An efficient sharding consensus protocol for improving blockchain scalability

A consortium blockchain facilitates establishment credit among supply and demand agents on a cloud platform. HotStuff, a Byzantine fault-tolerance consensus protocol, predominates the consortium blockchains and has undergone extensive research and practical applications. However, its scalability remains limited with an increased number of nodes, making it unsuitable for large-scale transactions. Consequently, an improved sharding consensus protocol (IShard) is proposed to consider decentralization, security, and scalability within the consortium blockchain. First, IShard employs the jump consistent hash algorithm for reasonable node allocation within the network, thus reducing data migration resulting from shard modifications. Second, a credit mechanism is devised to reflect credit based on the behavior of nodes, optimizing consensus nodes to enhance performance. Third, a credit-based consensus protocol is introduced to concurrently handle transactions through sharding among multiple shards, distributing transactions to each shard to alleviate the overall burden, thus enhancing the scalability of the blockchain. Fourth, a node removal mechanism is devised to identify and eliminate Byzantine nodes, minimizing view changes and ensuring efficient system operation in an environment susceptible to Byzantine faults. Finally, IShard has demonstrated its ability to ensure security and liveness in shard transactions, subject to particular constraints regarding Byzantine nodes. In addition, transaction processes involving supply and demand agents are designed to enhance data reliability. Experimental results demonstrate that IShard surpasses current leading protocols, achieving a communication complexity of O(n) and superior throughput and scalability. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.