Information Propagation on Permissionless Blockchains
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Blockchain technology, as a decentralized and non-hierarchical platform, has the potential to replace centralized systems. Yet, there are several challenges inherent in the blockchain structure. One of the deficiencies of the existing blockchains is a convenient information propagation technique enhancing incentive-compatibility and bandwidth efficiency. The transition from a centralized system into distributed one brings along game theoretical concerns. Especially for the permissionless blockchains, information propagation should be incentive-compatible just like any other communication or computational costly operation. Another important issue is that information is relayed via gossip-like protocols causing excessive bandwidth usage. Each information is propagated at least twice: first to advertise its existence, second to announce that it is final and validated, i.e., added to the block. In this work, we investigate two distinct aspects of the information propagation of the blockchains: incentive and routing mechanisms. For the former part, we analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions of the Sybil-proof incentive-compatible propagation methodology. We show the impossibility result of the Sybil-proofness in 1-connected network model. For the rest, we prove that the propagation decision is independent of the capabilities of the receiving side. Then, we formulate the generic fee sharing function which encourages rational participants to propagate information. Regarding the bandwidth efficiency, we study a special type of consensus protocols where the block owner (round leader) is validated before the block is created. We present a smart routing mechanism which the redundant communication cost from the size of the network to the scale of average shortest path length. Finally, we combine the incentive and routing mechanisms in a storage-efficient way.
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