A survey on the efficiency, reliability, and security of data query in blockchain systems

Abstract

With the emergence of digital currencies, blockchain systems have been committed to the efficient and trusted storage of data, building decentralized, tamper-proof, persistent, and anonymous digital ledger. Researchers have devoted considerable attention to query methods on blockchain platforms, leading to numerous developments and advancements. There is an imperative need for a comprehensive investigation of all these efforts, as well as their most recent progress and results. This study strives to provide a comprehensive and thorough survey of notable works and recent progress related to query technologies and theories. In general, blockchain query methods rely on utilizing distributed databases, data indexing structures, and cryptographic algorithms to achieve efficient, verifiable, and secure queries. Beyond the above, we examine existing issues of blockchain query technologies and theories on query efficiency, reliability, and security. In the end, this work concludes with a summarization on typical scenarios of blockchain query schemes, as well as a discussion of future challenges to be addressed in future research.