Skip to main content

Building Scalable Blockchain Applications - A Decision Process

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Designing for Digital Transformation. Co-Creating Services with Citizens and Industry (DESRIST 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12388))

Abstract

The blockchain technology faces many challenges before experiencing widespread adoption. One major challenge for many applications is the lack of scalability of the underlying architecture. While various technologies exist, that provide solutions to this issue, they are often overlooked when new applications are developed. To solve this problem we used a design science research approach to develop a decision process, that enables developers to choose the right technologies and ensure the scalability of their blockchain applications. The result is a four-step process, that helps to find the appropriate scalability solutions while still taking the business and technology environment into account. In addition the developed framework provides an overview of existing solutions and highlights gaps, where no solutions exist yet, providing a starting point for further research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ben-Sasson, E., Bentov, I., Horesh, Y., Riabzev, M.: Scalable zero knowledge with no trusted setup. In: Boldyreva, A., Micciancio, D. (eds.) CRYPTO 2019. LNCS, vol. 11694, pp. 701–732. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26954-8_23

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. bitinfocharts.com: Bitcoin block time historical chart (2019). https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtime.html

  3. Buterin, V.: Ethereum scalability research and development subsidy programs (2018). https://blog.ethereum.org/2018/01/02/ethereum-scalability-research-development-subsidy-programs/

  4. Cai, S., Yang, N., Ming, Z.: A decentralized sharding service network framework with scalability. In: Jin, H., Wang, Q., Zhang, L.-J. (eds.) ICWS 2018. LNCS, vol. 10966, pp. 151–165. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94289-6_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Chauhan, A., Malviya, O.P., Verma, M., Mor, T.S.: Blockchain and scalability. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security Companion (QRS-C), pp. 122–128 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Croman, K., et al.: On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains. In: Clark, J., Meiklejohn, S., Ryan, P.Y.A., Wallach, D., Brenner, M., Rohloff, K. (eds.) FC 2016. LNCS, vol. 9604, pp. 106–125. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53357-4_8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Cucurull, J., Rodríguez-Pérez, A., Finogina, T., Puiggalí, J.: Blockchain-based internet voting: systems’ compliance with international standards. In: Abramowicz, W., Paschke, A. (eds.) BIS 2018. LNBIP, vol. 339, pp. 300–312. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04849-5_27

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Dinh, T.T.A., Wang, J., Chen, G., Liu, R., Ooi, B.C., Tan, K.L.: Blockbench: a framework for analyzing private blockchains. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 1085–1100. ACM (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Eberhardt, J., Tai, S.: Zokrates-scalable privacy-preserving off-chain computations. In: IEEE International Conference on Blockchain. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  10. El Ioini, N., Pahl, C.: A review of distributed ledger technologies. In: Panetto, H., Debruyne, C., Proper, H.A., Ardagna, C.A., Roman, D., Meersman, R. (eds.) OTM 2018. LNCS, vol. 11230, pp. 277–288. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02671-4_16

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Evans, D.: The internet of things: how the next evolution of the internet is changing everything. CISCO White Paper 1(2011), 1–11 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Feng, X., Ma, J., Miao, Y., Meng, Q., Liu, X., Jiang, Q., Li, H.: Pruneable sharding-based blockchain protocol. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-018-0685-6

  13. Galal, H.S., Youssef, A.M.: Succinctly verifiable sealed-bid auction smart contract. In: Garcia-Alfaro, J., Herrera-Joancomartí, J., Livraga, G., Rios, R. (eds.) DPM/CBT -2018. LNCS, vol. 11025, pp. 3–19. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00305-0_1

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Hevner, A.R., March, S.T., Park, J., Ram, S.: Design science in information systems research. Manag. Inf. Syst. Q. 28(1), 6 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Koens, T., Poll, E.: What blockchain alternative do you need? In: Garcia-Alfaro, J., Herrera-Joancomartí, J., Livraga, G., Rios, R. (eds.) DPM/CBT -2018. LNCS, vol. 11025, pp. 113–129. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00305-0_9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Kouicem, D.E., Bouabdallah, A., Lakhlef, H.: Internet of things security: a top-down survey. Comput. Netw. 141, 199–221 (2018). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=130419466&site=ehost-live

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Lacity, M.: Addressing key challenges to making enterprise blockchain applications a reality. MIS Q. Execut. 17(3), 201–222 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  18. McCorry, P., Möser, M., Shahandasti, S.F., Hao, F.: Towards bitcoin payment networks. In: Liu, J.K.K., Steinfeld, R. (eds.) ACISP 2016. LNCS, vol. 9722, pp. 57–76. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40253-6_4

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Molina-Jimenez, C., Solaiman, E., Sfyrakis, I., Ng, I., Crowcroft, J.: On and off-blockchain enforcement of smart contracts. arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.00626 (2018)

  20. Peffers, K., Rothenberger, M., Tuunanen, T., Vaezi, R.: Design science research evaluation. In: Peffers, K., Rothenberger, M., Kuechler, B. (eds.) DESRIST 2012. LNCS, vol. 7286, pp. 398–410. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29863-9_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Post, R., Smit, K., Zoet, M.: Identifying factors affecting blockchain technology diffusion. In: Twenty-fourth Americas Conference on Information Systems (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Rimba, P., Tran, A.B., Weber, I., Staples, M., Ponomarev, A., Xu, X.: Quantifying the cost of distrust: comparing blockchain and cloud services for business process execution. Inf. Syst. Front. 1–19 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sahoo, M.S., Baruah, P.K.: HBasechainDB – a scalable blockchain framework on hadoop ecosystem. In: Yokota, R., Wu, W. (eds.) SCFA 2018. LNCS, vol. 10776, pp. 18–29. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69953-0_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Sleiman, M.D., Lauf, A.P., Yampolskiy, R.: Bitcoin message: data insertion on a proof-of-work cryptocurrency system. In: 2015 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW), pp. 332–336. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Trillo, M.: Stress test prepares visanet for the most wonderful time of the year. https://misc.visa.com/blogarchives/us/2013/10/10/stress-test-prepares-visanet-for-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year/index.html

  26. Vom Brocke, J., et al.: Reconstructing the giant: On the importance of rigour in documenting the literature search process. In: Ecis, vol. 9, pp. 2206–2217 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Worley, C., Skjellum, A.: Blockchain tradeoffs and challenges for current and emerging applications: generalization, fragmentation, sidechains, and scalability. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData), pp. 1582–1587 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Wüst, K., Gervais, A.: Do you need a blockchain? In: 2018 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technology (CVCBT), pp. 45–54. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Xu, X., et al.: The blockchain as a software connector. In: 2016 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA), pp. 182–191. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Xue, J., Xu, C., Zhang, Y., Bai, L.: DStore: a distributed cloud storage system based on smart contracts and blockchain. In: Vaidya, J., Li, J. (eds.) ICA3PP 2018. LNCS, vol. 11336, pp. 385–401. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05057-3_30

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This work has been developed in the project PIMKoWe. PIMKoWe (reference number: 02P17D160) is partly funded by the German ministry of education and research (BMBF) within the research programme “Industrie 4.0 – Kollaborationen in dynamischen Wertschöpfungsnetzwerken (InKoWe)” and managed by the Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA). The author is responsible for the content of this publication.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrian Hofmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Hofmann, A. (2020). Building Scalable Blockchain Applications - A Decision Process. In: Hofmann, S., Müller, O., Rossi, M. (eds) Designing for Digital Transformation. Co-Creating Services with Citizens and Industry. DESRIST 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64823-7_28

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64823-7_28

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-64822-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-64823-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics