Blockchain Abstract Data Type

TL;DR

This paper formalizes blockchains as a hierarchy of abstract data types with consistency criteria, providing a theoretical framework for understanding their convergence and mapping existing blockchains within this model.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formal specification of blockchains as abstract data types with consistency hierarchies, along with an oracle-based construction and implementability results.

Findings

Formal hierarchy of blockchain abstractions

Oracle-based construction capturing convergence

Mapping of existing blockchains into the framework

Abstract

The presented work continues the line of recent distributed computing communityefforts dedicated to the theoretical aspects of blockchains. This paper is the rst tospecify blockchains as a composition of abstract data types all together with a hierarchyof consistency criteria that formally characterizes the histories admissible for distributedprograms that use them. Our work is based on an original oracle-based constructionthat, along with new consistency deffnitions, captures the eventual convergence processin blockchain systems. The paper presents as well some results on implementability ofthe presented abstractions and a mapping of representative existing blockchains fromboth academia and industry in our framework.