Home > Published Issues > 2024 > Volume 13, No. 4, July 2024 >
IJEETC 2024 Vol.13(4): 260-276
doi: 10.18178/ijeetc.13.4.260-276

Load Balancing in Blockchain Networks: A Survey

Patikiri Arachchige Don Shehan Nilmantha Wijesekara
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Galle 80000, Sri Lanka
Email: nilmantha@eie.ruh.ac.lk (P.A.D.S.N.W.)

Manuscript received February 16, 2024; revised April 5, 2024; accepted April 16, 2024.

Abstract—Load Balancing (LB) in networking attempts to minimize the under-utilization and over-utilization of network resources by distributing the network flows evenly in the communication network. Blockchain includes a string of joined blocks that are built into the preservation of the non-tampering nature and safeguarding the verifiability. According to our felt experience, we are the initiators to review on blockchain-driven LB, where we organize the blockchain-driven LB concept under 7 categories and interpret thoroughly their performance in relation to LB techniques, BC-driven variables, LB approach, network variables, and similar things. We accumulated an early sample of 76 paper citations by handpicking articles for eligibility requirements scrutinized from web repositories, deploying a thorough and continuous method. Relying on this assessment, blockchain has been deployed in network LB for protecting data fidelity, trustworthiness, confidentiality of data transfers, deploying blockchain consensus for LB, deploying smart contracts for LB, deploying with secure resource trading, access control, and as a coordinator in the system of LB. Moreover, LB involves balancing loads in the blockchain transactions themselves. Thorough interpretation depicts that from blockchaindriven LB schemes, 37.5% deploy blockchain transaction LB, 90% deploy conventional blockchain architecture, 30% deploy generic consensus, 97.5% deploy decentralized LB, 97.5% deploy dynamic LB, 52.5% deploy deterministic LB, and the majority target generic networks. Finally, we go over the potential and predicaments of the notion of blockchain-driven LB and then provision ideas to defeat them.

 

Index Terms—blockchain, load balancing, blockchaindriven load balancing, smart contracts, sharding, networking

Cite: Patikiri Arachchige Don Shehan Nilmantha Wijesekara, "Load Balancing in Blockchain Networks: A Survey," International Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering & Telecommunications, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 260-276, 2024. doi: 10.18178/ijeetc.13.4.260-276

Copyright © 2024 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.