zk-PCN: A Privacy-Preserving Payment Channel Network Using zk-SNARKs

【Author】 Yu, Wenxuan; Xu, Minghui; Yu, Dongxiao; Cheng, Xiuzhen; Hu, Qin; Xiong, Zehui

【Source】2022 IEEE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE, COMPUTING, AND COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE, IPCCC

【影响因子】

【Abstract】Payment channel network (PCN) is a layer-two scaling solution that enables fast off-chain transactions but does not involve on-chain transaction settlement. PCNs raise new privacy issues including balance secrecy, relationship anonymity and payment privacy. Moreover, protecting privacy causes low transaction success rates. To address this dilemma, we propose zk-PCN, a privacy-preserving payment channel network using zk-SNARKs. We prevent from exposing true balances by setting up public balances instead. Using public balances, zk-PCN can guarantee high transaction success rates and protect PCN privacy with zero-knowledge proofs. Additionally, zk-PCN is compatible with the existing routing algorithms of PCNs. To support such compatibility, we propose zk-IPCN to improve zk-PCN with a novel proof generation (RPG) algorithm. zk-IPCN reduces the overheads of storing channel information and lowers the frequency of generating zero-knowledge proofs. Finally, extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of zkPCN in various settings.

【Keywords】Payment channel network; blockchain; privacy; zero-knowledge proof

【发表时间】2022

【收录时间】2023-06-13

【文献类型】理论模型

【主题类别】

区块链应用-实体经济-支付领域