Please refer to the attached files. The suitability flowchart file is attached as well.
Microsoft Word - isys3408_TutorialNotes_2022s1.docx ISYS3408 Blockchain For Business Tutorial Notes 2022 semester 1 Page 77 Tutorial 11 Blockchain Suitability Analysis HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT The treatment and disposal of industrial waste is a very large part of any industry. There are many laws governing the categorization of waste and how each category of waste needs to be transported, processed, treated and disposed. A high level description of the general steps is shown here: 1. Industry produces waste as part of normal operations (e.g. asbestos removal, used oil filters and tyres, medical waste, chemical/paint runoff, used cooking oil etc) 2. Waste is collected by various waste collection/disposal services 3. Waste is categorized according to government regulations 4. Recycling companies may extract materials from the waste for recycling/reuse 5. Some waste needs to be treated before disposal to make it safe from contaminating soil/water etc. Treatment companies would do this. 6. Remaining waste then needs to be disposed depending on the category, usually being disposed to landfill once rendered safe. 7. There are different categories of landfill sites able to accept certain types of waste but not others. Recent events in Victoria have highlighted major flaws in the current system. Several rogue waste disposal companies operated illegally for years by collecting waste from companies and then instead of processing and disposing of the waste properly, they stored the waste in huge warehouses or buried the waste, untreated, on country properties. These large stockpiles of waste have created several very dangerous toxic fires and have required very expensive clean-up operations to render the waste safe. Blockchain Suitability Analyse the scenario and discuss whether a blockchain solution would be appropriate for this domain. You must refer to one or more of the Blockchain Suitability flowcharts described in lecture 9. You can’t just simply answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – neither answer is right or wrong. Address the reasons and conditions that make this scenario suitable or not suitable for a blockchain solution. ISYS3408 Blockchain For Business Tutorial Notes 2022 semester 1 Page 78 Tutorial Evidence for Assessment You are required to submit a report of your analysis findings in your submission as part of labtask 3. You are welcome to incorporate the findings shared by the groups in the tutorials. Evaluating Suitability of Applying Blockchain Evaluating Suitability of Applying Blockchain Sin Kuang Lo University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
[email protected] Xiwei Xu Data61, CSIRO Sydney, Australia
[email protected] Yin Kia Chiam Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
[email protected] Qinghua Lu China University of Petroleum(East China) Beijing, China
[email protected] Abstract—Blockchain is an emerging technology for decentralized and transactional data sharing across a large network of untrusted participants. It enables new forms of distributed software architectures, where agreement on shared states can be established without trusting a central integration point. As a database and computational platform, blockchain has both advantages and disadvantages compared with conventional techniques. Blockchain may be an appropriate choice for some use cases while conventional technologies will be more appropriate for other use cases. A major difficulty for practitioners to decide whether or not to use blockchain is that limited product data or reliable technology evaluation available to assess the suitability of blockchains. In this paper, we propose an evaluation framework that comprises a list of criteria and a typical process for practitioners to assess the suitability of applying blockchain using these criteria based on the characteristics of the use cases. We then use several existing industrial trails to evaluate the feasibility of our framework. Keywords—blockchain, suitability, evaluation I. INTRODUCTION Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin [1], which provides an append-only data store of transactions replicated between peers and enables new forms of distributed software architectures, where agreement on shared state for decentralised and transactional data can be established across a large network of untrusted participants. Blockchain has unique properties. When data is contained in a committed transaction on the blockchain, it eventually becomes immutable in practice. The immutable chain of cryptographically-signed historical transactions provides non- repudiation of the stored data. Cryptographic tools also support data integrity, the public access to blockchain provides data transparency, and equal rights allow every participant the same ability to access and manipulate the blockchain. Trust in the blockchain is achieved from the interactions between nodes within the network. The participants of blockchain network rely on the blockchain network itself rather than relying on trusted third-party to facilitate transactions, which has the power to control and manipulate the system and is a single point of failure. Applications built on blockchains can take advantage of these properties of the blockchain. Many banks are