Blockchain and Edge Computing Nexus: A Large-scale Systematic Literature Review

TL;DR

This large-scale systematic review explores how blockchain and edge computing intersect, revealing patterns, key determinants, and their role in enhancing privacy and security in smart city applications.

Contribution

The paper introduces a comprehensive taxonomy and classification of blockchain-edge computing research, analyzed through quantitative and machine learning methods.

Findings

Identifies four main interaction patterns between blockchain and edge computing.

Highlights the importance of permissioned vs. permissionless designs.

Shows blockchain's role in improving privacy and security in mobile applications.

Abstract

Blockchain and edge computing are two instrumental paradigms of decentralized computation, driving key advancements in Smart Cities applications such as supply chain, energy and mobility. Despite their unprecedented impact on society, they remain significantly fragmented as technologies and research areas, while they share fundamental principles of distributed systems and domains of applicability. This paper introduces a novel and large-scale systematic literature review on the nexus of blockchain and edge computing with the aim to unravel a new understanding of how the interfacing of the two computing paradigms can boost innovation to provide solutions to timely but also long-standing research challenges. By collecting almost 6000 papers from 3 databases and putting under scrutiny almost 1000 papers, we build a novel taxonomy and classification consisting of 22 features with 287 attributes that we study using quantitative and machine learning methods. They cover a broad spectrum of technological, design, epistemological and sustainability aspects. Results reveal 4 distinguishing patterns of interplay between blockchain and edge computing with key determinants the public (permissionless) vs. private (permissioned) design, technology and proof of concepts. They also demonstrate the prevalence of blockchain-assisted edge computing for improving privacy and security, in particular for mobile computing applications.