SCRamble: Adaptive Decentralized Overlay Construction for Blockchain Networks

TL;DR

SCRamble is a decentralized protocol that improves blockchain transaction throughput and security by reducing block dissemination time through an innovative link selection strategy that considers block arrival times and network latency.

Contribution

It introduces SCRamble, a novel decentralized overlay construction protocol that enhances block propagation efficiency in blockchain networks.

Findings

Reduces block dissemination time significantly.

Improves transaction throughput and network security.

Effective link selection heuristics enhance performance.

Abstract

Despite being under development for over 15 years, transaction throughput remains one of the key challenges confronting blockchains, which typically has a cap of a limited number of transactions per second. A fundamental factor limiting this metric is the network latency associated with the block propagation throughout of the underlying peer-to-peer network, typically formed through random connections. Accelerating the dissemination of blocks not only improves transaction rates, but also enhances system security by reducing the probability of forks. This paper introduces SCRamble: a decentralized protocol that significantly reduces block dissemination time in blockchain networks. SCRamble's effectiveness is attributed to its innovative link selection strategy, which integrates two heuristics: a scoring mechanism that assesses block arrival times from neighboring peers, and a second heuristic that takes network latency into account.