An Optimized Encryption Storage Scheme for Blockchain Data Based on Cold and Hot Blocks and Threshold Secret Sharing

• Published in: Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2024-08, Vol.26 (8), p.690
• Main Authors: Yang, Dong, Tsai, Wei-Tek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Access control; Algorithms; Blockchain; blockchain data; Cloud computing; Cold storage; Cryptography; Data encryption; Data security; Data storage; Digital currencies; Efficiency; encrypted storage; Encryption; Fault tolerance; Government services; Health care industry; Information storage and retrieval; Nodes; Optimization; Privacy; Segments; Storage systems; threshold secret sharing
• ISSN: 1099-4300; 1099-4300
• DOI: 10.3390/e26080690

In recent years, with the rapid development of blockchain technology, the issues of storage load and data security have attracted increasing attention. Due to the immutable nature of data on the blockchain, where data can only be added and not deleted, there is a significant increase in storage pressure on blockchain nodes. In order to alleviate this burden, this paper proposes a blockchain data storage strategy based on a hot and cold block mechanism. It employs a block heat evaluation algorithm to assess the historical and correlation-based heat indicators of blocks, enabling the identification of frequently accessed block data for storage within the blockchain nodes. Conversely, less frequently accessed or "cold" block data are offloaded to cloud storage systems. This approach effectively reduces the overall storage pressure on blockchain nodes. Furthermore, in applications such as healthcare and government services that utilize blockchain technology, it is essential to encrypt stored data to safeguard personal privacy and enforce access control measures. To address this need, we introduce a blockchain data encryption storage mechanism based on threshold secret sharing. Leveraging threshold secret sharing technology, the encryption key for blockchain data is fragmented into multiple segments and distributed across network nodes. These encrypted key segments are further secured through additional encryption using public keys before being stored. This method serves to significantly increase attackers' costs associated with accessing blockchain data. Additionally, our proposed encryption scheme ensures that each block has an associated encryption key that is stored alongside its corresponding block data. This design effectively mitigates vulnerabilities such as weak password attacks. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves efficient encrypted storage of data while concurrently reducing the storage pressure experienced by blockchain nodes.