algorithms

Review
A Survey on Network Optimization Techniques for
Blockchain Systems
Robert Antwi 1, *,† , James Dzisi Gadze 1,† , Eric Tutu Tchao 2 , Axel Sikora 3, *,† , Henry Nunoo-Mensah 2 ,
Andrew Selasi Agbemenu 2 , Kwame Opunie-Boachie Obour Agyekum 1 , Justice Owusu Agyemang 1 ,
Dominik Welte 3 and Eliel Keelson 2

1 Department of Telecommunication Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

(KNUST), Kumasi AK-448-3929, Ghana; jdgadze.coe@knust.edu.gh (J.D.G.); kooagyekum@knust.edu.gh
(K.O.-B.O.A.); joagyemang@knust.edu.gh (J.O.A.)
2 Department of Computer Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST),
Kumasi AK-448-3929, Ghana; ettchao.coe@knust.edu.gh (E.T.T.); hnunoo-mensah@knust.edu.gh (H.N.-M.);
asagbemenu@knust.edu.gh (A.S.A.); ekeelson@knust.edu.gh (E.K.)
3 Institute of Reliable Embedded Systems and Communication Electronics (ivESK), Offenburg University of
Applied Sciences, Offenburg 77652, Germany; dominik.welte@hs-offenburg.de
* Correspondence: rantwi31@st.knust.edu.gh (R.A.); axel.sikora@hs-offenburg.de (A.S.)
† These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract: The increase of the Internet of Things (IoT) calls for secure solutions for industrial ap-
plications. The security of IoT can be potentially improved by blockchain. However, blockchain
technology suffers scalability issues which hinders integration with IoT. Solutions to blockchain’s
scalability issues, such as minimizing the computational complexity of consensus algorithms or
blockchain storage requirements, have received attention. However, to realize the full potential of
Citation: Antwi, R.; Gadze, J.D.; blockchain in IoT, the inefficiencies of its inter-peer communication must also be addressed. For
Tchao, E.T.; Sikora, A.;
example, blockchain uses a flooding technique to share blocks, resulting in duplicates and inefficient
Nunoo-Mensah, H.; Agbemenu, A.S.;
bandwidth usage. Moreover, blockchain peers use a random neighbor selection (RNS) technique
Obour Agyekum, K.O.-B.;
to decide on other peers with whom to exchange blockchain data. As a result, the peer-to-peer
Agyemang, J.O.; Welte, D.; Keelson, E.
(P2P) topology formation limits the effective achievable throughput. This paper provides a survey
A Survey on Network Optimization
Techniques for Blockchain Systems.
on the state-of-the-art network structures and communication mechanisms used in blockchain and
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193. establishes the need for network-based optimization. Additionally, it discusses the blockchain ar-
https://doi.org/10.3390/a15060193 chitecture and its layers categorizes existing literature into the layers and provides a survey on the
state-of-the-art optimization frameworks, analyzing their effectiveness and ability to scale. Finally,
Academic Editor: Shiping Chen,
this paper presents recommendations for future work.
Kaimeng Ding and Yanmei Zhang

Received: 13 May 2022 Keywords: blockchain; IIoT; network optimization; peer-to-peer; topology; gossip protocol
Accepted: 2 June 2022
Published: 4 June 2022

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral

with regard to jurisdictional claims in 1. Introduction
published maps and institutional affil- The ubiquity of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has revolutionized many fields
iations. of today’s life, such as health care, smart homes, supply chain, smart metering and manu-
facturing [1]. Furthermore, the application of IoT in industrial applications, also known as
the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), has paved the way for the advancements promised
by the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) [2]. In IIoT, sensors collect data from
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
industrial machines or processes, whereas actuators act on the raw or pre-processed data
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
provided by sensors or other processes . Furthermore, aside from automation, analysis of
This article is an open access article
the data generated gives insights into system efficiency, productivity and the quality of
distributed under the terms and
products that can also be used for long-term planning [3].
conditions of the Creative Commons
However, many of these devices have limited resources such as storage, memory and
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
processing power [4]. According to market research, 32-bit, 16-bit and 8-bit Microcontroller
4.0/).
Units (MCU) account for 41%, 35% and 24% of the market [5]. Most IoT devices are built

Algorithms 2022, 15, 193. https://doi.org/10.3390/a15060193 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms

Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 2 of 22

with these MCUs, with Random Access Memory (RAM) sizes of less than 1 MB and a few
hundred megahertz clock rates. For example, ESP8266 is a 32-bit MCU, with an 80 MHz
clock speed, 80 KB of RAM and 1 MB of flash storage [6,7]. Due to the resource constraints,
security, storage and data processing are often handled in the cloud. This dependency on
the cloud introduces centralization and contradicts the idea of making services required by
IIoT always accessible even when some service providers become unavailable.
Furthermore, cloud-based architectures have data integrity issues and present unac-
ceptable delays for latency-sensitive applications. However, the emergence of distributed
computing architectures such as edge and fog computing eliminates centralization and
presents acceptable latency for applications requiring high Quality of Service (QoS). Never-
theless, security is still an issue in these architectures since it requires mutual trust between
nodes and does not provide data integrity guarantees or protection against malicious
attacks [8].
The inability of existing IIoT architectures to ensure trust, data security and integrity
makes blockchain an excellent add-on for IIoT architectures. Blockchain is an append-only
distributed ledger technology that is collaboratively maintained by the participating nodes
without the need to trust any specific peer. Data are first submitted to the blockchain
peers as a transaction. Next, many of such transactions are combined into a block that the
participating peers must validate. Peers then execute a consensus algorithm to agree on the
block’s validity before it is committed to the main ledger. Finally, every two consecutive
blocks are interlinked using the block’s hash [9]. Thus, the blockchain can secure data
against unauthorized modification, making it immutable, traceable and trustworthy. Once
a block is confirmed valid, it is then broadcast to all peers in the network to ensure the
global consistency of the ledger.
Despite blockchain’s security and availability guarantees, scalability issues are the
main concerns inhibiting its wide usage in the IIoT ecosystem [10]. Plain vanilla blockchain
has a transaction processing capacity limited to a few transactions per second. For example,
bitcoin can process seven transactions per second, whereas Ethereum can process about
thirty transactions per second [11]. This transactional throughput is unacceptable in IIoT
since millions of devices are usually deployed, generating vast volumes of data with strict
latency requirements.
One of the main reasons for the limited processing capacity is the kind of consensus al-
gorithm mostly employed by the blockchain. The consensus algorithm used in blockchains
requires solving a complex puzzle [12]. Therefore, most existing solutions to this scala-
bility problem use lighter and faster consensus algorithms to achieve high transactional
throughput [13–17]. Other existing solutions approach blockchain scalability from a storage
perspective and propose storage optimization schemes to reduce the storage requirement
of peers [18–28].
However, the ability of blockchain to process transactions also significantly depends
on the reliability of the underlying network and its mechanisms for sharing data among
the peers and how fast peers can communicate [29,30]. For instance, blockchains use a
flooding technique to broadcast blocks called gossip. Although the gossip broadcast is
robust for distributed systems, it inevitably leads to duplications and inefficient bandwidth
use [31]. Therefore, as more peers join the blockchain network, duplication and bandwidth
use increase due to a higher likelihood of overlapping peers chosen for the gossiping
process. This will cause performance overheads in an IIoT setting where bandwidth is also
constrained [32,33].
Moreover, in real IIoT deployments, different devices will generate data at vary-
ing rates. Some devices generate data at slow rates, whereas others may generate data
rapidly. The co-existence of many such devices in a network [34] could pose a problem to
the blockchain, as the current implementations of gossip could lead to a high degree of
duplication. Furthermore, peers exchange data before and after a block is verified.
Furthermore, blockchain peers employ a random neighbor selection mechanism to
decide which other peers to exchange data with. However, this may result in the selection
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 3 of 22

