Keywords

1 Backgrounds and Introductions

The original blockchain proposed in 2008, known as Bitcoin [1], is a completely open operating mode, i.e. the public blockchain model. In the public blockchain model, anyone from all over the world can join or exit the network as a node of the blockchain, freely and easily without any restricts. The participants’ identity can be directly transformed between the developer, the provider, and the consumer of the blockchain services without any technical constraints. Therefore, a very important innovation of blockchain is that the blockchain technology can inimitably create a peer-to-peer (P2P) trust platform in such a completely trustless environment without a common centralized and trusted third-party [2]. In consequence, the public blockchain technology has contributed the most effort to the consensus mechanism to achieve the consistency of numerous nodes [3]. For an example, Proof of Work (PoW) powered blockchains currently account for more than 90% of the total market capitalization of existing digital cryptocurrencies. The PoW consensus mechanism requires every node must complete a lot of but might not be a commercial sense of computations in order to achieve the entitlement to record the ledger of the blockchain, e.g. a coin or token reward [4]. With this endogenous incentive mechanism, the blockchain operators (nodes) or so called the blockchain network service provider can be encouraged to stay in the blockchain network to promote the current blockchain network running more robustly and steadily.

While a completely open and decentralized operating mode can theoretically obtain one of the highest levels of trust, it also raises the performance issues of blockchain network, such as the current highest frequency of transactions is under 6 TPS of Bitcoin and about 15 TPS of Ethereum [5] which is much lower than the current centralized payment system. The complete decentralization also brings with the privacy and access control issues as well as particularly the supervision issues which must be faced by social and commercial applications [6]. Now, the way under discussion to solve these problems in the public blockchain, such as trading partitions and data sharing, will inevitably reduce the degree of decentralization.

The consortium blockchain [7] is a later proposed operating mode, which is trying to touch a compromise between trust level and performance requirements. In consortium blockchain model, each node must go through certain permission before joining the blockchain network, so the identities are basically not directly transformable between the blockchain service provider and the blockchain service consumer. The consortium blockchain can, therefore, using a more consistent Byzantine fault-tolerance (BFT) algorithm to solve the Byzantine fault tolerance [8, 9] of the distributed ledgers. This will also bring an additional benefit that no bifurcation existed anymore. Nodes of consortium blockchain generally do not have a mechanism to achieve rewards from the endogenous blockchain system but are usually driven by the self’s business interests of operators. The biggest problems that the consortium blockchain will face to put the project for actual working, is that most of the existing business scenarios are difficult to find multiple reliable nodes that can reach the consortium blockchain requirement. For the sake of participants’ own interests, enterprises or other organizations prefer to control the blockchain network and finally convert the real blockchain network operating model to a private blockchain, which extremely weakens the most important characteristic of the blockchain – trust.

After introducing the smart contract [5], the blockchain network service will have a significant shift for the blockchain network consumer identity which is divided from a single-identity of blockchain network user to blockchain application developers (blockchain application service providers) and blockchain application users (blockchain application service consumer). The blockchain network services will play as an independent operator role in the service architecture of the blockchain application services. In general, the service providers of blockchain networks are different from the service providers of blockchain applications, and most importantly, their goals or incentives would not be the same. However, due to the uniqueness of the blockchain network, the inconsistencies of incentives may hinder the development of the blockchain network itself. For example, the service providers of blockchain networks in the public blockchain, known as the miners, may simply pursue greater token incentives rather than satisfying the needs of blockchain application providers and users. In the consortium blockchain network, the nodes will only support the applications in line with their own commercial interests, rather than to support other external users’ applications. The different commercial interests of enterprises will disperse the users’ data to different blockchain networks and impede the connection of data.

This paper is an attempt to design a business-oriented schema for blockchain network operation, where the consortium-like nodes can make up a blockchain network but offer a public-like blockchain network services with a uniform standard. The fundamental blockchain network can set up enough incentive to drive the operating nodes focusing on how to improve their operational and service capabilities. Therefore, the business-oriented schema will enable the final business service provider (application developer) and the business service consumer (application user) to use the fundamental blockchain network services easily and conveniently as the today’s Internet service. In Sect. 2 we discuss the Internet operating mode and in Sect. 3 we introduce the idea of the Internet operating mode to blockchain network operating and discuss what is the business-oriented schema of the blockchain network service with some independent operators. In Sect. 4, we point out some important features of the business-oriented schema for blockchain network operation.

