class: title-slide # Revisiting Transactional Statistics of <br>High-scalability Blockchains <h2 class="sm-top-margin"> Daniel Perez <span class="very minor">Imperial College London</span><br> Jiahua Xu <span class="very minor">University College London</span><br> Benjamin Livshits <span class="very minor">Imperial College London</span><br> </h2> <h3 class="sm-top-margin">October 29th, ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2020</h3> <br> <h4>Slides available at: http://bit.ly/transactional-throughput</h4> --- # Overview 1. Background 2. Data overview 3. Main results 1. EOS 2. Tezos 3. XRP 4. Takeaways --- class: middle, title-slide # Background --- # Blockchain overview .pull-left-40[ * Append-only data structures * Unit-of-work is a block * Each block has many transactions * Each transaction can contain several actions * Block producers (miners) need to reach consensus ] .pull-right-60[ <img src="./blockchain-overview.png"> ] --- class: full-table # Blockchain scalability * Scalability often discussed in terms of transactions per second * Average transactions per second can be computed by <br>blocks/second x transactions/block Platform | Block time | Transactions/block | Transaction/second :---------:|----------------:|-------------------:|------------------: Visa | - | - | 65,000 Bitcoin | 10 minutes | 3,500 | 6 -- Tezos | 1 minute | 2,400 | 40 EOS | 0.5 second | 2,000 | 4,000 XRP | ? | ? | 65,000 .caption[ Advertised limits of different platforms ] --- class: middle, title-slide # Data overview --- class: full-table # Data collected .pull-left-40[ * Data from October 1, 2019 to April 30, 2020 * Grouped in 6-hour interval for TPS computation ] .pull-right-60[ Platform | Number of blocks | Number of transactions | Average TPS | Max TPS :---------:|-------------------:|-----------------------:|-------------:|--------: EOS | 36,133,709 | 631,445,236 | 34 | *136* Tezos | 301,822 | 7,890,133 | 0.43 | *0.57* XRP | 4,753,965 | 271,546,797 | 15 | *56* ] -- <br> Data and measurement framework open-sourced: https://github.com/danhper/blockchain-analyzer --- class: full-table # Types of transactions <style> .actions-table td:nth-child(3), .actions-table td:nth-child(5), .actions-table td:nth-child(7) { text-align: right; } </style> <table class="actions-table"> <thead> <tr> <td></td> <th colspan="2" class="text-center">EOS</td> <th colspan="2" class="text-center">Tezos</td> <th colspan="2" class="text-center">XRP</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Category</td> <th>Action name</td> <td>%</td> <th>Operation kind</td> <td>%</td> <th>Transaction type</td> <td>%</td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Peer-to-peer transactions</td> <td><em>Transfer</em></td> <td><em>96.2</em></td> <td>Transaction</td> <td>21.4</td> <td><em>Payment</em></td> <td><em>36.9</em></td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td></td> <td></td> <td></td> <td></td> <td>EscrowFinish</td> <td>0.0</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Account actions</td> <td>newaccount</td> <td>0.0</td> <td>Reveal</td> <td>0.0</td> <td>TrustSet</td> <td>1.2</td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td>bidname</td> <td>0.0</td> <td>Origination</td> <td>1.3</td> <td>AccountSet</td> <td>0.1</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Other actions</td> <td>delegatebw</td> <td>0.0</td> <td><em>Endorsement</em></td> <td><em>76.6</em></td> <td><em>OfferCreate</em></td> <td><em>59.1</em></td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td>undelegatebw</td> <td>0.0</td> <td>Delegation</td> <td>0.6</td> <td>OfferCancel</td> <td>2.7</td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td>buyrambytes</td> <td>0.0</td> <td>Reveal nonce</td> <td>0.1</td> <td>EscrowCreate</td> <td>0.0</td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td>Others</td> <td>3.8</td> <td></td> <td></td> <td>EnableAmendment</td> <td>0.0</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> .caption[ Distribution of actions executed on each blockchain ] --- class: middle, title-slide # EOS results --- # EOS Throughput over time .pull-left-40[ * Change of trend in November 2019 * Due to airdrop of EIDOS token * Caused EOS to enter congestion mode ] .pull-right-60[  ] --- # EIDOS token aidrop .pull-left-50[ * Very simple airdrop 1. Send EOS to a contract 2. Contract sends back the EOS and some amount of its token * Originator of the airdrop is anonymous but tone is aggressive * Likely a voluntary spam attack * Caused many developers to quit EOS ] .pull-right-50[  ] ??? According to recent report, developers working on platform fell by 85% https://decrypt.co/32217/billion-dollar-blockchain-eos-in-trouble-research --- # EOS Throughput before spam attack .pull-left-40[ * Used a lot for betting games * Used for some porn website payments * Fairly stable and varied usage ] .pull-right-60[  ] --- # Wash-trading on EOS * WhaleEx was most active exchange at time of analysis * Claims to be the largest decentralized exchange in the world * In *75%* of the trades, the buyer and seller were the same user * The exact same amount was sent back-and-forth * Aggregated trades for all top users resulted in 0 value transfer --- class: middle, title-slide # Tezos results --- # Tezos Throughput over time .pull-left-40[ * Very stable trend * Vastly dominated by endorsement - consensus related * Regular spikes in number of transactions * Transaction spikes due to block producer payouts - consensus related ] .pull-right-60[  ] --- class: middle, title-slide # XRP results --- # XRP Throughput over time .pull-left-40[ * Dominated by `OfferCreate` * Spike around November and December due to spam attack * Stable throughput from January and on ] .pull-right-60[  ] --- # I Owe You (IOU) in XRP .pull-left-50[ * Anybody can emit an IOU * User can establish trust line to accept IOUs from other users * If the IOU issuer cannot pay, the IOU has no value ] .pull-right-50[  ] --- # Value in XRP transactions .pull-left-50[ * Less than *6%* of the transactions had an economic value * Only 0.2% of the transactions were successful trades * Only 3.3% of the transactions were payments with an economic value ] .pull-right-50[  ] --- # Valuable payments on XRP .pull-left-40[ * Vast majority of valuable payments are in XRP * Average of 586 million XRP traded per day * Exchanges account for a large portion of these payments ] .pull-right-60[  ] ??? BTC has > 30 billion trading volume per day --- # Takeaways * All three blockchains are still very far from their potential * Current TPS very far away from claimed maximum * Most transactions are have no economic value * *96%* of EOS transactions from valueless airdrop token * *76%* of Tezos transactions to maintain consensus * *94%* of XRP transactions have no economic value * Low or absent fees tend to attract a lot of spam * XRP has dealt with spam attacks much better than EOS, likely because of the difference in fee model