Achieving Fairness in the Tangle through an Adaptive Rate Control Algorithm

Abstract

Throughput is a key property for any distributed ledger technology. However, limited resources, such as bandwidth or node computational power, can lead to network congestion when nodes try to issue more transactions than the network can handle. Consequently, priority criteria are necessary to determine whether a transaction should be accepted or not. In this paper, we present a novel adaptive rate control algorithm for the Tangle, a new-generation distributed ledger allowing large throughput. Our approach combines various concepts, such as resource tests and Proof-of-Work with dynamic difficulty. Our algorithm not only serves as an anti-spam mechanism, but also achieves fair representation. This is to be contrasted with pure Proof-of-Work blockchains, which lead to wasteful mining races.