Smartphones offer limited storage and memory, con- straints that conventional blockchains struggle to meet, yet they are also the devices where user- owned transaction chains promise the most value. We present the first empirical study of TrustChain, a DAG-based per-peer ledger running entirely on mobile hardware. A Rust implementation and open- source benchmark evaluate how flush-interval batch- ing (k) and lossless compression affect a single node scaling from 103 to 106 blocks.
On a Galaxy S8 and Pixel-6 emulator, RAM stays below 600 MB and compressed disk use below 0.5 GB at one million blocks (128 B payload). Insert la- tency remains interactive (< 8 ms) with disk:100 flushing; moderate batching (k ≈ 500) cuts CPU load by roughly 45 % without harming durabil- ity. Lightweight compression (LZ4-1, Zstd-1) trims space by 20 to 30 % at a sub-10 ms cost, with diminishing returns at higher levels. End-to-end tests show storage is never the bottleneck, raw UDP achieving a 7 ms median RTT.
Taken together, the implementation and measure- ment dataset provide a concrete reference for deploy- ing DAG-based chains on smartphones and highlight opportunities for advancing mobile blockchain tech- nology.