Abstract
To bridge the current gap between the Blockchain expectancies and their intensive computation constraints, the present paper advances a lightweight processing solution, based on a load-balancing architecture, compatible with the lightweight/embedding processing paradigms. In this way, the execution of complex operations is securely delegated to an off-chain general-purpose computing machine while the intimate Blockchain operations are kept on-chain. The illustrations correspond to an on-chain Tezos configuration and to a multiprocessor ARM embedded platform (integrated into a Raspberry Pi). The performances are assessed in terms of security, execution time, and CPU consumption when achieving a visual document fingerprint task. It is thus demonstrated that the advanced solution makes it possible for a computing intensive application to be deployed under severely constrained computation and memory resources, as set by a Raspberry Pi 3. The experimental results show that up to nine Tezos nodes can be deployed on a single Raspberry Pi 3 and that the limitation is not derived from the memory but from the computation resources. The execution time with a limited number of fingerprints is 40% higher than using a classical PC solution (value computed with 95% relative error lower than 5%).
Highlights
In the context of the 2007–2008 worldwide financial crisis, Blockchains emerged as an attempt to ensure trust and to enhance the security side of financial transactions in peer-topeer networks
The experiments brought to light that the maximum number of nodes to be deployed on a Raspberry Pi 3 is 9
95% confidence limits are computed with a relative error lower than 5%. These results demonstrate that the main limitation derives from the reduced computing resources: for more than 9 nodes, the maximal time imposed by the blockchain for performing basic operations cannot be met on a Raspberry Pi 3
Summary
In the context of the 2007–2008 worldwide financial crisis, Blockchains emerged as an attempt to ensure trust and to enhance the security side of financial transactions in peer-topeer networks. Blockchains are specialized computing machines, optimized to perform a reduced set of repetitive operations related to user/message/transaction authentication, and achieved by public-key protocols, hash computation, and consensus protocols. Their potential benefits, including decentralized trust and resilience, are generally put into balance against their highly intensive computing requirements. Illustrating this point, it was reported that in 2008 the BitCoin [1] energy consumption was 16% larger than the whole energy consumption of Ireland [2]. The applicative needs of such verticals are generally catered for by conventional, general-purpose computing machines, increasingly accommodated by elastic cloud resources
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