Blockchain Networks: Data Structures of Bitcoin, Monero, Zcash, Ethereum, Ripple and Iota

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain data structures across various networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, highlighting how network abstractions can facilitate data analysis and insights into blockchain organization.

Contribution

It systematically categorizes blockchain data as network models, aiding data scientists in analyzing blockchain structures and functionalities.

Findings

Network abstractions help analyze blockchain structure

Different blockchain types have unique data models

Network analysis reveals insights into blockchain organization

Abstract

Blockchain is an emerging technology that has enabled many applications, from cryptocurrencies to digital asset management and supply chains. Due to this surge of popularity, analyzing the data stored on blockchains poses a new critical challenge in data science. To assist data scientists in various analytic tasks on a blockchain, in this tutorial, we provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of the fundamental elements of blockchain network models. We discuss how we can abstract blockchain data as various types of networks and further use such associated network abstractions to reap important insights on blockchains' structure, organization, and functionality.