PartChain: Scaling blockchain through account-based partitioned sharding

Abstract

Sharding technology, as one of the mainstream methods for overcoming the scalability bottlenecks in blockchain, divides the nodes of the entire blockchain network into several subsets to process multiple sets of transactions in parallel. However, as the number of shards continues to increase, the number of cross-shard transactions also increases. The proportion of cross-shard transactions may become very high, leading to increased communication costs, higher time expenses, and reduced transaction throughput in the sharded system.

In this paper, we propose a sharding system called PartChain based on the idea of account partitioning. In PartChain, we partition accounts using aggregation to encourage transactions to occur within a single shard, thereby reducing cross-shard transactions. For the remaining cross-shard transactions, we have designed a cross-shard consensus mechanism based on collective signatures to enhance the security of such transactions. Finally, we have implemented a prototype of PartChain and conducted research and evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to traditional solutions, our cross-shard transaction ratio has decreased by 67%, and transaction throughput has increased by 1.9 times.