TangleSim: An Agent-based, Modular Simulator for DAG-based Distributed Ledger Technologies

TL;DR

TangleSim is an open-source, agent-based simulator designed to model and analyze the performance of DAG-based distributed ledger technologies, specifically the Tangle 2.0 protocol, in various network conditions and attack scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, modular simulation framework for large-scale DAG-based DLTs, capturing network topology, communication, and consensus dynamics.

Findings

Performance analysis under diverse network conditions

Impact of network topology on protocol efficiency

Simulation of attack scenarios and resilience

Abstract

DAG-based DLTs allow for parallel, asynchronous writing access to a ledger. Consequently, the perception of the most recent blocks may differ considerably between nodes, and the underlying network properties of the P2P layer have a direct impact on the performance of the protocol. Moreover, the stronger inter-dependencies of several core components demand a more complex and complete approach to studying such DLTs. This paper presents an agent-based, open-sourced simulator for large-scale networks that implement the leaderless Tangle 2.0 consensus protocol. Its scope includes modelling the underlying peer-to-peer communication with network topology, package loss, heterogeneous latency, the gossip protocol with reliable broadcast qualities, the underlying DAG-based data structure, and the consensus protocol. The simulator allows us to explore the performance of the protocol in different network environments, as well as different attack scenarios.