2018 · 164 citations · 21 references
ComputingComputer ScienceComputer SystemsComputer NetworksDistributed SystemsNetwork SecurityConsensus ProtocolsDistributed ConsensusNetwork ProtocolsPeer-to-peer NetworkingPeer-to-peer NetworksPeer-to-peer SystemsBlockchain ConsensusPeer-to-peer ArchitecturesPeer-to-peer ComputingPeer-to-peer Information ExchangePeer-to-peer Network ArchitecturePeer-to-peer ProtocolsSecurity In Peer-to-peer NetworksSecurity In Peer-to-peer Systems
Ethereum, the second‑largest cryptocurrency, has been studied mainly for its application‑level features, while its underlying peer‑to‑peer network—critical for information propagation and consensus—has received little attention. The authors develop NodeFinder to measure and illuminate the properties of Ethereum’s previously opaque peer‑to‑peer network at scale. They analyze the network using a three‑month longitudinal view of P2P nodes and a single‑day snapshot of Mainnet peers. They find that less than half of all nodes contribute to the Mainnet, revealing a noisy DEVp2p ecosystem that differs from other P2P networks in size and geographic distribution.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency valued at a peak of $138 billion in 2018, is a decentralized, Turing-complete computing platform. Although the stability and security of Ethereum---and blockchain systems in general---have been widely-studied, most analysis has focused on application level features of these systems such as cryptographic mining challenges, smart contract semantics, or block mining operators. Little attention has been paid to the underlying peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that are responsible for information propagation and that enable blockchain consensus. In this work, we develop NodeFinder to measure this previously opaque network at scale and illuminate the properties of its nodes. We analyze the Ethereum network from two vantage points: a three-month long view of nodes on the P2P network, and a single day snapshot of the Ethereum Mainnet peers. We uncover a noisy DEVp2p ecosystem in which fewer than half of all nodes contribute to the Ethereum Mainnet. Through a comparison with other previously studied P2P networks including BitTorrent, Gnutella, and Bitcoin, we find that Ethereum differs in both network size and geographical distribution.
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Making Smart Contracts Smarter
Loi Luu, Duc-Hiep Chu, Hrishi Olickel et al. · 2016 · 2.2K citations
Information propagation in the Bitcoin network
Christian Decker, Roger Wattenhofer · 2013 · 1.2K citations