An Attestation Architecture for Blockchain Networks
This work tackles the problem of ensuring blockchain network resiliency for future digital economy infrastructure, but it appears to be an incremental review and discussion rather than presenting new experimental results.
The paper addresses challenges in blockchain network survivability by reviewing standard attestation architectures and evidence conveyance protocols, exploring their applicability to blockchain networks, and discussing open challenges related to node attestations in evolving deployment models like virtualization and containerization.
If blockchain networks are to become the building blocks of the infrastructure for the future digital economy, then several challenges related to the resiliency and survivability of blockchain networks need to be addressed. The survivability of a blockchain network is influenced by the diversity of its nodes. Trustworthy device-level attestations permits nodes in a blockchain network to provide truthful evidence regarding their current configuration, operational state, keying material and other system attributes. In the current work we review the recent developments towards a standard attestation architecture and evidence conveyance protocols. We explore the applicability and benefits of a standard attestation architecture to blockchain networks. Finally, we discuss a number of open challenges related to node attestations that has arisen due to changing model of blockchain network deployments, such as the use virtualization and containerization technologies for nodes in cloud infrastructures.