1

Blockchain technology research and application: a

systematic literature review and future trends
Min An, Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Qiyuan Fan, Hao Yu and Haiyang Zhao

Abstract—Blockchain, as the basis for cryptocurrencies, has solutions is expected to grow from 4.5 billion U.S. dollars in
received extensive attentions recently. Blockchain serves as an 2020 to an estimated 19 billion U.S. dollars by 2024 [10].
immutable distributed ledger technology which allows transac- It can be seen that the value and potential development of
tions to be carried out credibly in a decentralized environment.
blockchain technology is because it is widely used in many
arXiv:2306.14802v2 [cs.CR] 27 Jun 2023

Blockchain-based applications are springing up, covering nu-

merous fields including financial services, reputation system and fields.
Internet of Things (IoT), and so on. However, there are still Blockchain was first proposed in 2008 and implemented
many challenges of blockchain technology such as scalability, in 2009[11]. The blockchain is essentially a distributed pub-
security and other issues waiting to be overcome. This article
provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain technology and
lic ledger with the nature of a key-value database, and all
its applications. We begin with a summary of the development of transaction data is permanently recorded in a one-way chain
blockchain, and then give an overview of the blockchain architec- list through asymmetric encryption technology and distributed
ture and a systematic review of the research and application of consensus technology. As new blocks are added and the length
blockchain technology in different fields from the perspective of the chain increases, so does the cost of tampering or attack,
of academic research and industry technology. Furthermore,
technical challenges and recent developments are also briefly
so the blockchain is also more secure. Blockchain has key
listed. We also looked at the possible future trends of blockchain. characteristics such as decentralization, persistence, anonymity
and auditability, which are the key to the continuous popularity
Index Terms—Blockchain, Blockchain-based FL, Federated of blockchain technology, and the reason why blockchain
learning, Internet-of-Things (IoT), Intelligent transportation, greatly reduces costs and improves efficiency. Blockchain
Privacy, Reinforcement learning, Systematic literature review, technology is the representative research of decentralized
Security, Smart grid distributed systems in recent years, but it is also constrained
by distributed theory.
I. I NTRODUCTION Blockchain is a distributed digital architecture system in
edge networks, first proposed by Scott Stornetta in 1991[12].
S an emerging technology, blockchain (BC) has been
A widely used in many fields, such as manufacturing,
logistics and transportation, electronic transactions, intelligent
Blockchain is based on a peer-to-peer decentralized network,
that is, each blockchain node is a peer-to-peer relationship, and
the entire network is a decentralized distributed structure. All
transportation, energy/utilities, healthcare, etc.[1]–[8].
network nodes can collect transactions and record them into
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that records
blocks, and the reward mechanism of the blockchain network
and shares every transaction that occurs in the network of
can encourage each node in the network to use a unified
users. Nowadays cryptocurrency has become a buzzword in
consensus algorithm to compete for blocks. And eventually
both industry and academia. Digital currencies are only one
form a chain structure composed of blocks stored in each node,
way to use blockchain. Other evolving applications can include
so that the blockchain nodes do not need to trust each other.
online voting, medical records, insurance policies, property
and real estate records, copyrights and licenses, and supply
chain tracking [9]. They can also include smart contracts,
where payouts between the contracted parties are embedded A. The state of blockchain research
in the blockchain and automatically execute when contractual With the development of technologies such as the Internet
conditions have been met. Worldwide spending on blockchain and sensors, the Internet of Things has been continuously
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation applied in various industries, resulting in a large number of
of China under Grant No. 61862063, 61502413, 61262025; the National new technologies, new products and new applications, and the
Social Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 18BJL104; the Science privacy protection of all intelligent information communica-
Foundation of Young and Middle-aged Academic and Technical Leaders of
Yunnan under Grant No. 202205AC160040; the Science Foundation of Yun- tion has become very important, thus triggering researchers
nan Jinzhi Expert Workstation under Grant No. 202205AF150006; the Open to innovate and design blockchain technology. Most of the
Foundation of Yunnan Key Laboratory of Software Engineering under Grant research on blockchain technology mainly focuses on the
No. 2020SE301; the Science Foundation of ”Knowledge-driven intelligent
software engineering innovation team”. security mechanism of blockchain and the blocking rate, in
Min An is with the School of Software and the Yunnan Key Laboratory of which the blocking rate represents the rate at which blockchain
Software Engineering, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China (e-mail: network mining generates blocks. This section will introduce
[email protected]; [email protected]).
Qiyuan Fan, Hao Yu and Haiyang Zhao are with the School of Software, the research status of blockchain technology from these two
Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China. aspects respectively.
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1) Security mechanism of blockchain: Blockchain technol- of entities based on multiple observations of supply chain
ogy mainly uses consensus algorithms to ensure the security events. In addition to the research on the security mecha-
and immutable block data, among which, Proof of Work nism of the blockchain technology itself, some researchers
(PoW) is a common consensus protocol in the blockchain have studied the deployment cost of the blockchain. For
system, but when the computing power of the attacker is example, P. Frauenthaler et al. [18] introduced a novel relay
greater than half of the computing power of the blockchain scheme, considering that the current blockchain relay scheme
network, The system will be subject to a double flower attack requires the target blockchain to immediately verify the size
or 51% attack by the attacker, which undoubtedly poses a of each relay. This results in high operational costs when
great threat to the blockchain. X.Yang et al. [13] proposed a deploying these relays between Ethereum-based blockchains,
technique that combines the historically weighted information and the computational cost of verifying block headers on-
of miners with the total computational difficulty to mitigate the chain is high. To overcome these limitations, the scheme uses
51% attack problem, based on which the cost of traditional an on-demand verification model combined with economic
attacks increases by two orders of magnitude. J.Bae et al. incentives to reduce the operational cost of relays between
[14] proposed a random mining group selection technique Ethereum-based blockchains by up to 92%, through which
to reduce the probability of successful double flower attack. decentralized interoperability between blockchains becomes
This method divides miners into several groups and provides feasible. In addition, there are also studies focusing on the
mining opportunities for randomly selected groups. In addition tamper-proof and security issues of distributed federated learn-
to the optimization based on traditional consensus algorithms ing systems. The model parameters uploaded by terminals are
to resist attacks, some researchers have also developed some authenticated and shared through blockchain technology, so as
novel consensus algorithms. to avoid privacy disclosure and tampering attacks caused by
For example, A. Dorri et al. [15] proposed a fast and scal- long communication distances. The research focus is mainly
able consensus algorithm named tree-chain. Compared with on the mechanism of blockchain combined with federated
the existing hash function verification method, Tree chain is a learning, and it is also considered in the federated learning
leader selection consensus algorithm. It changes from a linear scenario based on blockchain technology. The relationship
blockchain structure to a tree-structured blockchain, where between blockchain block time and system resources and the
each branch is managed by a specific verifier, each verifier performance of federated learning system, and the convergence
is periodically assigned to a range of random consensus codes performance of federated learning is optimized.
that match a specific pattern of the most significant bits output 2) The blocking rate of blockchain: Due to its decentralized
by the hash function, and each verifier is then responsible for property, blockchain is seen as a promising technology for
the transactions it falls within the consensus code assigned to providing reliable and secure services. However, due to the
the verifier. Since transactions are deterministic assigned to limited throughput, the current blockchain platform cannot
verifiers based on random consensus codes, tree chains elimi- meet the transaction needs in actual use, so researchers have
nate the significant inefficiencies of traditional blockchains in proposed many new solutions. S. Yang et al. [19] improved
verifier selection, such as PoW. A. Kumar et al. [16] propose A on the linear structure of traditional blockchain protocols using
novel consensus algorithm for public blockchains that shards the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure, in which blocks
miners based on their performance. After miner sharding is are organized by level and width, which produces a compact
