João Esteves Marçal

Co-advisor: M. Matos


Adaptive Information Dissemination in the Bitcoin Network


Tese submetida para provas de mestrado em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa.

Abstract

Distributed ledgers have received significant attention as a building block for cryptocurrencies and have proven to be also relevant in several other fields. In cryptocurrencies, this abstraction is usually implemented by grouping transactions in blocks that are then linked together to form a blockchain. Nodes need to exchange information to maintain the status of the chain which consumes significant network resources. Unfortunately, naively reducing the number of messages exchanged can have a negative impact in performance and correctness, as some transactions might not be included in the chain.

In this dissertation, we study the mechanisms of information dissemination used in Bitcoin and propose a set of adaptive mechanisms that not only lowers network resource usage but can also adapt to changes in the network. Our experimental evaluation shows that is possible to lower the bandwidth consumed by 10.2% and the number of exchanged messages in 41.5%, without any negative impact in the number of transactions committed.


Publicações

Adaptive Information Dissemination in the Bitcoin Network
João Esteves Marçal
MSc Thesis. Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa.
September, 2018.
Available BibTeX, MSC Thesis, and extended abstract, and mid-term report.
Técnicas para Redução da Carga na Rede no Livro-Razão da Bitcoin.
J. Marçal, M. Matos and L. Rodrigues
Actas do décimo Simpósio de Informática (Inforum), Coimbra, Portugal, Sep. 2018.
Available BibTeX, extended report (pdf).

Luís Rodrigues