Accelerating Message Propagation in Blockchain Networks

Abstract

Improving performance of blockchain systems is one of the principal research interests in the field. While many efforts are being made to produce faster and more efficient consensus protocols, they are all constrained by a common factor: the time it takes for a block to propagate through the network. Most blockchain networks use different variations of gossip-like communication protocols to be able to send large messages whilst minimizing latency and bandwidth use. Unfortunately, it still supposes a major bottleneck for state-of-the-art high-performance blockchain systems. In this paper we analyze the most relevant work being done to improve message propagation in blockchain networks. More specifically, we introduce the problem of neighbour selection for gossip protocols, and we propose an alternative method to pick neighbours based on weights derived from self-collected metrics. Our technical performance study shows that the proposed method can suppose an improvement of up to 5 seconds. Additionally, in combination with the use of erasure coding techniques, we are capable of achieving a 75% reduction of the overall block propagation time.