Achieving almost all blockchain functionalities with polylogarithmic storage

DOI10.1007/978-3-031-18283-9_32MaRDI QIDQ6045249zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Parikshit Hegde, Robert Streit, Yanni Georghiades, Chaya Ganesh, Sriram Vishwanath

Publication date 26 May 2023

Published in Financial Cryptography and Data Security (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.05869

zbMATH Keywords

blockchainscryptocurrencyhybrid nodesNIPoPoWstoragetrimming

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Actuarial science and mathematical finance (91G99) Authentication, digital signatures and secret sharing (94A62)

Abstract: In current blockchain systems, full nodes that perform all of the available functionalities need to store the entire blockchain. In addition to the blockchain, full nodes also store a blockchain-summary, called the emph{state}, which is used to efficiently verify transactions. With the size of popular blockchains and their states growing rapidly, full nodes require massive storage resources in order to keep up with the scaling. This leads to a tug-of-war between scaling and decentralization since fewer entities can afford expensive resources. We present emph{hybrid nodes} for proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies which can validate transactions, validate blocks, validate states, mine, select the main chain, bootstrap new hybrid nodes, and verify payment proofs. With the use of a protocol called emph{trimming}, hybrid nodes only retain polylogarithmic number of blocks in the chain length in order to represent the proof-of-work of the blockchain. Hybrid nodes are also optimized for the storage of the state with the use of emph{stateless blockchain} protocols. The lowered storage requirements should enable more entities to join as hybrid nodes and improve the decentralization of the system. We define novel theoretical security models for hybrid nodes and show that they are provably secure. We also show that the storage requirement of hybrid nodes is near-optimal with respect to our security definitions.

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Cites work

• Aggregatable subvector commitments for stateless cryptocurrencies
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• Batching techniques for accumulators with applications to IOPs and stateless blockchains
• KVaC: key-value commitments for blockchains and beyond
• Majority is not enough: bitcoin mining is vulnerable
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Cited in

(3)

• Efficient state management in distributed ledgers
• Senarai: a sustainable public blockchain-based permanent storage protocol
• Limits on revocable proof systems, with implications for stateless blockchains

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