A Systematic Approach to Selecting the Right Blockchain for a Given Application

Abstract

Blockchain and Industry 4.0 are two of the most transformative technologies in the present time. Integrating both technologies can be disruptive in many industries such as supply chain management, healthcare, data sharing, energy trading, and finance, etc.  Since the invention of Bitcoin, the use of Blockchain for consensus-based transactions in multiple application areas has been growing exponentially. All the major technology giants have blockchain-based solutions, ready to be used in the public domain. However, applying blockchain technology in every distributed application is not well suited. Various blockchain-based solutions have been proposed in different application areas to address the challenges emphasizing their efficiency and security. But the question of the hour is whether Blockchain is really required to be used in all such cases. Can it really solve all the security-related issues that often occur in distributed systems? The answer may be both yes and no. Of course, blockchain technology helps to create information transparency as well as manage it well and provides a safeguard against fraudulent mutation, etc. This paper discusses the challenges applying blockchain technologies and issues related to blockchain technology itself. It also investigates the promises which blockchain-based applications make in supporting consensus-based as well as transparent transactions in spite of the inherent risks available in such application scenarios. Conclusively, it proposes a blockchain recommendation algorithm that takes the primary constraints of using blockchain and features of the application into account and recommends which type of blockchain should be applied in a particular use case. A case study for the algorithm-based recommendation along with human expert recommendation has also been discussed. Several application scenarios have been discussed and tested with algorithm for blockchain type recommendation.