Security and Performance Evaluation of Master Node Protocol in the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network

Abstract

This paper proposes a proximity-aware extensions to the current Bitcoin protocol, named Master Node Based Clustering (MNBC). The ultimate purpose of the proposed protocol is to evaluate the security and performance of grouping nodes based on physical proximity. In MNBC protocol, physical internet connectivity increases as well as the number of hops between nodes decreases through assigning nodes to be responsible for propagating based on physical internet proximity.