Employing the Structural Power to Achieve Supply-Demand Balanced Payment Channel Networks

2026-09-03

AI Summary

本文通过揭示支付通道网络中流动性分配的结构组织，并引入支付拓扑熵及MaxPTE算法，从静态拓扑视角优化了供需平衡问题，减少了交易失败概率。

Abstract

Blockchain technology faces scalability challenges because transactions must be validated and recorded across the network. Payment channel networks (PCNs) improve efficiency by moving transactions off-chain and recording only critical interactions on the mainnet. However, PCNs require pre-deposited channel balances (supply) to match transaction demands (demand), and insufficient balances cause supply shortages. Existing approaches, including transaction path optimization and channel balance allocation, address this problem but incur high costs due to dynamic adaptation to fluctuating demands. We reveal a correlation between balance deficits in PCNs and network topology by uncovering the structural organization of liquidity allocation. This enables supply-demand conflicts to be mitigated from a static topological perspective through channel reconfiguration, without additional balance replenishment. We further introduce payment topological entropy (PTE), an information-theoretic metric that quantifies each node's deviation from the global average connection pattern and captures structural properties of balance supply. Based on PTE, we design MaxPTE, a topology optimization algorithm that reorganizes balance allocation across channels through structural reconfiguration, aligning static balance distribution with dynamic transaction demand. Extensive experiments show that MaxPTE reduces balance deficits by 27.25%, increases average maximum flow by 12.23%, and decreases transaction failure probability by 25.96%, outperforming existing benchmarks. The method also remains robust across diverse balance-demand distributions, improving supply-demand balance without prior demand prediction.

Problem

• Blockchain Scalability
• Payment Channel Networks
• Supply-Demand Balance
• Balance Deficits

Innovation

• Structural Power
• Payment Topological Entropy (PTE)
• Topology Optimization
• Balance Deficits
• Supply-Demand Balance