Interoperability in blockchain: A survey
Publication Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
12-2023
Abstract
This paper presents a systematic and comprehensive survey on blockchain interoperability, where interoperability is defined as the ability of blockchains to flexibly transfer assets, share data, and invoke smart contracts across a mix of public, private, and consortium blockchains without any changes to the underlying blockchain systems. Analyzing the vast landscape of both research papers and industry projects, we classify the existing works into five categories, namely, (1) sidechains, (2) notary schemes, (3) hashed time lock contracts (HTLC), (4) relays, and (5) blockchain agnostic protocols. We analyze the existing works under a taxonomy that consists of system and safety characteristics, such as decentralization, direction of communication, locking mechanism, verification mechanism, trust, safety, liveness, and atomicity. Different from other surveys, we are the first to evaluate the performance of some representative interoperability approaches between Bitcoin and Ethereum covering sidechains, notary schemes, and HTLCs. Even though the performance of cross-chain transactions is low (typically fewer than 10 transactions per second), the main reason is the underlying blockchain (e.g., Bitcoin and Ethereum) and not the interoperability approach. Finally, we discuss existing challenges and possible research directions in blockchain interoperability. For example, we identify challenges in interoperability across permissioned and permissionless blockchains, in interacting with scripting blockchains, in security and privacy.
Keywords
blockchain, cross-chain, interoperability, survey
Discipline
Databases and Information Systems | Information Security
Research Areas
Data Science and Engineering
Publication
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
Volume
35
Issue
12
First Page
12750
Last Page
12769
ISSN
1041-4347
Identifier
10.1109/TKDE.2023.3275220
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Citation
REN, Kunpeng; HO, Nhut-Minh; LOGHIN, Dumitrel; NGUYEN, Thanh-Toan; OOI, Beng Chin; TA, Quang-Trung; and ZHU, Feida.
Interoperability in blockchain: A survey. (2023). IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 35, (12), 12750-12769.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8561
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2023.3275220