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Core Concepts, Challenges, and Future Directions in Blockchain: A Centralized Tutorial

Published: 06 February 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Blockchains are a topic of immense interest in academia and industry, but their true nature is often obscured by marketing and hype. In this tutorial, we explain the fundamental elements of blockchains. We discuss their ability to achieve availability, consistency, and data integrity as well as their inherent limitations. Using Ethereum as a case study, we describe the inner workings of blockchains in detail before comparing blockchains to traditional distributed systems. In the second part of our tutorial, we discuss the major challenges facing blockchains and summarize ongoing research and commercial offerings that seek to address these challenges.

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cover image ACM Computing Surveys
ACM Computing Surveys  Volume 53, Issue 1
January 2021
781 pages
ISSN:0360-0300
EISSN:1557-7341
DOI:10.1145/3382040
Issue’s Table of Contents
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Publication History

Published: 06 February 2020
Accepted: 01 October 2019
Revised: 01 October 2019
Received: 01 February 2019
Published in CSUR Volume 53, Issue 1

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Author Tags

  1. Blockchain
  2. cryptocurrency
  3. distributed ledger
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