Investigating the Impact of Workload Characteristics on the Scalability and Performance of Permissioned Blockchain

Abstract Blockchain Technology has grown exponentially in recent years due to its decentralized, immutable, transparent data storage, transaction sharing, and processing. With the emergence of different blockchain platforms, it is substantial to analyze and evaluate the performance of these platforms in various scenarios. The popularity of the public blockchain, i.e., Bitcoin and Ethereum, has increased manifold. But in distinction to a public blockchain, there is a permissioned and private blockchain that allows restricted involvement of users in the network. To make a well-informed decision regarding the selection of an appropriate platform for utilization, it is crucial to evaluate diverse performance metrics among the numerous available blockchain platforms. In this study, we conducted an assessment of the performance of the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain (HLF), taking into account various metrics such as resource consumption, throughput, success rate, and latency. We have incorporated parameters such as the ordering service, programming language to write chaincode/smart contracts, number of transactions, transactions per second, and organizations to evaluate the system’s performance. Along with our analysis, we also suggested potential areas of research for the future development of blockchain technology.