Proof-of-Work Difficulty Readjustment with Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

AbstractBlockchain is a decentralized, distributed and public digital ledger technology. It can be visualized as a gradually increasing list of “blocks” which contains data that are linked together using cryptographic hash. Each transaction is verified by several participating nodes to compute a complex mathematical problem. The complexity of this computation, also known as Proof-of-Work (PoW), is governed by the difficulty set on a periodic basis. If the hash rate of the blockchain’s PoW grows or declines exponentially, the blockchain will be unable to maintain the block creation interval. The utilization of genetic algorithm (GA) in addition with the existing difficulty adjustment algorithm is proposed as a response to this by optimizing the blockchain parameters. A simulation of 3 scenarios as well as the default, were performed and the results were recorded. Based on the results, we are able to observe that the blockchain is able to reach the expected block time 74.4% faster than the blockchain without GA. Moreover, the standard deviations of the average block time and difficulty decreased by 99.4% and 99.5% respectively when block and difficulty intervals were considered for optimization, when compared to the default blockchain without GA. KeywordsBlockchainBitcoinDifficultyProof-of-WorkGenetic algorithm