completed, the best miner from each shard is selected to form DAG structure (CoDAG). In order to make CoDAG more
a super miner shard, and then a miner is randomly selected efficient and secure, algorithms and protocols have also been
from the super shard as the winning miner for mining the next designed to appropriately place newly generated blocks, which
block in the blockchain network, for sharding, the performance improve security and transaction verification time compared
history of miners will be maintained in each miner, and to traditional blockchain protocols, and enjoy the consistency
resharding will be carried out regularly to bring fairness to the and activity characteristics of blockchain. However, due to
system. This performance-based consensus algorithm ensures the change of the linear structure of the blockchain, the
more fairness, avoids hunger, improves trust among miners data tracing and verification algorithms have been changed,
and the overall performance of the blockchain network. and under extreme conditions, once there are few blocks
In fact, blockchain technology, due to its data traceability associated with a block, it will increase the possibility of
and integrity, can effectively solve the current world’s complex being tampered with by attacks, so there is a certain risk.
distributed system of distributed management and data tamper- K. Wang et al. [20] extended the traditional analysis of
ing and other major problems, but the blockchain technology the basic tradeoff between throughput and fork rate of a
itself can not solve the trust issues related to the data itself, blockchain system and further proposed FastChain, which
therefore, reputation management has become an important increases the throughput of a blockchain system by reducing
research direction of blockchain technology. S. Malik et block propagation time. FastChain employs bandwidth-based
al. [17] proposed a three-tier trust management framework neighbor selection, where miners disconnect from bandwidth-
named TrustChain, which uses alliance blockchain to track constrained neighbors. And prefer nodes with higher band-
interactions among supply chain participants and dynamically width. This method effectively reduces the propagation delay
assign trust and reputation scores based on these interactions. of block authentication and improves the block rate of the
Therefore, a reputation model based on this framework can blockchain. However, selecting nodes based on the bandwidth
be used to evaluate the quality of goods. And the credibility of users may cause unfairness in the system for a long time,
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and because the connections between nodes are constantly through the mining process. Thus, instead of the traditional
changing dynamically, it will increase the maintenance and method of using third-party trust organizations or institutions
management costs of the blockchain network. to build trust relationships, a decentralized and trusted dis-
As can be seen from the above research, it is difficult to tributed system is established [24].
optimize the mechanism of the blockchain itself to increase the In addition, the blockchain is jointly maintained and partici-
blocking rate. In fact, blockchain technology, as a distributed pated by all blockchain nodes, and its incentive mechanism en-
system protocol, is usually deployed in the edge computing sures that all nodes in the distributed system can participate in
network, and many applications of edge computing, such as the verification process of the block, and through the consensus
the Internet of vehicles, industrial Internet, etc., need a dis- mechanism, select a specific node to add the newly generated
tributed coordination mechanism of security and mutual trust. block to the blockchain, thus ensuring the stability and security
The application of blockchain in Mobile Edge Computing of the system. Therefore, the blockchain network is a dis-
(MEC) system has aroused great interest of researchers, and tributed consensus and multi-party maintenance system, which
task unloading is one of the basic problems of MEC, and is a robust and secure system. Blockchain technology can also
collaborative unloading can effectively improve the through- guarantee the authenticity and immutability of transactions.
put of distributed systems, which is of great significance Blockchain technology stores transaction information using a
for blockchain technology. However, most of the existing time-stamped chain structure, so the transaction information
work in the design and optimization of blockchain and MEC on the chain can be traced. And for any two adjacent blocks
are carried out separately, which will lead to sub-optimal in the blockchain, the information of the latter block contains
performance, so some researchers have conducted research the information of the previous block, in turn recursively, each
on blockchain technology in the scenario based on MEC. block contains the information of all the previous blocks, so
J. Feng et al. [21] propose a joint optimization framework once a block is tampered with, the data information of the
for blockchain-based MEC systems to achieve an optimal block and all the subsequent blocks must be modified, and
trade-off between MEC system performance and blockchain the blockchain maintenance time is limited. Therefore, the
system performance. Specifically, the optimal tradeoff of en- tampering operation must be completed within a limited time,
ergy consumption and latency (final determination time) is but in fact, every re-mining calculation needs to pay a huge
achieved by jointly optimizing user association, data rate price, so the data on the blockchain is immutable.
allocation, block producer scheduling, and compute resource In addition, blockchain technology can create smart con-
allocation. A. Vera-Rivera et al. [22] propose a blockchain- tracts between users who do not trust each other [25], guaran-
based service-oriented architecture that allows secure and teeing the confidentiality of transactions. Blockchain network
private task offloading collaboration among edge servers in is an open consensus network, which encrypts the data on
MEC environments to help alleviate processing saturation in the chain through asymmetric encryption technology to ensure
dense networks and improve resource utilization of mobile data security, and prevents external attacks from tampering
edge computing systems. The mechanism is based on the through complex consensus algorithms. In fact, taking PoW
Hyperledger-Fabric blockchain, which serves as a distributed consensus algorithm as an example, the computing power of
interactive gaming environment with advanced encryption external attacks is at least more than half of the total computing
capabilities, minimizing potential security and privacy threats. power of the blockchain network to succeed. Therefore, it
From the above research, it can be seen that the computing ensures that the data on the chain is not tampered with
offloading through edge computing can effectively reduce the and forged, so that it has high confidentiality, credibility and
block rate of the blockchain and improve the system resource security.
utilization. According to the above description, blockchain technology
has a tamper-proof mechanism and a security and confiden-
tiality mechanism based on encryption, which is of great
B. Advantages of blockchain technology significance to ensure the safe sharing of data in the edge
As a distributed data recording system that provides a network.
secure trust mechanism, blockchain technology is of great Our main contributions of this paper are described as
significance to the development of various fields at present. follows.
This technology has the advantages and characteristics of 1) Starting from the structure and technology of the
multi-centralization, multi-party maintenance, time series data, blockchain itself, we outline its role and type, analyze
smart contract [23], immutable, open consensus, security and its key characteristics, and then make a brief summary
trust. These features are described in detail below. of its consensus algorithm.
First, blockchain, as a decentralized distributed system, uses 2) We systematically discussed the research and application
a multi-centralized consensus approach to establish trust mech- of blockchain technology in various fields from the
anisms. The verification, accounting, storage, maintenance and perspective of academia and industry.
transmission of transactions in the blockchain all rely on 3) We summarize the current challenges and research
the distributed system structure. Each blockchain node can progress of blockchain technology, and suggest possible
distribute the same mathematical problem to select nodes future research trends.
among multiple distributed nodes for the final mining block, The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section
and complete the verification and verification of transactions II briefly introduces the background of blockchain architec-
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ture and discusses the related work. In the Section III, we In addition, in order to enhance the usefulness of blockchain
summarize the overview of blockchain technology research in on resource - and power-constrained devices, people propose
multiple fields from both academic and industrial perspectives, a new DAG-Structured blockchain, based on directed acyclic
including the research and application of blockchain technol- graph architecture. In chain-structured blockchain, a new
ogy in federated learning, reinforcement learning, cloud edge transaction must be validated before attached to the main
computing, intelligent transportation, smart grid and IoT. We chain, which is called synchronous consensus. Different from
describe the current challenges about blockchain in Section IV, it, tangle adopts an asynchronous consensus, which is more
and introduce the research progress of blockchain technology efficient in improving system throughput.
respectively. Possible future research trends are described in
Section V. Section VI concludes this paper.

