A Practical Screening Method for Blockchain-Based Systems
Yuki Kondo, Taku Shimosawa, Satoshi Oshima · 2018
Since Bitcoin and Blockchain became popular, various industries have been interested in applying Blockchain technology to their business. Companies have been working on many Proof-of-Concepts to find good use cases. To find use cases quickly in the fast-changing environment around Blockchain, companies repeat short-term Proof-of-Concepts many times. There is some work on evaluation methods for Blockchain-based systems like the evaluation form validating the feasibility of Blockchain-based systems with comprehensive evaluation items and prototypes. However, the previous evaluation methods do not satisfy the tight time constraints of Proof-of-Concepts conducted by companies. It takes a long time to define evaluation indices, implement measurement tools and run a series of tests for all evaluation items. It also takes more time to repeat the evaluation to compare multiple Blockchain-based systems using different Blockchain software products. In this paper, we propose a practical screening method for Blockchain-based systems. To reduce time spent on Proof-of-Concepts, the screening phase with a simple check form is introduced before the prototyping phase. Throughout the screening phase, a screening form selects a few Blockchain software products which demonstrate good coverage of requirements for a use case in terms of network topology, settlement finality, governance, privacy/confidentiality and application architecture. After choosing a few promising Blockchain software products, the prototyping phase follows. Prototypes using selected Blockchain software products are evaluated by filling comprehensive evaluation items like the previous methods. The time required for Proof-of-Concepts decreases due to eliminating unpromising Blockchain software products in the screening phase. For the evaluation of the proposed method, we had a case study. The result showed that the estimated workload of a Proof-of-Concept decreased by 59% compared to the previous method.