RainBlock: Faster Transaction Processing for Public Blockchains

Abstract

This paper presents RAINBLOCK, a public blockchain that achieves high transaction throughput. The chief insight behind RAINBLOCK is that the number of transactions in each block is limited by I/O bottlenecks. By removing these I/O bottlenecks, RAINBLOCK allows miners to process more transactions in the same amount of time. The paper makes two novel contributions: the RAINBLOCK architecture that removes I/O from the critical path of processing transactions, and the distributed, multi-versioned DSM-TREE data structure that stores the system state efficiently. A single RAINBLOCK miner processes 27.4 K transactions per second (27× higher than an Ethereum miner). In a geo-distributed settings, RAINBLOCK miners process 20K transactions per second.