VIBES: fast blockchain simulations for large-scale peer-to-peer networks

Abstract

Following the success of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Hyperledger, blockchains are now gaining widespread adoption in a wide variety of applications, using a diversity of distributed ledger systems with varying characteristics. Yet, beyond the original bitcoin protocol, the safety and reliability properties of such systems are not sufficiently analyzed. To better understand the behavior of these systems, we propose VIBES: a configurable blockchain simulator for large scale peer-to-peer networks. With VIBES, users can explore important characteristics and metrics of the network, reason about interactions between nodes, and compare different scenarios in an intuitive way. VIBES differentiates itself from previous works in its ability to simulate blockchain systems beyond bitcoin and its support for large-scale simulations with thousands of nodes.