Performance of blockchain technology on DoD tactical networks
Noah Weston, Jared C. Willard, Peng Wang · 2019
The benefits of blockchain technology are evident in the banking industry as the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies. Recently, research has been focused on novel, non-cryptocurrency uses of blockchain for other industries such as national defense. Application of these technologies in military use cases requires special consideration of the limitations inherent to tactical military operations, namely the network communication technologies. In this work we explore the performance of blockchain technologies on network environments representative of those available in Department of Defense (DoD) tactical operations. Our experimentation with the Ethereum blockchain on a mobile network emulation reveals a series of verbose blockchain network communication protocols as well as a heavy reliance on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) for block transfer and synchronization that may limit the effectiveness of blockchain on current DoD mobile ad hoc networks.