of neighbors with unfavorable communication links. As a result, as the number of peers

and transactions grows, the number of forks and invalid transactions grows because newly
generated blocks may not reach other peers who may submit competing proposals.
Therefore, there is a need to optimize the blockchain’s network layer and improve
its ability to scale [35]. Various mitigation measures have been proposed in the literature,
and this paper reviews existing optimization methods and analyzes their effectiveness in
solving blockchain network issues and their ability to scale.
There are existing reviews on network optimization that present frameworks for
non-blockchain networks [36–44]. There are also reviews for blockchain optimization
frameworks, which discuss optimized consensus algorithms, thus reducing computational
complexity and storage requirements [45–53]. However, only a few works have attempted
to review network optimization in conjunction with blockchain [3,54–56], and they are not
detailed enough. In this work, we review state-of-the-art works on network optimization
for blockchain. The main contributions of this survey are as follows: We
• establish the need for network-based optimizations for blockchain
• introduce background knowledge on the blockchain architecture and discuss the
layers
• categorize reviewed works based on the blockchain architecture
• discuss network optimization in blockchain, analyze their effectiveness and ability to
scale
• finally, we present some open issues and directions for future work
The rest of this paper is organized as depicted in Figure 1. Section 3 presents back-
ground knowledge on blockchain architecture and its layers. Furthermore, Section 4
discusses studies conducted on blockchain’s network characteristics, then network opti-
mization is discussed in Section 5. Research gaps are discussed in Section 6, and the paper
is finally concluded in Section 7.

Figure 1. Structure of Survey.

2. Survey Methodology
This survey considers the results from Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect and Springer
Link. Querying the databases and analyzing the papers took place from September 2021 to
March 2022. The keywords used and the corresponding results returned are summarized in
Table 1 . Since ScienceDirect allows the exportation of only a hundred references at a time,
its results were limited to publications in Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics.
Then, only the top 300 results were considered. SpringerLink also permits the exportation
of the top 1000 results; therefore, the results returned were limited separately to journal
articles and conference papers, and the top 1000 results were exported for each. Finally,
all results from Scopus and IEEE were exported. The number of papers imported by the
reference manager is shown in Table 2.
A total of 9811 references were left after removing duplicates. During the title screen-
ing process, irrelevant documents such as the cover or front matter of the conference
proceedings were excluded. In addition to this, documents whose titles suggested that
their full manuscript described an application of blockchain for storage, trust or security in
IoT or non-IoT were excluded. Furthermore, sharding-centric publications were excluded.
This reduced the number of papers to 242.
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 4 of 22

Table 1. Search Query used and the Total Number of Results Returned from Selected Databases.

IEEE Science Springer

Query Keywords Scopus Total
Xplore Direct Link
Query 1 “blockchain” AND (iot OR iiot) AND integration 556 262 3017 5519 9354
Query 2 “blockchain” AND “scalability” 1913 1075 6280 5224 14,492

Query 3 “blockchain” AND (iot OR iiot) AND 363 224 2746 5134 8467
(optimization OR optimize)
Query 4 “blockchain” AND “gossip” 50 26 134 478 688
“blockchain” AND (peer-to-peer OR p2p
Query 5 OR network OR gossip ) AND 992 650 4583 8598 14,823
(optimization OR optimize)
Total 3874 2237 16,760 24,953 47,825

Table 2. Total Number of References Imported into the Reference Manager.

IEEE Science Springer

Query Keywords Scopus Total
Xplore Direct Link
Query 1 “blockchain” AND (iot OR iiot) AND integration 556 262 300 1866 2984
Query 2 “blockchain” AND “scalability” 1913 1049 298 1986 5246

Query 3 “blockchain” AND (iot OR iiot ) AND 363 224 300 1992 2879
(optimization OR optimize)
Query 4 “blockchain” AND “gossip” 49 26 134 195 404
“blockchain” AND (peer-to-peer OR p2p
Query 5 OR network OR gossip ) AND 981 641 300 1994 3916
(optimization OR optimize)
Total 3862 2202 1332 8033 15,429

The abstracts of the remaining papers were screened to identify works relevant to
blockchain’s network structure or communication. Therefore, during this phase, network
optimization works that employed blockchain as a security enabler were excluded. As a
result, only 146 remained for full-text screening.
Finally, the full-text screening process selected publications focusing on the communi-
cation complexity of consensus algorithms, improving the P2P structure or reducing the
total bandwidth consumed by blockchain when operational. This further reduced the num-
ber of papers selected for this survey to 33. A summary of the screening process is shown
in Figure 2. Tables 3 and 4 summarize the exclusion and inclusion criteria, respectively.

