An AHP-weighted Gray Rational Analysis (GRA) approach for blockchain consensus protocol selection

Abstract

Blockchain technology has revolutionized various industries by offering transparency, security, and decentralization. The critical aspect of blockchain technology is the consensus protocol, which plays a pivotal role in ensuring the integrity and reliability of distributed ledger systems. The selection of an appropriate consensus protocol for a given blockchain application is a complex and multifaceted decision-making process, influenced by various technical, environmental, and operational factors. This paper presents an integrated multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to facilitate the selection of an optimal blockchain consensus protocol. Through a comprehensive evaluation of criteria, including performance, sustainability, incentives, security, and decentralization, our approach provides a robust decision-making framework for consensus protocol assessment. The results prioritize the importance of performance and security factors in blockchain consensus protocol evaluation. The sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the impact of experts’ weight coefficients on the result. The results prioritize the importance of performance and security in blockchain consensus protocol selection.