Performance evaluation for the hash generation phase of a democratic blockchain

Abstract

Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have the potential to transform different areas of research and industry. Initially created to support a peer-to-peer electronic cash system – more commonly known as bitcoin – blockchains provide a decentralised transactions and data management technology. This decentralised technology is secure, anonymous, and transparent. Nonetheless, the blockchain protocol has a number of technical weaknesses such as power computing dependency and high power consumption. An alternative protocol proposes a democratic approach in which the computing power is not a determinant factor in user participation. The democratic protocol has three phases: hash generation, hash broadcast, and hash validation. We evaluate the performance of the hash generation phase on CPU, GPU, and cluster platforms. A considerable speedup is achieved with GPUs when using final nonce values similar to a real blockchain application. Also, it provides the best power efficiency.