Accelerating Block Propagation with Sender Switchover in a Blockchain

Abstract

In a public blockchain, the block propagation time has a significant impact on the performance, security and fairness of mining. Reducing the propagation time can increase the transaction processing performance, reduce the fork rate, and increase security. We propose a method to improve block propagation with block sender switchover, even if a node is receiving a block. The method is not vulnerable to eclipse attacks because the neighboring nodes are not changed. Our simulation shows that the proposed method improves the 90th percentile value of the propagation time by up to 18% and the fork rate by up to 7.9%.