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FLOCK: Fast, Lightweight, and Scalable Allocation for Decentralized Services on Blockchain

Keizer, NV; Ascigil, O; Psaras, I; Pavlou, G; (2021) FLOCK: Fast, Lightweight, and Scalable Allocation for Decentralized Services on Blockchain. In: Proceedings 2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC). (pp. pp. 1-9). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Green open access

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Abstract

Many decentralized services have recently emerged on top of blockchain, offering benefits like privacy, and allowing any node in the network to share its resources. In order to be a competitive alternative to their central counterparts, their performance needs to match up. Specifically, service allocation remains a performance bottleneck for many decentralized services.In this paper we present FLOCK, an allocation system which is highly scalable, fast, and lightweight. Furthermore, it allows nodes to indicate their preference for clients/sellers without needing to submit bids by using stable matching algorithms. We decouple the price discovery and outsource this function to a smart contract on the blockchain.Additionally, another smart contract is used to orchestrate the allocation and take care of service discovery, while trusted execution environments securely compute allocation solutions, and off-chain payment networks are used to send rewards.Evaluation of FLOCK shows that gas costs are manageable and improve upon other solutions which leverage auctions, and that our instance of the stable matching algorithm greatly improves run-time and throughput over auction counterparts. Finally, our discussion outlines practical improvements to further increase performance.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: FLOCK: Fast, Lightweight, and Scalable Allocation for Decentralized Services on Blockchain
Event: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC)
ISBN-13: 978-1-6654-3578-9
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1109/ICBC51069.2021.9461079
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBC51069.2021
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Keywords: Service Allocation, Blockchain, Stable Matching
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Electronic and Electrical Eng
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10131485
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