Mohammad Hossein Tabatabaei, Roman Vitenberg, Narasimha Raghavan Veeraragavan
{"title":"Understanding blockchain: Definitions, architecture, design, and system comparison","authors":"Mohammad Hossein Tabatabaei, Roman Vitenberg, Narasimha Raghavan Veeraragavan","doi":"10.1016/j.cosrev.2023.100575","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The explosive advent of the blockchain technology has led to hundreds of blockchain systems in the industry, thousands of academic papers published over the last few years, and an even larger number of new initiatives and projects. Despite the emerging consolidation efforts, the area remains highly turbulent without systematization, educational materials, or cross-system comparative analysis.</p><p>In this paper, we provide a systematic and comprehensive study of four popular yet widely different blockchain systems: Bitcoin<span>, Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, and IOTA. The study is presented as a cross-system comparison, which is organized by clearly identified aspects: definitions, roles of the participants, entities, and the characteristics and design of each of the commonly used layers in the cross-system blockchain architecture. Our exploration goes deeper compared to what is currently available in academic surveys and tutorials. For example, we provide the first extensive coverage of the storage layer in Ethereum and the most comprehensive explanation of the consensus protocol in IOTA. The exposition is due to the consolidation of fragmented information gathered from white and yellow papers, academic publications, blogs, developer documentation, communication with the developers, as well as additional analysis gleaned from the source code. We hope that this survey will help the readers gain in-depth understanding of the design principles behind blockchain systems and contribute towards systematization of the area.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":48633,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":13.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Computer Science Review","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574013723000424","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The explosive advent of the blockchain technology has led to hundreds of blockchain systems in the industry, thousands of academic papers published over the last few years, and an even larger number of new initiatives and projects. Despite the emerging consolidation efforts, the area remains highly turbulent without systematization, educational materials, or cross-system comparative analysis.
In this paper, we provide a systematic and comprehensive study of four popular yet widely different blockchain systems: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, and IOTA. The study is presented as a cross-system comparison, which is organized by clearly identified aspects: definitions, roles of the participants, entities, and the characteristics and design of each of the commonly used layers in the cross-system blockchain architecture. Our exploration goes deeper compared to what is currently available in academic surveys and tutorials. For example, we provide the first extensive coverage of the storage layer in Ethereum and the most comprehensive explanation of the consensus protocol in IOTA. The exposition is due to the consolidation of fragmented information gathered from white and yellow papers, academic publications, blogs, developer documentation, communication with the developers, as well as additional analysis gleaned from the source code. We hope that this survey will help the readers gain in-depth understanding of the design principles behind blockchain systems and contribute towards systematization of the area.
期刊介绍:
Computer Science Review, a publication dedicated to research surveys and expository overviews of open problems in computer science, targets a broad audience within the field seeking comprehensive insights into the latest developments. The journal welcomes articles from various fields as long as their content impacts the advancement of computer science. In particular, articles that review the application of well-known Computer Science methods to other areas are in scope only if these articles advance the fundamental understanding of those methods.