Lecture 9

: Peer to Peer Distributed

Databases
December 2021
Distributed Databases ( Peer to Peer )

No centralised authority!!!!????
 Distributed Databases ( Peer to Peer )
• IoT provides the possibility of connecting anyplace, anytime,
with anyone, any services, and anything ITU (SECTOR & ITU,
2019);
• Also as standalone devices or combination cooperating
together towards a common goal (Große et al. 2020)
 Distributed Databases
• While centralised databases follow the Availability, Consistency,
Isolation and Durability (ACID) principles, peer-to-peer distributed
databases follow the
• Basic Availability Soft State Eventual Consistency (BASE)[51]
principle.
• CAP theorem [54] Brewers theorem. Only two of the attributes
Consistency Availability and Partitioning can be achieved at the
same time
• The FLP Impossibility Theorem, ( an acronym of last name of the
authors Michael Fisher, Nancy Lynch and Mick Peterson [53] ) states
“It is impossible to have a deterministic protocol that solves
consensus in a message-passing asynchronous system in which at
most one process may fail by crashing”. At any time, different parts
of a distributed database will be different, leading to inconsistencies
known as partitioning.
 Distributed Databases
• Distributed databases are therefore Replicated
State Machines (RSMs) [55], with Byzantine fault
1
tolerance [12] i.e. able to tolerate up to of the
3
members being attackers who can collude by
deleting or delaying messages between honest
members.
• This need for consistency results in transaction
confirmation delays in distributed databases an
undelaying characteristic in all distributed ledger
technology
 Distributed Databases
• The advantage of a peer-to-peer distributed ledger (DL), is
the ability to handle adversaries (Byzantine failures [12]),
such as malicious behaviour, crashed or unreachable nodes
and network delays.
• Resistance to adversaries, referred to as Byzantine fault
tolerance (BFT) [75] is measured as the ratio of the number
of nodes required to compromise a distributed ledger
versus the total number of nodes needed to gain consensus
[12].
• DL data is transferred and appended to the ledger as
transactions, and stored chronologically [29], with each
transaction containing meta-data and digital representation
of assets such as cryptocurrencies, smart contracts or other
valuable types of tokens.
 Distributed Ledger - Block Chain

Bitcoin, Hyper Ledger Fabric, and Ethereum implementations are based on the
Blockchain DL mode
 Distributed Ledgers
Direct Acyclic Graph

IOTA Tangle, Hashgraph-Hedra and Obyte implementations utilise a Directed

Acyclic Graph (DAG) DL
 Distributed Ledgers

• Distributed Ledger Technology

 a Distributed Database (DDB) storage in Transaction(s)

networked nodes, which do trust each.

 consensus protocol decides order of
operations and data replication. Replication or
 A Proof of Something(PoX) confirms

Cryptography
(Local)

legitimacy of the item (e.g. PoW, PoS)

Validation
 DDB state subject to CAP and FLP
theorems (Brewer, 2012)
 Park, S., Oh, S., & Kim, H. (2019). 2
Network Nodes ( min > 3 + 1 of Nodes )

Replication PoX and

(remote Mining Consensus
neighbour)

𝑇 = 𝑡𝑖 + 𝑡𝑐 = 𝑡𝑣 + 𝑡𝑝𝑜𝑤 + 𝑡𝑛 + 𝑡𝑒 + 𝑡𝑐

Figure 6: Components of a DLT Transaction (Author)

v= attach & validation time
i= issuance time
pow= Proof of Something
c= confirmation time
n = network, e = overheads
 Distributed Ledgers

• Distributed Ledger Technology

 Bitcoin a blockchain-based DLT Transaction(s)

 issuance time is FIXED at 10min and

delivering 7TPS for the entire network
(Pervez et al., 2018).
Replication
 10 additional block to confirm or

Cryptography
(Local)
 T = 10+100 = 110 minutes
 IOTA Tangle DAG based DLT Validation
 Issuance time 1 to 60 seconds ≃800TPS for
the entire network (Pervez et al., 2018) 2
Network Nodes ( min > 3 + 1 of Nodes )
 14 new edges attached to confirm
 T = 1 to 60 + 14 to 840 = 15 to 900 seconds Replication PoX and
(remote Mining Consensus
neighbour)

Figure 6: Components of a DLT Transaction (Author)

 Distributed Ledgers

Some Popular Public DLTs Some Common IoT

Bitcoin (blockchain) Smart Wearable Devices
Ethereum (blockchain) Mobile Phones (Android, Windows,
IOTA Tangle (DAG) AppleOS)
Byteball (DAG) Smart Controllers (Raspberry pi)
---- more --- Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV)
GoPro Camera
--- more ---

DLT-IoT Research
Attraction
Finance
no third-party intermediaries,
Internet of Things (IoT)
a trustless node environment
Health care
secure value and data transaction
Energy
processing
Utility
faster reconciliation between
Logistics
transacting and participating
--- more ---
parties
 Advantages & Disadvantages
• Advantages
– Fault Tolerance
– Security
– Immutability
– No third parties
• Disadvantages
– Computationally Expensive
– In some cases financially expensive
– Low transaction Throughput
– Immature architecture
– Lack of Interoperability and Lack of standards