New Lightning: MIT Introduces Spider Routing Scheme to Accelerate Cryptocurrency Transactions

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have "improved" the Lightning Network by creating a model of the networktransaction routing in a blockchain called Spider.

According to MIT developers, the solution representsa “network of payment channels” (PCN), which can reduce the time spent on transactions on the blockchain and even make a profit. Its architecture has significant resemblance to the Lightning Network, a payment network already operating in Bitcoin and several other public blockchains.

Experts explained that transactions will becarried out with minimal participation of the blockchain. PCN users will create off-chain escrow accounts, thereby forming a unified network of joint accounts. Payments will then be made through these accounts and the information will be recorded on the blockchain only for account creation and closure, which will significantly speed up transactions. Accounts may also charge a small fee if transactions are routed through them.

In traditional schemes, transactions are committedby the shortest route, however, this does not take into account the user's balance, and if, when processing a large number of transactions, the balance on the joint account becomes zero, this will lead to a delay or failure of the operation. The Spider scheme offers a more efficient way to route cryptocurrency payments. It is about dividing transactions into parts that are transmitted through channels with different bandwidths. The developers are confident that such a scheme will work much more efficiently unlike other networks in which the payment is rejected if the payment channel cannot transfer a large payment.

In addition, if the Spider account cannotprocess the incoming transaction, it is not rejected, but queued until this account restores the balance of coins as a result of another transaction. At the same time, a special algorithm will check the workload of nodes to detect delays in such queues, which will allow less often to direct a transaction through a busy route. In the near future, the developers plan to increase the efficiency of the Spider solution for conducting transactions based on DAG and eliminate possible problems related to privacy.

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