Transaction Characteristics of Bitcoin

Abstract: Blockchain has been considered as an important technique to enable secure management of virtual network functions and network slices. To understand such capabilities of a blockchain, e.g. transaction confirmation time, demands a thorough study on the transaction characteristics of the blockchain. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the transaction characteristics of Bitcoin -- the first blockchain application, focusing on the underlying fundamental processes. A set of results and findings are obtained, which provide new insight into understanding the transaction and traffic characteristics of Bitcoin. As a highlight, the validity of several hypotheses/assumptions used in the literature is examined with measurement for the first time.