FSS: A Flexible Scaling Scheme for Blockchain Based on Stale Block Rate

Abstract

In blockchain, there has long been a contradiction between the limited ability and the uncertain requirements of processing transactions, which seriously restricts the practical application of blockchain. Therefore, how to improve the scalability of blockchain has become an urgent issue to be solved. Some existing works have achieved blockchain expansion through increasing the upper limit of block size permanently, which makes the trade-off of the “Mundellian Trilemma ” in blockchain (i.e. a blockchain system cannot be optimal in all the three dimensions of scalability, security and decentralization at the same time) fixed and thus not adapted to the dynamic environment. In this paper, we propose FSS, a flexible scaling scheme for blockchain based on stale block rate, which dynamically adjusts the upper limit of block size according to the stale block rate, not only expanding the blockchain when allowed, but also shrinking it when necessary. Experimental results indicate that FSS can reasonably improve the scalability of blockchain with required stale block rate.