  As the cornerstone of blockchain, block synchronization plays a vital role in
maintaining the security. Without full blockchain synchronization, unexpected
forks will emerge and thus providing a breeding ground for various malicious
attacks. The state-of-the-art works mainly study the relationship between the
propagation time and blockchain security at the systematic level, neglecting
the fine-grained impact of peering nodes in blockchain networks. To conduct a
node-level synchronization analysis, we take advantage of the large deviation
theory and game theory to study the pull-based propagation from a microscopic
perspective. We examine the blockchain synchronization in a bidirectional
manner via investigating the impact of full nodes as responders and that of
partial nodes as requesters. Based on that, we further reveal the most
efficient path to speed up synchronization from full nodes and design the best
synchronization request scheme based on the concept of correlated equilibrium
for partial nodes. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness
of our analysis.
