Topology-Aware Cooperative Data Protection in Blockchain-Based Decentralized Storage Networks

From currency to cloud storage systems, the continuous rise of the blockchain technology is moving various information systems towards decentralization. Blockchain-based decentralized storage networks (DSNs) offer significantly higher privacy and lower costs to customers compared with centralized cloud storage associated with specific vendors. Coding is required in order to retrieve data stored on failing components. While coding solutions for centralized storage have been intensely studied, topology-aware coding for heterogeneous DSNs have not yet been discussed. In this paper, we propose a joint coding scheme where each node receives extra protection through the cooperation with nodes in its neighborhood in a heterogeneous DSN with any given topology. As an extension of, which also subsumes, our prior work on coding for centralized cloud storage, our proposed construction preserves desirable properties such as scalability and flexibility in networks with varying topologies.