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Analytical Modeling and Throughput Computation of Blockchain Sharding | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Analytical Modeling and Throughput Computation of Blockchain Sharding


Abstract:

Sharding has shown great potential to scale out blockchains. It divides nodes into smaller groups which allow for partial transaction processing, relaying and storage. He...Show More

Abstract:

Sharding has shown great potential to scale out blockchains. It divides nodes into smaller groups which allow for partial transaction processing, relaying and storage. Hence, instead of running one blockchain, we will run multiple blockchains in parallel, and call each one a shard. Sharding can be applied to address shortcomings due to compulsory duplication of three resources in blockchains, i.e., computation, communication and storage. The most pressing issue in blockchains today is throughput. In this paper, we propose new queueing-theoretic models to derive the maximum throughput of sharded blockchains. We consider two cases, a fully sharded blockchain and a computation sharding. We model each with a queueing network that exploits signals to account for block production as well as multi-destination cross-shard transactions. We make sure quasi-reversibility for every queue in our models is satisfied so that they fall into the category of product-form queueing networks. We then obtain a closed-form solution for the maximum stable throughput of these systems with respect to block size, block rate, number of destinations in transactions and the number of shards. Comparing the results obtained from the two introduced sharding systems, we conclude that the extent of sharding in different domains plays a significant role in scalability.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems ( Volume: 35, Issue: 6, June 2024)
Page(s): 983 - 997
Date of Publication: 12 March 2024

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I. Introduction

Throughput in Bitcoin and Ethereum networks are way below the satisfactory levels. Although most of the participating nodes in mentioned blockchains have evolved through time, it has not led to much improvement in scalability. It so happens that blockchains do not scale very easily. This stems from the well-known scalability trilemma in blockchains [1] which states that only two properties among decentralization, security and scalability can fully be satisfied in a system. In blockchains today, scalability is sacrificed for the sake of the other two. Different solutions have been proposed to address the blockchain scalability problem [2], [3]. In this paper, we focus on one of the most promising solutions, i.e., sharding [4], [5].

References

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