Impact of Network Topologies on Blockchain Performance

Since blockchains are increasingly adopted in real-world applications, it is of paramount importance to evaluate their performance across diverse scenarios. Although the network infrastructure plays a fundamental role, its impact on performance remains largely unexplored. Some studies evaluate blockchain in cloud environments, but this approach is costly and difficult to reproduce. We propose a cost-effective and reproducible environment that supports both cluster-based setups and emulation capabilities and allows the underlying network topology to be easily modified. We evaluate five industry-grade blockchains – Algorand, Diem, Ethereum, Quorum, and Solana – across five network topologies – fat-tree, full mesh, hypercube, scale-free, and torus – and different realistic workloads – smart contract requests and transfer transactions. Our benchmark framework, Lilith, shows that full mesh, hypercube, and torus topologies improve blockchain performance under heavy workloads. Algorand and Diem perform consistently across the considered topologies, while Ethereum remains robust but slower.