II. B LOCKCHAIN ARCHITECTURE

A. Blockchain structure
Blockchain is a sequence of blocks, which holds a complete
list of transaction records like conventional public ledger.
Figure 1 shows the basic structure of the blockchain, where
TX represents a specific transaction on the blockchain. The un-
derlying data structure of the blockchain is shown in Figure 2.
The blockchain starts from the genesis block, and the orderly
one-way connection in the way of Hash pointer constitutes the
whole blockchain, and the validity of transactions on the chain Fig. 3. DAG-structured blockchain.
is guaranteed according to the longest chain legal principle and
consensus algorithm. As shown in Fig. 3, DAG-structured blockchain is not
constrained by the single main chain and forks all the time,
the relation among transactions looks like a tangled net. This
novel architecture and consensus mechanism can improve
network throughput and system response time theoretically.
IOTA[27], Byteball[28], and NANO are three representative
DAG-structured blockchains.
Fig. 1. An example of blockchain which consists of a continuous sequence
of blocks.
B. Blockchain type
A block on the blockchain is composed of two parts: a Blockchain is broadly categorized into three types: pub-
block and a block. The block contains data records generated lic or permissionless blockchain, private or permissioned
within a certain period of time that cannot be tampered with. blockchain, and consortium blockchain[29]. We compare these
Specifically, the block contains information such as the block three types of blockchain from different perspectives. The
version, Merkle tree root hash, timestamp, parent block hash, comparison is listed in Table 1.
and nonce. A block consists of a transaction counter and In a public blockchain, there is no dominant authority
all transactions within the block. The maximum number of and no party has more power than others in the network.
transactions that a block can contain mainly depends on the Participants can enter and exit at any time according to their
size of a single block and the size of each transaction, and wish. Similarly, any participant can validate the transaction
the maximum number of transactions essentially represents due to its public nature. In Bitcoin, for example, miners can
the throughput performance indicator of the blockchain. The validate the transactions and receive Bitcoins as rewards. With
typical digital signature algorithm used in blockchains is the a private blockchain, a centralized structure is followed, where
elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) [26]. a single entity has full power to validate the transactions and
make decisions. The private blockchain is more efficient, easy
to implement, utilizes fewer energy resources, and is faster
compared to the public blockchain. Besides, with the consor-
tium blockchain, not every member has the same permissions.
A few members of the blockchain network are assigned certain
privileges to validate the new blocks. Other members can also
validate but must reach a consensus before implementation.
Different consensus algorithms are implemented depending on
the requirements and environment.
Consensus algorithms are the core of blockchain and
determine how it will work. It is the critical technology
that describes the security and improves the performance
Fig. 2. Diagram of the underlying data structure of the blockchain. of blockchain. A consensus algorithm means an agreement,
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TABLE I
C OMPARISONS AMONG PUBLIC BLOCKCHAIN , CONSORTIUM BLOCKCHAIN AND PRIVATE BLOCKCHAIN

Property Public blockchain Consortium blockchain Private blockchain

Consensus determination All miners Selected set of nodes One organization
Read permission Public Could be public or restricted Could be public or restricted
Immutability Nearly impossible to tamper Could be tampered Could be tampered
Efficiency Low High High
Centralized No Partial Yes
Consensus process Permissionless Permissioned Permissioned

TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF S MART C ONTRACT P LATFORMS

Platform Language Consensus Protocols Permission

Ethereum Solidity, Serpent, LLL, Mutan PoW Public

Corda Java, Kotlin Raft Private
Fabric Java, Golang PBFT Private
Rootstock Solidity PoW Public
EOS Python, JavaScript, Golang and PHP BFT-DPOS Public
Stellar C++ Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) Consortium, Private

used in a decentralized network communally to collectively Decentralization. In conventional centralized transaction

