Abstract
Dynamic participation of nodes, also known as churn, is quite common in P2P networks, and Bitcoin network is no exception. The impact of churn becomes more pronounced when nodes with different roles and functionality exist. In this paper we analyze node churn in Bitcoin network where ordinary nodes generate transaction traffic and distribute and verify blocks, while relay nodes that just distribute blocks, but have a larger number of connections. We use the tools of probabilistic analysis and Markov chains, and show that churn of relay nodes has a higher impact on traffic performance than that of ordinary nodes. We introduce two different Continuous Time Markov chains (CTMC) for ordinary and relay nodes to model each type of node’s behavior separately. Our results indicate that node sleep impacts the performance more in networks where the proportion of relay nodes is lower, and also that block and transaction delivery times are higher in those cases. Also, we find that the time needed for a node to synchronize upon rejoining the network after sleep is dominated by the time required for block and transaction verification.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aoki Y, Otsuki K, Kaneko T, Banno R, Shudo K (2019) Simblock: A blockchain network simulator. In: Proceeding of CryBlock 2019 (in conj with IEEE INFOCOM)
Basu S, Eyal I, Sirer EG (2020) Falcon: A Fast Bitcoin backbone (Last accessed February 24)https://www.falcon-net.org/
Ben Mariem S, Casas P, Donnet B (2018) Vivisecting blockchain P2P networks: Unveiling the Bitcoin IP network. In: ACM CoNEXT student workshop
Corallo M (2013) High-speed bitcoin relay network. https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg03189.html
Corallo M (2016) Compact block relay. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0152.mediawiki
Corallo M (2017) FIBRE: Fast internet Bitcoin relay engine. https://github.com/bitcoinfibre/bitcoinfibre
Daniel E, Rohrer E, Tschorsch F (2019) Map-z: Exposing the zcash network in times of transition. In: Proceedings of the IEEE 44th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN). arXiv:1907.09755
Delgado-Segura S, Bakshi S, Pérez-Solà C, Litton J, Pachulski A, Miller A, Bhattacharjee B (2018) TxProbe: Discovering Bitcoin’s network topology using orphan transactions. arXiv:1812.00942
Delgado-Segura S, Pérez-Solà C, Herrera-Joancomartí J, Navarro-Arribas G, Borrell J (2018) Cryptocurrency networks: A new P2P paradigm. Mobile Information Systems. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/2159082
Gervais A, Karame GO, Wüst K, Glykantzis V, Ritzdorf H, Capkun S (2016) On the security and performance of proof of work blockchains. In: Proc. 2016 ACM SIGSAC conference on computer and communications security, pp. 3–16. ACM
Gervais A, Ritzdorf H, Karame GO, Čapkun S (2015) Tampering with the delivery of blocks and transactions in Bitcoin. In: Proc. 22nd ACM SIGSAC conference on computer and communications security, pp. 692–705. ACM
Imtiaz MA, Starobinski D, Trachtenberg A, Younis N (2019) Churn in the bitcoin network: Characterization and impact. In: IEEE Int. Conf. on blockchain and cryptocurrency. Seoul, South Korea
Karame GO, Androulaki E, Capkun S (2012) Double-spending fast payments in Bitcoin. In: Proc. 2012 ACM conference on computer and communications security, pp. 906–917. ACM
Lischke M, Fabian B (2016) Analyzing the Bitcoin network: The first four years. Future Internet 8(1):7
Miller A, Kosba A, Katz J, Shi E (2015) Nonoutsourceable scratch-off puzzles todiscourage bitcoin mining coalitions. In: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 680–691
Mišić J, Mišić VB, Chang X, Motlagh SG, Ali MZ (2019) Modeling of bitcoin’s blockchain delivery network IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering to appear
Mišić J, Mišić VB, Chang X (2020) On the benefits of compact blocks in Bitcoin. In: IEEE Int. Conf. on communications ICC 2020. Dublin, Ireland
Motlagh SG, Mišić J, Mišić V (2020) Modeling of churn process in bitcoin network. In: Int. Conf. on computing, networking and communications (ICNC 2020). Big Island, HI
Motlagh SG, Mišić J, Mišić VB (2020) Impact of node churn in the bitcoin network. IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering to appear
Nakamoto S (2008) Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system
Neudecker T (2019) Characterization of the bitcoin peer-to-peer network (2015-2018). Tech. Rep. 1 Karlsruher Institut fu̇r Technologie (KIT), https://doi.org/10.5445/IR/1000091933
Otsuki K, Banno R, Shudo K (2019) Effects of a simple relay network on the bitcoin network. In: Proceedings of Asian Internet Engineering Conference (AINTEC)
(2014) P2P Network, https://www.bitcoin.org/en/p2p-network-guide#initial-block-download
Ron D, Shamir A (2013) Quantitative analysis of the full Bitcoin transaction graph. In: Int. Conf. Financial cryptography and data security, pp. 6–24. Springer
Stutzbach D, Rejaie R (2006) Understanding churn in peer to peer networks. In: Proceeding of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement
Casado-Vara R, Prieto J, De la Prieta F, Corchado JM (2018) How blockchain improves the supply chain: Case study alimentary supply chain. Procedia Computer Science 134:393–398
Zhang Y, Xu C, Ni J, Li H, Shen X (2019) Sherman: Blockchain-assisted public-key encryption with keyword search against keyword guessing attacks for cloud storage IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, https://doi.org/10.1109/TCC.2019.2923222
Buterin V (2017) Ethereum: A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform. http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html
Zhang Y, Xu C, Lin X, Shen X (2019) Sherman: Blockchain-based public integrity verification for cloud storage against procrastinating auditors IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing
Zhang Y, Xu C, Cheng N, Li H, Yang H, Shen X (2020) Sherman: chronos+: An accurate blockchain-based time-stamping scheme for cloud storage IEEE Transactions on Service Computing
Casado-Vara R, Chamoso P, De la Prieta F, Prieto J, Corchado JM (2019) Non-linear adaptive closed-loop control system for improved efficiency in IoT-blockchain management. Information Fusion, pp 227–239
Abdullah N, Høakansson A, Moradian E (2017) Blockchain based approach to enhance big data authentication in distributed environment Ninth International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN), https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUFN.2017.7993927
Klarman U, Basu S, Kuzmanovic A, Gun Sirer E (2018) bloXroute: A scalable trustless blockchain distribution network. whitepaper
Bi W, Yang H, Zheng M (2018) An Accelerated Method for Message Propagation in Blockchain Networks. arXiv:1809.00455
Decker C, Wattenhofer R (2013) Information propagation in the Bitcoin network. Proc. 13th IEEE Int. Conf Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P’13)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Motlagh, S.G., Mišić, J. & Mišić, V.B. An analytical model for churn process in Bitcoin network with ordinary and relay nodes. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 13, 1931–1942 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-020-00953-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-020-00953-y