Distributed Delay-Tolerant Payment with Blockchains
Overview
Banking as an essential service is always hard to access in remote rural regions where infrastructural cost is high and network connectivity is intermittent and unstable. Although microbanking has been made possible by SMS messages, this scheme incorporates severe security flaws. Public cryptocurrencies enable low-cost, secure and pervasive money transferring among distributed peers, but are still limited in their ability to reach more people in remote, closed communities as blockchains assume high-performance network connectivity.
We propose a blockchain-based banking scheme that delivers service to remote communities and intermittently connects to the wider network. Using a base station that offers connectivity within the local area, regular transaction processing is solely handled by blockchain miners. The bank only joins to process currency exchange requests, reward miners and monitor node behaviours when connectivity is available. By distributing the verification and storage tasks among peers, our system design saves on the overall deployment and operational costs without sacrificing reliability and trustworthiness. Through theoretical and empirical analysis, we provided insights to system design, tested its robustness against network disturbances, and demonstrated the feasibility of implementation on off-the-shelf computers and mobile devices.
People
- Yining Hu, UNSW and Data61-CSIRO
- Ahsan Manzoor, University of Oulu, Finland
- Parinya Ekparinya, University of Sydney
- Madhusanka Liyanage, University of Oulu, Finland
- Kanchana Thilakarathna, University of Sydney
- Guillaume Jourjon, Data61-CSIRO
- Aruna Seneviratne, UNSW,
- Mika E Ylianttila, University of Oulu, Finland
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