Research directions in blockchain data management and analytics

Abstract

Blockchain technology has emerged as a primary enabler for verification-driven transactions between parties that do not have complete trust among themselves. Bitcoin uses this technology to provide a provenance-driven verifiable ledger that is based on consensus. Nevertheless, the use of blockchain as a transaction service in non-cryptocurrency applications, for example, business networks, is at a very nascent stage. While the blockchain supports transactional provenance, the data management community and other scientific and industrial communities are assessing how blockchain can be used to enable certain key capabilities for business applications. We have reviewed a number of proof of concepts and early adoptions of blockchain solutions that we have been involved spanning diverse use cases to draw common data life cycle, persistence as well as analytics patterns used in real-world applications with the ultimate aim to identify new frontier of exciting research in blockchain data management and analytics. In this paper, we discuss several open topics that researchers could increase focus on: (1) leverage existing capabilities of mature data and information systems, (2) enhance data security and privacy assurances, (3) enable analytics services on blockchain as well as across off-chain data, and (4) make blockchain-based systems active-oriented and intelligent.