A Formally Verified Lightning Network

In this work we use formal verification to prove that the Lightning Network (LN), the most prominent scaling technique for Bitcoin, always safeguards the funds of honest users. We provide a custom implementation of (a simplification of) LN, express the desired security goals and, for the first time, we provide a machine checkable proof that they are upheld under every scenario, all in an integrated fashion. We build our system using the Why3 platform.

@article{fabiański2025_2503.07200,
  title={ A Formally Verified Lightning Network },
  author={ Grzegorz Fabiański and Rafał Stefański and Orfeas Stefanos Thyfronitis Litos },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.07200},
  year={ 2025 }
}