Electronic node and method for maintaining a distributed ledger

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10846281-B2
Application number	US-201715819418-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 21, 2017
Priority date	Jan 31, 2017
Publication date	Nov 24, 2020
Grant date	Nov 24, 2020

Abstract

An electronic device for maintaining a distributed ledger, which is maintained by multiple electronic nodes, wherein the distributed ledger includes multiple blocks which are associated at least with one of the previously recorded blocks and wherein a block can be added to the distributed ledger based on a mining process, has circuitry configured to perform a mining process of a block to be added to the distributed ledger, wherein the mining process by at least a part of the multiple electronic nodes includes compressing data of the block to be added to the distributed ledger.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An electronic device for maintaining a distributed ledger, which is maintained by multiple electronic nodes, wherein the distributed ledger includes multiple blocks which are associated at least with one of previously recorded blocks and wherein a new block can be added to the distributed ledger based on a mining process by at least a part of the multiple electronic nodes, the electronic device comprising circuitry configured to:
perform a mining process of the new block to be added to the distributed ledger, wherein the mining process includes:
obtaining a hash from the previously recorded blocks,
using the hash to select a subset of dictionary elements from a predefined dictionary,
computing a sparse representation of each sub-block of the new block based on the selected subset of dictionary elements to compress data of the new block, and
adding the compressed new block to the distributed ledger, wherein the distributed ledger represents digital currency used to buy physical goods and/or services.

2. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the circuitry is further configured to perform a compression algorithm for compressing data.

3. The electronic device of claim 2 , wherein the compression algorithm is based on a non-deterministic polynomial-time hard search problem.

4. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the compression of the data is further based on a current state of the distributed ledger.

5. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein each block includes multiple sub-blocks, wherein each sub-block includes at least one of: transaction data, video data, image data, audio data, document data.

6. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the compression includes representing data of the block based on the predefined dictionary.

7. The electronic device of claim 6 , wherein the predefined dictionary includes a set of the dictionary elements and the set of the dictionary elements is adapted to the data of the block to be compressed.

8. The electronic device of claim 7 , wherein the subset of the set of the dictionary elements is selected based on a current status of the distributed ledger.

9. A method for maintaining a distributed ledger, which is maintained by multiple electronic nodes, wherein the distributed ledger includes multiple blocks which are associated at least with one of previously recorded blocks and wherein a new block can be added to the distributed ledger based on a mining process by at least a part of the multiple electronic nodes, the method comprising:
performing a mining process of the new block to be added to the distributed ledger, wherein the mining process includes:
obtaining a hash from the previously recorded blocks,
using the hash to select a subset of dictionary elements from a predefined dictionary,
computing a sparse representation of each sub-block of the new block based on the selected subset of dictionary elements to compress data of the new block, and
adding the compressed new block to the distributed ledger, wherein the distributed ledger represents digital currency used to buy physical goods and/or services.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the compression of data is based on a compression algorithm for compressing data.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the compression algorithm is based on a non-deterministic polynomial-time hard search problem.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein the compression of the data is further based on a current state of the distributed ledger.

13. The method of claim 9 , wherein each block includes multiple sub-blocks, wherein each sub-block includes at least one of: transaction data, video data, image data, audio data, document data.

14. The method of claim 9 , wherein the compression includes representing data of the block based on the predefined dictionary.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the predefined dictionary includes a set of the dictionary elements.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the set of the dictionary elements is adapted to the data of the block to be compressed.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the subset of the set of the dictionary elements is selected based on a current status of the distributed ledger.

Assignees

• Sony Corp

Inventors

• Cronie Harm
• Nolan Julian

Classifications

• G06F16/2365 Primary

  Ensuring data consistency and integrity · CPC title

• H04L9/50 Primary

  using hash chains, e.g. blockchains or hash trees · CPC title

• H04L2209/30

  Compression, e.g. Merkle-Damgard construction · CPC title

• H04L9/32

  including means for verifying the identity or authority of a user of the system {or for message authentication, e.g. authorization, entity authentication, data integrity or data verification, non-repudiation, key authentication or verification of credentials} · CPC title

• G09C1/00

  Apparatus or methods whereby a given sequence of signs, e.g. an intelligible text, is transformed into an unintelligible sequence of signs by transposing the signs or groups of signs or by replacing them by others according to a predetermined system (cryptographic typewriters G09C3/00) · CPC title