Path of Trust: An Off-Chain Performance Enhancement Algorithm for Public Blockchains

Abstract

Blockchain technology is one among the latest innovations in computing industry. Blockchains have gathered widespread interest in the industry due to their potential as secure data storage. Despite the potential benefits of blockchains, there are several limitations which hinders mass deployment, one of these limitations being low throughput. Low throughput has limited blockchain adoption in large scale applications such as banking or mobile payments. This study addresses this limitation through development of a performance enhancement algorithm called Path of Trust (PoT). PoT uses off-chain stratergy in which transactions meeting certain criteria bypass the main chain and sent direct to the recipient. The PoT algorithm was incorporated into a blockchain wallet that was developed as a mobile app. Experiments were run to verify the performance of the developed solution. Based on the experiments performed, the performance of the blockchain based on the developed solution was improved when compared to the original blockchain. With PoT algorithm running, the average transaction processing time was 12.81 secs per transaction compared to 18.52 secs when PoT was not running.