Bridges Between Islands: Cross-Chain Technology for Distributed Ledger Technology

Since the emergence of blockchain in 2008, today, we see a kaleidoscopic variety of applications built on distributed ledger technology (DLT), including applications for financial services, healthcare, or the Internet of Things. Yet, each application comes with specific requirements for DLT characteristics (e.g., high throughput, scalability). However, trade-offs between DLT characteristics restrict the development of a DLT design (e.g., Ethereum, IOTA) that fits all use cases’ requirements simultaneously. Consequently, separated DLT designs emerged, each specialized to suite dedicated application requirements. To enable the development of more powerful applications on DLT, such DLT islands must be bridged. However, knowledge on cross-chain technology (CCT) is scattered across scientific and practical sources. Therefore, we examine this diverse body of knowledge and provide comprehensive insights into CCT by synthesizing underlying characteristics, evolving patterns, and use cases. Our findings resolve existing contradictions in the literature and provide avenues for future research in an emerging scientific field

Blockchain based Decentralized Applications: Technology Review and Development Guidelines

Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology is a disruptive technology that provides the infrastructure for developing decentralized applications enabling the implementation of novel business models even in traditionally centralized domains. In the last years it has drawn high interest from the academic community, technology developers and startups thus lots of solutions have been developed to address blockchain technology limitations and the requirements of applications software engineering. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of DLT solutions analyzing the addressed challenges, provided solutions and their usage for developing decentralized applications. Our study reviews over 100 blockchain papers and startup initiatives from which we construct a 3-tier based architecture for decentralized applications and we use it to systematically classify the technology solutions. Protocol and Network Tier solutions address the digital assets registration, transactions, data structure, and privacy and business rules implementation and the creation of peer-to-peer networks, ledger replication, and consensus-based state validation. Scaling Tier solutions address the scalability problems in terms of storage size, transaction throughput, and computational capability. Finally, Federated Tier aggregates integrative solutions across multiple blockchain applications deployments. The paper closes with a discussion on challenges and opportunities for developing decentralized applications by providing a multi-step guideline for decentralizing the design of traditional systems and implementing decentralized applications.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables, 121 reference

Enhancing blockchain interoperability and intraoperability capabilities in collaborative enterprise-a standardized architecture perspective

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Facilitating cross-chain cryptocurrency exchanges: An inquiry into blockchain technology and interoperability with an emphasis on cryptocurrency arbitrage

Since the introduction and proliferation of the blockchain-based cryptocurrency Bitcoin, alternative cryptocurrencies also based on blockchain technology have exploded in number. It was once believed that one, or very few, cryptocurrencies would eventually dominate the market and drive out competitors. This assumption, however, was incorrect. Thousands of cryptocurrencies exist concurrently. The vast number of cryptocurrencies leads to a problem—what if the cryptocurrency that an individual possesses does not meet their current needs as well as another cryptocurrency might? The attempt to solve this problem has led to the rise of many cryptocurrency exchanges and exchange schemes. In this paper, we will discuss the motivations for an individual to be interested in exchanging two or more cryptocurrencies by describing and comparing various popular cryptocurrencies with different desirable attributes. While we will discuss these attributes, this paper will give special focus to arbitrage in particular. In addition, we will describe various cryptocurrency exchange schemes and their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we contribute to the understanding of cryptocurrency exchangeability and interoperability by comparing the historical price data of several cryptocurrencies to determine how often arbitrage has been possible in the past

Enabling interoperable distributed ledger technology with legacy platforms for enterprise digitalization

Presently to achieve enterprise digitalization technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) has now been deployed to support digital services provided by enterprises. But several challenges in DLTs remain to be addressed, including the interoperability, standardization, and integration. Therefore, this study provides theoretical and practical understanding of DLT interoperability and identified the factors that influence the interoperability of DLTs. Also, an architecture is designed to shows how interoperability can be achieved in DLTs and legacy systems supported by Application Programming Interface (API). A case study is presented to illustrate the applicability of the architecture to support a digital energy marketplace.acceptedVersio

PUBLIC BLOCKCHAIN SCALABILITY: ADVANCEMENTS, CHALLENGES AND THE FUTURE

In the last decade, blockchain has emerged as one of the most influential innovations in software architecture and technology. Ideally, blockchains are designed to be architecturally and politically decentralized, similar to the Internet. But recently, public and permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have faced stumbling blocks in the form of scalability. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum process fewer than 20 transactions per second, which is significantly lower than their centralized counterpart such as VISA that can process approximately 1,700 transactions per second. In realizing this hindrance in the wide range adoption of blockchains for building advanced and large scalable systems, the blockchain community has proposed first- and second-layer scaling solutions including Segregated Witness (Segwit), Sharding, and two-way pegged sidechains. Although these proposals are innovative, they still suffer from the blockchain trilemma of scalability, security, and decentralization. Moreover, at this time, little is known or discussed regarding factors related to design choices, feasibility, limitations and other issues in adopting the various first- and second-layer scaling solutions in public and permissionless blockchains. Hence, this thesis provides the first comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art first- and second-layer scaling solutions for public and permissionless blockchains, identifying current advancements and analyzing their impact from various viewpoints, highlighting their limitations and discussing possible remedies for the overall improvement of the blockchain domain