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A Distributed Ledger Technology Based on Shared Write-Once Objects

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Models, Languages, and Tools for Concurrent and Distributed Programming

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11665))

Abstract

Research on blockchain technologies and applications has exploded since Satoshi Nakamoto’s seminal paper on Bitcoin. Everybody agrees that blockchain is a foundational technology, but neither has a unified definition of blockchain been established yet, nor does a commonly agreed upon standard exist. The basic principle of a blockchain is to maintain transactions on digital assets, without utilizing a central coordinator. Despite the assumed trustless environment, high security is promised.

The core technologies behind blockchain are well known in distributed computing. They comprise peer-to-peer replication and peer-to-peer consensus. In addition, cryptography is used to sign transactions and to achieve a timely order between them.

In this paper we show how a coordination middleware that relies on the virtual shared memory (VSM) paradigm can contribute to realizing a flexible and generally distributed ledger technology (DLT) that can serve as the basis for many different kinds of blockchain applications. As a proof-of-concept, the realization of different blockchain types, such as public and permissioned, and different consensus protocols are sketched on top of this VSM-based DLT.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although the Ethereum protocol is not intended for permissioned blockchains, there exist permissioned Ethereum based variants like Quorum or Hydrachain.

  2. 2.

    As an advanced feature, the transaction mechanism also supports weaker forms of commit. In this case, the transaction will not fail and rollback, but report an error and allow certain operations to be withdrawn and new ones to be possibly added in order to “repair” the transaction.

  3. 3.

    If a peer wants to transfer only a sub-amount of a coin, then it will transfer the rest to itself by creating a ToCoin at its own site.

  4. 4.

    Eager replication is used for all objects.

  5. 5.

    The peer shall reexamine the verification result of the peer group, which must be the same as its own, if the verifier peers did not lie.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Informatics, Compilers and Languages Group, Institute of Information Systems Engineering, TU Wien, Argentinierstr. 8, 1040, Wien, Austria

    Eva Maria Kuehn

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  1. Eva Maria Kuehn
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Correspondence to Eva Maria Kuehn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Michele Boreale

  2. School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy

    Flavio Corradini

  3. School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy

    Michele Loreti

  4. Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Rosario Pugliese

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Kuehn, E.M. (2019). A Distributed Ledger Technology Based on Shared Write-Once Objects. In: Boreale, M., Corradini, F., Loreti, M., Pugliese, R. (eds) Models, Languages, and Tools for Concurrent and Distributed Programming. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11665. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21485-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21485-2_9

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