[vertex-four]

I am unaware of any current proposal which requires putting in place a bank-like organisation. If you're talking about Lightning Network: routing things across a network without requiring a central controller is a very well-studied field.

[mhluongo]

Lightning's network topology is still up in the air. Saying "routing is well studied" is well and good, but from what I've read doing it with payment channels without devolving to hub and spoke isn't trivial.

[vertex-four]

I would argue that that is mostly because cryptocurrency developers are mostly incapable of reading CS papers, but that's neither here nor there.

[mhluongo]

I'm sure your input would be welcome :)

There have been a couple posts recently debating different network configurations [0]. It seems like the difference between Lightning's routing and other networks is that channels need re-balancing, but I don't know the literature well enough to know if there's an existing, well-studied analog.

[0] https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-...