A Novel Method for Block Propagation with Erasure Coding

Data transmission in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network layer is a critical component for the efficient functioning of blockchain systems. As the volume of transaction data and the number of nodes within the network continue to grow, enhancing network throughput and transmission efficiency presents a significant challenge. Traditional methods of block propagation often lead to increased redundancy and communication costs, particularly when multiple rounds of requests are required for specific data chunks. To address these challenges, we propose an improved blockchain broadcasting method that utilizes erasure coding to encode fragmented block data. By employing erasure coding techniques, our method effectively reduces redundancy during block propagation, thus lowering the overall communication costs associated with data transmission across the network. In our paper, we test the broadcast speed and synchronization efficiency under different numbers of nodes and block sizes, as well as different RS coding schemes. Through comprehensive experiments, we analyze how these variables impact the performance of the broadcasting process. Our results indicate that the proposed method significantly improves broadcast efficiency, while also enhancing the fault tolerance of data transmission within the network. When some nodes in the entire network recover the block first, these nodes can send specific chunks in the propagation process to make the entire network synchronize faster.