Approved
Electricity Consumption of a Distributed Consensus Algorithm
Wilhelm Wanecek ()
Start
2021-04-09
Presentation
2021-06-21 15:15
Location:
Zoom
Finished:
2021-06-29
Master's thesis:
Abstract
Bitcoin and Ethereum apply proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithms [15], where solving very difficult, yet arbitrary mathematical problems is key to ensuring the reliability and stability of the decentralized network. Several of the recent payment networks have designed other mechanisms of achieving consensus, for example AlgoRand's Proof-of-Stake algorithm [16], or Stellar's two-round voting based Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) [1]. These have the potential to be far less energy intensive than PoW-based blockchains, and may because of this serve an important role of inspiration for future blockchain solutions, within and beyond fintech. Through a case study on the Stellar payment network, this study serves to investigate the energy consumption of a payment network that does not apply an intrinsically computation heavy PoW consensus algorithm, with an overarching aim of reasoning about the feasibility of a larger portion of the global financial infrastructure running on such a blockchain based payment network. Section 2 covers background and theory relevant to understanding the problem domain. Section 3 describes and motivates the choice of method. Section 4 presents results. Finally, section 5 places the results in a broader context while discussing the validity.
Supervisor: Max Åhman (LTH)
Examiner: Maria Kihl (EIT)