Mass Exit Attacks on the Lightning Network

The Lightning Network (LN) has enjoyed rapid growth over recent years, and has become the most popular scaling solution for the Bitcoin blockchain. The security of the LN relies on the ability of the nodes to close a channel by settling their balances, which requires confirming a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain within a pre-agreed time period. We study the susceptibility of the LN to mass exit attacks in case of high transaction congestion, in the presence of a small …

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