MEChain: MEC-aided Blockchain Network with Joint Storage Computation Offloading

Abstract

Web3 represents the next-generation value-driven Internet built on blockchain technology, whose realization heavily relies on mobile devices. However, the limited resources of these devices significantly restrict their ability to participate in transaction verification and ledger maintenance in blockchain networks. Existing offloading schemes often overlook storage offloading or adopt oversimplified joint strategies, failing to adequately consider the synergistic effects of storage and computation offloading on network performance. To address this issue, this paper proposes MEChain, a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)-aided blockchain network that implements a two-layer joint computation-storage offloading mechanism involving edge service providers (ESPs) and cloud service providers (CSPs). The joint computation offloading, ledger storage, and resource pricing problem is formulated as a three-stage Stackelberg game to capture the complexity of multi-party interactions. An iterative algorithm based on backward induction is designed to efficiently solve the Nash equilibrium, thereby ensuring system stability. Theoretical analysis and numerical experiments demonstrate that the MEChain framework not only significantly improves the profit per unit time of mobile devices by 11.3% but also exhibits rapid convergence of the proposed algorithm, providing a practical and theoretical foundation for resource optimization in mobile blockchain systems.