A Mining Strategy for Minimizing Waiting Time in Blockchains for Time-Sensitive Applications

Gholamreza Ramezan,Cyril Leung,Chunyan Miao,Liu Liu

doi:10.1155/2022/4352406

Gholamreza Ramezan, Cyril Leung + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/4352406

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Abstract

Blockchain, as proposed in Bitcoin, focuses on securing financial transactions. However, in recent years, the use of blockchain has expanded to a wide range of networks and application domains. This includes time-sensitive applications which need transactions to be processed fast enough to meet delay requirements. Reducing the transaction waiting time in the mining process is key to the successful adoption of blockchain in such applications. In this paper, we propose a mining strategy that is aimed at minimizing the average waiting time per transaction by ensuring a certain minimum required block size, based on the average transaction arrival rate, mining service rate, and maximum block size. We derive an expression for the average transaction waiting time of the proposed mining strategy and determine the optimal mining rule. Numerical results show that the average waiting time per transaction can be reduced by up to 15 % using the proposed mining strategy compared to the traditional strategy in which miners immediately start the next mining round using the transactions already waiting in the pool.

Highlights

Blockchain technology, originally proposed in [1], is widely used in different systems and applications
It can create a decentralized infrastructure and guarantee the immutability of the network control messages exchanged between network nodes
Blockchain supports smart contracts which can autonomously execute programs to follow the terms of agreements made between network nodes

Summary

Introduction

Blockchain technology, originally proposed in [1], is widely used in different systems and applications. The blockchain network is sliced into multiple communities of a similar size, each individually processing a disjoint portion of data, e.g., a shard that contains transactions associated with members of a community They require a change in blockchain database structure. If the number of transactions in the pool when a miner is ready to start a new mining round is relatively small, it may be advantageous for the miner to wait for some more transactions to arrive before starting the mining process. In [17], we proposed a scheme in which miners wait for a certain minimum number, D, of transactions to be in the pool before starting a new mining round. In Wait‐Min ðD, BÞ, miners wait for a minimum of D transactions to arrive to the mining pool and B is the maximum number of transactions to be picked up from the pool.

System Model

Proposed Strategy

Derivation of the Average Waiting Time

Numerical Results

Conclusion