A Noncooperative Game Theory-Based Incentive Model for Scaling Permissioned Blockchain Networks

Blockchain offers decentralization and data security in a trustless environment. Transaction details are logged to trace a transaction trail. Blockchain has multiple components that are crucial to overall performance. One such component is the consensus model. It is responsible for network scaling, and blockchain suffers from scaling problems. It is also important for the growth and existence of the network to satisfy the transaction proposers and validators. To maintain the network, incentives are given to validators in a digital asset form, commonly using cryptocurrency. A lack of appropriate incentives can lead to suboptimal network performance, preventing networks from reaching their full potential. This paper introduces a noncooperative game theory-based incentive model to improve network performance while enhancing the scaling feature of a permissioned blockchain network. The model is generic and focuses on the incentive structure of the network. The proposed model is based on five design goals. They are generability, scalability, energy awareness, fairness, and dynamism. The proposed model is not a consensus model but a complement to a suitable voting-based consensus model. An extensive simulation campaign was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.