TY - JOUR
T1 - A Performance-Optimized Consensus Mechanism for Consortium Blockchains Consisting of Trust-Varying Nodes
AU - Zhang, Peiyun
AU - Zhou, Mengchu
AU - Zhao, Qixi
AU - Abusorrah, Abdullah
AU - Bamasag, Omaimah O.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 7, 2020; revised May 6, 2021; accepted May 9, 2021. Date of publication May 12, 2021; date of current version September 16, 2021. The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61872006, in part by the Scientific Research Activities Foundation of Academic and Technical Leaders and Reserve Candidates in Anhui Province under Grant 2020H233, in part by Top-notch Discipline (specialty) Talents Foundation in Colleges and Universities of Anhui Province under Grant gxbjZD2020057, and in part by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has funded this Project, under Grant-30-135-42. Recommended for acceptance by Dr. Yulei Wu. (Corresponding author: MengChu Zhou.) PeiYun Zhang is with the School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China, and also with the School of Computer and Information, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241003, China (e-mail: zpy@nuist.edu.cn).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2021/7/1
Y1 - 2021/7/1
N2 - Blockchain technology has wide applications in the fields of finance, public welfare, and the Internet of Things. Owing to a blockchain's characteristics, which include decentralization, openness, autonomy, immutability, and anonymity, it is difficult to quickly reach a reliable consensus result among its nodes. This work proposes a performance-optimized consensus mechanism based on node classification. Nodes are classified into accounting, validating, and propagating ones based on their trust values. All accounting nodes form an accounting node group, from which one is selected as the current accounting node to package transactions into a block, and the remaining nodes in the accounting node group can be used to validate the block quickly, owing to their high trust values. Validating and propagating nodes are responsible for validating and propagating transactions, respectively. All nodes' trust values are dynamically updated according to their behavior and performance. Corresponding algorithms are designed to realize the proposed consensus mechanism. The experimental results show that the proposed consensus mechanism provides higher throughput, lower consumption, and higher fault tolerance than some popularly used methods, thereby advancing the field of consortium blockchains.
AB - Blockchain technology has wide applications in the fields of finance, public welfare, and the Internet of Things. Owing to a blockchain's characteristics, which include decentralization, openness, autonomy, immutability, and anonymity, it is difficult to quickly reach a reliable consensus result among its nodes. This work proposes a performance-optimized consensus mechanism based on node classification. Nodes are classified into accounting, validating, and propagating ones based on their trust values. All accounting nodes form an accounting node group, from which one is selected as the current accounting node to package transactions into a block, and the remaining nodes in the accounting node group can be used to validate the block quickly, owing to their high trust values. Validating and propagating nodes are responsible for validating and propagating transactions, respectively. All nodes' trust values are dynamically updated according to their behavior and performance. Corresponding algorithms are designed to realize the proposed consensus mechanism. The experimental results show that the proposed consensus mechanism provides higher throughput, lower consumption, and higher fault tolerance than some popularly used methods, thereby advancing the field of consortium blockchains.
KW - Blockchain
KW - consensus mechanism.
KW - node classification
KW - trust
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105883614&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85105883614&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TNSE.2021.3079415
DO - 10.1109/TNSE.2021.3079415
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85105883614
SN - 2327-4697
VL - 8
SP - 2147
EP - 2159
JO - IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering
IS - 3
ER -