Set Reconciliation for Blockchains with Slepian-Wolf Coding: Deletion Polar Codes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a polar coding scheme for set reconciliation in blockchain networks, effectively handling deletions by combining deletion detection and lossless compression to improve synchronization efficiency.

Contribution

It presents a novel polar coding approach tailored for set reconciliation with deletions, extending polar codes to blockchain package synchronization.

Findings

Effective deletion detection using polar codes

Reduced overhead in index feedback

Connections to IBLTs and network coding

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a polar coding based scheme for set reconciliation between two network nodes. The system is modeled as a well-known Slepian-Wolf setting induced by a fixed number of deletions. The set reconciliation process is divided into two phases: 1) a deletion polar code is employed to help one node to identify the possible deletion indices, which may be larger than the number of genuine deletions; 2) a lossless compression polar code is then designed to feedback those indices with minimum overhead. Our scheme can be viewed as a generalization of polar codes to some emerging network-based applications such as the package synchronization in blockchains. Some connections with the existing schemes based on the invertible Bloom lookup tables (IBLTs) and network coding are also observed and briefly discussed.