SE-Chain: A Scalable Storage and Efficient Retrieval Model for Blockchain

Massive data is written to blockchain systems for the destination of keeping safe. However, existing blockchain protocols still demand that each full node has to contain the entire chain. Most nodes quit because they are unable to grow their storage space with the size of data. As the number of nodes decreases, the security of blockchains would significantly reduce. We present SE-Chain, a novel scale-out blockchain model that improves storage scalability under the premise of ensuring safety and achieves efficient retrieval. The SE-Chain consists of three parts: the data layer, the processing layer and the storage layer. In the data layer, each transaction is stored in the AB-M tree (Adaptive Balanced Merkle tree), which adaptively combines the advantages of balanced binary tree (quick retrieval) and Merkle tree (quick verification). In the processing layer, the full nodes store the part of the complete chain selected by the duplicate ratio regulation algorithm. Meanwhile, the node reliability verification method is used for increasing the stability of full nodes and reducing the risk of imperfect data recovering caused by the reduction of duplicate number in the storage layer. The experimental results on real datasets show that the query time of SE-Chain based on the AB-M tree is reduced by 17% when 16 nodes exist. Overall, SE-Chain improves the storage scalability extremely and implements efficient querying of transactions.