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A Systematic Local Fork Management Framework for Blockchain Sandbox Environments

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Business Process Management: Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation, and Central and Eastern Europe Forum (BPM 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 459))

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Abstract

Blockchain technology presently permeates multiple industries, resulting in an increasing number of agents (primarily end-users and engineers) interacting with it in a variety of contexts. This, in turn, has introduced the practical need for a sufficient tooling ecosystem for blockchain solutions testing and evaluation under secure environment conditions. To that end, this study presents a robust framework for the creation and management of customisable, persistent, private, scalable blockchain environments that fulfill precisely the need for live sandbox platforms with on-chain interaction capabilities. We extend the concept of local chain forking, emphasising the limitations of existing tooling and methodologies and propose how our framework mitigates identified weaknesses and bridges some of the resulting gaps in desirable non-functional attributes. We offer a reference implementation for our framework and discuss how it can be applicable to a broad array of DevOps and security-oriented Use Cases. Finally, emerging challenges are discussed and potential directions for further research are drawn.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London, SE109LS, UK

    Antreas Pogiatzis & Georgios Samakovitis

Authors
  1. Antreas Pogiatzis
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  2. Georgios Samakovitis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Antreas Pogiatzis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Andrea Marrella

  2. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Raimundas Matulevičius

  3. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Renata Gabryelczyk

  4. Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany

    Bernhard Axmann

  5. University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Vesna Bosilj Vukšić

  6. Télécom SudParis, Evry, France

    Walid Gaaloul

  7. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Mojca Indihar Štemberger

  8. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Andrea Kő

  9. Data61, Eveleigh, NSW, Australia

    Qinghua Lu

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Pogiatzis, A., Samakovitis, G. (2022). A Systematic Local Fork Management Framework for Blockchain Sandbox Environments. In: Marrella, A., et al. Business Process Management: Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation, and Central and Eastern Europe Forum. BPM 2022. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 459. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16168-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16168-1_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16167-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16168-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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