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Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) stands to benefit industries such as financial services with transparency and censorship resistance. DLT systems need to be scalable to handle mass user adoption. Mass user adoption is required to demonstrate the true value of DLT. This dissertation first analyses...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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School of Economics
2021
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| _version_ | 1867613156330700800 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Clark, Jonathan |
| author2 | Georg, Co-Pierre |
| author_browse | Clark, Jonathan Georg, Co-Pierre |
| author_facet | Georg, Co-Pierre Clark, Jonathan |
| author_sort | Clark, Jonathan |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Distributed ledger technology (DLT) stands to benefit industries such as financial services with transparency and censorship resistance. DLT systems need to be scalable to handle mass user adoption. Mass user adoption is required to demonstrate the true value of DLT. This dissertation first analyses scalability in ethereum and EOS. Currently, ethereum 1.0 uses proof of work (PoW) and handles only 14 transactions per second (tps) compared to Visa's peak 47 000 tps. Ethereum 2.0, known as Serenity, introduces sharding, proof of stake (Casper), plasma and state channels in and effort to scale the system. EOS uses a delegated proof of stake (DPoS) protocol, where 21 super-nodes, termed ‘block producers' (BPs), facilitate consensus, bringing about significant scalability improvements (4000 tps). The trade-off is decentralisation. EOS is not sufficiently decentralised because the BPs yield significant power, but are not diverse. This dissertation conducts an empirical analysis using unsupervised machine learning to show that there is a high probability collusion is occurring between certain BPs. It then suggests possible protocol alterations such as inverse vote weighting that could curb adverse voting behaviour in DPoS. It further analyses whether universities are suitable BP's before mapping out required steps for universities to become block producers (leading to improved decentralisation in EOS) |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/32578 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:31:38.662Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publishDateRange | 2021 |
| publishDateSort | 2021 |
| publisher | School of Economics |
| publisherStr | School of Economics |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/32578 Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology Clark, Jonathan Georg, Co-Pierre Distributed ledger technology (DLT) EOS ethereum scalability decentralisation delegated proof of stake (DPoS) Block Producer (BP) Distributed ledger technology (DLT) stands to benefit industries such as financial services with transparency and censorship resistance. DLT systems need to be scalable to handle mass user adoption. Mass user adoption is required to demonstrate the true value of DLT. This dissertation first analyses scalability in ethereum and EOS. Currently, ethereum 1.0 uses proof of work (PoW) and handles only 14 transactions per second (tps) compared to Visa's peak 47 000 tps. Ethereum 2.0, known as Serenity, introduces sharding, proof of stake (Casper), plasma and state channels in and effort to scale the system. EOS uses a delegated proof of stake (DPoS) protocol, where 21 super-nodes, termed ‘block producers' (BPs), facilitate consensus, bringing about significant scalability improvements (4000 tps). The trade-off is decentralisation. EOS is not sufficiently decentralised because the BPs yield significant power, but are not diverse. This dissertation conducts an empirical analysis using unsupervised machine learning to show that there is a high probability collusion is occurring between certain BPs. It then suggests possible protocol alterations such as inverse vote weighting that could curb adverse voting behaviour in DPoS. It further analyses whether universities are suitable BP's before mapping out required steps for universities to become block producers (leading to improved decentralisation in EOS) 2021-01-20T07:49:15Z 2021-01-20T07:49:15Z 2020 2021-01-19T14:39:43Z Master Thesis Masters MPhil http://hdl.handle.net/11427/32578 eng application/pdf School of Economics Faculty of Commerce |
| spellingShingle | Distributed ledger technology (DLT) EOS ethereum scalability decentralisation delegated proof of stake (DPoS) Block Producer (BP) Clark, Jonathan Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| title_full | Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| title_fullStr | Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| title_full_unstemmed | Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| title_short | Understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| title_sort | understanding scalability in distributed ledger technology |
| topic | Distributed ledger technology (DLT) EOS ethereum scalability decentralisation delegated proof of stake (DPoS) Block Producer (BP) |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/32578 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT clarkjonathan understandingscalabilityindistributedledgertechnology |