c368dd2afdc9b7 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2169-3536 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Access |
| spelling | doaj-art-b6369fc973dc4a6eb5c368dd2afdc9b72025-01-28T00:01:45ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-0113148371485610.1109/ACCESS.2025.352774610835102PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel NetworksAnan Jin0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4157-9018Yuhang Ye1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4608-1451Brian Lee2Xiang Li3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1649-7950Yuansong Qiao4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1543-1589Software Research Institute, Technological University of the Shannon, Midlands Midwest, Athlone, IrelandDepartment of Computer and Software Engineering, Technological University of the Shannon, Midlands Midwest, Athlone, IrelandSoftware Research Institute, Technological University of the Shannon, Midlands Midwest, Athlone, IrelandSchool of Information Engineering, East China University of Technology, Nanchang, ChinaSoftware Research Institute, Technological University of the Shannon, Midlands Midwest, Athlone, IrelandPayment channel networks (PCNs) are a viable solution to the issue of blockchain scalability by offering off-chain transactions between two untrusted peers, without committing each transaction to the blockchain. The payment channel cannot be used when its deposit is depleted, which hinders the payment completion, such as it is overly utilized in one direction. However, they cannot migrate the deposit from one channel to another to facilitate payment completion when a depletion in the channel deposit arises. This limitation arises from the basic design assumption of payment channels, i.e., each channel is independent from others. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes PaySwitch, inspired by the traditional network switch, to enable connecting multiple payment channels through one PaySwitch smart contract. PaySwitch is designed to enable any peer in the PaySwitch to dynamically reallocate the deposits in their payment channels while maintaining the independence of each other to ensure the trustworthiness of the channel. This paper presents the security definition of PaySwitch and formally proves its security using the UC-framework. To demonstrate the feasibility of PaySwitch, this paper applies it to several routing algorithms. The experimental results show that PaySwitch is capable of improving the transaction success rate and throughput compared with the traditional payment channel based approaches.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10835102/Blockchainpayment channelsmart contractUC-frameworknetwork security |
| spellingShingle | Anan Jin Yuhang Ye Brian Lee Xiang Li Yuansong Qiao PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks IEEE Access Blockchain payment channel smart contract UC-framework network security |
| title | PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks |
| title_full | PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks |
| title_fullStr | PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks |
| title_full_unstemmed | PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks |
| title_short | PaySwitch: Smart Contract-Based Payment Switch for Off-Chain Payment Channel Networks |
| title_sort | payswitch smart contract based payment switch for off chain payment channel networks |
| topic | Blockchain payment channel smart contract UC-framework network security |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10835102/ |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ananjin payswitchsmartcontractbasedpaymentswitchforoffchainpaymentchannelnetworks AT yuhangye payswitchsmartcontractbasedpaymentswitchforoffchainpaymentchannelnetworks AT brianlee payswitchsmartcontractbasedpaymentswitchforoffchainpaymentchannelnetworks AT xiangli payswitchsmartcontractbasedpaymentswitchforoffchainpaymentchannelnetworks AT yuansongqiao payswitchsmartcontractbasedpaymentswitchforoffchainpaymentchannelnetworks |