Matteo Loporchio, Anna Bernasconi, Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, Laura Ricci
{"title":"Skip index: Supporting efficient inter-block queries and query authentication on the blockchain","authors":"Matteo Loporchio, Anna Bernasconi, Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, Laura Ricci","doi":"10.1016/j.future.2024.107556","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Decentralized applications, the driving force behind the new Web3 paradigm, require continuous access to blockchain data. Their adoption, however, is hindered by the constantly increasing size of blockchains and the sequential scan nature of their read operations, which introduce a clear inefficiency bottleneck. Also, the growing amount of data recorded on the blockchain makes resource-constrained light nodes dependent on untrusted full nodes for fetching information, with a consequent need for query authentication protocols ensuring result integrity. Motivated by these reasons, in this paper we propose the skip index, an indexing data structure that allows users to quickly retrieve information simultaneously from multiple blocks of a blockchain. Our solution is also designed to be used as an authenticated data structure to guarantee the integrity of query results for light nodes. We discuss the theoretical properties of skip indices, propose efficient algorithms for their construction and querying, and detail their computational complexity. Finally, we assess the effectiveness of our proposal through an experimental evaluation on the Ethereum blockchain. As a reference use case, we focus on the popular CryptoKitties application and simulate a scenario where users seek to retrieve the events generated by the service. Our experimental results suggest that the use of skip indices offers a constant multiplicative speedup, thanks to search times that are at most logarithmic within a chosen search window. This allows to reduce the number of visited blocks by up to two orders of magnitude if compared to the naive sequential approach currently in use.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55132,"journal":{"name":"Future Generation Computer Systems-The International Journal of Escience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Future Generation Computer Systems-The International Journal of Escience","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X2400520X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, THEORY & METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Decentralized applications, the driving force behind the new Web3 paradigm, require continuous access to blockchain data. Their adoption, however, is hindered by the constantly increasing size of blockchains and the sequential scan nature of their read operations, which introduce a clear inefficiency bottleneck. Also, the growing amount of data recorded on the blockchain makes resource-constrained light nodes dependent on untrusted full nodes for fetching information, with a consequent need for query authentication protocols ensuring result integrity. Motivated by these reasons, in this paper we propose the skip index, an indexing data structure that allows users to quickly retrieve information simultaneously from multiple blocks of a blockchain. Our solution is also designed to be used as an authenticated data structure to guarantee the integrity of query results for light nodes. We discuss the theoretical properties of skip indices, propose efficient algorithms for their construction and querying, and detail their computational complexity. Finally, we assess the effectiveness of our proposal through an experimental evaluation on the Ethereum blockchain. As a reference use case, we focus on the popular CryptoKitties application and simulate a scenario where users seek to retrieve the events generated by the service. Our experimental results suggest that the use of skip indices offers a constant multiplicative speedup, thanks to search times that are at most logarithmic within a chosen search window. This allows to reduce the number of visited blocks by up to two orders of magnitude if compared to the naive sequential approach currently in use.
期刊介绍:
Computing infrastructures and systems are constantly evolving, resulting in increasingly complex and collaborative scientific applications. To cope with these advancements, there is a growing need for collaborative tools that can effectively map, control, and execute these applications.
Furthermore, with the explosion of Big Data, there is a requirement for innovative methods and infrastructures to collect, analyze, and derive meaningful insights from the vast amount of data generated. This necessitates the integration of computational and storage capabilities, databases, sensors, and human collaboration.
Future Generation Computer Systems aims to pioneer advancements in distributed systems, collaborative environments, high-performance computing, and Big Data analytics. It strives to stay at the forefront of developments in grids, clouds, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to effectively address the challenges posed by these wide-area, fully distributed sensing and computing systems.