Micropaying to a distributed payee with instant confirmation

Abstract

Micropayment means the value of transaction is small, i.e., payment worths a few pennies. To achieve instant micropayments, Hearn and Spilman introduced a notion of payment channel. In this paper, we formally discuss the robustness requirements of a scheme that is suitable for micropayments, consider the explicit value of penalty and user privacy leakage. More precisely, we propose a micropayments scheme for decentralized blockchain-based payment system based on the notion of payment channel, which enables a payee to receive funds at several unsynchronized points of sale and penalize the double-spenders, with instant confirmation.