Hydra: A Multiple Blockchain Protocol for Improving Transaction Throughput

TL;DR

Hydra is a decentralized multi-blockchain protocol that significantly enhances transaction throughput without compromising security or introducing centralization, by distributing blocks across multiple chains and analyzing the trade-offs involved.

Contribution

Hydra introduces a novel multi-blockchain approach that improves throughput while maintaining security and decentralization, with a rigorous analysis of double spend risks.

Findings

Increased transaction throughput significantly.

Finality remains within acceptable bounds.

No central component is required.

Abstract

Improving transaction throughput is one of the main challenges in decentralized payment systems. Attempts to improve transaction throughput in cryptocurrencies are usually a trade-off between throughput and security or introduce a central component. We propose Hydra, a decentralized protocol that improves transaction throughput without the security trade-off and has no central component. Our novel approach distributes blocks over multiple blockchains. Hydra makes a trade-off between transaction throughput and finality, the time it takes to stabilize the record of a transaction in the blockchain. We rigorously analyze the double spend attack in a multiple-blockchain protocol. Our analysis shows that the number of transactions per second can be increased significantly while finality is within acceptable boundaries.