Performance Evaluation of Proof-of-Work and Collatz Conjecture Consensus Algorithms

Blockchain is the underlying technology of Bitcoin that allows a peer-to-peer distributed ledger with security and immutability. The core of a blockchain is the consensus mechanism that sets the rule for nodes in handling the shared data. Implementation of the consensus algorithm depends on the nature of targeted business environment. In this research, the performance of two consensus algorithms, Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Collatz Conjecture (PCC), are studied in the context of a private blockchain. A quantitative analysis on the execution time, deployment time, and latency time are done for 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 transactions and the results are presented. The results shows that PCC takes only (1/1000)th of the execution time that is required for PoW for these different sets of transactions. In addition, these timings are recorded for ten repeated executions for the same sets of transactions, and found that PCC has a nearly consistent execution time.