Optimizing Consensus in Blockchain with Deep and Reinforcement Learning

This study aims to optimize blockchain consensus mechanisms by integrating artificial intelligence techniques to address critical limitations in latency, scalability, computational efficiency, and security inherent in traditional protocols, such as PoW, PoS, and PBFT. The proposed model combines deep neural networks (DNNs) for feature extraction with deep reinforcement learning (DRL), specifically Deep Q-Networks (DQN) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), to enable dynamic validator selection and real-time adjustment of consensus difficulty. The training process utilizes a hybrid dataset of historical blockchain records from Ethereum and Hyperledger networks and synthetic data from simulated attack scenarios involving Sybil, 51%, and DoS threats. Experimental evaluations were conducted in private and permitted environments under varying transactional loads. Results show a 60% reduction in confirmation latency compared to PoW, achieving 320 ms, and a 20% improvement over PBFT. Transaction throughput increased to 22,000 transactions per second (TPS), and computational resource consumption was reduced by 30%. The model achieved an attack tolerance of up to 92%, significantly enhancing network resilience. The novelty of this work lies in its autonomous consensus optimization strategy, which enables adaptive and secure protocol behaviour without manual intervention, representing a scalable and efficient solution for future blockchain infrastructures.