Timely Publication of Transaction Records in a Private Blockchain

Abstract

Blockchain technology has been successfully applied in many different application domains. However, in some time-sensitive applications, e.g., a COVID-19 tracking system with case and testing information recorded in blockchains, it is critical to publish information or transactions in blockchains in a timely manner. In this paper, we introduce an approach to timely publishing transaction records in private blockchains, which are small-scale permissioned ones with limited number of transactions broadcast per unit of time. In our approach, when a transaction is broadcast by a peer, it is published immediately in a temporary block after being approved using a consensus mechanism. When a predefined number of temporary blocks have been published, the system will combine them into a permanent one and publish it upon approval using the same consensus mechanism. The experimental results show that our proposed approach is feasible and effective for timely publication of transaction records in a private blockchain.