A Survey on Network Optimization Techniques for Blockchain Systems

Abstract

The increase of the Internet of Things (IoT) calls for secure solutions for industrial applications. The security of IoT can be potentially improved by blockchain. However, blockchain technology suffers scalability issues which hinders integration with IoT. Solutions to blockchain’s scalability issues, such as minimizing the computational complexity of consensus algorithms or blockchain storage requirements, have received attention. However, to realize the full potential of blockchain in IoT, the inefficiencies of its inter-peer communication must also be addressed. For example, blockchain uses a flooding technique to share blocks, resulting in duplicates and inefficient bandwidth usage. Moreover, blockchain peers use a random neighbor selection (RNS) technique to decide on other peers with whom to exchange blockchain data. As a result, the peer-to-peer (P2P) topology formation limits the effective achievable throughput. This paper provides a survey on the state-of-the-art network structures and communication mechanisms used in blockchain and establishes the need for network-based optimization. Additionally, it discusses the blockchain architecture and its layers categorizes existing literature into the layers and provides a survey on the state-of-the-art optimization frameworks, analyzing their effectiveness and ability to scale. Finally, this paper presents recommendations for future work.

An Efficient Blockchain Neighbor Selection Framework Based on Agglomerative Clustering

“…Solutions for BC scalability are classified by implementation layer [30]. State-of-the-art BC research addresses scalability in three key areas.…”

Dynamic Transaction Confirmation Sharding Protocol for Alliance Chain

“…This situation arises because all transactions within the blockchain structure require nodes to utilize their computational and storage resources [3,4], resulting in substantial wastage of time and space [5]. The manifestation is the bottleneck of low throughput and high latency caused by the blockchain's difficulty bearing the cost of consensus process and ledger storage [6]. Researchers have suggested various strategies to tackle performance issues and fulfill the practical requirement of enhancing blockchain resources to manage the rising volume of transactions [7].…”

An Overview of Technologies for Improving Storage Efficiency in Blockchain-Based IIoT Applications

“…On their own, IoT and blockchain have contributed to massive advancements in the fields to which they have been applied [25,26]. The benefits of the blockchain, which include enhanced security, transparency, and greater traceability [27], make it a promising technology for integration with IIoT, which has long had issues with security [28][29][30][31][32]. However, there are several issues that limit the integration of blockchain into IIoT systems [25,33].…”