XIII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2021

Abstract: This article deals with the basic concepts of blockchain technology, as well as various types of algorithms for achieving consensus of a distributed network.

Key words: Blockchain, database, application, consensus, algorithms

With the development of information technologies, we can observe the emergence of a significant number of innovative directions in various fields of activity, some of which are predicted to be revolutionary. One of these areas is an active development of blockchain technology. This technology has great potential that can change many aspects of human life.

The blockchain technology gained its popularity due to the hype around the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. But a more thorough analysis revealed that the scope of its application is not limited only to the creation of electronic money and platforms for exchanging them. This attracted the interest of both small development teams and the largest corporations in the world such as Microsoft, IBM, Visa and others. To date, the established community of developers is actively studying, developing and trying to implement this technology in their products, thus increasing the relevance of its research.

A blockchain is a distributed database that stores a sequential, continuous, and ever-growing list of ordered records called blocks. Each new block of the chain is inextricably linked to the previous one. This allows you to track changes and check the correctness of the sequence of blocks, which makes the information stored in such database be protected from unauthorized changes. A special feature of this technology is that the database is not stored on one specific device or server, and each participant has its own constantly updated copy. In addition, such a database allows you to control the reliability of transactions without the supervision of third parties acting as guarantors. Special consensus algorithms are used to verify transactions. But due to the fact that today this technology is not sufficiently studied and there are no elegant solutions to the problem of achieving consensus, the operation of such algorithms significantly reduces the performance of a decentralized network and, as a result, the number of transactions per second.

Currently, the most promising, as well as implemented in the work of large blockchain networks, algorithms for achieving consensus are:

1. Proof of work (PoW)

This is the first decentralized algorithm successfully implemented in the blockchain, which is used in the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, ZCash, Monero and many other networks.

The algorithm requires performing complex calculations, the result of which can be easily verified by other network participants. In order to add a new block to the network, the miner must first calculate the sequence of characters at the end of the string, the hash of which will start with a certain number of zeros.

The most important advantage of this implementation is the reliability, proven by several years of real operation, which cannot be said about many other algorithms. However, it also has drawbacks: a huge number of calculations performed and low performance.

2. Proof of ownership (PoS)

To date, many possible implementations of this algorithm have been proposed. In all cases, the participant is required to have a certain share of the extracted cryptocurrency, which he stores in the network, in order to verify transactions.

The algorithm is as follows: instead of mining, participants block part of their cryptocurrency and place a bet on the completion of the block. Further, depending on the size of the bet made, or the duration of blocking funds, or other criteria that best match the long-term interests of the network, a participant is selected who is granted the right to process the block, for which the miner is awarded a reward.

If in the proof-of-work algorithm, abuse is unprofitable as it is very expensive, then in this algorithm, verification is carried out by those who are most interested in the well-being of the network. In addition, participants who bet on a version of the chain with fake transactions lose their bets.

Proof of ownership is now implemented in Peercoin, Decred, and is being prepared for implementation in the Ethereum network. The advantages of PoS are higher energy efficiency and, possibly, more successful prevention of attacks, but it has not yet been implemented in any major project and has not been tested by time.

3. Delegated proof of ownership (DPoS)

Despite the similarity of the name to the previous algorithm, the implementation details here differ significantly. In DPoS, token holders do not bid on transaction verification, but vote for the group that will verify them.

DPoS remains decentralized, since all network participants participate in the selection of validating nodes, but at the same time it is partly centralized, since decisions are made by a smaller group, which speeds up the verification and processing of transactions.

Various DPoS implementations support the reputation Institute, an ongoing voting process, and a shuffle system that makes selected "validators" responsible and honest.

The advantages of DPoS are that it scales well and provides fast transaction verification, but the disadvantage is some centralization, as well as the lack of testing on a large project. DPoS is used in the Steemit, EOS, and BitShares networks.

4. Strategy of the Byzantine generals (BFT)

This is a rather complex concept. This algorithm allows validators (generals) to manage the state of the network and exchange messages, thus ensuring integrity and allowing you to choose the correct version of the transaction. The advantages of BFT are scalability and cheap transactions, while the disadvantages are some centralization.

But despite the different approaches to achieving integrity, the main disadvantage of the entire blockchain technology is that the reliability of the network is directly proportional to the number of users, that is, the more users, the more potentially correct copies of the database and the less likely that each user will have a modified chain of blocks.

The considered technology is quite young and has some disadvantages at this stage of development, but more in-depth research of decentralized databases will optimize the computational cost of matching solutions and increase its reliability and speed.

References:

Принцип работы технологии blockchain– [Электронный ресурс] https://tjournal.ru/news/

Основы технологии blockchain. – [Электронный ресурс] https://www.binance.vision/ru/blockchain

Википедия – [Электронный ресурс] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

Описание технологии – [Электронный ресурс] blockchain https://prostocoin.com/blog/blockchain-guide

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