A Storage Optimization Scheme for Blockchain Transaction Databases

As the typical peer-to-peer distributed networks, blockchain systemsrequire each node to copy a complete transaction database, so as to ensure newtransactions can by verified independently. In a blockchain system (e.g., bitcoinsystem), the node does not rely on any central organization, and every node keepsan entire copy of the transaction database. However, this feature determines thatthe size of blockchain transaction database is growing rapidly. Therefore, with thecontinuous system operations, the node memory also needs to be expanded tosupport the system running. Especially in the big data era, the increasing networktraffic will lead to faster transaction growth rate. This paper analyzes blockchaintransaction databases and proposes a storage optimization scheme. The proposedscheme divides blockchain transaction database into cold zone and hot zone usingexpiration recognition method based on Least Recently Used (LRU) algorithm. Itcan achieve storage optimization by moving unspent transaction outputs outsidethe in-memory transaction databases. We present the theoretical analysis on theoptimization method to validate the effectiveness. Extensive experiments showour proposed method outperforms the current mechanism for the blockchaintransaction databases.