Abstract
Blockchain is a very attractive technology since it maintains a public, append-only, immutable and ordered log of transactions which guarantees an auditable ledger accessible by anyone. Blockchain systems are inherently interdisciplinary since they combine various fields such as cryptography, multi-agent systems, distributed systems, social systems, economy, and finance. Furthermore, they have a very active and dynamic ecosystem where new blockchain platforms and algorithms are developed continuously due to the interest of the public and the industries to the technology. Consequently, we anticipate a challenging and interdisciplinary research agenda in blockchain systems, built upon a methodology that strives to capture the rich process resulting from the interplay between the behavior of agents and the dynamic interactions among them. To be effective, however, modeling studies providing insights into blockchain systems, and appropriate description of agents paired with a generic understanding of their components are needed. Such studies will create a more unified field of blockchain systems that advances our understanding and leads to further insight. According to this perspective, in this study, we propose using a generic multi-agent organizational modeling for studying blockchain systems, namely AGR4BS. Concretely, we use the Agent/Group/Role (AGR) organizational modeling approach to identify and represent the generic entities which are common to blockchain systems. We show through four real case studies how this generic model can be used to model different blockchain systems. We also show briefly how it can be used for modeling three well-known attacks on blockchain systems.
Highlights
Blockchain is a very attractive technology since it maintains a public, append-only, immutable and ordered log of transactions which guarantees an auditable ledger accessible by anyone
We propose AGR4BS, a generic organization-centric multi-agent model for blockchain systems relying on high-level abstractions
Considering the previous literature, one can see that all existing blockchain modeling approaches are elaborated having in mind some specific aspects and/or problems of blockchain systems, which in turn makes them specific so that they cannot be applied to others
Summary
Blockchain is a very attractive technology since it maintains a public, append-only, immutable and ordered log of transactions which guarantees an auditable ledger accessible by anyone. A blockchain system allows its participants to collectively build a distributed economic, social and technological system where participants perform verified transactions without needing to fully trust each other, neither relying on a trusted third party, nor having a global view of the system [2]. They do so by looking for peers and connecting to them based on an implementation dependent selection strategy; the information propagation through that network shares some similarities with co-evolving knowledge networks [3]. While some participants use the blockchain as a transactional service, other participants are incentivized for contributing to and providing this service
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