Title: Performance evaluation for the hash generation phase of a democratic blockchain

Authors: Luis Lugo; Cesar Pedraza

Addresses: Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, DC, Colombia ' Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, DC, Colombia

Abstract: Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have the potential to transform different areas of research and industry. Initially created to support a peer-to-peer electronic cash system – more commonly known as bitcoin – blockchains provide a decentralised transactions and data management technology. This decentralised technology is secure, anonymous, and transparent. Nonetheless, the blockchain protocol has a number of technical weaknesses such as power computing dependency and high power consumption. An alternative protocol proposes a democratic approach in which the computing power is not a determinant factor in user participation. The democratic protocol has three phases: hash generation, hash broadcast, and hash validation. We evaluate the performance of the hash generation phase on CPU, GPU, and cluster platforms. A considerable speedup is achieved with GPUs when using final nonce values similar to a real blockchain application. Also, it provides the best power efficiency.

Keywords: distributed ledger technology; DLT; hash generation; parallel computing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITST.2020.10028394

International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, 2020 Vol.10 No.3, pp.286 - 303

Received: 08 Mar 2018
Accepted: 09 May 2018
Published online: 04 May 2020 *

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