Engineering Blockchain Based Software Systems: Foundations, Survey, and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive review of blockchain-based software systems, discussing their foundations, development challenges, and future research directions from a software engineering perspective.

Contribution

It offers a systematic survey of BBS engineering research, characterizing foundational theories, processes, models, and identifying key challenges and techniques.

Findings

Consolidated current state of BBS engineering research

Identified key challenges and principles in BBS development

Outlined future directions for BBS research

Abstract

Many scientific and practical areas have shown increasing interest in reaping the benefits of blockchain technology to empower software systems. However, the unique characteristics and requirements associated with Blockchain Based Software (BBS) systems raise new challenges across the development lifecycle that entail an extensive improvement of conventional software engineering. This article presents a systematic literature review of the state-of-the-art in BBS engineering research from a software engineering perspective. We characterize BBS engineering from the theoretical foundations, processes, models, and roles and discuss a rich repertoire of key development activities, principles, challenges, and techniques. The focus and depth of this survey not only gives software engineering practitioners and researchers a consolidated body of knowledge about current BBS development but also underpins a starting point for further research in this field.