VWchain: A lightweight scalable edge-side blockchain based on Value-Witness

IF 5.3 2区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, HARDWARE & ARCHITECTURE

Journal of Systems Architecture Pub Date : 2026-06-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-20 DOI:10.1016/j.sysarc.2026.103733

Lide Xue , Mingzheng Wang , Xin Wang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Blockchain technology is emerging as the foundational trust infrastructure for Web 3.0, albeit faced with significant scalability challenges. While Layer-2 solutions offer high throughput, they diminish decentralization, increase security risks, or require users to continuously monitor the blockchain network—a practice unfriendly to mobile and IoT devices.

To address these issues, this paper introduces VWchain, a scalable end-to-end blockchain designed for lightweight devices. It employs a novel Value Witness (VW) data structure and a series of on-chain designs that fully leverage the storage and computational resources on the edge side (user-side), achieving a rational dispersion of global state data storage and transaction validation computation. Thanks to this approach, VWchain can be effectively deployed on consumer-grade hardware, providing the system with strong decentralization and robustness. Meanwhile, user usability is also ensured as users can freely manage their online time. Furthermore, we formally analyze and prototype VWchain, experimental results demonstrate that VWchain exhibits balanced and outstanding performance in terms of performance, device cost, and security.

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VWchain：基于Value-Witness的轻量级可扩展边缘端区块链

区块链技术正在成为Web 3.0的基础信任基础设施，尽管它面临着重大的可伸缩性挑战。虽然第二层解决方案提供了高吞吐量，但它们减少了去中心化，增加了安全风险，或者要求用户持续监控区块链网络，这对移动和物联网设备不友好。为了解决这些问题，本文介绍了VWchain，一种专为轻量级设备设计的可扩展的端到端区块链。它采用了一种新颖的Value Witness （VW）数据结构和一系列链上设计，充分利用了边缘侧（用户侧）的存储和计算资源，实现了全局状态数据存储和交易验证计算的合理分散。由于这种方法，VWchain可以有效地部署在消费级硬件上，为系统提供了强大的去中心化和鲁棒性。同时，用户可以自由管理自己的上网时间，保证了用户的可用性。此外，我们正式分析和原型化了VWchain，实验结果表明，VWchain在性能、设备成本和安全性方面表现出平衡和出色的性能。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Systems Architecture 工程技术-计算机：硬件

CiteScore

8.70

自引率

15.60%

发文量

226

审稿时长

46 days

期刊介绍： The Journal of Systems Architecture: Embedded Software Design (JSA) is a journal covering all design and architectural aspects related to embedded systems and software. It ranges from the microarchitecture level via the system software level up to the application-specific architecture level. Aspects such as real-time systems, operating systems, FPGA programming, programming languages, communications (limited to analysis and the software stack), mobile systems, parallel and distributed architectures as well as additional subjects in the computer and system architecture area will fall within the scope of this journal. Technology will not be a main focus, but its use and relevance to particular designs will be. Case studies are welcome but must contribute more than just a design for a particular piece of software. Design automation of such systems including methodologies, techniques and tools for their design as well as novel designs of software components fall within the scope of this journal. Novel applications that use embedded systems are also central in this journal. While hardware is not a part of this journal hardware/software co-design methods that consider interplay between software and hardware components with and emphasis on software are also relevant here.