Table 3. Exclusion Criteria.

No. Criteria
1 The article is not published in English.
2 The article uses blockchain to secure IoT applications.
3 The article uses blockchain to secure a non-blockchain network optimization.
4 The article presents a sharding-based blockchain optimization.
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 5 of 22

Table 4. Inclusion Criteria.

No. Criteria
1 The study emphasizes the communication complexity of consensus algorithms.
2 The paper proposes optimization for protocols used to share transactions or blocks.
3 The paper presents an optimized neighbor selection or peer-to-peer topology.
4 The paper proposes compression schemes for blockchain data before transmission.

Figure 2. Survey Methodology.

3. Background Knowledge
This section briefly introduces blockchain technology, its architecture and discusses
the layers it comprises. The section then discusses blockchain’s P2P structure and the
gossip dissemination protocol.
Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger that stores transactions in a chain
of blocks. It was initially developed as the technology powering the Bitcoin cryptocur-
rency [53]. It aims to remove the need for a trusted third party who will validate trans-
actions [57,58]. Therefore, transactions are timestamped and verified by all participating
nodes and then added as a block in the main chain using cryptographic tools. As shown
in Figure 3, the blockchain architecture consists of the control, consensus, data and net-
work layers.

Figure 3. The Blockchain Architecture.

1. Control Layer: The control layer serves as an interface between applications and
the ledger. These applications include finance, data storage, voting, securing IoT,
logistics and supply chain tracking [10,51]. They interact with the ledger by invoking
smart contracts to trigger transactions. Smart contracts are programmable scripts
that interact with the ledger by reading or writing data to the ledger when invoked.
On-chain and off-chain are the primary processing models at the control layer.
2. Consensus Layer: The algorithms blockchain peers use to agree on the validity of
blocks and transactions exists at the consensus layer. Peers in public blockchains use
Proof of X (X => Work, Stake and many more) algorithms to reach a consensus [53].
All peers in public blockchains are eligible to participate in the consensus process.
However, in private blockchains, validating blocks and transactions are performed
mainly by different peers with specific roles. In Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), these roles
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 6 of 22

include orderers, endorsers, validators and leaders [31]. New transactions are first
sent to peers who can endorse transactions by executing smart contracts. After en-
dorsement, the transaction is sent to the leader node and maintains a connection to the
ordering nodes. Next, ordering nodes add the transactions to a block and send them
back to the leader node to be broadcasted in the network. Finally, every peer will have
to validate the block before committing it to its local ledger.
3. Data Layer: The data layer defines the structure of transactions, blocks and the crypto-
graphic mechanisms that link them together. A number of transactions are combined
together into a block. The size of a block depends on an explicitly defined size or on a
time interval at which blocks must be produced [59].
4. The Network Layer: The network layer mainly consists of the network structure and
the communication mechanisms. The network structure is responsible for establishing
and managing the peer-to-peer network structure, while the distribution of transac-
tions or blocks to peers in the network is handled by the communication mechanisms
using gossip. Forming the P2P network requires new peers to randomly select some
existing peers as their neighbors (to exchange blockchain data). Upon joining the
network, a new peer connects to other peers whose addresses are hard-coded into
its configurations. Then, the new peer requests the addresses of the existing peer’s
neighbors and finally selects some peers randomly as neighbors to gossip with. Peers
utilize the gossip protocol in the network to distribute new blocks or transactions [60].
The gossiping dissemination occurs in rounds and is prone to duplicate transmissions.
As shown in Figure 4, Node L shares a newly generated block with its neighbours
(Peer 1, 2 and 3). Peer 1 also shares with its neighbours (4 5 7), Peer 2 shares with
(6 7 8) and Peer 3 then shares it with (7 9). After this round, it can be realized that
Node 7 received the block three times.

Figure 4. The Gossip Dissemination Protocol.

4. The Impact of Network Structure and Communication Mechanisms on Performance

This section discusses various studies on the network characteristics of blockchain
networks. These studies present findings on redundant traffic generated by blockchain,
causes and impact of propagation delay and the communication complexity of consen-
sus algorithms.
Various studies have been conducted to investigate the characteristics of blockchain’s
P2P structure, gossip mechanism and their impact on performance. Kiffer et al. [61] studied
the Ethereum blockchain and discovered that there was a high churn rate in its P2P. Hence,
only a few peers propagated new blocks since churning nodes are usually unable to recon-
struct blocks in time. Furthermore, the location of a peer determines how fast it receives
a new block. The increased block propagation time due to physical distance can lead to
higher occurrences of forks and invalid transactions [29]. It is, therefore, recommended that
during the neighbor selection stage, a peer selects neighbors that are physically close to
it [59,62,63]. In blockchain’s P2P network, peers use the gossip protocol to share blocks and
transactions. Since the gossip protocol causes duplicate transmissions [31], other studies
analyzed the blockchain’s traffic to observe the degree of duplication, the impact of network
size and topology on the blockchain’s traffic. For example, the authors in [64,65] revealed
that traffic redundancy increases with an increase in network size. We can attribute this to
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 7 of 22

the fact that there is an increased probability of overlapping neighbors for different peers.
A summary of relevant studies and their findings are presented in Table 5.

Table 5. Studies on Blockchain’s Network Characteristics 1 = Mathematical Analysis and Simu-

lations, 2 = Measurement on Real Network, 3 = Varied Network Size, 4 = Varied Block Size and
Interval, 5 = Analyzed Transactional Throughput, 6 = Analyzed Latency, 7 = Analyzed P2P Structure,
8 = Analyzed Traffic Load.