2 The Schema of Internet Network Operation

The current operation schema of Internet service is the network operator mode. The basic services of the Internet are provided by so-called network operators (most are companies), such as AT&T, China mobile and so on. The hardware and technology upgrade of the Internet is usually provided by network equipment providers, such as Huawei and Cisco. The network equipment providers would upgrade the Internet hardware capabilities under certain technical standards, such as upgrading from coaxial cable to optical fiber and mobile communication from 4G to 5G. However, on the service side of Internet applications, the developers of commercial applications only need to publish their own services via the Internet, and users can then access these services easily through the Internet. For applications, the Internet itself is just a medium, and different network operators or different hardware devices will not have a fundamental impact on the form of application services (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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The operation model of Internet network

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Internet network service providers, i.e. network operators, charge the connected Internet service users (including business application developers and users) according to certain standard rate, which would enhance their ability to keep up the Internet network service. Therefore, as the underlying technical support of the Internet, network equipment vendors and other roles are basically isolated from the service users of the Internet. The advantage of such a layering is that the iteration of Internet technology will not fundamentally affect the development, maintenance and the use of the Internet applications. At the same time, Internet operators must be competitive to improving the service capabilities of the Internet, while application developers can focus on their own business and explore application scenarios and improve the user experience.

Under the existing Internet operation model, different operators can use various technologies to offer gradational and multidimensional levels of Internet access services, such as the Internet access speed. Therefore, the connectivity between different Internet operators often requires two operators or a certain organization to achieve the global Internet connectivity in accordance with some agreements. Internet users that are switching services between different operators may have to pay for cross-operators or even service disruption. That is, where the Internet is open, but often because of the natural monopoly of network operators, developers and users are not completely free to choose their operators.

3 Introducing the Idea to Blockchain Network Operating

The nodes of public blockchain such as Bitcoin are completely open, so both individuals and companies can run blockchain networks equally as long as they can provide the corresponding server supports according to the blockchain agreement. However, as the proof of work (POW) to be more and more difficult, it is almost impossible for an individual’s ordinary server to effectively participate in the mining competition, substantially out of the Bitcoin network operation. Thus, a large number of so-called miners whether individuals or companies have an increasingly convergence to form the “mine pools” to participate in the mining competition. For example, the top four mining pools of Bitcoin have now controlled more than 50% calculation power of the entire network. The situation of Ethereum, the second largest crypto-currency, is also similar to that. It can be seen that the public blockchain built up by the proof of work shows that with the increase of the calculation power of the whole network and the difficulty of mining, the aggregation of computing power is unavoidable from the game point of view, thus seriously questioning the blockchain. The most important one is based on the distribution, which has brought great hidden dangers to the unreliable modification and stability of the blockchain network. Using other consensus mechanisms such as POS, DPOS, etc., it is also unavoidable or even active to reduce the number of nodes actually participating in the consensus and writing ledgers, in order to reduce the huge loss of POW and expect to improve the operating performance of blockchain networks. In general, although the public blockchain upholds the spirit of openness and sharing, now and in the future, the number of nodes that can actually participate in the consensus is very limited or even not open to the public.

The consortium blockchain operators are permission as established. All operators must obey the consortium’s rules to run the blockchain network, so node to join and exit is limited by the consortium rules. However, in the real business scenarios, forming a stable consortium is difficult, especially the leader of the consortium is often applied the main stakeholders have absolute power consortium blockchain and makes consortium blockchain substantially degenerate to a private blockchain. This will lose the most important characteristics of building a blockchain – “trust”. Now in the crypto-currency market, a large number of independent operating blockchain network claim that they are consortium blockchain network or even public blockchain network, but in essence, they are just company‘s “private” blockchain just like the above situations.

