Talking Blockchains: The Perspective of a Database Researcher

摘要

There are few topics out there, that seem to create as much confusion and discussion as blockchains. This has a multitude of reasons: (1) A large number of drastically different concepts and systems are unified under the very broad term "blockchain". (2) The topic touches a variety of different fields, including databases, distributed processing, networks, cryptography, and even economics. (3) There exists a large number of different applications of the technology.The goal of this paper is to simplify and structure the discussion of blockchain technology. We first introduce a simple formalization of the basic components, that appear again and again in a variety of blockchain systems. Second, we formalize four important execution models, that express the workflow of a large number of blockchain systems. Third, along the way, the we also discuss certain misconceptions, that constantly reappear in discussions. We believe that a common formalization of the transaction processing behavior of blockchain systems both helps beginners to get into the topic as well as can bring experts from different fields to a common denominator when discussing blockchain systems.