Complex Network Analysis on Blockchain Payment Channel Networks for Metaverse

In the emerging metaverse ecosystem, blockchain is an enabling technology to ensure trustworthy transactions among metaverse virtual/real entities. However, existing blockchains suffer from their performance limitation. Payment channel networks have been emerging as a solution to dispel the performance curse of blockchains by executing transactions via a privacy channel maintained between entities. In this paper, we conduct complex network analysis on blockchain payment channel networks (PCNs). We consider two typical PCNs: the Ripple and Lightning networks as representatives. We analyze the Ripple and Lightning network from the perspectives of degree distribution, word-cloud analysis, small-world phenomenon, connected components, betweenness and closeness, and the rich-club phenomenon. We obtain some important implications through the complex network analysis, such as the scale-free phenomenon the small-world phenomenon, and the non-rich-club effect of the two typical PCNs. Such findings will contribute to future in-depth analysis of the structural characteristics of blockchain PCNs and provide guidelines for designing efficient scheduling schemes for PCNs to support diverse metaverse applications.