【摘要】 去中心化是区块链网络的重要优势。然而,尽管人们普遍认识到这一性质的重要性,但大多数关于这一主题的研究缺乏量化,而且没有对它们在实践中实现的去中心化程度进行计算。熵是随机变量不确定性的度量,也就是数据集的随机性度量,正好可以用来衡量区块链网络的去中心化程度。本文以比特币和以太坊为例,提出一种基于信息论中熵值理论来量化计算这些区块链网络去中心化程度的方法。利用信息熵计算出比特币和以太坊的出块数量和地址余额的随机程度,以此作为量化比特币和以太坊去中心化程度的指标。计算结果表明,基于出块数量的全样本统计,比特币比以太坊要高出大约12%的去中心化程度,并且基于10000个地址余额的样本统计,比特币也比以太坊要高出大约9.2%的去中心化程度。本文提出的方法具有普适性,可以用来量化评估任何区块链网络的去中心化程度。更多还原

【Abstract】 The most primary advantage of blockchain networks is to be decentralization. However, despite the widely acknowledged importance of this property, most studies on this topic lack quantification, and none of them performs a measurement on the degree of decentralization they achieved in practice. Entropy is a measure of uncertainty of random variables, that is the measure of randomness of data sets, can be used to measure the degree of decentralization for blockchain networks. In this paper, taking Bitcoin and Ethereum for instances, we propose an entropy method in information theory to quantify the degree of decentralization for them. Using the information entropy, we calculate the degrees of randomness of blocks mined and address balances to quantify the degrees of decentralization for Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, and the results of calculations indicate that Bitcoin’s mining is more approximately 12% decentralized than Ethereum with full samples, and Bitcoin’s wealth is more approximately 9.2% decentralized than Ethereum with 10000 samples. The method proposed in this paper can be used to evaluate the degree of decentralization for any blockchain network.更多还原