Cryptocurrency Solutions to Enable Micropayments in Consumer IoT

Blockchain based cryptocurrencies have received great attention but long confirmation times of transactions hinder its adoption for micro-payments. Payment network is one of the solutions proposed to address the scalability issue. It transforms the problem into a routing problem by leveraging Hash Time Locked Contracts (HTLC). Payment networks possess unique characteristics to be considered when routing protocol is designed. Channels must stay balanced to have a sustainable network. In this paper, we present a payment network design that aims to keep the channels balanced by using a common weight policy across the network. We additionally utilize multi-point connection for unbalanced payment scenarios. The results show that we can keep the channels in the network more equally balanced compared to minimal fee approach and multiple connections from customers to stores increases the success ratio.