A Performance Evaluation of Basic HotStuff in Private ConsenSys GoQuorum Networks

Abstract

Private blockchains are uncompetitive with the throughput of distributed databases. HotStuff(RS) is a recent BFT-SMR consensus protocol that is supposedly a faster alter-native to the established IBFT and QBFT protocols. Despite its promise, HS remains untested in private Ethereum blockchains. Previous work evaluates HS as a standalone protocol but never in a blockchain environment due to the difficulty of implementing BFT-SMR protocols. Our work addresses this gap by implementing and evaluating Basic HotStuff(BHS), a HS variant that trades latency for simplicity, against IBFT and QBFT in a private Ethereum blockchain. We create a consensus module for BHS in GoQuorum 22.7.4 and measure the performance of BHS, IBFT, and QBFT under varying (i) network sizes, (ii) transaction loads, and (iii) network conditions. Our work shows that, at scale, BHS significantly outperforms IBFT and QBFT under low-bandwidth conditions and has the lightest network traffic under all network conditions.