Blockchains: Decentralized and Verifiable Data Systems

✍ Scribed by Pingcheng Ruan, Tien Tuan Anh Dinh, Dumitrel Loghin, Meihui Zhang, Gang Chen

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 131
• Series: Synthesis Lectures on Data Management
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book takes readers through the sensational history of blockchains and their potential to revolutionize database systems of the future. In order to demystify blockchains, the book capitalizes on decades of research and field testing of existing database and distributed systems and applies these familiar concepts to the novel blockchain system. It then utilizes this framework to explore the essential block platform underpinning blockchains, which is often misunderstood as a specific attribute of cryptocurrencies rather than the core of the decentralized system independent of application. The book explores the nature of these decentralized systems, which have no single owner and build robustness through a multitude of stakeholder contributions. In this way, blockchains can build trust into existing systems and thus present attractive solutions for various domains across both academia and industry. Despite this, high-impact and real-world applications of blockchain have yet to be realized outside of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The book establishes how this new data system, if properly applied, can disrupt the sector in much the same way databases did so many years ago. The book explores the fundamental technical limitations that may be preventing blockchain from realizing this potential and how to overcome or mitigate them. Readers who are completely new to blockchains will find this book to be a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in blockchain technology. Readers with some experience of blockchains, for example through developing cryptocurrencies, will likely find the book’s database perspective enlightening. Finally, researchers already working with blockchain will learn to identify existing gaps in the design space and explore potential solutions for creating the next generation of blockchain systems.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Who Should Read This Book?
What Content Is There in This Book?
How Is the Book Organized?
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Origin and Evolution
1.1 Let There Be Bitcoin
1.1.1 Ledger, Blocks, and Transactions
1.1.2 Proof-of-Work and Mining
1.1.3 Bitcoin Versus Bank
1.2 Ethereum Generalizes
1.2.1 Smart Contracts
1.2.2 Vulnerabilities and Mitigations
1.3 Why Not Permissioned?
1.4 Summary and Further Reading
2 Blockchains and Distributed Databases
2.1 Why Blockchains and Databases?
2.1.1 Why a Unified Taxonomy?
2.2 Replication
2.2.1 Replication Model
2.2.2 Consistency Level
2.2.3 Replication Approach
2.2.4 Failure Model
2.3 Concurrency
2.4 Storage
2.4.1 Storage Model
2.4.2 State Organization
2.5 Sharding
2.5.1 Shard Formation
2.5.2 Cross-Shard Transactions
2.6 Benchmarking
2.6.1 Benchmarking Frameworks
2.6.2 Benchmarking Reports
2.7 Fusion
2.8 Summary and Further Reading
3 Blockchain State of the Art
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3.1 Replication
3.1.1 Proof-of-Work and Analysis
3.1.2 Proof-of-Work and Enhancements
3.1.3 Byzantine-Fault Tolerant State-Machine Replication
3.2 Concurrency
3.2.1 Order-Execute Paradigm and Security Implications
3.2.2 Execute-Order-Validate Paradigm and Transaction Aborts
3.2.3 OX Versus EOV, and Others
3.3 Storage
3.3.1 Ledger Abstraction
3.3.2 State Organization
3.4 Sharding
3.4.1 Blockchain Trilemma and Sharding
3.4.2 Shard Formation
3.4.3 Cross-Shard Transaction
3.4.4 Atomic Cross-Chain Swap and Blockchain Interoperability
3.5 Layer-2 Scaling
3.5.1 Channels
3.5.2 Sidechains
3.5.3 Rollups
3.6 Summary and Further Reading
4 Blockchain Applications
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4.1 Finance
4.1.1 Fungible and Non-fungible Tokens
4.1.2 Decentralized Exchange and Finance
4.1.3 Challenges and Issues
4.2 Supply Chain
4.3 Healthcare
4.4 Identity Management
4.5 Summary and Further Reading
A Appendix
A.1 Basic Cryptographic Primitives
A.2 Gallery of Popular Blockchains
Appendix Bibliography