Can Lightning Network’s Autopilot Function Use BA Model as the Underlying Network?

Abstract

By extending micropayment channel technology and building a transaction network, the Lightning Network solves inefficient bitcoin transactions. Currently, more than 1,000 Bitcoins have been deposited in the Lightning Network. In designing the Lightning Network routing protocol, simulating its transactions, and evaluating the network robustness, researchers have almost always used the Barabasi Albert Model as a substrate network. In particular, as the network grows in size, it becomes particularly important to automatically establish links for the network of joined nodes—the autopilot function—and it becomes a crucial question whether the Barabasi Albert Model as the underlying network for the autopilot function conforms to the real topology of the Lightning Network. In this paper, we construct the temporal network of Lightning Network and compare the topological properties of Lightning Network with those of Barabasi Albert Model of the same scale in detail. Lightning Network has a large gap with Barabasi Albert Model in terms of assortativity and network diameter. We found that nodes tend to connect to nodes with greater Closeness Centrality in terms of node preference connectivity. Our findings suggest that using the Barabasi Albert Model as the underlying network for the autopilot function is not a reasonable choice.