The Design Principle of Blockchain: An Initiative for the SoK of SoKs

Abstract

Blockchain, also coined as decentralized AI, has the potential to empower AI to be more trustworthy by creating a decentralized trust of privacy, security, and audibility. However, systematic studies on the design principle of blockchain as a trust engine for an integrated society of cyber-physical-social-system (CPSS) are still absent. In this article, we provide an initiative for seeking the design principle of blockchain for a better digital world. Using a hybrid method of qualitative and quantitative studies, we examine the past origin, the current development, and the future directions of blockchain design principles. We have three findings. First, the answer to whether blockchain lives up to its original design principle as a distributed database is controversial. Second, the current development of the blockchain community reveals a taxonomy of 7 categories, namely, privacy and security, scalability, decentralization, applicability, governance and regulation, system design, and cross-chain interoperability. Both research and practice are more centered around the first category of privacy and security and the fourth category of applicability. Future scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers have vast opportunities in other, much less exploited facets and the synthesis at the interface of multiple aspects. Finally, in counter-examples, we conclude that a synthetic solution that crosses discipline boundaries is necessary to close the gaps between the current design of blockchain and the design principle of a trust engine for a truly intelligent world.