involved in trials of blockchain technology, including through the global R3 consortium1 which is applying blockchain to trade finance and cross-border payments. Financial transactions are the first, but not the only use case being investigated for blockchain technology. A blockchain implements a distributed ledger, which can verify and store any kind of transactions, in general [2]. Many startups, enterprises, and governments [3] are exploring blockchain applications in areas as diverse as supply chain, electronic health records, voting, energy supply, ownership management, identity management, and protecting critical civil infrastructure. Data privacy and scalability are two points of criticism of blockchain. The privacy setting is limited since there are no privileged users, and every participant can join the network to access all the information on the blockchain. For throughput scalability, mainstream public blockchains to date can only handle on average 3-20 transactions per second 2 , whereas mainstream payment services, like VISA, can handle an average of 1,700 transactions per second3.Thus, blockchains cannot by themselves meet the requirements for all usage scenarios, for example, applications that require real-time processing or used within a single organizational unit. Gartner estimated that 90% of enterprise blockchain projects launched in 2015 would fail within 18 to 24 months [4]. In practice, there is a gap where no proper evident-based guideline that could be used to evaluate the suitability of blockchain use cases. Hence, this paper provides insights on the trade-offs on non-functional requirements when implementing blockchain-based applications and develops a blockchain suitability evaluation framework based on a list of criteria. Several industrial trails are selected to validate the suitability of blockchain using our evaluation framework. II. SUITABILITY EVALUATION FRAMEWORK The first step of architecting a blockchain-based application is to assess the suitability of applying blockchain against the requirements of use cases. Fig. 1 shows the framework proposed based on existing industrial products, technical forums, academic literature and our own experience of using blockchains and developing prototypes. The process to evaluate the suitability of blockchain comprises mainly seven questions that need to be answered, which are denoted as white 1 http://www.r3cev.com/ 2 https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/01/15/privacy-on-the-blockchain/ 3 https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/retail.html 2017 International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems 978-1-5386-2431-9/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICECCS.2017.26 158 decision nodes. The subquestions derived from the main questions are denoted as grey decision nodes. Fig. 1. Suitability evaluation framework. A. Multi-party The first question is whether multiple parties are involved in the scenario. The operations or transactions between parties are normally governed by intermediaries. Supply chain is one of the examples as it consists of complex, dynamic, multi-party arrangements with regulatory and logistical constraints spanning across different jurisdictional boundaries. Blockchain provides a shared infrastructure with a neutral stand where none of the participated organization dictates it. Thus, blockchain is suitable for scenarios involving multiple parties, potentially where there are intermediaries acting within the current systems. It would break down the silos of information controlled by individual parties while at the same time make the process faster and cheaper. A system within a single entity can use other relatively cheaper mechanisms to achieve the same properties provided by blockchains. B. Trusted authority The second question is whether a trusted authority is required in the scenario. Trusted authority is an entity that is authorized to execute a certain operation or alter a policy or configuration of an operation. Examples of the trusted authorities would be the bank and government. The issue arises from having a trusted authority is that it may become a single point of failure. When the trusted authority experiences problems, all the users accessing the services from it would be affected. Blockchain is suitable for scenarios without any trusted authority or the current trusted authority has potential to be decentralized. Using a blockchain does not remove trust because users are still exposed to risk in their use of blockchain technology. Users are shifting their trust from the third-party intermediaries or central governing organization to the blockchain software, the incentive that motivates “good behavior” of the processing nodes, and the trusted third parties that act as “oracles” which record information about the external world on the blockchain. Blockchain removes the need to trust a single specific third party to maintain the ledger of a transaction, and so is sometimes called a “distributed trust”. C. Centralized operation The third question is whether the operations on the application is centralized. In blockchain-based systems that use smart contracts, system operation is harder to implement for the smart contracts than regular distributed systems. This is because smart contracts comprise code that regulates the interactions between mutually untrusting