This is why the Internet network operation model is introduced in the blockchain. Under the schema of blockchain network operation model, the owner of the node which is the network operator should be independent business organization or company. It is like today’s Internet operators, so they don’t need to profit from application developers and users according to the detail business scenarios, but from providing universal blockchain network services. Sequentially different operators will form a new blockchain network relationship with both cooperation and competition, where the operators can also give more credibility and more dynamic blockchain services. When more operators dominated in the consortium blockchain network, the corresponding blockchain network has more competitive between the various blockchain networks. Under the consortium rules, a few nodes will not be able to control the final blockchain network (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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The business-oriented schema for blockchain network operation

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4 Important Features of the Business-Oriented Schema for Blockchain Network Operation

When establishing a new business-oriented schema for blockchain network operation, some features are very important and should be paid more attention to.

Separation of Network and Application. For Bitcoin, the application is not separated from the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is just the Bitcoin application. After the introduction of smart contract concept, the basic network of the blockchain can be run independently, while the blockchain application can run in the form of a smart contract or a combination of several smart contracts on the blockchain network. Although the smart contract has already been implemented in the blockchain, the maintenance of network operation and application is still not enough separated. For example, ETC is used to stimulate the nodes in the Ethereum network. However ETC is also spent for the calculation and storage cost of the applications on the Ethereum network. The coupling of network and application results in that the network operators may not benefit the application from their own interests and harm the network overall interests. Therefore, in the schema of blockchain network operation model, the blockchain network should be independent of the application development and services. In particular, application development should only follow a unified protocol and some common underlying interfaces, which can make it easily to be migrated between different blockchain networks.

Separation of Network Development and Operation. Under the schema of blockchain network operation model, the network development should be separated from the network operations. Technology developers will focus on the development and planning of block chain technology. However, the network operators have the complete right to decide on which new blockchain technology to adopt as long as it follows the blockchain protocol, standard and consensus mechanism of the consortium blockchain. The technical differences between nodes bring some differentiation of services into blockchain network users, such as in guarantee under the premise of using the same blockchain network, some nodes can provide users with faster query service, while some nodes can provide users with more storage space outside the blockchain and so on. While running on the same blockchain network, different nodes can still have different target users, so they can offer personalized development tools and testing environments. This is a useful feature for implementing a general-purpose, efficient blockchain network.

Incentives for Different Roles at Multi-levels. For a blockchain system, the incentive is the most important means of governance. The public blockchain often has only a single incentive mode, namely the incentive of the coin or token to the blockchain node. After introducing the schema of blockchain network operation model, the incentive for different roles can be layered. For the blockchain network technique developers, they must provide better and more powerful blockchain network technology so as to be adopted by the blockchain network operators. This is one of the most important incentives for technique developers, unlikely from today’s blockchain where the technology developers are often also the blockchain operators. Overlapping of the two roles usually tends to be bad for the entire network ecosystem and harms the progress and development. For the blockchain operators, the most important incentive is to provide stable and continuous blockchain services, thus the numerous blockchain operators must maintain a dynamic and effective blockchain service with a cooperation and competition relation. Although for a blockchain network, the network underlying protocol and the data are the same, but the operators can still provide differentiated technology and service ability. At the same time, a blockchain node can offer multiple blockchain network connectivity; so implementing different blockchain networks are also favorable for the formation of blockchain global ecological system. For blockchain application developers, just like the Internet application developers do not need too much concerned with the actual operators, they can focus to provide more valuable, professional application on the blockchain services. On the basis of the characteristics of blockchain, the application server is entirely operated by blockchain network i.e. operator is responsible for the continuing and tamper-resistant blockchain service after the application released. The interests of blockchain application users can be protected effectively based on the smart contracts which are written in the clear and open source programming.

After the establishment of a complete data system [10], the blockchain can be used as a very suitable big data platform. The data value of the blockchain system can be continuously mined by using a Big Data Open Architecture [12] and other big data techniques [11, 13].

5 Summary and Conclusion

In this paper, we propose the schema of blockchain network operation model based on the existing Internet operation mode. The consortium-like nodes can also make up a blockchain network but offer a public-like blockchain network services with a uniform standard. The fundamental blockchain network can set up enough incentive to drive the operating nodes focusing on how to improve their operational and service capabilities. It also drives the blockchain network technique developers focusing on blockchain technique, while the blockchain application developers focusing on valuable and professional applications.