A balanced routing algorithm for blockchain offline channels using flocking

Abstract

Offline channels have the potential to mitigate the scalability problem of blockchains. A Path-Based fund Transfer (PBT) uses a path in the channel network. PBTs can make the channel network imbalanced, i.e., funds in a few channels become very low and funds in other channels become very high. Imbalanced channel network may make PBT infeasible. Hence we need a routing algorithm for PBT that keeps the channel network balanced. In existing solutions for this problem have privacy problem as the channels have to reveal their balances in order to find suitable routes for PBTs. In this paper, we mitigate this problem as we propose a flocking based algorithm for PBTs that keeps the channel network balanced.