Deconstructing Blockchains: A Comprehensive Survey on Consensus, Membership and Structure

It is no exaggeration to say that since the introduction of Bitcoin, blockchains have become a disruptive technology
that has shaken the world. However, the rising popularity of the
paradigm has led to a flurry of proposals addressing variations
and/or trying to solve problems stemming from the initial
specification. This added considerable complexity to the current
blockchain ecosystems, amplified by the absence of detail in many
accompanying blockchain whitepapers.
Through this paper, we set out to explain blockchains in a
simple way, taming that complexity through the deconstruction
of the blockchain into three simple, critical components common
to all known systems: membership selection, consensus mechanism
and structure. We propose an evaluation framework with insight
into system models, desired properties and analysis criteria, using
the decoupled components as criteria. We use this framework to
provide clear and intuitive overviews of the design principles
behind the analyzed systems and the properties achieved. We
hope our effort will help clarifying the current state of blockchain
proposals and provide directions to the analysis of future proposals.