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Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers Uncovered: Clarifications, Achievements, and Open Issues

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Advancing Research in Information and Communication Technology

Part of the book series: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology ((Festschrifts,volume 600))

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Abstract

Although the first Blockchain (BC) was proposed about a decade ago, BC achievements from a technical and functional perspective are measurable, but still face open issues. Since IFIP’s Working Group 6.6 on the “Management of Networks and Distributed System” investigated BCs in various aspects, this contribution here summarizes and clarifies key characteristics of BCs and their related approach of Distributed Ledgers (DL).

While many properties are under discussion, the two approaches differ measurably. In turn, the value of BCs and DLs is outlined in combination with selected and exemplified application domains. However, a set of open issues has been observed, which possibly hinders a practical operation, e.g., due to excessive expectations, missing interoperability, wrong scalability promises, or out-of-scope trust assumptions. Thus, the state-of-the-art in BCs and DLs is clarified and current as well necessary research steps to follow complement this state.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was driven by the IFIP WG6.6 involvement of the authors, and thus supported partially by (a) the University of Zürich UZH, Switzerland, and (b) the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement No. 830927, the CONCORDIA Project.

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  1. Communication Systems Group CSG, Department of Informatics IfI, University of Zürich UZH, Binzmühlestrasse 14, CH–8050, Zürich, Switzerland

    Eder J. Scheid, Bruno B. Rodrigues, Christian Killer, Muriel F. Franco, Sina Rafati & Burkhard Stiller

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  1. Eder J. Scheid
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  2. Bruno B. Rodrigues
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Correspondence to Eder J. Scheid .

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  1. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Michael Goedicke

  2. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Erich Neuhold

  3. Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Kai Rannenberg

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Scheid, E.J., Rodrigues, B.B., Killer, C., Franco, M.F., Rafati, S., Stiller, B. (2021). Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers Uncovered: Clarifications, Achievements, and Open Issues. In: Goedicke, M., Neuhold, E., Rannenberg, K. (eds) Advancing Research in Information and Communication Technology. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology(), vol 600. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81701-5_12

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