Discrete-Time Analysis of the Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies have become more and more popular and widespread during recent years. After the initial hype about the technology and many cryptocurrency related use cases, the technology slowly starts to make its way into other domains like food tracking and document management. In order to further contribute to the search of what this technology can be used for, more detailed performance evaluations are required in order to investigate key performance indicators and general limits of the technology. To this end, we develop a discrete-time queueing model that allows a detailed evaluation of the characteristics of a blockchain system, such as the transaction waiting time distribution. Furthermore, we validate the model by comparing the results to values obtained from measurements in a closed lab environment based on the Ethereum blockchain.