Stability and Scalability of Blockchain Systems

Abstract

The blockchain paradigm, introduced in the Bitcoin whitepaper [10], enables distributed consensus over a peer-to-peer network. Each peer constantly mines new information called blocks. Thus, blocks in the network are created over time. Each peer that creates (mines) a block also creates references to one or more previously created blocks. Peers also communicate blocks in order to synchronize their information sets; i.e., the sets of blocks and references the peers are aware of.