Today between 10:00-10:30 am at @TABConf 8 - Oct 12-15, 2026 ATL , learn about our new research on Lightning Network pathfinding strategies from my great student @Sindura Saraswathi 
- We present a detailed breakdown of the underlying cost functions and constraints used by pathfinding algorithms of the different LN node implementations.
- Surprisingly, we observe that the pathfinding problems that most LN node implementations attempt to solve are NP-complete, and cannot be guaranteed to be optimally solved by the variants of Dijkstra’s algorithm currently deployed in production.
- Through comparative analysis and simulations, we evaluate efficacy of different pathfinding strategies across metrics such as success rate, fees, path length, and timelock.
We think that this study provides new insights for how pathfinding within the Lightning Network can further be improved. While beyond the scope of our study, the findings are also relevant for multi-part payments.
Link to paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.13784
GitHub
TABConf 6 Schedule • TABConf
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