Atomic Appends: Selling Cars and Coordinating Armies with Multiple Distributed Ledgers
Antonio Fernandez Anta, Chryssis Georgiou, Nicolas Nicolaou

TL;DR
This paper introduces the AtomicAppends problem for interblockchain transactions, analyzes its solvability under various scenarios, and proposes a specialized blockchain intermediary called Smart DLO to ensure atomicity.
Contribution
It formalizes the AtomicAppends problem for multiple distributed ledgers and proposes a novel Smart DLO intermediary to solve it in asynchronous, crash-prone environments.
Findings
AtomicAppends require either an intermediary or specific conditions for solvability.
Smart DLO can ensure atomic appends even with crashing clients.
Interoperability solutions depend on client utility, timing, and failure models.
Abstract
The various applications using Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) or blockchains, have led to the introduction of a new `marketplace' where multiple types of digital assets may be exchanged. As each blockchain is designed to support specific types of assets and transactions, and no blockchain will prevail, the need to perform interblockchain transactions is already pressing. In this work we examine the fundamental problem of interoperable and interconnected blockchains. In particular, we begin by introducing the Multi-Distributed Ledger Objects (MDLO), which is the result of aggregating multiple Distributed Ledger Objects -- DLO (a DLO is a formalization of the blockchain) and that supports append and get operations of records (e.g., transactions) in them from multiple clients concurrently. Next, we define the AtomicAppends problem, which emerges when the exchange of digital assets…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsBlockchain Technology Applications and Security · Distributed systems and fault tolerance · Cognitive Functions and Memory
