Locality based approach to improve propagation delay on the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network

Fadhil, Muntadher; Owenson, Gareth; Adda, Mo

doi:10.23919/inm.2017.7987328

Cited by 24 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Discussion: Proposals were made to increase performance by favoring the establishing of connections to peers in geographic proximity [29]. Geographic proximity can be easily deducted using IP address information and freely available databases, hence, the required information can be easily obtained.…”

Section: A Attachment Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Network Layer Aspects of Permissionless Blockchains

Neudecker

Hartenstein

2019

IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials

147

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Permissionless blockchains reach decentralized consensus without requiring pre-established identities or trusted third parties, thus enabling applications such as cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. Consensus is agreed on data that is generated by the application and transmitted by the system's (peer-to-peer) network layer. While many attacks on the network layer were discussed so far, there is no systematic approach that brings together known attacks, the requirements, and the design space of the network layer. In this paper, we survey attacks on the network layer of permissionless blockchains, and derive five requirements: 1) performance; 2) low cost of participation; 3) anonymity; 4) DoS resistance; and 5) topology hiding. Furthermore, we survey the design space of the network layer and qualitatively show the effect of each design decisions on the fulfillment of the requirements. Finally, we pick two aspects of the design space, in-band peer discovery and relay delay, and demonstrate possible directions of future research by quantitatively analyzing and optimizing simplified scenarios. We show that while most design decisions imply certain tradeoffs, there is a lack of models that analyze and formalize these tradeoffs. Such models could aid the design of the network layer of permissionless blockchains. One reason for the lack of models is the deliberately limited observability of deployed blockchains. We emphasize that simulation based approaches cope with these limitations and are suited for the analysis of the network layer of permissionless blockchains.

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Section: A Attachment Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Network Layer Aspects of Permissionless Blockchains

Neudecker

Hartenstein

2019

IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials

147

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“…Turning now to the comparison between BCBPT protocol and locality based protocol LBC. The LBC protocol was proposed in our prior work [6] as a mechanism to improve the transaction propagation delay in the Bitcoin network. The LBC protocol aims to convert the Bitcoin network topology from normal randomised neighbour (connected nodes) selection to location based neighbour selection.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, DNS service nodes should recommend available nodes to the node N based on the proximity in the physical geographical location as the geographic distance in the internet is many times a good indication of topologic distance. DNS service follows the geographical distance calculation methodology that has been used in our previous work [6] in order to recommend closest available nodes to node N. The node N calculates the distance to each discovered node in order to get its proximity ordering based on a latency threshold. This ordering would help the node N to be directed to a specific cluster.…”

Section: B Cluster Creation and Maintenancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The evaluation of BCBPT is done based on whether or not the BCBPT protocol is able to speed up the transaction propagation delay. In addition, we perform a comparison based on the transaction propagation delay between the BCBPT protocol and LBC protocol that has been presented in our previous work [6]. However, finding out the best mechanism which is able to speed up the propagation delay in the Bitcoin network is deemed to be the main intended impact of this research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Proximity Awareness Approach to Enhance Propagation Delay on the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network

Sallal

Owenson

Adda

2017

2017 IEEE 37th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)

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In the Bitcoin system, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, the delay overhead in transaction verification prevents the Bitcoin from gaining increasing popularity nowadays as it makes the system vulnerable to double spend attacks. This paper introduces a proximity-aware extension to the current Bitcoin protocol, named Bitcoin Clustering Based Ping Time protocol (BCBPT). The ultimate purpose of the proposed protocol, that is based on how the clusters are formulated and the nodes define their membership, is to improve the transaction propagation delay in the Bitcoin network. In BCBPT, the proximity of connectivity in the Bitcoin network is increased by grouping Bitcoin nodes based on ping latencies between nodes. We show, through simulations, that the proximity base ping latency defines better clustering structures that optimize the performance of the transaction propagation delay. The reduction of the communication link cost measured by the information propagation time between nodes is mainly considered as a key reason for this improvement. Bitcoin Clustering Based Ping Time protocol is more effective at reducing the transaction propagation delay compared to the existing clustering protocol (LBC) that we proposed in our previous work.

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“…Among these rules, 'Rule 1' is the default behavior of Bitcoin clients, and 'Rule 5' is our proposed approach where we have used x=3, y=3, and z=2. Rules 2∼4 are implemented for comparison purposes, where Rules 2 and 3 may be considered similar to what was proposed by Fadhil et al [21], [24]. However, their work either had an unclear notion of 'long' link, or had a strict cut-off threshold of 100km which would not work if there were no peers within 100km or outside 100km.…”

Section: A Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nodes in the Bitcoin Network: Comparative Measurement Study and Survey

Park

Seol

et al. 2019

IEEE Access

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Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that has gained significant attention and growth in recent years. Unlike traditional currencies, Bitcoin does not rely on a centralized authority to control the supply, distribution, and verification of the validity of transactions. Instead, Bitcoin relies on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network of volunteers to distribute pending transactions and confirmed blocks, to verify transactions, and to collectively implement a replicated ledger that everyone agrees on. This P2P network is at the heart of Bitcoin and many other blockchain technologies. In this paper, we present a comparative measurement study of nodes in the Bitcoin network. We measure and analyze how many the so-called ''volunteers'' are in the Bitcoin P2P network by scanning the live Bitcoin network for 37 days in 2018 and compare them with the data reported by prior work in 2013∼2016. This paper is motivated by the fact that Bitcoin has experienced explosive growth in terms of a number of users, transactions, value, and interest over a recent couple of years. Our investigation includes the IP addresses of Bitcoin nodes, size of the network, power law in the geographic distribution, protocol, and client versions, and network latencies and shows how today's network is different from early days. In addition, based on the observations made from the measurement study, we propose a simple distance-based peer selection rule for improved connectivity and faster data propagation. The evaluation results show that our proposed lightweight and backward-compatible peer selection rule has the potential to reduce data dissemination latency. INDEX TERMS Bitcoin, peer-to-peer network, blockchain, peer selection, network measurement.

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Locality based approach to improve propagation delay on the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network

Cited by 24 publications

References 4 publications

Network Layer Aspects of Permissionless Blockchains

Network Layer Aspects of Permissionless Blockchains

Proximity Awareness Approach to Enhance Propagation Delay on the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network

Nodes in the Bitcoin Network: Comparative Measurement Study and Survey

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