Calibrating the performance and security of blockchains via information propagation delays

Abstract

Miners of a blockchain exchange information about blocks and transactions with one another via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The speed at which they learn of new blocks and transactions in the network determines the likelihood of forks in the chain, which in turn has implications for the efficiency as well as security of proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains. Despite the importance of information propagation delays in a blockchain's peer-to-peer network, little is known about them. The last known empirical study was conducted, for instance, by Decker and Wattenhofer in 2013 [11].