Skip to main content

Trade-Off Between Security and Scalability in Blockchain Design: A Dynamic Sharding Approach

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover The International Conference on Deep Learning, Big Data and Blockchain (Deep-BDB 2021) (Deep-BDB 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 309))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Security and scalability are considered as two major issues that are most likely to influence rapid deployment of blockchains in businesses. We believe that the ability to scale up a blockchain lies mainly in improving the underlying technology rather than deploying new hardware. Though recent research works have applied sharding techniques in enhancing scalability of blockchains, they do not cater for addressing the issue of both data security and scalability in blockchains. In this paper, we propose an approach that makes a trade-off between security and scalability when designing blockchain based systems. We propose an efficient replication model, which creates dynamic sharding wherein blocks are stored in a varying number of nodes. The proposed approach shows that the replication of blockchain over peer-to-peer network is minimized as the blockchain’s length evolves according to a replication factor to preserve the security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Hyperledger Architecture Volume 1. Introduction to hyperledger business blockchain design philosophy and consensus. https://www.hyperledger.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Hyperledger_Arch_WG_Paper_1_Consensus.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2021

  2. Amiri, M.J., Agrawal, D., El Abbadi, A.: On sharding permissioned blockchains. In: IEEE International Conference on Blockchain, Blockchain 2019, Atlanta, GA, USA, 14–17 July 2019, pp. 282–285. IEEE (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Amiri, M.J., Agrawal, D., El Abbadi, A.: Sharper: sharding permissioned blockchains over network clusters. CoRR, abs/1910.00765 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Chen, J., Micali, S.: Algorand: a secure and efficient distributed ledger. Theor. Comput. Sci. 777, 155–183 (2019)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  5. Dang, H., Dinh, T.T.A., Loghin, D., Chang, E.-C., Lin, Q., Ooi, B.C.: Towards scaling blockchain systems via sharding. In: Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Management of Data, SIGMOD Conference 2019, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 30 June–5 July 2019, pp. 123–140. ACM (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Goodman, L.M.: Tezos a self amending crypto ledger white paper (2017). https://tezos.com/whitepaper.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2021

  7. Kokoris-Kogias, E., Jovanovic, P., Gailly, N., Khoffi, I., Gasser, L., Ford, B.: Enhancing bitcoin security and performance with strong consistency via collective signing. CoRR, abs/1602.06997 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Kokoris-Kogias, E., Jovanovic, P., Gasser, L., Gailly, N., Syta, E., Ford, B.: OmniLedger: a secure, scale-out, decentralized ledger via sharding. In: 2018 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, SP 2018, Proceedings, 21–23 May 2018, San Francisco, California, USA, pp. 583–598. IEEE Computer Society (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Leung, D., Suhl, A., Gilad, Y., Zeldovich, N.: Vault: fast bootstrapping for the algorand cryptocurrency. In: 26th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2019, San Diego, California, USA, 24–27 February 2019. The Internet Society (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Lu, Y., Tang, Q., Wang, G.: Generic superlight client for permissionless blockchains. CoRR, abs/2003.06552 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Luu, L., Narayanan, V., Zheng, C., Baweja, K., Gilbert, S., Saxena, P.: A secure sharding protocol for open blockchains. In: Weippl, E.R. , Katzenbeisser, S., Kruegel, C., Myers, A.C., Halevi, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 October 2016, pp. 17–30. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Maymounkov, P., Mazières, D.: Kademlia: a peer-to-peer information system based on the XOR metric. In: Druschel, P., Kaashoek, F., Rowstron, A. (eds.) IPTPS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2429, pp. 53–65. Springer, Heidelberg (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45748-8_5

    Chapter  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. White paper (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Ozisik, A.P., Bissias, G., Levine, B.N.: Estimation of miner hash rates and consensus on blockchains (draft). CoRR, abs/1707.00082 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Harmony team. Harmony. Technical White paper, 16 (2017). https://harmony.one/whitepaper.pdf. Accessed May 2021

  16. ZILLIQA team and Others. The zilliqa. Technical White paper, 16 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Buterin, V.: Ethereum, white paper (2017). https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/. Accessed 20 May 2021

  18. Zamani, M., Movahedi, M., Raykova, M.: RapidChain: scaling blockchain via full sharding. In: Lie, D., Mannan, M., Backes, M., Wang, X. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018, Toronto, ON, Canada, 15–19 October 2018, pp. 931–948. ACM (2018)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kahina Khacef .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Khacef, K., Benbernou, S., Ouziri, M., Younas, M. (2022). Trade-Off Between Security and Scalability in Blockchain Design: A Dynamic Sharding Approach. In: Awan, I., Benbernou, S., Younas, M., Aleksy, M. (eds) The International Conference on Deep Learning, Big Data and Blockchain (Deep-BDB 2021). Deep-BDB 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 309. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84337-3_7

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics