A Comprehensive 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. 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 paper we compare four blockchain technology platforms and focus on their business level properties including actors and roles, services, and processes and data model. Our comparison results in a reference model, which could potentially guide the business analysts, 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 technologies.