Performance Evaluation of Proof of Scope Consensus Mechanisms on Hyperledger

The distributed ledger technology first introduced as a baseline technology for Bitcoin is disrupting many fields with its features of immutability and traceability. Applying blockchain in different fields is not one size fits for all solution. The various domains came up with different drawbacks of blockchain. To resolve these problems changes in block structures and consensus mechanisms of blockchain are proposed and used for different use cases or domains. We have proposed a consensus mechanism to reduce latency and increase the throughput of transactions processed by the blockchain network. The evaluation of the newly proposed consensus mechanism is done using queuing theory, mathematical models or simulations. Beyond this, we have used the Hyperledger platform to implement our proposed consensus mechanism Proof of Scope. The performance of implementations of Raft and PoW-Ethash consensus mechanisms from Hyperledger are evaluated with the proposed consensus mechanism. The varying load was applied to the network to measure transaction throughput. It is found that the latency is lower and throughput is better of the proposed consensus mechanism than that of Raft and PoW-Ethash for the same network conditions.

I. Introduction

Blockchain technology which is the base technology of bitcoins is disrupting the internet. Even though it started with cryptocurrencies its applications are widely explored in different domains like healthcare, logistics and supply chain, education, governance, insurance, banking and finance, real estates, copyrights and royalties etc. The current solutions used in these domains require a controller or a trusted third party to facilitate transactions between the parties or users involved in the respective system. In blockchain the role of this trusted third party is done by consensus mechanisms.