Towards Decentralized Complex Queries over Distributed Ledgers: a Data Marketplace Use-case

TL;DR

This paper proposes a DHT overlay network on top of distributed ledgers to enable efficient keyword-based searches in decentralized data marketplaces, addressing the challenge of unstructured data in trustless environments.

Contribution

It introduces a hypercube-structured DHT layer for keyword queries over DLTs, enhancing search capabilities in decentralized data marketplaces.

Findings

DHT layer enables efficient keyword searches in DLTs

Simulation shows the approach is viable and scalable

Improves data discoverability in decentralized environments

Abstract

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and Decentralized File Storages (DFS) are becoming increasingly used to create common, decentralized and trustless infrastructures where participants interact and collaborate in Peer-to-Peer interactions. A prominent use case is represented by decentralized data marketplaces, where users are consumers and providers at the same time, and trustless interactions are required. However, data in DLTs and DFS are usually unstructured and there are no efficient mechanisms to query a certain type of data for the search in the market. In this paper, we propose the use of a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) as a layer on top of DLTs where, once the data are acquired and stored in the ledger, these can be searched through multiple keyword based queries, thanks to the lookup functionalities offered by the DHT. The DHT network is a hypercube overlay structure, organized for an efficient processing of multiple keyword-based queries. We provide the architecture of such solution for a decentralized data marketplace and an analysis based on a simulation that proves the viability of the proposed approach.