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International Conference for Emerging Technologies in Computing

iCETiC 2019: Emerging Technologies in Computing pp 29–45Cite as

An Efficient Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Protocol with Probabilistic Flooding

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Abstract

Bitcoin was launched in 2009, becoming the world’s first ever decentralized digital currency. It uses a publicly distributed ledger called the blockchain to record the transaction history of the network. The Bitcoin network is structured as a decentralized peer-to-peer network, where there are no central or supernodes, and all peers are seen as equal. Nodes in the network do not have a complete view of the entire network and are only aware of the nodes that they are directly connected to. In order to propagate information across the network, Bitcoin implements a gossip-based flooding protocol. However, the current flooding protocol is inefficient and wasteful, producing a number of redundant and duplicated messages. In this paper, we present an alternative approach to the current flooding protocol implemented by Bitcoin. We propose a novel protocol that changes the current flooding protocol to a probabilistic flooding approach. Our approach allows nodes to maintain certain probabilities of sending information to their neighbours, based on previous message exchanges between the nodes. Our experimental evaluation shows a reduction in the number of duplicated messages received by each node in the network and the total number of messages exchanged in the network, whilst ensuring that the reliability and resilience of the system were not negatively affected.

This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/2094 and co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund through the Southern Eastern Regional Operational Programme to Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.blockchain.com/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?daysAverageString=7timespan=all.

  2. 2.

    http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source.

  3. 3.

    If the inputs are greater than the required outputs, miners may collect the difference as a transaction fee or may be sent back to the payee’s address as change.

  4. 4.

    It may also decrease in difficulty, depending on the average block creation rate of the previous 2,016 blocks.

  5. 5.

    Users may turn off the routing function in Bitcoin Core if desired.

  6. 6.

    https://github.com/JoaoBraveCoding/bitcoin-simulator.

  7. 7.

    https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

    Huy Vu & Hitesh Tewari

Authors
  1. Huy Vu
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  2. Hitesh Tewari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huy Vu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CFRED, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Mahdi H. Miraz

  2. Glyndwr University, Wrexham, UK

    Peter S. Excell

  3. Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales, Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan, UK

    Andrew Ware

  4. AMA International University, Salmabad, Bahrain

    Safeeullah Soomro

  5. University of Essex, Colcheser, UK

    Maaruf Ali

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© 2019 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Vu, H., Tewari, H. (2019). An Efficient Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Protocol with Probabilistic Flooding. In: Miraz, M., Excell, P., Ware, A., Soomro, S., Ali, M. (eds) Emerging Technologies in Computing. iCETiC 2019. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 285. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23943-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23943-5_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-23942-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23943-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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