make a decision when it is needed. Its properties include systems, each transaction needs to be validated through the
non-repudiation, authentication, decentralized control, trans- central trusted agency (e.g., the central bank), inevitably
parency, and byzantine fault tolerance[30]. Authors[31], elab- resulting to the cost and the performance bottlenecks at the
orated the five components of the consensus algorithm: (1) central servers. Contrast to the centralized mode, third party
block proposal, (2) block validation, (3) information propa- is no longer needed in blockchain. Consensus algorithms in
gation, (4) block finalization, and (5) incentive mechanism. blockchain are used to maintain data consistency in distributed
In addition, famous consensus algorithms are such as Proof network.
of Work (PoW), Proof of Skate (PoS), Proof of Existence Persistency. Transactions can be validated quickly and in-
(PoE), Proof of Authority (PoA), etc. Another term smart valid transactions would not be admitted by honest miners.
contracts [32] are deployed in blockchain as a digital agree- It is nearly impossible to delete or rollback transactions once
ment between two or many other parties. The concept of they are included in the blockchain. Blocks that contain invalid
smart contracts was first proposed by Nick Szabo[33] in 1994 transactions could be discovered immediately.
and was first implemented in Ethereum. Smart contracts are Anonymity. Each user can interact with the blockchain with
computer programs that can be consistently executed by a a generated address, which does not reveal the real identity
network of mutually distrusting nodes, without the arbitration of the user. Note that blockchain cannot guarantee the perfect
of a trusted authority. Being embedded in blockchains, smart privacy preservation due to the intrinsic constraint (details will
contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be be discussed in section IV).
enforced automati-cally without the intervention of a trusted Auditability. Bitcoin blockchain stores data about user
third party. Based on its pre-defined function, it can store, balances based on the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO)
process information, and write outputs. To prevent tampering, model [11]: Any transaction has to refer to some previous
smart contracts are copied to each node in the blockchain. unspent transactions. Once the current transaction is recorded
Besides, a smart contract enables transaction traceability in into the blockchain, the state of those referred unspent trans-
FL as well as irreversibility[34]. actions switch from unspent to spent. So transactions could be
Table 2 compares Ethereum, Fabric, Corda, Stella, Root- easily verified and tracked.
stock (RSK) and EOS from the following aspects such as Credibility. As a distributed system, blockchain adopts
execution environment, supporting language, Turing com- a consensus algorithm to ensure the validity of on-chain
pleteness, data model, consensus protocols, permission and transactions. Double-spend attacks are prevented using UTXO
application. structures, a unique data structure that ensures that the input
for every transaction on the chain has a legitimate source.
At the same time, because the Hash value link is used, the
C. Key features of blockchain
modification of on-chain information depends on the contents
In summary, block chain has the following characteristics. and calculation order of a series of data in the previous
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TABLE III
C OMPARISON OF MAJOR CONSENSUS MECHANISMS

PoW PoS DPoS Raft

Application Scenarios Public blockchain Permissioned blockchain Permissioned blockchain Consortium blockchain
Degree of decentralization Fully decentralized Fully decentralized Fully decentralized Semi-decentralized
Accounting node Full network Full network Selected nodes Leader-based
Response time About 10 minutes About 1 minute About 3 seconds Second level
Throughput About 7 TPS - About 300 TPS -
Storage efficiency Full ledger Full ledger Full ledger Full ledger
fault-tolerant 50% 50% 50% 50%

