Dynamic Distributed Storage for Scaling Blockchains

Abstract: Blockchain uses the idea of storing transaction data in the form of a distributed ledger wherein each node in the network stores a current copy of the sequence of transactions in the form of a hash chain. This requirement of storing the entire ledger incurs a high storage cost that grows undesirably large for high transaction rates and large networks. In this work we use the ideas of secret key sharing, private key encryption, and distributed storage to design a coding scheme such that each node stores only a part of the entire transaction thereby reducing the storage cost to a fraction of its original cost. When further using dynamic zone allocation, we show the coding scheme can also improve the integrity of the transaction data in the network over current schemes. Further, block validation (bitcoin mining) consumes a significant amount of energy as it is necessary to determine a hash value satisfying a specific set of constraints; we show that using dynamic distributed storage reduces these energy costs.