Ref 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Blockchain Study Objectives Key Findings

Impact of network structure Redundancy increases with
[64] X X X Bitcoin
on traffic redundancy number of peers
Peer location determines block
Investigate P2P network
delivery latency
structure, block propagation
[61] X X Ethereum High churn in P2P network
mechanisms and the evolution
Only a few nodes propagate
of network over time
new blocks
EOSIO Compare transactional
About 76% of traffic used for
[47] X X X Tezos throughput to traffic
consensus
XRP Ledger generated
Block generation latency
increases with transaction
Study impact of HLF’s
[59] X X X X X HLF arrival rate
parameters on latency
Increase in number of peer
organizations increases latency
Investigate feasibility of a PBFT has the highest
[32] X X X X
wireless blockchain network communication complexity
Propagation delay increases
Impact of miner’s geographi- with an increase in block size
[66] X X X X Bitcoin
cal distribution Higher propagation delay leads
to higher occurrence of forks
Forking rates reduces with a
Impact of P2P structure and
[29] X X X X Bitcoin reduction in block propagation
gossip on latency
time
The proportion of always-online
Investigate peer communica-
[67] X X peers determine variability of
tion and dynamicity of peers
topology
Physical network characteristics
impact block delivery time
[68] X X Bitcoin Causes of delay in bitcoin
Internet usage at peak times
reduces delivery
Transaction latency has linear
relationship with network
latency
[62] X X X X X HLF Impact of HLF parameters
Bandwidth requirements of
leader node is proportional to
number of nodes
Network delay causes
Investigate the impact of
[63] X X X HLF inconsistencies and block
delay on HLF performance
synchronization problems
High churn rate
Characteristics of Bitcoin’s
[30] X X Bitcoin Churning leads to increased
P2P network
block propagation time
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 8 of 22

5. Network Optimization Techniques Used in Blockchain Networks

In this section, we will introduce the concept of network optimization as used in
blockchain networks and review various optimization frameworks proposed in the litera-
ture. The reviewed works have been categorized based on the layer on which they have
been implemented. These layers include the consensus layer, the network layer and data
layer, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Categorization of Network Optimization Frameworks in Blockchain.

In blockchain networks, network optimization refers to any technique that enhances

blockchain’s performance by speeding up the communication between peers, reducing
bandwidth consumption or deploying techniques that can help sustain acceptable per-
formance for large-scale applications. Existing approaches to network optimization in
blockchain improve the P2P topology, minimize duplicates caused by gossiping or by
reducing the size of data exchanged between peers.
Optimization works at the consensus layer include works that improve their commu-
nication pattern and hence, making them communicate in a small amount of time, reduce
the possibility of congestion or consume less bandwidth. Works at the network layer either
improve the gossip algorithm or the peer-to-peer network structure. Data layer approaches
are primarily about using schemes to minimize the size of the data that are exchanged on
the blockchain.

5.1. Network Layer

Relevant works at the network layer enhance either the gossip algorithm or the P2P
structure. Research works that optimize the gossip algorithm do so by reducing the
duplicates associated with it or by increasing the speed of block dissemination. The P2P-
based approaches replace the Random Neighbor Selection of blockchain with a neighbor
selection scheme based on propagation delay encountered when communicating with the
peer [69]. Propagation delay or proximity also serves as the basis of P2P approaches, which
use clustering. Most of the P2P-based approaches are distributed, but a few of them employ
Software Defined Networking (SDN) concepts in managing the P2P topology. A summary
of these approaches is presented in Table 6.

Table 6. Comparison of Network Layer Techniques. PC = Public, PR = Private, BI = Blockchain-

IoT, CT = Centralized Topology, DT = Distributed Topology, HY = Semi-Distributed Topology,
DY = Dynamic Topology, LY = Latency, BW = Bandwidth, Bandwidth = Reduction in TotalNnetwork
Bandwidth due to Minimization of Duplicates or Reducing Overhead Associated with Distributed
P2P Topology Management.

Ref PC PR BI CT DT HY DY LY BW Main Contributions Limitations

Gossip Algorithm with Results were collected
[70] X 33%
reduced degree of duplication using only nine peers
DHT for blockchain P2P
Compression scheme to
[71] 33%
reduce size of transmitted
data
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 9 of 22

Table 6. Cont.

Ref PC PR BI CT DT HY DY LY BW Main Contributions Limitations

Gossip algorithm with Could still be bandwidth
[31] X >100% 40% increased speed and reduced inefficient at large scales
bandwidth consumption due to block duplication
Gossip algorithm with
[72,73] increased speed and reduced
bandwidth consumption
Mathematical model to assess
impact of wireless
[74] X X 88% connectivity on block
synchronization and smart
contract execution
Excessive and repeated
send rate of INV
[75] X 0.88% Probability-based gossiping
messages can be an
overhead
Susceptible to crowding
Neighbor selection algorithm
[69] X 12.5% and over reliance on one
based on proximity
node
Weight-based neighbor
[76] 75%
selection
No results presented on
Tree-based topology for
[77] X the effectiveness of the
broadcast on the blockhain
work
[78] X 7% DHT P2P Topology
Intercrossing-net P2P Overhead due to constant
[79] X
topology for block broadcast reassembly of blocks
Susceptible to crowding
[80] X X Cluster-based P2P topology and over reliance on one
node
Susceptible to eclipse
[81] Clustered P2P topology
attacks
Susceptible to crowding
Semi-distributed P2P
[82] X and over reliance on one
topology management
node
Increase in topology
SDN-inspired topology
calculation time with
[83] X X X X X >100% management. Mathematical
increase in the number of
modelling of P2P topology
peers.
Increase in topology
calculation time with
Semi-distributed topology
[84] X X >100% >100% network size. Overhead
management
incurred by frequent
leader election

