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An unbiased overview of blockchain, its technologies, its applications, and a comparative evaluation.
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Overview This 35 page report provides an in-depth review of blockchain technology: its origins, technical operation, attributes, current state and areas of application. It also presents the results of a comparative empirical evaluation of three popular blockchains; Tendermint, IBM’s Hyperledger/Fabric, and Ethereum. This report provides an Introduction chapter that outlines Bitcoin, its legacy, opportunities beyond Cryptocurrencies, and many of the characteristics of blockchain technology. In chapter two, a range of applications for blockchain are presented including; Smart Contracts, Record Management, Identity Management, Internet of Things, and Analytics. Chapter three details various aspects of blockchain technology such as consensus models, as well as a reviewing a number of public and private blockchain platforms. Chapter four provides a comparative evaluation of blockchain implementations including the experimental process, parameter, results, and a discussion. Finally, the report provides Conclusions and is prefaced with an Executive Summary. How It Works A comparative evaluation of three popular blockchain implementations; Tendermint, IBM’s Hyperledger/Fabric and Ethereum. The evaluation is conducted in terms of transaction throughput, latency and compute cost. This evaluation represents one of the first empirical blockchain evaluations. Benefits An unbiased overview of blockchain, its technologies, its applications, and a comparative evaluation. The code used to run the comparative evaluation is also available, and this includes docker containers for the various blockchain implementations evaluated along with a test harness written in Java. The code allows the evaluation to be re-run on different hardware configurations, and to extend the evaluation to include additional blockchain implementations with some additional development work. It also acts as a resource for how to interface and use the various blockchains currently evaluated. Inventors Oisin Boydell David Haughton Brian Mac Namee Jing Su