A Comparative Analysis of Distributed Ledger Technology Platforms

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has emerged as one of the most disruptive technologies in the last decade. It promises to change the way people do their business, track their products, and manage their personal data. Though the concept of DLT was first implemented in 2009 as Bitcoin, it has gained significant attention only in the past few years. During this time, different DLT enthusiasts and commercial companies have proposed and developed several DLT platforms. These platforms are usually categorized as public vs private, general-purpose vs application-specific and so on. As a growing number of people are interested to build DLT applications, it is important to understand their underlying architecture and capabilities in order to determine which DLT platform should be leveraged for a specific DLT application. In addition, the platforms need to be evaluated and critically analyzed to assess their applicability, resiliency and sustainability in the long run. In this paper, we have surveyed several leading DLT platforms and evaluated their capabilities based on a number of quantitative and qualitative criteria. The comparative analysis presented in this paper will help the DLT developers and architects to choose the best platform as per their requirement(s)

Performance Analysis of Blockchain Platforms

Blockchain technologies have drawn massive attention to the world these past few years mostly because of the burst of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Etherium, Ripple and many others. A Blockchain, also known as distributed ledger technology, has demonstrated huge potential in saving time and costs. This open-source technology which generates a decentralized public ledger of transactions is widely appreciated for ensuring a high level of privacy through encryption and thus sharing the transaction details only amongst the participants involved in the transactions. The Blockchain is used not only for cryptocurrency but also by various companies to meet their business ends, such as efficient management of supply chains and logistics. The rise and fall of numerous crypto-currencies based on blockchain technology have generated debate among tech-giants and regulatory bodies. There are various groups which are working on standardizing the blockchain technology. At the same time, numerous groups are actively working, developing and fine-tuning their own blockchain platforms. Platforms such as etherium, hyperledger, parity, etc. have their own pros and cons. This research is focused on the performance analysis of blockchain platforms which gives a comparative understanding of these platforms

Decentralized Consensus Mechanisms in Blockchain: A Comparative Analysis

Blockchain technology relies on decentralized consensus mechanisms that allow distributed networks of nodes to agree on the state of a ledger without central coordination. This paper provides a comparative analysis of major consensus protocols utilized in blockchain systems, including proof-of-work (PoW), proof-of-stake (PoS), delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS), practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT), and federated consensus. We analyze the core principles behind each mechanism, strengths and weaknesses in terms of security, scalability, energy efficiency, and decentralization. We also provide examples of major blockchain platforms utilizing these protocols. Our analysis finds that no consensus mechanism optimizes across all attributes, with inherent tradeoffs between decentralization, transaction throughput, energy use, and finality. Hybrid models are emerging which aim to balance these tradeoffs

Ethereum Blockchain and HyperLedger Burrow Blockchain Comparative Analysis

Käesolevas bakalaureusetöös tutvustatakse plokiahela tehnoloogiat, võrreldakse kahte erinevat platvormi, Ethereum ja Hyperledger Burrow, luukse kaks detsentraalsed rakendust ning viimasena analüüsitakse, kas on praktiline rakendada Hyperledger Burrow platvormi keerukamatele rakendustele nagu näiteks Caterpillar. Töö raames tutvustatakse plokiahela ja hajusraamatu tehnoloogiaid. Järgnevalt selgitatakse miks ja mis põhjustel antud tehnoloogiad võrdleva analüüsi tegemiseks valiti. Analüüs põhineb kahe näidisrakenduse võrdlemisel, näidates mis on peamised erinevused ja sarnasused Ethereum ja Hyperledger Burrow vahel.This bachelor’s thesis aims is to introduce the blockchain technology, provide a comparative analysis of two different platforms Ethereum and Hyperledger Burrow, by creating two decentralized applications, and finally analyses if it is practical to implement Hyperledger Burrow to more complex applications like Caterpillar. At the beginning a brief explanation of blockchain, distributed ledger technologies is given with other related terminology. Then it is explained why and what was the motivation of selecting these technologies. More is depth comparative analysis in conducted based on example applications, showing what are the main differences and similarities between Ethereum and Hyperledger Burrow

On the Convergence of Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) Technologies

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology will soon become an integral part of our daily lives to facilitate the control and monitoring of processes and objects and revolutionize the ways that human interacts with the physical world. For all features of IoT to become fully functional in practice, there are several obstacles on the way to be surmounted and critical challenges to be addressed. These include, but are not limited to cybersecurity, data privacy, energy consumption, and scalability. The Blockchain decentralized nature and its multi-faceted procedures offer a useful mechanism to tackle several of these IoT challenges. However, applying the Blockchain protocols to IoT without considering their tremendous computational loads, delays, and bandwidth overhead can let to a new set of problems. This review evaluates some of the main challenges we face in the integration of Blockchain and IoT technologies and provides insights and high-level solutions that can potentially handle the shortcomings and constraints of both IoT and Blockchain technologies.Comment: Includes 11 Pages, 3 Figures, To publish in Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability for issue JSIS 14(1

Multilateral Transparency for Security Markets Through DLT

For decades, changing technology and policy choices have worked to fragment securities markets, rendering them so dark that neither ownership nor real-time price of securities are generally visible to all parties multilaterally. The policies in the U.S. National Market System and the EU Market in Financial Instruments Directive— together with universal adoption of the indirect holding system— have pushed Western securities markets into a corner from which escape to full transparency has seemed either impossible or prohibitively expensive. Although the reader has a right to skepticism given the exaggerated promises surrounding blockchain in recent years, we demonstrate in this paper that distributed ledger technology (DLT) contains the potential to convert fragmented securities markets back to multilateral transparency. Leading markets generally lack transparency in two ways that derive from their basic structure: (1) multiple platforms on which trades in the same security are matched have separate bid/ask queues and are not consolidated in real time (fragmented pricing), and (2) highspeed transfers of securities are enabled by placing ownership of the securities in financial institutions, thus preventing transparent ownership (depository or street name ownership). The distributed nature of DLT allows multiple copies of the same pricing queue to be held simultaneously by a large number of order-matching platforms, curing the problem of fragmented pricing. This same distributed nature of DLT would allow the issuers of securities to be nodes in a DLT network, returning control over securities ownership and transfer to those issuers and thus, restoring transparent ownership through direct holding with the issuer. A serious objection to DLT is that its latency is very high—with each Bitcoin blockchain transaction taking up to ten minutes. To remedy this, we first propose a private network without cumbersome proof-of-work cryptography. Second, we introduce into our model the quickly evolving technology of “lightning networks,” which are advanced two-layer off-chain networks conducting high-speed transacting with only periodic memorialization in the permanent DLT network. Against the background of existing securities trading and settlement, this Article demonstrates that a DLT network could bring multilateral transparency and thus represent the next step in evolution for markets in their current configuration