Performance Analysis of Blockchain Networks through Smart Contracts

Blockchain systems became popular, not just because they provide the underlying mechanism of the most prominent cryptocurrencies. They provide temper resistant features with decentralised architecture that are useful for many Internet of Things applications. However, one of the most limiting factors of its usability, are the slow throughput and latency. Even in Bit-coin, the most popular blockchain-based cryptocurrency system, speed causes a serious problem. Performance measurements and analysis are crucial to reveal possible bottlenecks and trigger improvements. They can also be used to compare different services with similar purposes. The goal of this paper is to find a way to differentiate blockchain services with a novel, lightweight approach. We developed a wallet application to be able to carry out experimental measurements by executing parameterizable computational tasks with smart contracts. We performed an evaluation of four different blockchain implementations with our approach, and investigated the correlation between the computational need of the smart contract and the elapsed time or used gas, and compared the overall latency.