Measuring ethereum network peers

Seoung Kyun Kim, Joshua Mason, Zane Ma, Andrew Miller, Siddharth Murali, Michael Bailey

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency valued at a peak of $138 billion in 2018, is a decentralized, Turing-complete computing platform. Although the stability and security of Ethereum-and blockchain systems in general-have been widely-studied, most analysis has focused on application level features of these systems such as cryptographic mining challenges, smart contract semantics, or block mining operators. Little attention has been paid to the underlying peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that are responsible for information propagation and that enable blockchain consensus. In this work, we develop NodeFinder to measure this previously opaque network at scale and illuminate the properties of its nodes. We analyze the Ethereum network from two vantage points: a three-month long view of nodes on the P2P network, and a single day snapshot of the Ethereum Mainnet peers. We uncover a noisy DEVp2p ecosystem in which fewer than half of all nodes contribute to the Ethereum Mainnet. Through a comparison with other previously studied P2P networks including BitTorrent, Gnutella, and Bitcoin, we find that Ethereum differs in both network size and geographical distribution.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationIMC 2018 - Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages91-104
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9781450356190
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 31 2018
Event2018 Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2018 - Boston, United States
Duration: Oct 31 2018Nov 2 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC

Other

Other2018 Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoston
Period10/31/1811/2/18

Keywords

  • DEVp2p
  • Ethereum
  • Network measurement
  • Peer-to-peer computing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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