To Squelch or not to Squelch: Enabling Improved Message Dissemination on the XRP Ledger

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the squelching mechanism in improving message dissemination on the XRP Ledger, comparing it with other approaches using real-world and testbed experiments.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative assessment of squelching in the XRP Ledger, a novel evaluation not previously performed in real-life scenarios.

Findings

Squelching reduces message duplication in the XRP Ledger.

It improves network scalability and message dissemination efficiency.

Comparison shows advantages over NDN and gossip-based approaches.

Abstract

With the large increase in the adoption of blockchain technologies, their underlying peer-to-peer networks must also scale with the demand. In this context, previous works highlighted the importance of ensuring efficient and resilient communication for the underlying consensus and replication mechanisms. However, they were mainly focused on mainstream, Proof-of-Work-based Distributed Ledger Technologies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. In this paper, the problem is investigated in the context of consensus-validation based blockchains, like the XRP Ledger. The latter relies on a Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) consensus mechanism which is proven to have a good scalability in regards to transaction throughput. However, it is known that significant increases in the size of the XRP Ledger network would be challenging to achieve. The main reason is the flooding mechanism used to disseminate the messages related to the consensus protocol, which creates many duplicates in the network. Squelching is a recent solution proposed for limiting this duplication, however, it was never evaluated quantitatively in real-life scenarios involving the XRPL production network. In this paper, our aim is to assess this mechanism using a real-life controllable testbed and the XRPL production network, to assess its benefit and compare it to alternative solutions relying on Named Data Networking and on a gossip-based approach.