An Efficient and Secure Consensus Mechanism for Peer-to-Peer Networks

Abstract

Bitcoin was proposed as an alternative to a centralized trust-based financial system in 2008 which uses distributed ledger called blockchain as the underlying technology. Bitcoin uses a peer-to-peer network without a third trusted party but still maintained trust in the network. The consensus mechanisms do the task of trust-building by executing certain algorithms to bring consensus to the peer nodes of the network. The consensus mechanism used in bitcoin is Proof of Work which involves a massive computation of hashes to validate a block and add it to the blockchain. As the applicability of blockchain increased, the computation-heavy consensus mechanisms were not suitable for real-time transactions. And so, there is a need for a new efficient and high throughput consensus mechanism. This paper proposes a new consensus mechanism using a scope index to mine a new block. This consensus mechanism deals with forking conditions, and the presence of malicious nodes in the network is also studied and compared with other consensus mechanisms.