block. The huge cost and uncertain results brought by such the system, so the authenticity of node information can be
tampering ensure that the data on the chain is difficult to guaranteed. Although the PoS consensus algorithm reduces the
tamper with. At the same time, the blockchain consensus waste of computing power and speeds up the computing rate
mechanism guarantees that the latest blockchain is accurately to a certain extent, with the longer the blockchain exists, some
added to the blockchain in the shortest possible time, and the long-standing nodes are likely to have huge rights, resulting in
blockchain information stored by the nodes is consistent and too much concentration of interests, and it is difficult to fairly
does not fork or even resist malicious attacks. carry out node block selection. PoA consensus algorithm can
effectively reduce the waste of computing power resources and
D. Consensus algorithm of blockchain avoid 51% computing power attacks. The algorithm mainly
selects the blockchain node through voting for block account-
The consensus algorithm of blockchain technology is an
ing. After selecting the accounting node, the transaction will
important means for decentralized distributed network nodes
be directly sent to the node for authentication, so there is a
to reach consensus, so that in the absence of a central node,
centralized problem and low efficiency.
each node can still efficiently collaborate to record and store
transaction data. There are three typical consensus algorithms: III. M ULTI - FIELD APPLICATION RESEARCH
Proof of work[35], Proof of authority (PoA)[36], and proof
A. Blockchain-based federated learning
of stake (PoS)[37]. A comparison of common consensus
mechanisms is shown in Table 3. The traditional federated learning architecture collects and
Among them, PoW is the most traditional consensus mech- aggregates model information of all participants based on a
anism, and its consensus process is mainly based on the central server, and then the central server merges and updates
computing power of each node on the blockchain to carry out the model information to the participants.
mining, which is essentially a hash calculation of transactions. This process may lead to the following three problems:
Ideally, the node that completes the calculation the fastest has 1) The central node may be unstable due to the influence
the accounting right of the block and gets the corresponding of service providers or other computing tasks;
mining reward. The blockchain network based on the PoW 2) The central node may favor some clients, resulting in
consensus algorithm is completely decentralized, does not unfair system;
need to structure trust institutions, and the block rate of the 3) If the central node is attacked or malicious, the training
whole network is completely dependent on the computing of the model will be damaged or the data privacy will
power of the network, at the same time, as long as the be disclosed.
computing power of the attacker does not exceed half of the In addition, the central node is usually far away from the
computing power of the whole network, transactions can be terminal, and it is easy to be eavesdropped or tampered with
recorded normally, and cannot be tampered with, so it is a safe by attacks during the interaction process. In order to solve
and trusted method. However, the method based on computing the above problems caused by the central structure, decen-
power will inevitably cause a large amount of computing tralization through the edge network is an effective method.
resources and energy waste in the mining process, and nodes In order to ensure the security and privacy of parameter
with more computing power will inevitably generate more aggregation in the edge network, federated learning combined
rewards, and the hash calculation time is long, resulting in a with the blockchain technology in the edge network shows its
long block cycle. PoS consensus algorithm reduces the waste advantages of security and convenient coordination. In fact,
of computing power compared with PoW consensus algorithm. at present, many studies have taken blockchain technology as
The algorithm uses virtual resources such as the number of the infrastructure of federated learning to realize the task of
tokens held by a node or token time to characterize the equity model aggregation of federated learning through blockchain
of each node, and uses the blockchain node with the highest technology, and the incentive mechanism in blockchain also
equity to make the final accounting for the block. Based on provides technical solutions to improve the enthusiasm of
the consensus algorithm, the rights and interests of nodes participants to participate in the training of federated learning
will be depreciated because of the damage to the security of model.
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Blockchain as a decentralized distributed storage architec- of federated learning are still blocked based on the tradi-
ture, with its asymmetric encryption and consensus algorithm tional consensus mode within the chain. Therefore, further
to ensure that it can not be tampered with and cannot be optimization of the block delay within the chain can effectively
forged, so as to ensure the authenticity of the parameters of the improve the efficiency of the system. It can be seen that the
federated learning process. Although the traditional federated federated learning framework based on blockchain technology
learning process is decentralized through blockchain technol- has become an important direction for the development and
ogy, the security of the federated learning model storage and research of federated learning. However, in addition to the
update process has been greatly improved, but the introduction blockchain mechanism to ensure the security of data, the
of blockchain also brings many new problems and challenges, throughput rate of blockchain itself is limited, which will limit
for example, the transactions of the blockchain network are the efficiency of federated learning. In the current research,
randomly arrived and randomly blocked. This will inevitably more consideration is given to optimizing the model update
cause a large waiting delay for each periodic federated learning process of federated learning. There is no consideration for
process; Moreover, because of the dynamic change of network the optimization of the blockchain mechanism as well as the
resources, it is difficult to predict the block time of each round, mechanism of the system itself.
so it is difficult to adjust and control the convergence time of
federated learning. In addition, blockchain block is usually
based on computing power or equity block, compared to the
previous centralized structure, the block process will consume
more delay and energy consumption.
Once the federated learning process has decentralized the
centralized structure using the edge network, it is difficult
for the participants to coordinate and interact safely and
effectively under the condition of mutual distrust. Generally,
the distributed system builds trust based on trusted third-party
institutions or organizations to provide trust authentication
and cryptographic interaction. However, in the absence of
trusted third-party institutions or organizations, it is difficult
for distributed systems to directly establish trust relationships.
Therefore, blockchain technology has important implications
for establishing a secure and trusted system for federated
learning[38]. Figure 4 shows the architecture of a federated
learning network based on blockchain.
C. Xu et al. [39] proposed an asynchronous federated Fig. 4. Federated learning network architecture based on blockchain.
learning framework with dynamic scaling factor based on
blockchain. The framework addresses the issue of trust be-
tween devices primarily through blockchain, and at the same
B. Blockchain with reinforcement learning
time, proposes new dynamic scaling factors to help improve
FL efficiency and accuracy. The framework mitigates the im- Currently, reinforcement learning is mainly used to opti-
pact of low-performance devices while being just as efficient mize the performance of blockchains. Currently, most IIoT
as traditional FL and has the added benefit of alleviating trust applications rely on centralized servers for data processing
issues between IoT devices. H. Jin et al. [40] considered the and transmission, which exposes data to security risks as well
problem that the existing blockchain-based federated learning as high operational costs and latency. Therefore, data security
solutions perform poorly when the data in the blockchain- and efficiency become key issues for IIoT.
based federated learning (BFL) cluster is sparse. A direct To address the above issues, blockchain is widely rec-
solution is to collect as many devices as possible to es- ognized as a promising solution for building a secure and
tablish a large BFL cluster. These devices may be located efficient data storage/processing/sharing environment in the
in geographically distant regions and far apart, which will IIoT. Blockchain was originally used as a Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
result in high communication latency, which will result in ledger for Bitcoin economic transactions, which can ensure
system inefficiencies for BFL due to frequent communication data security and efficiency by enabling anonymous trusted
in blockchain consensus. So they propose CFL, a cross-cluster transactions and removing various intermediaries. Despite
FL system facilitated by cross-chain technology that divides the significant benefits of blockchain technology, traditional
large clusters into multiple smaller clusters, each within its blockchain systems struggle to provide the scalability needed
own geographic area and organized by BFL. CFL connects to meet the high transaction throughput demands of the IIoT.
multiple BFL clusters, where only a few aggregated updates In fact, scalability has become a key issue for blockchain
are transmitted over long distances across clusters, thereby to be used as a common platform for different services and
improving system efficiency. The design of CFL focuses on applications. Bitcoin, as the first blockchain-based cryptocur-
cross-chain consensus protocol to ensure the safe exchange of rency, can only confirm about 3-4 transactions per second
model updates between clusters, while the upload parameters on average, and Ethereum has increased throughput to about
 8

