Auction-Based Storage Resource Allocation for Blockchain

Abstract

The blockchain establishes trust by maintaining a distributed appending-only ledger, which is widely applied to the nodes lacking trust in the edge environment. However, the full-replication storage mode of blockchain is a big challenge for resource-constrained edge devices. What is worse, system performance is also affected by the large storage overhead. Existing solutions to reduce blockchain storage overhead often require additional security assumptions, lack incentives, or fail to account for resource heterogeneity. To overcome these limitations, we design an auction-based storage resource allocation scheme. Winners are selected to store blocks, taking into account the block preferences of nodes, and the fairness of the system. Nodes are incentivized by implementing fairness and equity in distributed auctions and data transactions through smart contracts. Finally, extensive experiments show 65%–81% savings in storage overhead compared to fully replicated storage.