Blockchain-Cluster

The idea of this categorization is to make different blockchain protocols comparable and to identify protocol attack vectors. This categorization shall be seen as a first step towards a mature security blockchain research. Further details can be found in the associated thesis "Clustering Blockchain Protocols with Regards to Security Testing" from Tim Menapace. https://www.academia.edu/34955919/Clustering_Blockchain_Protocols_With_Regards_To_Security_Testing

Feel free to add new blockchain protocols or to enhance the categorization scheme by itself. //tim

Categories of Blockchain Design

A blockchain design is defined as the compound of the three design primitives transaction design, consensus design & block design.

Each Design primitive has several subcategories, described in the following tables:

Transaction Design

Category	Description of the category. For each blockchain protocol a category can have different values.
Chaincode	Code that is deployed into the blockchain inside a transaction and processed by every node in the network. Especially non-standard transaction code that is capable to enforce some kind of business logic.
Transaction Cryptography	How does the protocol ensure confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation and authentication of transactions?
--Key Generation	The cryptographic algorithm that generates the public/private key pair.
--Address Generation	The algorithm that generates the wallet address from the public key.
--Transaction Signature	The algorithm that uses the public/private key pair to sign a transaction broadcasted to the network.

Consensus Design

Category	Description of the category. For each blockchain protocol a category can have different values.
Consensus Algorithm	The algorithm that lets the nodes in the network eventually come to one state. Depending on the number of malicious processes consensus is possible, see section \ref{BFT}.
Node Authentication	How does a node authenticate itself to its peers in the network?
Governance	How is the codebase of the Reference Implementation developed and who is leading this development?
Transparency	Who got what kind of permissions on the network?
	public: Everybody can read
	private: Selected nodes can read
	permissionless: Everybody can write
	permissioned: Selected nodes can write

Data structure & Block Design

Category	Description of the category. For each blockchain protocol a category can have different values.
Data structure	How is the data of the blockchain stored in the nodes?
Blocktime	The average time between two blocks.
Tokens	Can users generate their own coin-like tokens?
Coin supply	Is there a generic coin in the system? How is it supplied? Incentive to generatenew blocks?

Characteristics of Blockchain Protocols

Each subcategory can have different values. The following table is an ongoing collection of different values / characteristics for blockchain design.

Consensus Algorithm	Node Authentification	Governance	Transparency	Data structure	Blocktime	Coinsupply	Tokens	Key Generation	Address Generation	Transaction Signature	Usage
Proof of work	No	decentralized	public	UTXO	fixed time	fixed amount	Via chaincode	ECC	RIPEM160 & SHA256	ECDSA -ed25519 -secp256k1	computation
Proof of stake	RLPx	Foundation	permissonless	Merkle Patricia Tree	adjustable	unlimited	No Tokens	PKI X.509	SHA3	PKI X.509	file storage
Proof of burn	X.509	incorporated	private	NoSQL DB	No blocks	no generic coin		Kerl	PKI X.509	Hash-based OTS	external data
Proof of activity	Mutual tethering		permissioned	Directed Acyclic Graph					Kerl	ring	monetization
Proof of capacity				Treestate							payments
Proof of elapsed time											cross-blockchain communication
pBFT											media
Stellar Consensus Protocol											supply chain
RAFT											securitization
Federated											settlement
											assets
											governance

Categorization of Blockchain Protocols

	Bitcoin	Ethereum	Hyperledger Fabric	IOTA	Monero	Zcash	Stellar	Tendermint	Sia	BigchainDB
Consensus Algorithm	Proof-of-work SHA-256	Proof-of-work ethhash	Ordering Service	Tip selection MCMC	Proof-of-work CryptoNight	Proof-of-work equihash	Stellar Consensus	BFT	PoW	PoS
Node Authentification	No BIP 150 & 151	Yes RLPx	X.509	Mutual tethering
Governance	decentralized	Ethreum Foundation	IBM & Linux Foundation	IOTA Foundation	decentralized	Zcash Foundation	Foundation
Transparency	public & permissionless	public & permissionless	private & permissioned	public & permissionless	public & permissionless	public & permissionless	public & permissionless	private & permissioned
Data structure	UTXO	Merkle Patricia Tree	NoSQL DB	Directed Acyclic Graph	UTXO LMDB	Treestate
Blocktime	10 min	~ 30 sec	adjustable	No blocks	2 min	150 sec
Coinsupply	21 mio BTC	Unlimited ETH	No generic coin	((3^33-1)/2) IOTA	Unlimited XMR	21 mio	100 bil lumen			No generic coin
Tokens	Via script	Via smart contract	Via chaincode	No			Yes
Chaincode	Bitcoin script	Ethereum bytecode	Chaincode	No
Key Generation	secp256k1	secp256k1	PKI X.509	Kerl Ternary Keccak384	ed25519		secp256k1
Address Generation	RIPEMD160 & SHA-256	SHA3	PKI X.509		Keccak256	zk-SNARKs black	SHA-256	SHA-256	blake2b	SHA3-256
Transaction Signature	ECDSA	ECDSA	PKI X.509	Hash-based One-time Signature	ring signature	BLAKE2b-256	ed25519	ed25519	ed25519	ed25519

Categorization of Blockchain Applications

Augur, Gnosis, Steemit, Counterparty <- To Do

uncategorized

bft, mining, nodes, Hash, Mempool, Merkle root, Seed,

properties

persistence, data exchange/data synchronization, immutability, availability, throughput, anonymity/pseudonymity, trustlessness, node operator, intregrated payment processes, currency, (near) real time

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