SHARE: A TEE-Assisted Multi-PCH Architecture for Secure and Scalable Off-Chain Payment Services

Jul 16, 2026

Upload by Logic

Payment channel hubs (PCHs) improve reachability in payment channel networks (PCNs) by coordinating off-chain transfers, but existing hub-based designs suffer from limited elasticity, bottlenecks in load balancing and throughput, and weaker privacy protection. SHARE introduces a TEE-assisted multi-PCH architecture combining cost-aware smoothnode allocation and confidential, rate-controlled multipath routing. It provides exact deployment and assignment for small networks, randomized double-greedy heuristics for large ones, and threshold key management to coordinate concurrent inter-hub channels. Receiver-side atomicity is enforced with shared-hashlocks. Security proofs and MATLAB/LND/SGX experiments show higher transaction success ratios and normalized throughput under varying transaction sizes.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

Introduction

Motivation and Background

SHARE Architecture

TEE-Assisted Execution and Threshold Key Management

Cost-Aware Allocation and Confidential Multipath Routing

Security Formalization and Proofs

Experimental Results and Prototypes

SHARE: A TEE-Assisted Multi-PCH Architecture for Secure and Scalable Off-Chain Payment Services Lingxiao Yang, Member, IEEE, Xuewen Dong, Member, IEEE, Wei Wang, Senior Member, IEEE, Yong Yu, Fellow, IEEE, Sheng Gao, Member, IEEE, Qiang Qu, and Yulong Shen, Senior Member, IEEE arXiv :2501 .04236v3 [ cs .DC] 10 Jul 2026 Abstract—Payment channel hubs (PCHs) improve the reachability of payment channel networks (PCNs) by coordinating off-chain payments between users without direct channels. However, existing hub-based services are commonly constrained by single-hub coordination or sender-computed routes, which limits elasticity under bursty workloads and creates bottlenecks in load balancing, throughput, and privacy protection. This paper presents SHARE, a TEE-assisted multi-PCH architecture for secure and scalable off-chain payment services. SHARE combines cost-aware smoothnode allocation with confidential rate-controlled multipath routing: it solves PCH deployment and client assignment exactly for small networks, applies a randomized double-greedy heuristic for large networks, and uses prior global state together with local requests to spread traffic while preserving channel liquidity. To protect sensitive routing information, SHARE employs TEE-assisted execution and threshold key management, enabling multiple smooth nodes to coordinate concurrent inter-PCH channels without reconstructing complete private keys. A shared-hashlock rule further provides receiver-side payment atomicity, ensuring that an honest receiver accepts only a complete transaction-unit set. We formalize SHARE with a UC-inspired ideal functionality and prove routing confidentiality, execution integrity, and receiverside acceptance atomicity under explicit leakage and thresholdcorruption assumptions. MATLAB simulations and an LND/SGX prototype show that SHARE improves the average transaction success ratio by 43.6% as transaction size varies and increases normalized throughput by 181.5% over the evaluated baselines. These results demonstrate that secure multi-hub coordination can turn PCHs from isolated relays into scalable service infrastructure for privacy-preserving off-chain payments. Index Terms—Payment channel network, multi-hub, trusted execution environment, off-chain payments, security and scalability. Lingxiao Yang and Yong Yu are with the School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China (e-mail: [lxyang@snnu.edu.cn](lxyang@snnu.edu.cn); [yuyong@snnu.edu.cn](yuyong@snnu.edu.cn)). Xuewen Dong is with the School of Computer Science and Technology, Xidian University, the Engineering Research Center of Blockchain Technology Application and Evaluation, Ministry of Education, and also with the Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Blockchain and Secure Computing, Xi’an 710126, China (e-mail: [xwdong@xidian.edu.cn](xwdong@xidian.edu.cn)). Wei Wang is with the Beijing Key Laboratory of Security and Privacy in Intelligent Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China, and also with the Ministry of Education Key Lab for Intelligent Networks and Network Security, aka MOE KLINNS Lab, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China ([e-mail: wangwei1@bjtu.edu.cn](e-mail: wangwei1@bjtu.edu.cn)). Sheng Gao is with the School of Information, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China (e-mail: [sgao@cufe.edu.cn](sgao@cufe.edu.cn)). Qiang Qu is with the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also with the Huawei Blockchain Lab, Huawei Cloud Tech Co., Ltd, Shenzhen 518055, China (e-mail: [qiang@siat.ac.cn](qiang@siat.ac.cn)). Yulong Shen is with the School of Computer Science and Technology, Xidian University, and also with the Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Network and System Security, Xi’an 710126, China (e-mail: [ylshen@mail.xidian.edu.cn](ylshen@mail.xidian.edu.cn)). Corresponding authors: Yong Yu, Xuewen Dong. The conference v

FAQs

What problem does SHARE address in payment channel hubs?

Existing hub-based services can be constrained to single-hub coordination or sender-computed routes, limiting elasticity and creating bottlenecks in load balancing, throughput, and privacy protection. SHARE targets secure, scalable multi-hub coordination for off-chain payments.

How does SHARE protect sensitive routing information between multiple PCHs?

SHARE uses TEE-assisted execution and threshold key management so multiple smooth nodes can coordinate concurrent inter-PCH channels without reconstructing complete private keys. It also formalizes routing confidentiality under explicit leakage assumptions.

What mechanisms ensure receiver-side payment atomicity in SHARE?

SHARE employs a shared-hashlock rule so an honest receiver accepts only a complete set of transaction units. This enforces acceptance atomicity with security guarantees in the formal model.

Jul 16, 2026

Upload by Logic