“The Justice” of Lightning Network

“Justice” exist in Bitcoin lighting network. If you are confused with the use of the word justice let me explain. Bitcoin lighting network has an integrated punitive mechanism that we call “justice transaction” involving the closure of a lighting channel that is suspected to be attempting theft.

As it is mentioned in a Research analysis report by BITMEX:

“It should be noted that, by design, when a thief attempts to steal funds on the lightning network, if caught, they do not only lose the money they tried to steal, they lose all the funds in the relevant channel. This “punishment” is expected to act as a deterrent and is sometimes called “justice”. “

Lightning Network’s Justice Stats

So far, BITMEX’s report have identified 241 justice transactions with transaction inputs totaling 2.22 BTC, with the monthly total peaking at around 0.67 BTC in February 2019.

Lightning Network
Value redeemed in justice transactions – monthly (BTC)

The 2.22 BTC represents the total funds claimed by honest non channel closing nodes, part of this value is funds originally owned by the dis-honest nodes and part of the value will be the value they tried to steal.

In conclusion, the report shows that the 241 justice transactions with value just over 2 BTC, are only 0.7% of the current number of Lightning Network’s channels. A percentage that is reasonably small relative to the size of the lighting network, which have currently 940 BTC locked up in 32.951 channels.

source: https://blog.bitmex.com/justice/

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