Lightning network: uma análise exploratória de micropagamentos no Bitcoin

Abstract

The growing popularity of Bitcoin led to an increasing number of daily recurring transactions, showing its main weakness: the need to store large amounts of data. The non-scalable nature of Bitcoin precludes its adoption as currency for small daily transactions. The Lightning Network protocol can be a solution to this problem by providing an alternative network for transactions to be performed outside the main network, serving as a secondary layer for Bitcoin. Through channels created between pairs of wallets, it allows payments to be executed instantly, passing to Blockchain only the initial and final configuration of the channel. This work proposes the understanding of the operation of this protocol, performing an exploratory analysis in the routing of payments, thus recognizing its limitations. This task was performed using Bitcoin’s Testnet network, through the creation of real-time scenarios and running tests capable of evaluating the protocol.