Mind the Gap: Trade-Offs between Distributed Ledger Technology Characteristics
This work addresses the challenge for developers and researchers in choosing DLT designs for applications, but it is incremental as it reviews and systematizes existing knowledge rather than introducing new methods.
The paper tackles the problem of selecting suitable Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) designs for peer-to-peer applications by reviewing DLT characteristics, identifying trade-offs, and developing archetypes to cater to specific quality requirements, without providing concrete numerical results.
When developing peer-to-peer applications on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), a crucial decision is the selection of a suitable DLT design (e.g., Ethereum) because it is hard to change the underlying DLT design post hoc. To facilitate the selection of suitable DLT designs, we review DLT characteristics and identify trade-offs between them. Furthermore, we assess how DLT designs account for these trade-offs and we develop archetypes for DLT designs that cater to specific quality requirements. The main purpose of our article is to introduce scientific and practical audiences to the intricacies of DLT designs and to support development of viable applications on DLT.