@article{KOSTAMIS2024193,
title = {Data management in Ethereum DApps: A cost and performance analysis},
author = {Periklis Kostamis and Andreas Sendros and Pavlos Efraimidis},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X23004351},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2023.11.026},
issn = {0167-739X},
year = {2024},
date = {2024-01-01},
urldate = {2024-01-01},
journal = {Future Generation Computer Systems},
volume = {153},
pages = {193-205},
abstract = {The cost of interacting with a blockchain and the time required to search and retrieve information from it are important factors in the design of Decentralized Applications (DApps). The corresponding approaches for data management in Ethereum vary from pure on-chain solutions to hybrid architectures. In this work, we thoroughly examine a wide range of data management methods, including unconventional ones, and evaluate them in terms of storage cost and retrieval latency while considering the impact of recent hard forks. More precisely, we elaborate on the use of Smart Contract (SC) storage as a data store for DApps and in view of the prohibitive cost inherent to this approach, we present and compare methods for low-cost data handling in Ethereum, namely the event-logs, the transaction payload, and the almost surprising exploitation of unused function arguments. In addition, we study hybrid schemes by using IPFS and Swarm as storage platforms and Ethereum as a timestamping proof mechanism. Such schemes are especially effective when large chunks of data have to be managed. The upload and retrieval performance of these platforms and the cost associated with storing (on-chain) the identifiers of the uploaded data are of utmost importance and therefore are investigated in detail.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
