An efficient sharding consensus protocol for improving blockchain scalability

IF 4.5 3区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Computer Communications Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI:10.1016/j.comcom.2024.108032

Li Lu , Linfu Sun , Yisheng Zou

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

A consortium blockchain facilitates establishment credit among supply and demand agents on a cloud platform. HotStuff, a Byzantine fault-tolerance consensus protocol, predominates the consortium blockchains and has undergone extensive research and practical applications. However, its scalability remains limited with an increased number of nodes, making it unsuitable for large-scale transactions. Consequently, an improved sharding consensus protocol (IShard) is proposed to consider decentralization, security, and scalability within the consortium blockchain. First, IShard employs the jump consistent hash algorithm for reasonable node allocation within the network, thus reducing data migration resulting from shard modifications. Second, a credit mechanism is devised to reflect credit based on the behavior of nodes, optimizing consensus nodes to enhance performance. Third, a credit-based consensus protocol is introduced to concurrently handle transactions through sharding among multiple shards, distributing transactions to each shard to alleviate the overall burden, thus enhancing the scalability of the blockchain. Fourth, a node removal mechanism is devised to identify and eliminate Byzantine nodes, minimizing view changes and ensuring efficient system operation in an environment susceptible to Byzantine faults. Finally, IShard has demonstrated its ability to ensure security and liveness in shard transactions, subject to particular constraints regarding Byzantine nodes. In addition, transaction processes involving supply and demand agents are designed to enhance data reliability. Experimental results demonstrate that IShard surpasses current leading protocols, achieving a communication complexity of O(n) and superior throughput and scalability.

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来源期刊

Computer Communications 工程技术-电信学

CiteScore

14.10

自引率

5.00%

发文量

397

审稿时长

66 days

期刊介绍： Computer and Communications networks are key infrastructures of the information society with high socio-economic value as they contribute to the correct operations of many critical services (from healthcare to finance and transportation). Internet is the core of today''s computer-communication infrastructures. This has transformed the Internet, from a robust network for data transfer between computers, to a global, content-rich, communication and information system where contents are increasingly generated by the users, and distributed according to human social relations. Next-generation network technologies, architectures and protocols are therefore required to overcome the limitations of the legacy Internet and add new capabilities and services. The future Internet should be ubiquitous, secure, resilient, and closer to human communication paradigms. Computer Communications is a peer-reviewed international journal that publishes high-quality scientific articles (both theory and practice) and survey papers covering all aspects of future computer communication networks (on all layers, except the physical layer), with a special attention to the evolution of the Internet architecture, protocols, services, and applications.