14 TPS, which is still not enough to handle high-frequency The limited computing and storage resources of edge servers
trading scenarios such as the Industrial Internet of Things. not only need to provide support for relevant application
In recent years, many teams have been working to achieve services, but also need to cache data frequently accessed by
a universal, scalable, and deployable blockchain platform. users, so deploying blockchain should save server resources as
It is mainly divided into two kinds according to different much as possible. In a cloud computing environment, multiple
optimization angles. One is on-chain optimization schemes copies of data backup are placed in multiple data centers to
such as adjusting block sizes and intervals (e.g., Bitcoin Cash), cope with the access requests of a large number of users in
improving the block out process (e.g., Bitcoin-NG), proposing different locations, but the placement of data copies should
new consensus mechanisms such as proof of equity (PoS), take into account the storage cost of the data center, the access
proof of commission risk (DPoS), and actual Byzantine fault delay of users, and the transmission cost between servers. The
tolerance (PBFT)(e.g., Cardano and EOS). Sharding technol- blockchain system oriented to the edge computing field should
ogy (e.g. Zilliqa). One is the off-chain optimization scheme, optimize and improve the blockchain to reduce the overhead
which aims to reduce redundancy on the main chain using side of block transmission and storage. Farhadi et al. [43] proposed
chains, multi-chains (such as Cosmos and AION), lightning a blockchain system supported by fog computing architecture,
networks, payment channels (such as Raiden networks and but each fog node needs to save complete data, resulting
TeeChan), etc. in huge network transmission costs and node storage costs.
In order to deal with the dynamic and high-dimensional Ayoade et al. [44] proposed a decentralized data management
characteristics of IIoT systems, M. Liu et al. [41] designed a system, which uses smart contracts to manage access rights
DRL-based algorithm to dynamically select/adjust block pro- and save the hash of data in blocks, reducing the storage
ducers, consensus algorithms, block sizes, and block intervals cost of blocks, but storing complete data in additional devices
to improve performance. In it, a performance optimization still increases the storage cost. Huang et al. [45] proposed
framework for blockchain IIo T systems is proposed for the an edge-computing oriented blockchain system, which realizes
first time to improve the performance of data security and the optimal storage strategy on edge devices including mobile
efficiency, which considers the four-fold tradeoffs of scalabil- devices, improves the proof-of-stake mechanism to meet the
ity, decentralization, security and latency. M. Liu et al. [42] edge environment, and reduces the storage cost of nodes.
proposed a new blockchain vehicle networking performance However, the device storing blocks is an intelligent device
optimization framework based on deep reinforcement learning with limited resources and high mobility.
(DRL) to maximize transaction throughput while ensuring The edge cloud environment of cloud edge aggregate
the decentralization, delay and security of the underlying computing meets the distributed requirements of blockchain
blockchain system. In this framework, we first analyze the deployment, and the blockchain can be deployed in the edge
performance of blockchain systems in terms of scalability, cloud to ensure the security and reliability of data uploaded
decentralization, latency, and security. DRL technology is used at the edge end. However, the shortcomings of blockchain
to select block producers and adjust block size and block storage occupation and resource consumption still hinder the
interval to adapt to the dynamic changes of vehicle networking deployment of blockchain in the edge cloud, and the main
scenarios. Simulation results show that our proposed frame- task of the edge server is still to process the task of uploading
work can effectively improve the throughput of blockchain- edge devices to achieve real-time effect, and the blockchain
enabled vehicle-connected systems without affecting other deployed in the edge server should save server resources as
characteristics. much as possible. Obviously, this poses a challenge to the
deployment of blockchain, and researchers have designed a
lightweight blockchain LBlockchainE that is suitable for the
C. Blockchain and cloud-edge computing edge cloud in the cloud edge converged computing environ-
Blockchain is considered to be the prototype of the next gen- ment.
eration of cloud computing, and the combination of blockchain
and cloud computing is a hot research area. In November
2015, Microsoft proposed the concept of blockchain as a D. Blockchain and intelligent transportation
service (BaaS), deploying blockchain as an application service Blockchain applications in smart transportation are equally
in the cloud. This is similar to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) widespread. Based on the immutability and traceability of
model, where users can interact with different technologies in blockchain, some parking reservation solutions can be de-
a low-risk environment provided by the Azure cloud platform. signed in combination with the reputation mechanism. Cur-
Tencent FiT released a white paper on blockchain solutions in rently, the application of blockchain technology in the Internet
April 2017, building an enterprise-class blockchain infrastruc- of Vehicles (IoV) has received some attention. In order to
ture platform, using blockchain as the underlying underlying solve the problems in iot, some researchers have proposed
technology, adding modules such as operation monitoring different combinations of iot and blockchain solutions (such
and user management to achieve effective supervision of the as privacy protection, vehicle life cycle, vehicle supply chain,
system, so as to achieve a safe, reliable and flexible blockchain vehicle edge computing, electronic toll collection).
cloud service. Users can flexibly and autonomously implement Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is critical to cope
various blockchain applications based on the basic framework with traffic events, e.g., traffic jams and accidents, and provide
provided by the platform. services for personal traveling. Although some researches have
 9

investigated the integration of blockchain and ITS, they mainly allows the creation of distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) networks
focus on data sharing, energy delivery, trust management, where untrusted members can interact in a verifiable way
blockchain-enabled crowdsensing, and blockchain network without a trusted intermediary. With blockchain, transactions
architecture. However, to the best of our knowledge, existing can be managed in ledger form, making microgrids more pow-
researches ignore the blockchain safety, the brought latency erful. These transactions may include electricity transactions,
by blockchain and the trade-off between these two metrics. currency transactions or even records of the flow of electricity
in the network.
At present, electricity trading has been able to realize
online trading, but this trading method is still in a rela-
tively preliminary stage, that is, the use of centralized central
database to store and process electricity consumption data and
transaction data, this method may encounter network attacks
in the Internet, and at the same time, the data center operator
as an intermediary between the seller and the buyer in elec-
tricity trading. There is no guarantee of trusted transactions,
so blockchain technology could enable new power trading
systems to solve the above problems.
Moreover, with the continuous expansion of the scale of
power and the gradual opening of the power market, the
operational stability and security of the power grid tend to
decline, and the power grid is heavily dependent on external
power, which is difficult to meet the power supply needs of
diverse users, and the development of new energy, the problem
of new energy consumption and utilization is more and more
serious. In view of this, an environmentally friendly, efficient
Fig. 5. The framework of DRL-based algorithm for ITS transaction and flexible micro-grid system integrating power generation,
selection[46]. distribution and sale has emerged. The development of micro-
grid helps to solve the problem of new energy consumption,
When blockchain and ITS are combined, for transaction
and its deployment at the receiving end makes it easy to meet
selection, we need to consider the data size, waiting time in the
the diversified needs of the receiving end users. Blockchain
transaction pool and blockchain environment. However, it is
is known as the ”next generation Internet”, as a decentralized,
rather challenging to select suitable active miners from RSUs,
low trust cost, information cannot be tampered with distributed
since the reliability and computing power of RSUs need to
ledger system, its combination with distributed microgrid
be evaluated. To solve the problem, a DRL-based algorithm
system has become a research trend.
is proposed to select transactions and active miners, and the
During the construction of the new power system, due to
corresponding framework is shown in Fig. 4. Z. Ning et al.
the access of various subjects such as micro-grid, distributed
[46] put forward a secure, efficient and distributed ITS system,
generation unit and new energy power system, as well as the
and formulated it as a multi-objective optimization problem,
improvement of the intelligence of the new power system,
i.e., minimizing the system latency, maximizing the data safety
the power dispatching data presents the characteristics of
and user utility. In order to solve the formulated problem, we
decentralized data sources, large data volume and high data
decomposed it into two subproblems, and proposed two cor-
transmission frequency. The interactive ability of data trans-
responding algorithms. The DRL-based algorithm can make
mission and processing in power system, especially in power
a satisfied trade-off between blockchain security and latency,
dispatching system, is required to be higher. At present, the
and the DIADEM algorithm is able to choose task computation
power dispatching data mostly adopts one-to-many transmis-
modes for vehicles in a distributed way. Extensive experiments
sion mode, and the higher dispatching authority only interacts
demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms, i.e., the DRL-
with the lower dispatching authority within the jurisdiction.
based algorithm can reach higher blockchain safety and lower
However, on the one hand, this kind of interaction brings
blockchain latency, and the DIADEM algorithm can obtain
great pressure to the uplink data transmission channel, and
larger social welfare than benchmark methods.
it is not easy to maintain and manage. On the other hand, the
efficiency of data sharing and interaction between dispatching
E. Blockchain and power system agencies at all levels, dispatching systems and other systems
Blockchain promises to change the way we execute global is low, and it is impossible to synchronize power dispatching
value transactions. Therefore, it is very important to explore data in real time and dynamics. Moreover, the risk of power
the application of this new technology in the field of energy. dispatching data being tampered during transmission cannot
This part mainly expounds the application of blockchain in the effectively ensure the security of power dispatching data.
energy field from the perspective of energy trading and power Thus, it brings some difficulties to the development of new
grid operation. We see blockchain as a distributed system that scheduling services such as load storage and load scheduling.
can provide trust between different and independent parties. It The power dispatching data processing method based on
 10

