A Reference Model for Blockchain-Based Distributed Ledger Technology

Blockchain is a distributed, transactional database that is shared across all the nodes participating in the network. This is the main technical innovation of Bitcoin and it acts as a public ledger for the transactions. Every node in the system has a full copy of the current chain, which contains every transaction ever executed. Every block contains a hash of the previous block, linking these two together. The linked blocks become a blockchain. However, this technology lacks standardisation and uniform understanding. This is due to a few studies, that would provide a comprehensive model of the blockchain and the distributed ledger technology. In this thesis we compare four blockchain technology platforms and focus on their business level properties including actors and roles, services, processes and data model. Our comparison results in a reference model, which could potentially guide the business and system analysts and software developers when developing new blockchain platforms or their supported implementations. Accuracy of the proposed reference model is validated by considering it against selected blockchain platforms. The reference model is also validated via application, showing its usefulness for a risk-related blockchain security assessment.