5.1.1. Gossip Optimization

Gossip-based optimization frameworks are discussed in this section. These strategies
try to limit the amount of duplication introduced by the gossip algorithm or the amount of
time spent gossiping. He et al. [70] proposed an algorithm accompanied by a modification
of the structure of blocks used by peers when gossiping. The modification was introduced
to minimize the quantity of duplication caused by the gossip protocol. They introduced
a list to keep track of all nodes previously selected for gossiping. Therefore, when a peer
receives a block, it does not send the blocks to their neighbors who are already on the history
list. Though their approach was effective at minimizing bandwidth wasted on duplicates
by about 33%, it was tested on a network consisting of only nine nodes. Their approach
may not scale well with the number of peers if the network receives huge volumes of
transactions due to the overhead incurred on checking a possibly long history list for every
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 10 of 22

transaction. Therefore, the effectiveness of this approach should be verified by increasing

the number of nodes.
The authors of [71] used a method similar to He et al., except that it also includes the
path in the network that the block has traversed. A Distributed Hash Table (DHT) was
used for the P2P network. Their approach could reduce bandwidth wastage caused by
duplicates by about 33% and also scales well with peers since, for a large network size,
their approach still had significant bandwidth savings. Furthermore, the results presented
suggested that it had a negligible effect on block verification latency.
Berendea et al. [31] and Shaleva et al. [72,73] altered the steps and communication
pattern of the gossip algorithm used by the Hyperledger Framework and Neo Blockchain,
respectively, to reduce its bandwidth usage and also to reduce the amount of time it uses.
In their approach, whenever a peer receives a new block, it constantly shares it with a
new set of uniformly and randomly selected neighbors until the dissemination counter is
exhausted. Since this approach increases the probability that all peers get the block in a
few gossip rounds, the pull component of gossip (peers requesting blocks they lack) was
removed to save bandwidth. The authors minimized the total network bandwidth by about
40%. Their approach realized an improvement in transactional throughput due to its speed
and reduction in the number of invalid transactions by 36%. At large scale, their approach
might be susceptible to a decrease in bandwidth efficiency due to duplicate transmissions.
Therefore, this method can further be improved by minimizing duplicate transmissions.
Vu et al. [75] used the INV message and GETDATA response used in bitcoin to calculate
a probability that will influence which neighbors will likely receive the new block. A peer
sends a number of inventory (INV) messages and measures the number of responses
received. The ratio of sent and received forms the probability that is used to decide which
neighbor gets the new block. Since all peers will have a variable number of neighbors, peers
with more neighbors will most likely respond to INV messages from a lot of their neighbors
and will, therefore, respond poorly to each and every neighbor. Peers with few neighbors,
however, will respond to INV messages from few peers and will, therefore, respond better,
hence gaining a higher probability. Furthermore, a peer with more neighbors will most
likely receive a new block from some neighbors, and hence, peers with few neighbors were
given a higher priority by the authors. The results presented indicate that this approach did
not yield any appreciable increase in transactional throughput. However, their approach
yielded about a 15% reduction in the number of messages transmitted by a peer. When
compared to the default gossip in bitcoin, their approach realized about a 0.88% reduction
in duplicates. Furthermore, probability calculations are not discarded but kept for future
transmissions, as well as network size.

5.1.2. P2P Topology Optimization

RNS is mainly replaced by more informed selection criteria in the P2P topology
optimization. This modification helps to improve blockchain metrics, such as average
finality time. The average finality time measures how long it takes for most peers to get a
newly created block. Because a long time equals a lower transactional throughput, these
strategies choose neighbors with the shortest communication delay.
The authors in [69,76] used a score-based algorithm to influence how the underlying
peer-to-peer of the bitcoin network is formed. Peers with the smallest propagation delay
were given a high score and also selected as neighbors. After receiving ten blocks, each
peer updates its neighbors by randomly selecting new neighbors and only adding if it
has high scores as determined by the algorithm. By shortening block propagation time,
Aoki et al. [69] realized a reduction in latency by about 12.5%, whereas Santiago et al. [76]
reduced latency by 75%
At a higher scale, however, this could lead to too much reliance on a peer when it
has the shortest propagation times and can consequently degrade the node’s performance.
In high-throughput networks, the periodic peer update process could increase the network’s
overall bandwidth. This approach can be made more efficient by putting in measures to
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 11 of 22

prevent any peer from having too many neighbors (crowding). Bandwidth-efficient peer
update techniques could also be introduced to minimize excessive consumption of network
resources at high scale.
Kan et al. [77] developed a scheme to improve data broadcasting in a blockchain
network. Their approach organized the peer-to-peer network into a tree structure. When a
node receives a new block from its parent node, it broadcasts it to its children node. Since
there is no interconnection between children nodes of any two parent nodes, their method
ensured that duplicate transmissions did not occur. This tree structure can, therefore,
simultaneously increase bandwidth efficiency, transactional throughput and also scales
well with network size. Using a DHT, Kaneko et al. [78] reduced redundancy by 7%.
Yang et al. [79] proposed the Ari protocol as a solution that modeled the peer-to-peer
network as an inter-crossing net instead of other approaches that employed a unidirectional
tree-based P2P topology [77]. Blocks are first split into equal parts, and a serial number is
assigned to each piece before they are broadcast into the network. The transmitted blocks
take the shortest path in the inter-crossing net to their destination peers; this improved
network-wide latency by about 50%. The splitting technique applied also helped achieve
some savings in bandwidth. However, when it grows, the split-and-scatter technique
can bottleneck the blockchain’s performance since nodes may have to wait a longer time
to receive all parts of blocks that have been scattered in the network. It will also make
inefficient use of bandwidth since more peers will have to frequently request block parts
from different peers.
BlockP2P by Hao et al. [80] is a technique proposed to improve transactional through-
put by minimizing latency in the blockchain network. As shown in Figure 6, the main idea
behind this approach is to group blockchain peers into a cluster based on the geograph-
ical location. This technique leads to a cluster of small diameter and, therefore, reduces
propagation time within the cluster. Furthermore, since the network consists of several
clusters, the authors designated some nodes, called routing nodes, which connect to routing
nodes of other clusters to ensure full connectivity. The authors gained a net increase in
transactional throughput due to the reduced latency of about 90%. When a small network
size is considered, the clustering approach has better bandwidth efficiency than Random
Neighbor Selection. However, when the network grows, crowding can occur in a cluster
and reduce intra-cluster efficiency. Although Al-Musharaf et al. [81] also used a similar
approach, their work was susceptible to network partitioning and eclipse attacks since a
star topology was used within a cluster.

Figure 6. Clustering of Peers by Hao et al. [80].

