On the Bandwidth Consumption of Blockchains

TL;DR

This paper empirically compares the bandwidth consumption of five blockchain protocols, analyzing how network traffic varies with protocol, node roles, and network size, highlighting the impact of transport protocols.

Contribution

First empirical study comparing blockchain bandwidth consumption across multiple protocols with detailed traffic analysis.

Findings

Transport protocol significantly impacts network traffic.

Segregating node roles reduces bandwidth usage.

Different blockchains respond differently to network size.

Abstract

With the advent of blockchain technology, the number of proposals has boomed. The network traffic imposed by these blockchain proposals increases the cost of hosting nodes. Unfortunately, as of today, we are not aware of any comparative study of the bandwidth consumption of blockchains. In this paper, we propose the first empirical comparison of blockchain bandwidth consumption. To this end, we measure the network traffic of blockchain network nodes of five blockchain protocols: Algorand, Aptos, Avalanche, Redbelly and Solana. We study the variation over time, differentiate the receiving and sending traffic and analyze how this traffic varies with the number of nodes and validators. We conclude that the transport protocol is the main factor impacting the network traffic, segregating node roles helps reduce traffic and different blockchains are differently impacted by the network size.