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DeChain: A Blockchain Framework Enhancing Decentralization via Sharding

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Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13494))

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Abstract

In a blockchain system, full nodes store all the history data generated by the whole network. As time goes by, the increasing data will place a heavy burden on the full nodes. Rational nodes may discard history data, which results in the decrease of the number of full nodes. Moreover, huge storage requirement prevents storage-constrained users from participating in the network. These factors weaken decentralization and are harmful to the whole blockchain network. In this paper, we propose a new shard-based blockchain framework called DeChain which distributes the blockchain database into different nodes in protocol level. Specifically, we design a new mechanism to shard the UTXOs into specific nodes and set special rules for transaction generation. Each node in DeChain is in charge of the verification of some specified transactions. We propose an RSA accumulator-based method to support inter-shards verification of transactions. With this framework, users can participate in the consensus of the whole network by only maintaining a small portion of blockchain database. This greatly reduces the storage burden and enhances the decentralization of blockchain network.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and detailed comments. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62072305), the Key (Keygrant) Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (No. 2020KJ010201), and the Key Research and Development Plan of Shandong Province (No. 2021CXGC010105).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Shenwei Chen, Zhen Liu, Yu Long & Dawu Gu

Authors
  1. Shenwei Chen
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  2. Zhen Liu
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  3. Yu Long
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  4. Dawu Gu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhen Liu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Khoa Nguyen

  2. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Guomin Yang

  3. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Fuchun Guo

  4. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Willy Susilo

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Chen, S., Liu, Z., Long, Y., Gu, D. (2022). DeChain: A Blockchain Framework Enhancing Decentralization via Sharding. In: Nguyen, K., Yang, G., Guo, F., Susilo, W. (eds) Information Security and Privacy. ACISP 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13494. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22301-3_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22301-3_23

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-22300-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-22301-3

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