A Pattern Language for Blockchain Governance

Blockchain technology has been used to build next-generation applications taking advantage of its decentralised nature. Nevertheless, there are some serious concerns about the trustworthiness of blockchain due to the vulnerabilities in on-chain algorithmic mechanisms, and tedious disputes and debates in off-chain communities. Accordingly, blockchain governance has received great attention for improving the trustworthiness of all decisions that direct a blockchain platform. However, there is a lack of systematic knowledge to guide practitioners to perform blockchain governance. We have performed a systematic literature review to understand the state-of-the-art of blockchain governance. We identify the lifecycle stages of a blockchain platform, and present 14 architectural patterns for blockchain governance in this study. This pattern language can provide guidance for the effective use of patterns for blockchain governance in practice, and support the architecture design of governance-driven blockchain systems

Blockchain-Based Applications for Smart Grids: An Umbrella Review

This article presents an umbrella review of blockchain-based smart grid applications. By umbrella review, we mean that our review is based on systematic reviews of this topic. We aim to synthesize the findings from these systematic reviews and gain deeper insights into this discipline. After studying the systematic reviews, we find it imperative to provide a concise and authoritative description of blockchain technology because many technical inaccuracies permeate many of these papers. This umbrella review is guided by five research questions. The first research question concerns the types of blockchain-based smart grid applications. Existing systematic reviews rarely used a systematic method to classify these applications. To address this issue, we propose a taxonomy of these applications, first by differentiating them based on whether the application is focusing on functional or non-functional aspects of smart grid operations, and then by the specific functions or perspectives that the application aims to implement or enhance. The second research question concerns the roles that blockchain technology plays in smart grid applications. We synthesize the findings by identifying the most prominent benefits that blockchain technology could bring to these applications. We also take the opportunity to point out several common technical mistakes that pervade the blockchain literature, such as equating all forms of blockchains to data immutability. The third research question concerns the guidelines for deciding whether a blockchain-based solution would be useful to address the needs of smart grids. We synthesize the findings by proposing benefit- based guidelines. The fourth research question concerns the maturity levels of blockchain-based smart grid applications. We differentiate between academic-led and industry-led projects. We propose a five-level scale to evaluate the maturity levels. The ranking of the industry-led projects is performed through our own investigation. Our investigation shows that more than half of the industry-led projects mentioned in the systematic reviews are no longer active. Furthermore, although there are numerous news reports and a large number of academic papers published on blockchain-based smart grid applications, very few have been successfully embraced by the industry. The fifth research question concerns the open research issues in the development of blockchain-based smart grid applications. We synthesize the findings and provide our own analysis

Achieving cybersecurity in blockchain-based systems: a survey

With The Increase In Connectivity, The Popularization Of Cloud Services, And The Rise Of The Internet Of Things (Iot), Decentralized Approaches For Trust Management Are Gaining Momentum. Since Blockchain Technologies Provide A Distributed Ledger, They Are Receiving Massive Attention From The Research Community In Different Application Fields. However, This Technology Does Not Provide With Cybersecurity By Itself. Thus, This Survey Aims To Provide With A Comprehensive Review Of Techniques And Elements That Have Been Proposed To Achieve Cybersecurity In Blockchain-Based Systems. The Analysis Is Intended To Target Area Researchers, Cybersecurity Specialists And Blockchain Developers. For This Purpose, We Analyze 272 Papers From 2013 To 2020 And 128 Industrial Applications. We Summarize The Lessons Learned And Identify Several Matters To Foster Further Research In This AreaThis work has been partially funded by MINECO, Spain grantsTIN2016-79095-C2-2-R (SMOG-DEV) and PID2019-111429RB-C21 (ODIO-COW); by CAM, Spain grants S2013/ICE-3095 (CIBERDINE),P2018/TCS-4566 (CYNAMON), co-funded by European Structural Funds (ESF and FEDER); by UC3M-CAM grant CAVTIONS-CM-UC3M; by the Excellence Program for University Researchers, Spain; and by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain under the project LINKA20216 (“Advancing in cybersecurity technologies”, i-LINK+ program)