Huang et al. [82] introduced the concept of “iTracker”. The iTracker is an entity owned
and operated by the ISPs that provide internet to peers in the blockchain network. When a
node wants to connect to another node in a different cluster, the iTracker of the originating
node connects to the iTracker in charge of the destination cluster. The iTracker returns
the node with the smallest propagation time to the originating peer. Since the iTracker is
responsible for topology, there is better bandwidth usage due to reduced overhead caused
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 12 of 22

by fully distributed topology management. Similar to other techniques that employ this
clustering approach, it also offers improved transactional throughput and could also suffer
reduced performance at a large scale when intra-cluster crowding is not mitigated.
Deshpande et al. [83] used a centralized approach, as shown in Figure 7, to reduce
the overhead incurred by the distributed network management of a vanilla blockchain.
Dedicated servers generated the P2P topology and assigned neighbors to each peer. This
method provided a flexible way to manage the network and make it possible to tune
the topology in real time. The topology generation used both clustering and Random
Neighbor Selection, but, unlike other clustering-based approaches, they introduced a
constraint to limit intra-cluster crowding. The SDN-inspired topology management resulted
in significant savings in bandwidth when compared to traffic generated by topology
and network management in distributed approaches. Even though the authors did not
evaluate their work in terms of blockchain-related metrics, this approach has the potential
to improve transactional throughput. This is because nodes have fewer responsibilities
and can, therefore, dedicate all their resources to process more transactions. Moreover,
the topology can also be tuned to minimize latency and speed up transaction confirmation.
It is, however, noteworthy that topology computation time increases with an increase in
network size. Therefore, research consideration should be given to multiple controllers to
help the network scale up.

Figure 7. SDN-Inspired Topology Management by Deshpande et al. [83].

Baniata et al. [84] used a hybrid architecture to manage the P2P network of blockchain,
as shown in Figure 8. One peer is voted into a leadership role to take charge of topology
management. Normal peers send their neighbor list to the leader. The leader then uses the
neighbor lists to calculate a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) and sends back the optimum
neighbors to each peer. Propagation delay is the cost used to calculate the MST problem.
Therefore, each peer receives neighbors who offer the best propagation delay and ulti-
mately leads to an improvement in transactional throughput. Similar to Deshpande et al.,
decoupling the P2P management leads to decent savings in bandwidth. However, when
a new leader is elected, it will have to request the neighbor list of all peers again and
compute the topology. Since this is an inefficient use of bandwidth, measures can be put
in place to ensure that topology and membership will not be lost if the current leader
becomes unavailable. Moreover, the MST calculation time increases with increasing peer
membership. Therefore, multi-leader scenarios should be considered to reduce topology
calculation time as the network scales up.
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 13 of 22

Figure 8. Semi-Distributed Topology Management Scheme used by Baniata et al. [84].

5.2. Consensus Layer

The reviewed works at this layer focused on reducing latency by verifying blocks
selectively, reducing the number of communication steps required to reach consensus.
Furthermore, other techniques replace the single leader in private blockchain consensus
with two or more leaders. A summary of these approaches has been presented in Table 7.

Table 7. Comparison of Consensus Layer Techniques. PC = Public Blockchain, PR = Private

Blockchain, BI = Blockchain-IoT, LY = Latency, TT = Transactional Throughput, BW = Bandwidth,
Bandwidth = Reduction in Total Network Bandwidth due to the Minimization of Duplicates or
Reducing Overhead Caused by Distributed P2P Topology Management.

Ref PC PR BI LY TT BW Main Contributions Limitations

Probabilistic verification
Trustworthiness of nodes
[14] 10 % algorithm to determine
not checked
when to validate blocks
Trust-based verification
[85] X >100% Guarantor selection
algorithm
Reputation-based block
[86]
verification
Byzantine Agreement
consensus algorithm with Performance degrades with
[87] X >100%
two rounds of increase in peers.
communication
HSBFT consensus No evaluation performed
[88] X
algorithm for the technique
Multi-Raft consensus
[89] X 30%
algorithm
Evaluated against a
[28] X X >100% 68.75% SPBFT consensus algorithm
network with a few nodes
Multi-leader PBFT
[90] X >100%
algorithm
A closed-loop algorithm to
Higher occurrences of
[91] X X determine the optimum
forking at high scale
blocks to mine

5.2.1. Selective Verification

Li et al. [14] proposed to reduce the average network latency by reducing the amount
of time required to verify blocks using a probabilistic verification method. They introduced
a validation degree metric, which other nodes used to determine whether or not to validate
a block. According to the metric, if a block does not require validation, then it can be
transmitted immediately to other peers. This probabilistic verification leads to an increase
in transactional throughput and also has good scalability. However, since not all peers will
validate transactions, the authors should have factored in the trustworthiness of peers.
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 14 of 22

However, unlike Li et al., the authors in [85,86] checked and used the trustworthiness
or reputation of peers to decide whether or not to verify new blocks. Their approaches
have good scalability, smaller latency and increased transactional rate when compared to
the bitcoin network.

5.2.2. Communication Complexity

The authors in this category proposed consensus algorithms with a reduced number of
communications required. For example, Locher et al. [87] presented a Byzantine Agreement-
based consensus algorithm that requires 1/4 nodes and two rounds of communication to
reach a consensus. The reduced number of steps should translate to a smaller latency and
bandwidth consumption; however, the results presented suggest that effective throughput
was reduced when the number of peers increased, and, hence, it is not scalable.
Jiang et al. [88] proposed a consensus algorithm called High-Performance and Scalable
Byzantine Fault Tolerance (HSBFT). Although no evaluation was performed for the pro-
posed technique, it may have a reduced bandwidth usage since communication complexity
was reduced from O(n2 ) to O(n).

