Electronic node and method for maintaining a distributed ledger

{
  "publication_number": "US2018218027A1",
  "country": "US",
  "kind": "A1",
  "title": "Electronic node and method for maintaining a distributed ledger",
  "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.",
  "claims": [
    "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 the previously recorded blocks and wherein a 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 a block to be added to the distributed ledger, wherein the mining process includes compressing data of the block to be added to the distributed ledger. 2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to perform a computational complex 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 a 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 a predefined dictionary. 7. The electronic device of claim 6, wherein the predefined dictionary includes a set of dictionary elements and the set of dictionary elements is adapted to the data of the block to be compressed. 8. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein a subset of the set of 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 the previously recorded blocks and wherein a 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 a block to be added to the distributed ledger, wherein the mining process includes compressing data of the block to be added to the distributed ledger. 10. The method of claim 9, wherein the compression of data is based on a computational complex 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 a 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 a predefined dictionary. 15. The method of claim 14, wherein the predefined dictionary includes a set of dictionary elements. 16. The method of claim 15, wherein the set of dictionary elements is adapted to the data of the block to be compressed. 17. The method of claim 16, wherein a subset of the set of dictionary elements is selected based on a current status of the distributed ledger."
  ],
  "description_excerpt": "The present disclosure generally pertains to an electronic node and a method for maintaining a distributed ledger.\n\nGenerally, it is known to distribute a ledger over multiple entities, e.g. electronic devices, servers or the like, which record digital transactions. Distributed ledgers can be based on the known blockchain technology, on which, for example, the known cryptocurrency bitcoin is based. There is no unified definition about the terms of blockchain and distributed ledger yet. Here, in the broadest definition, the terms are used as a type of database shared digitally recorded data with multiple nodes of a network. It may be comprised of peer to peer network. The digitally recorded data may include a kind of information to prove its consistency from the previously recorded data on the same database.\n\nDistributed ledgers can be public and can be accessible by anyone, but, in principle, they can also be non-public and only users having a permission may have access to them. It is also possible to differentiate the access permission to data on a ledger from each layered users.\n\nDistributed ledgers can use mechanisms, which are known, for example, from the blockchain technology as used for bitcoin. Such mechanisms include a discovery method, a consensus mechanism, a mechanism to keep data consistency and so on. The consensus mechanism ensures that all nodes or more than a certain number of nodes, generally electronic devices, having a copy of the distributed ledger reach consensus on the content of the distributed ledger.",
  "cpc": [
    "G06F 17/30371",
    "G06F 16/2365",
    "G06F 16/24575",
    "G06F 17/30528",
    "G09C 1/00",
    "H04L 2209/30",
    "H04L 2209/56",
    "H04L 9/0637",
    "H04L 9/0643",
    "H04L 9/32",
    "H04L 9/50"
  ],
  "ipc": [
    "G06F 17/30",
    "G06F 16/23",
    "G06F 16/2457",
    "G09C 1/00",
    "H04L 9/06",
    "H04L 9/32"
  ],
  "assignees": [
    "Sony Corp"
  ],
  "inventors": [
    "Harm Cronie",
    "Julian Nolan"
  ],
  "filing_date": "2017-11-21",
  "publication_date": "2018-08-02",
  "priority_date": "2017-01-31",
  "application_number": "US-201715819418-A",
  "family_id": "57963030",
  "cited_by_count": 98
}