Solutions to Scalability of Blockchain: A Survey

Zhou, Qiheng; Huang, Huawei; Zheng, Zibin; Bian, Jing

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2967218

Cited by 490 publications

(216 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Health data are seemingly endless, and more data are being generated at a dizzying pace each day, which requires sophisticated software and enormous amounts of computing power to sort through. Low throughput has also been a popular criticism of early blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum [ 44 - 46 ]. However, poor throughput is a common phenomenon in early and badly constructed blockchains [ 44 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proposed Implementation of Blockchain in British Columbia’s Health Care Data Management

et al. 2020

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Background There are several challenges such as information silos and lack of interoperability with the current electronic medical record (EMR) infrastructure in the Canadian health care system. These challenges can be alleviated by implementing a blockchain-based health care data management solution. Objective This study aims to provide a detailed overview of the current health data management infrastructure in British Columbia for identifying some of the gaps and inefficiencies in the Canadian health care data management system. We explored whether blockchain is a viable option for bridging the existing gaps in EMR solutions in British Columbia’s health care system. Methods We constructed the British Columbia health care data infrastructure and health information flow based on publicly available information and in partnership with an industry expert familiar with the health systems information technology network of British Columbia’s Provincial Health Services Authorities. Information flow gaps, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies were the target of our analyses. Results We found that hospitals and clinics have several choices for managing electronic records of health care information, such as different EMR software or cloud-based data management, and that the system development, implementation, and operations for EMRs are carried out by the private sector. As of 2013, EMR adoption in British Columbia was at 80% across all hospitals and the process of entering medical information into EMR systems in British Columbia could have a lag of up to 1 month. During this lag period, disease progression updates are continually written on physical paper charts and not immediately updated in the system, creating a continuous lag period and increasing the probability of errors and disjointed notes. The current major stumbling block for health care data management is interoperability resulting from the use of a wide range of unique information systems by different health care facilities. Conclusions Our analysis of British Columbia’s health care data management revealed several challenges, including information silos, the potential for medical errors, the general unwillingness of parties within the health care system to trust and share data, and the potential for security breaches and operational issues in the current EMR infrastructure. A blockchain-based solution has the highest potential in solving most of the challenges in managing health care data in British Columbia and other Canadian provinces.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proposed Implementation of Blockchain in British Columbia’s Health Care Data Management

et al. 2020

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“…However, many existing projects faced numerous scalability issues, starting with the pioneering example of Bitcoin [82]. Overall, many modern blockchains suffer from high processing, storage, and transmission overheads, as well as limited scalability [99], [100]. Therefore, the possibility to avoid this bottleneck should be carefully taken into consideration during future steps of the blockchain evolution.…”

Section: A Blockchain Scalabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview on Blockchain for Smartphones: State-of-the-Art, Consensus, Implementation, Challenges and Future Trends

et al. 2020

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“…Hence, they are more centralized. These systems sacrifice some of their decentrality for better scalability and performance [26], [27]. By having a governing authority that provides an inherent level of trust between participants, these Blockchain systems enable design decisions, such as sharding and channels, to be implemented without much complexity.…”

Section: A Blockchainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Decentrality in Blockchain Based Systems

et al. 2020

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Blockchain promises to provide a distributed and decentralized means of trust among untrusted users. However, in recent years, a shift from decentrality to centrality has been observed in the most accepted Blockchain system, i.e., Bitcoin. This shift has motivated researchers to identify the cause of decentrality, quantify decentrality and analyze the impact of decentrality. In this work, we take a holistic approach to identify and quantify decentrality in Blockchain based systems. First, we identify the emergence of centrality in three layers of Blockchain based systems, namely governance layer, network layer and storage layer. Then, we quantify decentrality in these layers using various metrics. At the governance layer, we measure decentrality in terms of fairness, entropy, Gini coefficient, Kullback-Leibler divergence, etc. Similarly, in the network layer, we measure decentrality by using degree centrality, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality. At the storage layer, we apply a distribution index to define centrality. Subsequently, we evaluate the decentrality in Bitcoin and Ethereum networks and discuss our observations. We noticed that, with time, both Bitcoin and Ethereum networks tend to behave like centralized systems where a few nodes govern the whole network.

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Solutions to Scalability of Blockchain: A Survey

Cited by 490 publications

References 33 publications

Proposed Implementation of Blockchain in British Columbia’s Health Care Data Management

Proposed Implementation of Blockchain in British Columbia’s Health Care Data Management

An Overview on Blockchain for Smartphones: State-of-the-Art, Consensus, Implementation, Challenges and Future Trends

Measuring Decentrality in Blockchain Based Systems

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