Abstract
Blockchain technology, as a revolutionary concept, born with Bitcoin, is triggering the start of a new era on information. It is generally recognized that the blockchain-based systems achieve high security in the process of information sharing in a distributed network, at the cost of low efficiency in terms of data throughput or high costs in consuming computational resources. A natural question we are interested in is whether there exists a trade-off principle between different performances of a blockchain system, which is also regarded as blockchain impossibility triangle (BIT) problem. In this paper, we propose an analysis method which can be used to verify the existence of the BIT. Our analysis method is composed of two layers. In the first layer the basic and core attributes are abstracted by building a consensus model, and in the second layer the analysis approach is designed to verify the existence of a BIT. Specifically, in the first layer, we firstly define a leaderless consensus model to quantitatively abstract the basic parameters in the process of system consensus, then three core attributes are justified to serve as the three vertices of the discussed triangle problem, namely security, cost, and efficiency. Based on the core attributes, we propose the credibility metric which measures the difficulty of achieving credible consensus for a given blockchain system. In the second layer, we analyze the existence of BIT, where we have demonstrated the conditions that a BIT exists and the conditions that the triangle does not exist. Finally, the proposed analysis method is applied in analyzing PoW based blockchain systems, where we have shown that there is no BIT problem in PoW based systems. Furthermore, the proposed analysis method can also help the blockchain developers in finding the promising directions of a new blockchain consensus mechanism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Biswas, S., Sharif, K., Li, F., Nour, B., Wang, Y.: A scalable blockchain framework for secure transactions in IoT. IEEE Internet Things J. 6(3), 4650–4659 (2019)
Brewer, E.: Cap twelve years later: how the “rules” have changed. Computer 45, 23–29 (2012)
Castro, M., Liskov, B., et al.: Practical Byzantine fault tolerance. In: Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, pp. 173–186 (1999)
Christidis, K., Devetsikiotis, M.: Blockchains and smart contracts for the Internet of Things. IEEE Access 4, 2292–2303 (2016)
Courtois, N.T., Bahack, L.: On subversive miner strategies and block withholding attack in bitcoin digital currency. arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.1718 (2014)
Gervais, A., Karame, G.O., Wüst, K., Glykantzis, V., Ritzdorf, H., Capkun, S.: On the security and performance of proof of work blockchains. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 3–16 (2016)
Lamport, L., Shostak, R., Pease, M.: The Byzantine generals problem. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. (TOPLAS) 4(3), 382–401 (1982)
Liu, Z., Luong, N.C., Wang, W., Niyato, D., Wang, P., Liang, Y.C., Kim, D.I.: A survey on blockchain: a game theoretical perspective. IEEE Access 7, 47615–47643 (2019)
Meng, Z., Ren, W., Cao, Y., You, Z.: Leaderless and leader-following consensus with communication and input delays under a directed network topology. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part B (Cybern.) 41, 75–88 (2011)
Nakamoto, S., et al.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2008). https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Natoli, C., Gramoli, V.: The balance attack against proof-of-work blockchains: the R3 testbed as an example. CoRR abs/1612.09426 (2016). http://arxiv.org/abs/1612.09426
Prokofieva, M., Miah, S.J.: Blockchain in healthcare. Australas. J. Inf. Syst. 23, 1–22 (2019)
Ren, L., Devadas, S.: Proof of space from stacked expanders. In: Hirt, M., Smith, A. (eds.) TCC 2016. LNCS, vol. 9985, pp. 262–285. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53641-4_11
Salman, T., Zolanvari, M., Erbad, A., Jain, R., Samaka, M.: Security services using blockchains: a state of the art survey. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor. 21(1), 858–880 (2019)
Sapirshtein, A., Sompolinsky, Y., Zohar, A.: Optimal selfish mining strategies in bitcoin. In: Grossklags, J., Preneel, B. (eds.) FC 2016. LNCS, vol. 9603, pp. 515–532. Springer, Heidelberg (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54970-4_30
Vukolić, M.: The quest for scalable blockchain fabric: proof-of-work vs. BFT replication. In: Camenisch, J., Kesdoğan, D. (eds.) iNetSec 2015. LNCS, vol. 9591, pp. 112–125. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39028-4_9
Wei, P., Yuan, Q., Zheng, Y.: Security of the blockchain against long delay attack. In: Peyrin, T., Galbraith, S. (eds.) ASIACRYPT 2018, Part III. LNCS, vol. 11274, pp. 250–275. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03332-3_10
Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H.N., Chen, X., Wang, H.: Blockchain challenges and opportunities: a survey. Int. J. Web Grid Serv. 14(4), 352–375 (2018)
Zhong, L., Wu, Q., Xie, J., Guan, Z., Qin, B.: A secure large-scale instant payment system based on blockchain. Comput. Secur. 84, 349–364 (2019)
Acknowledgments
This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China under Grant No. 61702090 and No. 61702084.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Zhang, S., Liu, Y., Chen, X. (2020). BIT Problem: Is There a Trade-off in the Performances of Blockchain Systems?. In: Zheng, Z., Dai, HN., Tang, M., Chen, X. (eds) Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems. BlockSys 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1156. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2777-7_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2777-7_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-2776-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-2777-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)