Blockchain systems, technologies and applications: a methodology perspective

Cao, B., Wang, Z., Zhang, L., Feng, D., Peng, M., Zhang, L. and Han, Z. (2023) Blockchain systems, technologies and applications: a methodology perspective. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 25(1), pp. 353-385. (doi: 10.1109/COMST.2022.3204702)

Abstract

In the past decade, blockchain has shown a promising vision to build trust without any powerful third party in a secure, decentralized and scalable manner. However, due to the wide application and future development from cryptocurrency to the Internet of things, blockchain is an extremely complex system enabling integration with mathematics, computer science, communication and network engineering, etc. By revealing the intrinsic relationship between blockchain and communication, networking and computing from a methodological perspective, it provided a view to the challenge that engineers, experts and researchers hardly fully understand the blockchain process in a systematic view from top to bottom. In this article we first introduce how blockchain works, the research activities and challenges, and illustrate the roadmap involving the classic methodologies with typical blockchain use cases and topics. Second, in blockchain systems, how to adopt stochastic process, game theory, optimization theory, and machine learning to study the blockchain running processes and design the blockchain protocols/algorithms are discussed in details. Moreover, the advantages and limitations using these methods are also summarized as the guide of future work to be further considered. Finally, some remaining problems from technical, commercial and political views are discussed as the open issues. The main findings of this article will provide a survey from a methodological perspective to study theoretical model for blockchain fundamentals understanding, design network service for blockchain-based mechanisms and algorithms, as well as apply blockchain for the Internet of things, etc.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was partially supported by National Key R & D Program of China under Grant 2021YFB1714100 and 2020YFB1806700, Zhejiang Lab under Grant 2021KF0AB03, National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61925101 and 61831002, and NSF CNS-2107216 and CNS-2128368.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Zhang, Professor Lei
• Authors: Cao, B., Wang, Z., Zhang, L., Feng, D., Peng, M., Zhang, L., and Han, Z.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Autonomous Systems and Connectivity
• Journal Name: IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
• Publisher: IEEE
• ISSN: 1553-877X
• ISSN (Online): 1553-877X
• Published Online: 06 September 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 IEEE
• First Published: First published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials 25(1): 353-385
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy