*6.2. Computational Time*

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is the algorithm used in Ethereum, which is one of the strongest algorithms against cryptanalysis [49]. Another factor that consumes time is the consensus protocol. Ethereum generally uses the Proof-of-Work (PoW) method as consensus. If the consensus is PoW and the cryptography algorithm is ECC, it requires about 4 minutes to generate 40 blocks, and the difficulty is 32.49 KH [50]. The average block

generation times with different difficulties [50] are presented in Figure 7 (*n* is the difficulty of the consensus protocol).

**Figure 7.** Average block generation time (BGT) when the difficulty of the consensus is 32 or 36, and a comparison.
