A dependable and secure consensus algorithm for blockchain assisted microservice architecture

Abstract

One of the integral components in the architectural design and development of Internet of Things (IoT) is Microservice. Microservices are basically an architectural and organizational approach in the process of software development where the software is composed of small but independent services that would communicate over well-defined APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). It is quite challenging to ensure data integrity and data availability in the architecture design of microservices. As Blockchain technology has emerged as a panacea to many of the other domains, the distributed microservice architecture can also utilize it. We know that the consensus algorithms are used in the Blockchain technology to validate the transactions alongside providing extra level of security. Taking the advantage of consensus algorithms in blockchain-based architecture models, in this paper, we propose TCA (Trustworthy Consensus Algorithm), which is designed to solve the data integrity and availability challenges in microservice architectures. We have evaluated the proposed algorithm against the known alternatives and it shows good level of efficiency.