A Comparative Analysis of Distributed Ledger Technology Platforms

TLDR

Distributed Ledger Technology, first introduced with Bitcoin in 2009, has become a disruptive force reshaping business, product tracking, and personal data management, and has attracted growing attention in recent years with many public, private, general‑purpose, and application‑specific platforms emerging. The study aims to assess DLT platforms’ architectures and capabilities to guide developers in selecting the most suitable platform for specific applications and to evaluate their long‑term applicability, resiliency, and sustainability. The authors surveyed leading DLT platforms and evaluated their capabilities using a set of quantitative and qualitative criteria. The resulting comparative analysis assists DLT developers and architects in choosing the optimal platform to meet their requirements.

Abstract

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has emerged as one of the most disruptive technologies in the last decade. It promises to change the way people do their business, track their products, and manage their personal data. Though the concept of DLT was first implemented in 2009 as Bitcoin, it has gained significant attention only in the past few years. During this time, different DLT enthusiasts and commercial companies have proposed and developed several DLT platforms. These platforms are usually categorized as public vs private, general purpose vs application specific and so on. As a growing number of people are interested to build DLT applications, it is important to understand their underlying architecture and capabilities in order to determine which DLT platform should be leveraged for a specific DLT application. In addition, the platforms need to be evaluated and critically analyzed to assess their applicability, resiliency and sustainability in the long run. In this paper, we have surveyed several leading DLT platforms and evaluated their capabilities based on a number of quantitative and qualitative criteria. The comparative analysis presented in this paper will help the DLT developers and architects to choose the best platform as per their requirement(s).