GEM 2-tree: A gas-efficient structure for authenticated range queries in blockchain

Ce Zhang, Cheng Xu, Jianliang Xu, Yuzhe Tang, Byron Choi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemConference contribution

119 Scopus citations

Abstract

Blockchain technology has attracted much attention due to the great success of the cryptocurrencies. Owing to its immutability property and consensus protocol, blockchain offers a new solution for trusted storage and computation services. To scale up the services, prior research has suggested a hybrid storage architecture, where only small meta-data are stored on-chain and the raw data are outsourced to off-chain storage. To protect data integrity, cryptographic proof can be constructed online for queries over the data stored in the system. However, the previous schemes only support simple key-value queries. In this paper, we take the first step toward studying authenticated range queries in the hybrid-storage blockchain. The key challenge lies in how to design an authenticated data structure (ADS) that can be efficiently maintained by the blockchain, in which a unique gas cost model is employed. By analyzing the performance of the existing techniques, we propose a novel ADS, called GEM2-tree, which is not only gas-efficient but also effective in supporting authenticated queries. To further reduce the ADS maintenance cost without sacrificing much the query performance, we also propose an optimized structure, GEM2∗-tree, by designing a two-level index structure. Theoretical analysis and empirical evaluation validate the performance of the proposed ADSs.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2019 IEEE 35th International Conference on Data Engineering, ICDE 2019
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages842-853
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781538674741
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 6 2019
Event35th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, ICDE 2019 - Macau, China
Duration: Apr 8 2019Apr 11 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings - International Conference on Data Engineering
Volume2019-April
ISSN (Print)1084-4627

Conference

Conference35th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, ICDE 2019
Country/TerritoryChina
CityMacau
Period4/8/194/11/19

Keywords

  • Authenticated query
  • Blockchain
  • Range query
  • Smart contract

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Signal Processing
  • Information Systems

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