Data Certification Strategies for Blockchain-based Traceability Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores strategies for certifying large, continuously produced data on blockchain in traceability systems, focusing on off-chain buffering and Merkle tree organization to enable decentralized verification.

Contribution

It proposes and compares new strategies for blockchain data certification that address challenges of certifying large, continuous data streams in traceability systems.

Findings

Different certification strategies analyzed and compared.

Effective off-chain buffering methods proposed.

Decentralized verification maintained across strategies.

Abstract

The use of blockchains for data certification and traceability is now well established in both the literature and practical applications. However, while blockchain-based certification of individual data is clear and straightforward, the use of blockchain to certify large amounts of data produced on a nearly continuous basis still poses some challenges. In such a case, in fact, it is first necessary to collect the data in an off-chain buffer, and then to organize it, e.g., via Merkle trees, in order to keep the size and quantity of certification data to be written to the blockchain small. In this paper, we consider a typical system for blockchain-based traceability of a production process, and propose and comparatively analyze some strategies for certifying the data of such a process on blockchain, while maintaining the possibility of verifying their certification in a decentralized way.