Abstract
Blockchains are distributed ledgers storing data and procedures in an immutable way. The validation of the information stored therein as well as the guarantee of its immutability can be achieved without the need of a central authority. Proof-of-work is the maximum expression of the distributed nature of such systems, and requires miners to spend a large amount of energy to secure the blockchain. The cost is mostly paid by the end-users that offer fees to support the validation of their transactions. In general, higher fees correspond to shorter validation delays. However, given the limited throughput of the system and variability of the workload, the fee one needs to offer to satisfy a certain requirement on the validation delay strongly depends on the intensity of the workload that, in turns, is subject to high variability.
In this work, we propose a time series analysis of the workload of Bitcoin blockchain and compare the accuracy of Facebook Prophet model with a ARIMA model. We take into account the periodicity of the workload and show by simulations how these predictions, accompanied with their confidence intervals, can be used to estimate the confirmation delays of the transactions given the offered fees.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Balsamo, S., Marin, A., Mitrani, I., Rebagliati, N.: Prediction of the consolidation delay in blockchain-based applications. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE), pp. 81–92 (2021)
Box, G.E., Jenkins, G.M., Reinsel, G.C., Ljung, G.M.: Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control. Wiley, Hoboken (2015)
Decker, C., Wattenhofer, R.: Information propagation in the bitcoin network. In: IEEE P2P 2013 Proceedings, pp. 1–10. IEEE (2013)
Faghih Mohammadi Jalali, M., Heidari, H.: Predicting changes in Bitcoin price using grey system theory. Financ. Innov. 13(6) (2020)
Fourneau, J., Marin, A., Balsamo, S.: Modeling energy packets networks in the presence of failures. In: Proceedings of 24th IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, MASCOTS, pp. 144–153. IEEE Computer Society (2016)
Gallina, L., Hamadou, S., Marin, A., Rossi, S.: A probabilistic energy-aware model for mobile ad-hoc networks. In: Al-Begain, K., Balsamo, S., Fiems, D., Marin, A. (eds.) ASMTA 2011. LNCS, vol. 6751, pp. 316–330. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21713-5_23
Kasahara, S., Kawahara, J.: Effect of Bitcoin fee on transaction-confirmation process. J. Ind. Manag. Optim. 15(1), 365–386 (2019)
Kawase, Y., Kasahara, S.: Priority queueing analysis of transaction-confirmation time for bitcoin. J. Ind. Manag. Optim. 16(3), 1077–1098 (2020)
Li, J., Yuan, Y., Wang, F.-Y.: Analyzing Bitcoin transaction fees using a queueing game model. Electron. Commer. Res. 1–21 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-020-09414-3
Malakhov, I., Marin, A., Rossi, S., Smuseva, D.: Fair work distribution on permissioned blockchains: a mobile window based approach. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Blockchain, pp. 436–441. IEEE (2020)
Mudassir, M., Bennbaia, S., Unal, D., Hammoudeh, M.: Time-series forecasting of bitcoin prices using high-dimensional features: a machine learning approach. Neural Comput. Appl. (2020)
Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2009). http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Taylor, S.J., Letham, B.: Forecasting at scale. Am. Stat. 72(1), 37–45 (2018)
Zarir, A.A., Oliva, G.A., Jiang, Z.M., Hassan, A.E.: Developing cost-effective blockchain-powered applications: a case study of the gas usage of smart contract transactions in the ethereum blockchain platform. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. (TOSEM) 30(3), 1–38 (2021)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Malakhov, I., Gaetan, C., Marin, A., Rossi, S. (2021). Workload Prediction in BTC Blockchain and Application to the Confirmation Time Estimation. In: Ballarini, P., Castel, H., Dimitriou, I., Iacono, M., Phung-Duc, T., Walraevens, J. (eds) Performance Engineering and Stochastic Modeling. EPEW ASMTA 2021 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13104. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91825-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91825-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91824-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91825-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)