Decision support system for blockchain (DLT) platform selection based on ITU recommendations: A systematic literature review approach

Blockchain technologies, also known as Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), are increasingly being explored in many applications, especially in the presence of (potential) dis-/mis-/un-trust among organizations and individuals. Today, there exists a plethora of DLT platforms on the market, which makes it challenging for system designers to decide what platform they should adopt and implement. Although a few DLT comparison frameworks have been proposed in the literature, they often fail in covering all performance and functional aspects, adding that they too rarely build upon standardized criteria and recommendations. Given this state of affairs, the present paper considers a recent and exhaustive set of assessment criteria recommended by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). Those criteria (about fifty) are nonetheless mostly defined in a textual form, which may pose interpretation problems during the implementation process. To avoid this, a systematic literature review regarding each ITU criterion is conducted with a twofold objective: (i) to understand to what extent a given criterion is considered/evaluated by the literature; (ii) to come up with ‘formal’ metric definition (i.e., on a mathematical or experimental ground) based, whenever possible, on the current literature. Following this formalization stage, a decision support tool called CREDO-DLT, which stands for “multiCRiteria-basEd ranking Of Distributed Ledger Technology platforms”, is developed using AHP and TOPSIS, which is publicly made available to help decision-maker to select the most suitable DLT platform alternative (i.e., that best suits their needs and requirements). A use case scenario in the context of energy communities is proposed to show the practicality of CREDO-DLT. •Blockchain (DLT) standardization initiatives are reviewed.•To what extent ITU’s DLT assessment criteria are covered in literature is studied.•A mathematical formalizations of the ITU recommendations are proposed.•A decision support tool (CREDO-DLT) is designed for DLT platform selection.•An energy community use case is developed to show the practicality of CREDO-DLT.