@article{younis_imtiaz_starobinski_trachtenberg_2018, 
  title={Improving Bitcoin's Resilience to Churn}, 
  abstractNote={Efficient and reliable block propagation on the Bitcoin network is vital for
ensuring the scalability of this peer-to-peer network. To this end, several
schemes have been proposed over the last few years to speed up the block
propagation, most notably the compact block protocol (BIP 152). Despite this,
we show experimental evidence that nodes that have recently joined the network
may need about ten days until this protocol becomes 90% effective. This problem
is endemic for nodes that do not have persistent network connectivity. We
propose to mitigate this ineffectiveness by maintaining mempool synchronization
among Bitcoin nodes. For this purpose, we design and implement into Bitcoin a
new prioritized data synchronization protocol, called FalafelSync. Our
experiments show that FalafelSync helps intermittently connected nodes to
maintain better consistency with more stable nodes, thereby showing promise for
improving block propagation in the broader network. In the process, we have
also developed an effective logging mechanism for bitcoin nodes we release for
public use.}, 
  author={Younis and Imtiaz and Starobinski and Trachtenberg}, 
  year={2018}, 
  month={Mar}
  }