Print Email Facebook Twitter Improving the Anonymity of the Lightning Network using Sub-Optimal Routes Title Improving the Anonymity of the Lightning Network using Sub-Optimal Routes Author Plotean, Mihai (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science) Contributor Roos, S. (mentor) Prabhu Kumble, S. (mentor) Spinellis, D. (graduation committee) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Programme Computer Science and Engineering Project CSE3000 Research Project Date 2021-07-01 Abstract The Lightning Network is a second layer payment protocol built on top of Bitcoin, which is scalable and has reduced transaction fees. It does so by eliminating the need to broadcast every transaction to the whole network. When one user wants to send a payment to another, the routing protocol generates a path between them that is always fast and cost efficient. The low degree of randomness in the existing routing protocols during path selection allows an adversary to compromise the anonymity of the sender and recipient.In this work, we propose a new routing algorithm that is less predictable when creating a transaction path. We show that this increases the anonymity of the users of the Lightning Network by creating an attack on the new routing protocol. The attacker tries to identify the potential source and recipient of a transaction. Our results suggest that there is a trade-off between the offered anonymity and transaction fees; it is not possible to get higher anonymity at no cost by designing a non-deterministic routing algorithm. Subject lightning networkanonymitybitcoinrouting algorithm To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0dd72d7f-e19f-4d22-9c8a-cbd77eb08358 Part of collection Student theses Document type bachelor thesis Rights © 2021 Mihai Plotean Files PDF Research_Paper_1.pdf 1.7 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:0dd72d7f-e19f-4d22-9c8a-cbd77eb08358/datastream/OBJ/view