5.2.3. Multi-Leader
Cao et al. [89] analyzed raft vs. multi-raft for network latency and leader’s traffic. It
was observed that the traffic generated in raft was greater than multi-raft. This improve-
ment is only visible in high-throughput networks with balanced nodes across multiple
leaders. About a 30% reduction in total network traffic was due to the balancing. The
overhead on the leader is due to the total number of simultaneous connections and log
synchronization. Multi-raft also has a lower cpu at a higher scale and, therefore, is scalable.
The authors of [28] proposed, and enhanced the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant (PBFT) [92]
algorithm called “score-voting based byzantine fault tolerance”. In this scheme, the authors
used a reward and punishment scheme to select nodes which can participate in the con-
sensus process. The reduced bandwidth is due to the minimization of broadcasts during
the consensus process. Consensus nodes do not broadcast but unicast to the primary node,
thus, reducing communication complexity. Their technique proved superior to (PBFT),
Window-based BFT (WBFT) [93] and Reputation-based BFT (RBFT) [94] in terms of the
number of communications required, delay and transactional throughput. They realized
an increase in transactional throughput from 160 tps to 270 tps and a reduced latency of
100 ms when compared to PBFT, which had a latency of 325ms.
Jalalzai et al. [90] voted a group of nodes, called a committee, to undergo the consensus
process. Members of the committee were randomly selected to ensure fairness. The band-
width saving and the scalability of this approach depends on the size of the committee.
For a network consisting of 130 nodes, their approach has a latency of 5 s when compared
to PBFT, which achieved a latency of 15 s.

5.2.4. Congestion
Casado-Vara et al. [91] designed a framework for blockchain-based IoT systems. They
artificially adjusted the PoW algorithm’s difficulty as a means to limit congestion in the
network. They used a queuing system between the side chains, and the main blockchain
decides the optimal number of blocks that must be admitted and mined at any particular
time in the main blockchain. By reducing PoW’s difficulty, an increase in transactional
throughput was realized. However, this work suffers from bandwidth inefficiencies of a
traditional blockchain. Since this approach uses a reduced PoW difficulty to prevent queue
saturation, there will be a higher occurrence of forking rates at high scales.

5.3. Data Layer

Optimizations at the data layer primarily apply a form of compression to blockchain
data or traffic to reduce the bandwidth consumed when blocks or transactions are shared
in the network. A summary of these approaches has been presented in Table 8.
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 15 of 22

Table 8. Comparison of Data Layer Techniques. PC = Public Blockchain, PR = Private Blockchain,

BI = Blockchain-IoT, BW = Bandwidth. Bandwidth = Reduction in Total Network Bandwidth due to
Minimization of Duplicates or Reducing Overhead Caused by Distributed P2P Topology Management.

Ref PC PR BI BW Main Contributions Limitations

XOR-based compression of Requires peers to have multiple
[95] X 1.87%
blockchain traffic network interfaces
Erasure coding technique to
Only effective when dealing with
[96] X 82% compress transactions before
a few transactions
transmission
Erasure coding technique to
[97] X
compress compact blocks
Network coding technique to
[98] X X >100%
compress compact blocks
Requires peers to have a similar
A block structure with
transaction pool. Will consume
[99] X transactions replaced by their
higher bandwidth if dissimilarity
hashes
is high

Ahn et al. [95] used a simple packet aggregation scheme to compress the traffic
generated in the network. Their approach required a blockchain node in the network to
have multiple network interfaces. They then used an XOR operation to join the blockchain
traffic with the same destination. The authors reported that their technique reduced the
PBFT processing time by 23%; a corresponding increase in transactional throughput was
also realized. The results presented also showed a reduction in bandwidth by about 1.87%.
These improvements may not be achieved in a real network (especially at a large scale)
since it requires all peers to have multiple network interfaces.
Jin et al. [96] devised an erasure-coding technique to compress blocks before transmis-
sion. Their technique works by first clustering the blockchain nodes; each cluster elects
a cluster head, as shown in Figure 9. If, for instance, a node has a new block to share, it
transmits the block’s headers and id’s of its transactions. The cluster head then broadcasts
this received data in its cluster. Next, cluster members send all the transactions they lack;
their leader relays them to the originating peer. The originating peer then encodes all
requested transactions and sends them back to each cluster member to recover the transac-
tions they need. The clustering of nodes leads to an improved throughput, whereas the
coding technique greatly reduced bandwidth by about 82%. However, the coding technique
is only effective when dealing with a few transactions. It will, therefore, not scale well with
an increase in transactions. Zhang et al. [97] proposed a similar approach, although not in
a clustered network.

Figure 9. Clustering Technique used by Jin et al. [96].

Cebe et al. [98] also used a coding technique to minimize the size of blocks before it is
transmitted to other peers in the network. The authors, first of all, split a block into chunks.
Then, a group of chunks, called a generation, is combined into one packet and transmitted
to other peers. In their experimental setup, consisting of five wireless IoT peers, the total
traffic transmitted per node was reduced from about 51 kB to about 9 kB. However, when
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 16 of 22

the number of transactions or peers increases, the task of decoding and reassembling blocks
could burden peers.
Zhao et al. [99] proposed lightblock, a modified and lighter block structure. In their
approach, peers maintain a pool of transactions, and, hence, when any other peer receives
a hash of a transaction, it should be able to recover the full transaction from the pool.
Therefore, the authors replaced all transactions in a block with its hash, hence making
it smaller and occupying a smaller bandwidth when transmitted. In the unlikely case
that all peers have similar transaction pools, their approach will drastically reduce the
requirements to transmit blocks. However, when there are dissimilarities in transaction
pools, this approach is likely to consume more bandwidth than the normal blockchain
operation and will, therefore, not scale well with peers or transactional load.

5.4. Multi-Layer
Some blockchain frameworks, such as Hyperledger Fabric, allow administrators to
manually configure some blockchain parameters, such as block size and block generation
interval. Selecting optimum values for these parameters is an area that researchers have
exploited to improve blockchain performance. Hang et al. [100] studied the impact of these
tunable parameters on the blockchain network and presented a guideline for building an
optimum blockchain network. Even though this guideline promises to build a blockchain
with an improved throughput, it may not scale well because the guidelines were provided
from a network with less than ten peers. Moreover, a configuration that is optimum for
a network with tens of peers may not be optimum for a network with hundreds of peers.
Table 9 summarizes the relevant works in this category.

Table 9. Comparison of Multi-Layer Techniques. PC = Public Blockchain, PR = Private Blockchain,

BI = Blockchain-IoT, CL = Consensus Layer, DL = Data Layer, LY = Latency, TT = Transactional Throughput.