blockchain first verifies the identity information of the power Xiong et al. [118] introduce edge computing for mobile
dispatching system. When the identity information verification blockchain applications and present a Stackelberg game model
passes, a secure channel between the power dispatching system for efficient edge resource management for mobile blockchain.
and the blockchain is established for the data interaction They reduce computational requirements of mobile devices by
between the power dispatching system and the blockchain, leveraging edge computing. In addition, there are some other
which can effectively prevent unauthorized users from ob- challenges that also brought in the meantime when introducing
taining power dispatching data in the interaction process. the novel design of blockchain into IIoT systems.
Improve the reliability and confidentiality of data interac-
tion, and then establish a safe channel to realize the power IV. C HALLENGES & R ECENT ADVANCES
dispatching data of the power dispatching system and the Although blockchain has been widely used in many fields
data processing results of the blockchain, and carry out data and achieved great success, and based on its huge potential is
interaction between the power dispatching system and the still being studied. But at the same time, it also faces many
blockchain to realize the safe interaction of the whole process challenges that limit its further application. Below, we list
of power dispatching data up-chain, on-chain processing and some of the key challenges and recent research developments
reading, and can synchronize the power dispatching data in from the perspective of blockchain application limitations.
real time and dynamically. Effectively reduce the difficulty
of maintenance and management of a large amount of power
dispatching data. A. Performance optimization
In addition to that, Blockchain technology are also widely Performance optimization is mainly divided into two per-
used in Power flow[47]–[49], Emission Reduction[50]–[52], spectives, one is the optimization for specific scenarios, and
Energy Markets[53]–[75], Batteries[76], [77], Demand Re- the other is the optimization for the overall transaction per-
sponse[78]–[84], Electric Vehicles[85]–[94], Security and Pri- formance of the blockchain. In resource-constrained scenar-
vacy[95]–[106], and Other[107]–[114]. ios, the computing and storage resources of each node are
limited, but the proof-of-work based consensus algorithm
of blockchain itself needs to consume a lot of computing
F. Blockchain and IoT
resources to compete for bookkeeping rights, which is not
The integration of the Internet of Things and industry is applicable in cloud-edge computing scenarios. At this time,
an important means to promote industrial automation and the low-energy characteristics of the proof-of-stake mechanism
information. IIoT helps reduce errors, reduce costs, improve can be used in combination with lightweight blockchain to
efficiency and enhance security in manufacturing and indus- determine the ownership of accounting rights through a small
trial processes, enabling a higher level of integrity, availability amount of competitive computing and node resources. The
and scalability in the industrial sector. However, security optimization of the overall transaction performance for the
attacks and failures could cause huge headaches for the global blockchain is mainly because of the blockchain expansion
iot network. For example, central data centers are vulnerable problem, with the increase of transaction volume, it will in-
to single point failures and malicious attacks such as DDoS, evitably bring huge storage costs, and increase the blockchain
Sybil attacks, etc. In addition, there is a risk of leakage of transaction delay. The nodes participating in the consensus
sensor data stored in data centers. In addition, communication must store all transactions to verify the legitimacy of the
between iot devices may be subject to data interception, and transaction on the blockchain, in addition, due to the block size
the credibility of the collected data cannot be guaranteed. and block time limits, the transactions that the blockchain can
In recent years, with the emergence of blockchain, the process in a certain period of time are fixed, which is not in
idea of combining blockchain with the Internet of Things line with most transaction scenarios. Current performance opti-
has gained widespread attention [115]–[117]. Leveraging the mization is mainly based on blockchain storage optimization,
characteristics of blockchain’s tamper-proof and decentralized blockchain redesign, and reinforcement learning to improve
consensus mechanism, there is an opportunity to address the performance implementation. In order to meet the challenges
security issues in the IIoT systems described above. of blockchain systems in IIoT, J. Huang et al. [99] proposed
There are some existing research on this topic, for example, a directed acyclic graph structured blockchain system based
O. Novo[115] proposes an access control system based on on the IIoT consensus mechanism of credit. An adaptive PoW
the blockchain technology to manage IoT devices. However, algorithm for power-constrained iot devices is used to reduce
the system is not fully built on a distributed architecture power consumption in the consensus mechanism and improve
because of the usage of the central management hub. Once system throughput by utilizing its asynchronous consensus
the management hub is failed or attacked, IoT devices con- model, which can adjust the difficulty of the PoW based on
nected to it become unavailable. Z. Li et al.[102] exploit the behavior of the nodes, reducing the difficulty for honest
the consortium blockchain technology to propose a secure nodes and increasing the difficulty for malicious nodes. They
energy trading system. But they do not consider privacy issues, also proposed an access control scheme based on symmetric
such as the sensitive data disclosure risk, and thus it cannot cryptography in a transparent blockchain system, providing
guarantee sensitive data confidentiality. The aforementioned users with a flexible approach to data rights management.
systems all adopt chain-structured blockchains in IoT systems, In terms of storage optimization, there are metadata-based
which are overloaded for power-constrained IoT devices. Z. blockchain research and lightweight blockchain research.
 11

