Zhenzhen Li
ABSTRACT
Ethereum is the typical representative of the second generation of Blockchain technology. To achieve anonymity and decentralization, Ethereum utilizes a structured P2P network for data broadcasting, replication, and synchronization. The Ethereum P2P network topology construction profoundly affects the overall Ethereum system performance and reliability. However, there are few studies on the Ethereum underlying P2P overlay network topology. In this paper, we perform a preliminary investigation on this extensive Ethereum P2P system with a comprehensive measurement method combining active and passive methods. We gather Ethereum nodes information by active method for nodes crawling and verification, and we use the passive network traffic monitoring for routing data gathering. After a period of data collection for more than one month, we get a massive data set that has more than 50 million routing data entries. This data set allows us to gain knowledge on the Ethereum network scale and to derive mathematical characteristics of overlay network structure. By analyzing the data set comprehensively, we find that the Ethereum network exhibits both small-world and scale-free characteristics. There are a few critical nodes that have a significant impact on the robustness and vulnerability of the whole system. The Ethereum network also has a very high concentration in terms of network routing, which is very vulnerable to routing attacks.
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- Mining the Characteristics of the Ethereum P2P Network
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