Blockchain Networks: Data Structures of Bitcoin, Monero, Zcash, Ethereum, Ripple and Iota
This tutorial assists data scientists in analyzing blockchain data, but it is incremental as it compiles existing knowledge without introducing new methods.
The paper tackles the challenge of analyzing blockchain data by providing a systematic overview of how to abstract blockchain data into network models, enabling insights into blockchain structure, organization, and functionality.
Blockchain is an emerging technology that has enabled many applications, from cryptocurrencies to digital asset management and supply chains. Due to this surge of popularity, analyzing the data stored on blockchains poses a new critical challenge in data science. To assist data scientists in various analytic tasks on a blockchain, in this tutorial, we provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of the fundamental elements of blockchain network models. We discuss how we can abstract blockchain data as various types of networks and further use such associated network abstractions to reap important insights on blockchains' structure, organization, and functionality.