Blockchain technology was unveiled almost 35 years ago, but it became more recently – in 2009, with the introduction of Bitcoin – giving this “big digital book” a daily consumption objective. However, although blockchains were used for payments, digital contracts and supply chains, blockchain systems always reach a low transaction rate with high energy and transaction costs.
A computer team at New York University has now developed an alternative approach to the design of the blockchain, bounce, which is based on satellites to determine the order of the blocks, where each block is a set of transactions. In the rebound protocol, the encodings of many blocks reach the satellite responsible for a time slot and which the satellite orders these blocks and the “rebounds”.
“The advantage of satellites is that they are difficult to access, are sure against secondary channel attacks, and their processing can be made attractive,” explains Dennis Shasha, IT professor at the Institut Purpose of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and principal research author, which appears in the newspaper MDPI network. “The rebound protocol on satellite computers is so simple that it can be burned in memory in reading alone, thus preventing software injection attacks.”
“Although the deployment of the real world can present certain practical challenges,” adds Shasha, associate director of Nyu Wireless, “Bounce provides a basis for research and future development of high -performance, econetic and accessible blockchain systems.”
Bounce deals with more than five million transactions every two seconds with a time of response to confirmation of transaction of transaction between three and 10 seconds. Its flow is therefore 30 to 100 times higher than that of its nearest competitor, Solana, which is a advanced system which is known for its speed.
The energy cost of the rebound is less than 1 / 10th of a joule per transaction. On the other hand, Solana has an energy consumption of more than 1,000 joules per transaction – a joule feeds a watt per second. Bitcoin, which reaches less than 100 transactions per second, has energy consumption much greater than a million joules per transaction.
The Bounce Blockchain protocol provides for a set of satellites that share time slots – Blockchain’s basic units. Because the satellite for each location controls the blocks it receives during this slit, the rebound system completely avoids the “forks”. A “fork” occurs when a blockchain is divided into two separate or more channels, which allows, for example, to buy different items with the same funds – an attack known as “double expenditure”.
Researchers have conducted experiences to confirm the effectiveness of the model using Cloudlab, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Cloud access program (1840761 A002). Cloudlab allows researchers to build their own clouds in order to build and test the next generation of computer platforms. The communication times of the earth to the satellite were made with the international space station.
