Digital Twins for Dynamic Management of Blockchain Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Digital Twin framework to dynamically manage and optimize blockchain systems, addressing the Trilemma tradeoff by enabling real-time reconfiguration and protocol selection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Digital Twin architecture specifically designed for blockchain management, including a dynamic consensus protocol selection approach.

Findings

Effective support for dynamic adaptation demonstrated through simulations

Framework maintains balance among decentralization, scalability, and security

Enables real-time reconfiguration of blockchain parameters

Abstract

Blockchain systems are challenged by the so-called Trilemma tradeoff: decentralization, scalability and security. Infrastructure and node configuration, choice of the Consensus Protocol and complexity of the application transactions are cited amongst the factors that affect the tradeoffs balance. Given that Blockchains are complex, dynamic dynamic systems, a dynamic approach to their management and reconfiguration at runtime is deemed necessary to reflect the changes in the state of the infrastructure and application. This paper introduces the utilisation of Digital Twins for this purpose. The novel contribution of the paper is design of a framework and conceptual architecture of a Digital Twin that can assist in maintaining the Trilemma tradeoffs of time critical systems. The proposed Digital Twin is illustrated via an innovative approach to dynamic selection of Consensus Protocols. Simulations results show that the proposed framework can effectively support the dynamic adaptation and management of the Blockchain