The Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) is designed to improve the scalability of blockchain systems by using off-chain payment paths to settle transactions in a faster, cheaper, and more private manner. This work aims to empirically study LN's fee revenue for network participants. Under realistic assumptions on payment amounts, routing algorithms and traffic distribution, we analyze the economic returns of the network's largest routing nodes which currently hold the network together, and assess whether the centralizing tendency is incentive-compatible from an economic viewpoint. Moreover, since recent literature has proved that participation is economically irrational for the majority of large nodes, we evaluate the long-term impact on the network topology when participants start behaving rationally.

翻译：比特币闪电网络（LN）旨在通过利用链下支付路径，以更快、更便宜且更私密的方式结算交易，从而改善区块链系统的可扩展性。本文旨在实证研究LN中网络参与者的费用收益。在关于支付金额、路由算法和流量分布的合理假设下，我们分析了当前维系网络运行的最大路由节点的经济回报，并从经济学角度评估中心化趋势是否符合激励相容性。此外，鉴于近期文献已证明参与行为对大多数大型节点而言在经济上并不理性，我们评估了参与者开始理性行为时对网络拓扑结构的长期影响。