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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
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
bitinfocharts.com: Bitcoin block time historical chart (2019). https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtime.html
Buterin, V.: Ethereum scalability research and development subsidy programs (2018). https://blog.ethereum.org/2018/01/02/ethereum-scalability-research-development-subsidy-programs/
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
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)
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
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
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)
Eberhardt, J., Tai, S.: Zokrates-scalable privacy-preserving off-chain computations. In: IEEE International Conference on Blockchain. IEEE (2018)
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
Evans, D.: The internet of things: how the next evolution of the internet is changing everything. CISCO White Paper 1(2011), 1–11 (2011)
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
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
Hevner, A.R., March, S.T., Park, J., Ram, S.: Design science in information systems research. Manag. Inf. Syst. Q. 28(1), 6 (2008)
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
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
Lacity, M.: Addressing key challenges to making enterprise blockchain applications a reality. MIS Q. Execut. 17(3), 201–222 (2018)
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
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)
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
Post, R., Smit, K., Zoet, M.: Identifying factors affecting blockchain technology diffusion. In: Twenty-fourth Americas Conference on Information Systems (2018)
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)
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
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)
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
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)
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)
Wüst, K., Gervais, A.: Do you need a blockchain? In: 2018 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technology (CVCBT), pp. 45–54. IEEE (2018)
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)
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
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
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
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)