XRP-NDN overlay: Improving the Communication Efficiency of Consensus-Validation based Blockchains with an NDN Overlay

Scientific Conference (2023)

With growing adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies, their networks must scale while maintaining efficient communication for the underlying consensus and replication mechanisms. New content ... [more ▼]

With growing adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies, their networks must scale while maintaining efficient communication for the underlying consensus and replication mechanisms. New content distribution concepts like Named Data Networking create opportunities to achieve this goal. We present and evaluate XRP-NDN overlay, a solution to increase communication efficiency for consensus-validation blockchains like XRP Ledger. We send consensus messages over different communication models and show that the chosen model lowers the number of messages at node level to minimum, while maintaining or improving performance by leveraging overlay advantages. [less ▲]

SPON: Enabling Resilient Inter-Ledgers Payments with an Intrusion-Tolerant Overlay

Scientific Conference (2021, October 04)

Payment systems are a critical component of everyday life in our society. While in many situations payments are still slow, opaque, siloed, expensive or even fail, users expect them to be fast ... [more ▼]

Payment systems are a critical component of everyday life in our society. While in many situations payments are still slow, opaque, siloed, expensive or even fail, users expect them to be fast, transparent, cheap, reliable and global. Recent technologies such as distributed ledgers create opportunities for near-real-time, cheaper and more transparent payments. However, in order to achieve a global payment system, payments should be possible not only within one ledger, but also across different ledgers and geographies.In this paper we propose Secure Payments with Overlay Networks (SPON), a service that enables global payments across multiple ledgers by combining the transaction exchange provided by the Interledger protocol with an intrusion-tolerant overlay of relay nodes to achieve (1) improved payment latency, (2) fault-tolerance to benign failures such as node failures and network partitions, and (3) resilience to BGP hijacking attacks. We discuss the design goals and present an implementation based on the Interledger protocol and Spines overlay network. We analyze the resilience of SPON and demonstrate through experimental evaluation that it is able to improve payment latency, recover from path outages, withstand network partition attacks, and disseminate payments fairly across multiple ledgers. We also show how SPON can be deployed to make the communication between different ledgers resilient to BGP hijacking attacks. [less ▲]

The rise of eBPF for non-intrusive performance monitoring

in IEEE Xplore (2020, June 08)

In this paper, we explain that container engines are strengthening their isolation mechanisms. Therefore, nonintrusive monitoring becomes a must-have for the performance analysis of containerized user ... [more ▼]

In this paper, we explain that container engines are strengthening their isolation mechanisms. Therefore, nonintrusive monitoring becomes a must-have for the performance analysis of containerized user-space application in production environments. After a literature review and background of Linux subsystems and container isolation concepts, we present our lessons learned of using the extended Berkeley packet filter to monitor and profile performance. We carry out the profiling and tracing of several Interledger connectors using two full-fledged implementations of the Interledger protocol specifications. [less ▲]

Deep dive into Interledger: Understanding the Interledger ecosystem - Part 3

Learning material (2019)

At the technical level, the goal of Interledger is to provide an architecture and a minimal set of protocols to enable interoperability for any value transfer system. The Interledger protocol is literally ... [more ▼]

At the technical level, the goal of Interledger is to provide an architecture and a minimal set of protocols to enable interoperability for any value transfer system. The Interledger protocol is literally a protocol for interledger payments. To understand how is it possible to achieve this goal, several aspects of the technology require a deeper analysis. For this reason, in our journey to become knowledgeable and active contributor we decided to create our own test-bed on our premises. By doing so, we noticed that some aspects are well documented but we found that others might need more attention and clarification. Despite a large community effort, the task to keep information on a fast evolving software ecosystem is tedious and not always the priority for such a project. Therefore, the purpose of this document is to guide, through several hands-on activities, community members who want to engage at different levels. The document consolidates all the relevant information from generating a simple payment to ultimately create a test-bed with the Interledger protocol suite between Ripple and other distributed ledger technology. [less ▲]

Deep dive into Interledger: Understanding the Interledger ecosystem - Part 1

Learning material (2019)

At the technical level, the goal of Interledger is to provide an architecture and a minimal set of protocols to enable interoperability for any value transfer system. The Interledger protocol is literally ... [more ▼]

At the technical level, the goal of Interledger is to provide an architecture and a minimal set of protocols to enable interoperability for any value transfer system. The Interledger protocol is literally a protocol for interledger payments. To understand how is it possible to achieve this goal, several aspects of the technology require a deeper analysis. For this reason, in our journey to become knowledgeable and active contributor we decided to create our own test-bed on our premises. By doing so, we noticed that some aspects are well documented but we found that others might need more attention and clarification. Despite a large community effort, the task to keep information on a fast evolving software ecosystem is tedious and not always the priority for such a project. Therefore, the purpose of this document is to guide, through several hands-on activities, community members who want to engage at different levels. The document consolidates all the relevant information from generating a simple payment to ultimately create a test-bed with the Interledger protocol suite between Ripple and other distributed ledger technology. [less ▲]