Appendable-Block Blockchains: Overview, Applications, and Challenges

Appendable-Block Blockchains: Overview, Applications, and Challenges

Regio A. Michelin, Roben Castagna Lunardi, Henry Cabral Nunes, Volkan Dedeoglu, Charles V. Neu, Avelino Francisco Zorzo, Salil S. Kanhere
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 23
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5839-3.ch004
OnDemand:
(Individual Chapters)
Available
$37.50
Current Special Offers
No Current Special Offers
TOTAL SAVINGS: $37.50

Abstract

Blockchain has emerged as a technology that can change the way people and systems interact, providing mechanisms that ensure integrity and ownership of the data produced without reliance on a trusted third-party. Appendable-block blockchain is a novel instantiation that suits for solutions that require a high transaction throughput. Appendable-block blockchains focus on data produced by nodes instead of a relation (transaction) between two entities. This new kind of blockchain can improve how data are stored and managed in distributed systems. This chapter introduces the notion of appendable-block blockchain and exemplifies its applicability in multiple practical domains. Additionally, the authors provide a discussion on the security aspects of this new blockchain. Finally, the chapter presents current issues and possible future directions for appendable-block blockchains.
Chapter Preview
Top

Architectures

Initially, as presented by Bitcoin (Nakamoto, 2008), blockchain was designed to operate over a completely distributed architecture, where all nodes can (also known as full nodes) have the same role in the management and in the operation of the blockchain. However, due to the characteristics of many applications, some proposals discussed the usage of blockchain in a more controlled environment. For example, for international bank transfers, Ripple (Armknecht et al., 2015) proposed an architecture composed of different roles, where clients connect through servers. Clients mean light-nodes that control a key pair and request transactions. Servers can be different kinds of nodes: a proposer (who will try to insert a new transaction requested by a client), validator (a node that will validate or not a transaction in a consensus round) or a tracking node (a server that receives validate transactions).

Appendable-block blockchain was initially designed for a hierarchical Internet of Things (IoT) peer-to-peer network arranging different entities, i.e., IoT nodes with different roles in the network. In a first proposal from Lunardi et al. (2018), these roles were divided into layers (see Figure 01):

  • 1.

    Perception Layer: composed of devices, which produce information and interact with the physical world;

  • 2.

    Transportation Layer: composed of gateways, which manage the access and control data and activity of devices;

  • 3.

    Application Layer: composed of service providers, which request information from gateways.

Key Terms in this Chapter

Blockchain Data Structure: Is the data organisation applied to create a structure for blocks (typically linked list) and the transactions inside each block.

Blockchain: Is a sequence of block linked to each other by a hash value obtained from the previous block.

Appendable-Block: Is a block definition that uses a linked list to arrange the transactions in a block, thus making the block capable of support appending new transactions at any time.

PoW: Proof-of-work is one of the most popular consensuses algorithms used in some blockchain implementation and rely on devices performing some typically CPU intensive computation tasks.

Smart Contract: Is a piece of code that can be embedded in the blockchain, allowing a remote execution when invoked.

IoT: The internet of things is a concept in which an object is capable of data processing and network communication.

PBFT: Practical Byzantine fault tolerance is a consensus algorithm that relies on the election of a leader and running voting among the nodes.

Complete Chapter List

Search this Book:
Reset