B. Consensus algorithm the consistency and imtamability of transaction records. How-

ever, the ledger sharing mechanism in blockchain technology
Blockchain technology is essentially a peer-to-peer dis-
also brings privacy threats, and the privacy protection of
tributed database that maintains the consistency of the
user identity, account address, transaction content and other
blockchain system through consensus algorithms, realizes trust
information has become the focus of research. In the actual
between different nodes and calculates the corresponding
use of the blockchain system, in order to ensure the traceable,
rights and interests of each node. POW consensus algorithm
verifiable and other characteristics of the recorded data on
is a proof-of-work consensus mechanism and one of the core
the blockchain, all data must be disclosed to all nodes in
technologies of Bitcoin. However, with the continuous innova-
the blockchain network. This feature, while ensuring security
tion of blockchain technology, the defects of POW consensus
and verifiability, allows malicious attackers to directly access
algorithm in performance and security are more and more
the data recorded in the blockchain ledger and snoop on
obvious, and improved protocols based on POW consensus
user privacy through analysis of the data. By analyzing the
algorithm are constantly proposed. In the POW Consensus
transaction data recorded in the blockchain ledger, the attacker
protocol, new coin rewards and transaction fees protect the
discovers the rules, associates the different addresses and
security of the Bitcoin network. If a greedy saboteur is able
transaction data of the user, and further corresponds to the
to concentrate more computing power than an honest node,
real identity of the user. Such attacks mainly rely on address
it launches a 51% attack. From an economic perspective,
clustering and identity information mining. In order to prevent
the benefits of following the rules of the Bitcoin system are
the disclosure of personal privacy, the existing research is
in most cases greater than the benefits of an attack. The
similar to the method of network privacy protection, which
shortcomings of POW consensus algorithm are mainly in the
realizes information concealment and concealment by mixing
following three aspects.
personal information with other users’ information.
Waste of resources. Mining requires a lot of hash operations,
In order to resist the ledger analysis technology, according
requires electricity and various computing resources, and the
to the assumptions based on the technology, the researchers
hash values found do not actually have any practical use value.
propose a defense mechanism for exchanging assets and
The network performance is low. Because the POW consen- confusing addresses, namely, address obfuscation mechanism.
sus algorithm limits the time of bitcoin block to 10 minutes, Different users exchange assets with each other through trans-
transaction confirmation takes at least 10 minutes, and cur- actions, so as to achieve the effect of confusing user addresses
rently only supports 7 transactions per second, which is not and protecting the privacy of each user. Because the address
suitable for high-concurrency commercial applications. obfuscation mechanism is carried out through the exchange
PoW consensus algorithm computing power centralization. of assets, it is usually called the mixing mechanism, and
At present, the mining pool is the main force, and it is basically the transaction used to exchange assets is called the mixing
impossible for individual miners to survive, and the mining transaction.
pool with high computing power has the option, which leads
to the concentration of computing power.
V. P OSSIBLE FUTURE TRENDS
The core contradiction of POW algorithm is block size
and block interval. Increasing block capacity can improve Blockchain has shown its potential in both industry and
throughput, but too many blocks will cause network conges- academia. In this section, we discuss possible future directions
tion, increase the time and efficiency of inter-node consensus, from three aspects: blockchain testing, artificial intelligence,
and may reduce block efficiency. Reducing the outgoing block and blockchain applications.
interval can also increase throughput, but the shortening of the
outgoing block interval will cause more frequent chain forks A. Blockchain testing
and increase security issues such as double flowers. Therefore, Many different types of blockchains have emerged recently,
with the development of public chain consensus mechanism, and as of now, coindesk has more than 700 cryptocurrencies
POW consensus algorithm has produced many variants. There listed on it. When incorporating blockchain into their business,
are two ways to improve its performance and security. One users must select the type of blockchain to meet their business
is to transform the growth mode of the chain, redistribute requirements. Therefore, there is a need for a recognized and
accounting rights, and reduce disorderly competition and block universally applicable blockchain testing mechanism to test
interval without changing the core of POW proof-of-work. One different blockchains. At the same time, blockchain perfor-
is not to modify the content of the POW consensus algorithm, mance is an important indicator of blockchain application, and
and control the transaction volume on the chain through the blockchain testing is also conducive to objectively evaluating
off-chain expansion mechanism to improve the efficiency of the stability, scalability, security and other performance indi-
the blockchain. cators of a blockchain.
Blockchain testing can be divided into three phases: se-
lection phase, performance testing phase and operation and
C. Privacy protection
maintenance testing phase. In the selection stage, the type of
The blockchain-based distributed ledger integrates a variety blockchain and its matching with the business scenario are
of technologies such as asymmetric encryption systems, P2P mainly tested. The performance test stage mainly tests dif-
networks, consensus algorithms, and smart contracts to ensure ferent performance indicators of blockchain, which is mainly
 12

divided into single indicator test and business scenario indi- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
cator test. The single indicator test only tests the blockchain This work described in this paper was supported by the
performance indicators, while the business scenario indicator National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.
test needs to test the important performance indicators in the 61862063, 61502413, 61262025; the National Social Science
scenario combined with the specific scenario. The operation Foundation of China under Grant No. 18BJL104; the Science
and maintenance test phase mainly tests the convenience and Foundation of Young and Middle-aged Academic and Tech-
stability of blockchain operation and maintenance. nical Leaders of Yunnan under Grant No. 202205AC160040;
the Science Foundation of Yunnan Jinzhi Expert Workstation
under Grant No. 202205AF150006; the Open Foundation of
B. Artificial intelligence Yunnan Key Laboratory of Software Engineering under Grant
No. 2020SE301; the Science Foundation of ”Knowledge-
The combined application of AI and blockchain technology
driven intelligent software engineering innovation team”.The
is still in the exploratory stage, but from the point of view
authors would like to thank Prof.Xuan Zhang for his construc-
of reinforcement learning methods being used to optimize
tive comments.
blockchain performance, AI technology is bound to be able to
At the same time, we also want to thank Dr.Liu Jinzhuo,
assist blockchain. As a law and regulation on the blockchain,
Software School of Yunnan University, for his guidance in
the essence of smart contract is to reach a contract call through
writing this article. In addition, I also want to thank Fan
a transaction, so it can be seen that its essence is not a smart
Qiyuan, Yu Hao, Zhao Haiyang for their efforts in the work
contract. And AI technology helps build intelligent prophecy
of this paper.
machines so that smart contracts can become smarter.
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Science and Technology, Chendu, China, in 2022.
10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.065.
He is currently studying for a master’s degree in
[108] T. Fan, Q. He, E. Nie, and S. Chen, “A study of pricing and trading
the School of Software, Yunnan University, Kun-
model of Blockchain & Big data-based Energy-Internet electricity,” in
ming, China. His current research interests include
IOP conference series: Earth and environmental science, IOP Publishing,
computer vision.
2018, p. 052083.
[109] A. Goranović, M. Meisel, L. Fotiadis, S. Wilker, A. Treytl, and T.
Sauter, “Blockchain applications in microgrids an overview of current
projects and concepts,” in IECON 2017-43rd annual conference of the
IEEE industrial electronics society, IEEE, 2017, pp. 6153–6158.
 16

Haiyang Zhao received his Bachelor’s degree in

Geotechnical and Urban Underground from Hunan
University of Science and Technology, China in
2022.
He is currently studying for a master’s degree in
the School of Software, Yunnan University, Kun-
ming, China. His current research interests include
computer vision and autonomous driving.