Ref PC PR BI CL DL LY TT Main Contributions Limitations

Methodology to
construct optimum May not scale well with
[100] X X X 36.7% 20%
network based on peers
empirical data
A DRL algorithm to
Single agent may not
select optimum values
[101] X X X X 11.9% scale well with an
for tunable parameters
increase in peers
of the blockchain

Liu et al. [101] used a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) technique to proactively
select a consensus algorithm, block size, interval and producers. They dynamically adjusted
the consensus algorithm used by the blockchain network, block-producing peers, the rate
at which their system generated blocks and the size of a block. The state-space of their
DRL approach includes the size of a transaction, computational strength of a node and
data transmission rate. The action taken by the agent is primarily changing either one or
multiple parameters (consensus algorithm, block size, producers and interval). As a result,
the agent interacts with the environment to increase transactional throughput, finality
and more. The usage of consensus algorithms with a smaller traffic footprint led to a net
reduction in bandwidth. Even though this work is effective throughput and bandwidth,
further investigation should be conducted into multi-agent approaches since a single agent
will not scale very well with network growth. Moreover, constantly interacting with the
network can hamper its performance. It is, therefore, necessary to investigate how to
achieve a trade-off between maximized performance and minimized interaction.

6. Gap Analysis
Despite all the efforts that have been put into making blockchain scalable, there is still
room for further research. This section discusses some identified gaps and directions for
possible future work.
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 17 of 22

1. Some blockchain frameworks allow network administrators to configure block size, in-
terval and other parameters manually. Therefore, to construct an optimum blockchain
network with improved transactional throughput, some researchers conducted exten-
sive measurements to determine the impact of parameters on the blockchain’s ability to
process transactions. After analyzing the experimental results, guidelines on selecting
the best value for each parameter were presented. However, since these guidelines
were extracted from a setup consisting of a few nodes, the approach may not suit
the blockchain when it scales up with the number of peers. Therefore, researchers
could investigate optimization algorithms that will take the network’s size and other
relevant parameters as input and automatically determine and apply the optimum
value for all the configurable blockchain parameters.
2. Deep Reinforcement Learning has been applied to automatically select tunable
blockchain parameters, such as consensus algorithm and block size. In principle,
a DRL agent persistently interacts with its environment and takes actions that will
converge to an optimal state. However, persistently interacting with the blockchain
network will impede its normal operation and subsequently bottleneck its transac-
tional throughput. Therefore, future work could research how to achieve a trade-off
between maximized performance and minimized interaction.
3. Solutions proposed as a better alternative to the random neighbor selection used in
current blockchain implementations suggests selecting neighbors based on proximity
or latency of communication. Hence, each peer selects neighbors offering the least
communication latency during the neighbor selection stage. Furthermore, if many
peers consider a specific peer as having low-latency communication, they will all
select it. Consequently, it will lead to that peer having too many neighbors and,
consequently, overloading it. Therefore, further research could examine neighbor
selection strategies and limit the number of neighbors based on network size, a peer’s
computing and network resources.
4. Blockchain is a distributed technology, hence its P2P network management is also
distributed, thus, all peers are responsible for setting up and managing the P2P
network. However, this approach has significant network management overhead
and does not easily lend itself to a dynamic reconfiguration. Therefore, to make P2P
management more flexible and minimize its management overhead, researchers could
consider developing intelligent semi-distributed techniques [84] to manage the P2P
of blockchain networks. Thus, some peers in the blockchain are assigned special
responsibilities. For example, they are tasked with calculating the optimum P2P
topology and selecting suitable neighbors for every peer in the network.
5. Using semi-distributed strategies for P2P network management will be computation-
ally intensive when the blockchain peers increases. Hence when only a single peer
is tasked with the P2P topology calculation, it would require more time to achieve
the optimum topology. This would affect the real-time requirements of the network.
Therefore, future research could investigate the optimum number of peers required
for a network of a given size and share P2P topology calculation and management
across the selected peers.

7. Conclusions
As a summary, this paper introduces the blockchain architecture and its layers and
reviews the existing optimization work in the literature. The proposed optimization frame-
works are implemented at consensus, data, network or a combination of layers. As a
result, the blockchain’s communication complexity, bandwidth or latency was reduced.
Although these proposals are reasonable steps toward realizing highly scalable and perfor-
mant blockchain systems suitable for IIoT integration, they are fraught with inherent flaws.
For example, optimizations based on neighbor selection may lead to over-dependence on a
peer with the least propagation time. Putting in measures to prevent possible overcrowding
will ensure that no peer is overloaded. Works that reduce blockchain communication
Algorithms 2022, 15, 193 18 of 22

complexity (Section 5.2.2) result in a reduced bandwidth. However, better savings can be
achieved when it is coupled with other bandwidth-saving approaches, such as duplicates
minimization (Section 4) and coding techniques (Section 5.3), before transmission. Further-
more, better latencies may be achieved when communication complexity reduction-based
techniques are combined with more informed neighbor selection. Therefore, more research
is needed in this area to explore every uncharted territory.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, R.A., J.D.G., J.O.A and K.O.-B.O.A.; methodology, R.A.,
A.S. AND E.T.T.; formal analysis, R.A., D.W. and A.S.; investigation, R.A., J.D.G. and E.T.T.; writing—
original draft preparation, R.A. ; writing—review and editing, A.S., J.D.G. and E.T.T; visualization,
R.A.; supervision, J.D.G. and E.T.T.; project administration, E.T.T and A.S.; funding acquisition, E.T.T
and A.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Research and Educa-
tion (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) and the German Academic Exchange
Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD). This paper was written as part of the
Distributed IoT-Platforms for Safe Food Production in Education, Research and Industry (Dipper)
project, which is co-financed by the BMBF (Förderkennzeichen: 01DG21017) and DAAD (Projekt-ID:
57557211).
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is
not applicable to this article.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:

RNS Random Neighbor Selection

P2P Peer-to-Peer
IoT Internet of Things
IIoT Industrial IoT
QoS Quality of Service
HLF Hyperledger Fabric
SDN Software Defined Networking
DHT Distributed Hash Tables
INV Inventory
MST Minimum Spanning Tree
PBFT Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
DRL Deep Reinforcement Learning

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