Blockchains: Decentralized and Verifiable Data Systems (Synthesis Lectures on Data Management)

This book takes readers through the sensational history of blockchains and their potential to revolutionize database systems of the future. In order to demystify blockchains, the book capitalizes on decades of research and field testing of existing database and distributed systems and applies these familiar concepts to the novel blockchain system. It then utilizes this framework to explore the essential block platform underpinning blockchains, which is often misunderstood as a specific attribute of cryptocurrencies rather than the core of the decentralized system independent of application. The book explores the nature of these decentralized systems, which have no single owner and build robustness through a multitude of stakeholder contributions. In this way, blockchains can build trust into existing systems and thus present attractive solutions for various domains across both academia and industry. Despite this, high-impact and real-world applications of blockchain have yet to be realized outside of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The book establishes how this new data system, if properly applied, can disrupt the sector in much the same way databases did so many years ago. The book explores the fundamental technical limitations that may be preventing blockchain from realizing this potential and how to overcome or mitigate them. Readers who are completely new to blockchains will find this book to be a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in blockchain technology. Readers with some experience of blockchains, for example through developing cryptocurrencies, will likely find the book’s database perspective enlightening. Finally, researchers already working with blockchain will learn to identify existing gaps in the design space and explore potential solutions for creating the next generation of blockchain systems.

Pingcheng Ruan is a Ph.D. graduate of the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore, under the guidance of Professor Beng Chin Ooi. He is the winner of the Best Paper Award at VLDB 2019 and the Research Highlight Award at ACM SIGMOD 2020. His doctoral thesis earned an Honorable Mention for the ACM SIGMOD 2022 Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award. His research interest focuses on blockchains, distributed systems, databases, and all other data processing platforms. In 2016, he graduated from the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University with a Bachelor’s Degree with First Class Honors.

Tien Tuan Anh Dinh is an Assistant Professor in the Information System and Technology Design (ISTD) pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. His research interests intersect with distributed systems, databases, and security. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham, UK, with a focus on applying formal methods to verify security properties of P2P systems. He spent a few months, respectively, at Singtel as a research engineer and at Microsoft Research in the networking and systems group. He was a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), working on cloud-based systems, and a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS), working on databases and security.

Dumitrel Loghin is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore (NUS) also working in the Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme (SBIP) and part of the Database Systems Research Group. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the NUS in 2017, his Master’s degree in Advanced Computer Architectures from the Politehnica University of Bucharest in 2012, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the same university in 2010. His research interests include parallel and distributed computing, blockchain and distributed database systems, advanced computer architectures, embedded systems, and general performance of computer systems.

Meihui Zhang is a professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), China. Before joining BIT, she was an Assistant Professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). She obtained her PhD from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her main research interests include Big Data Management and Analytics, Large-scale Data Integration, Modern Database Systems, Blockchain Systems and AI. She is a winner of 2020 VLDB Early Career Research Contribution Award and 2019 CCF-IEEE CS Young Scientist Award. She is also a co-author of VLDB 2019 Best Paper, IEEE ICDE 2018 best paper runner up, and 2019 ACM SIGMOD Highlight Award paper. Meihui has served as Research Track Associate Editor of VLDB 2018-2020, VLDB 2023, SIGMOD 2021, SIGMOD 2023, ICDE 2018 and ICDE 2022-2023. She is serving as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) and Survey Track Editor of Distributed and Parallel Databases. She is a trustee of VLDB endowment.

Gang Chen is a Professor and Dean of Computer Science at Zhejiang University as well as the Director of the Zhejiang University Software Institute. He was selected as the Distinguished Professor of the Yangtze River Scholars Award Program by the Ministry of Education in 2017 and as a third-batch national Million Plan technology innovation leader; he won the Zhongchuang Software Talent Award in 2012 and was selected as the New Century Talent Support Program of the Ministry of Education in 2007. His research interests are in the field of database and big data research, including the direction of batch-streaming-mixed big data real-time processing technology, cloud database management technology, and Internet big data processing technology. His papers have been published in CCF Class A international journals and academic conferences, andhis research work won the VLDB 2014 Best Paper Award. He has won the first prize for the Science and Technology Progress Award by the Ministry of Education, the first for Science and Technology by Zhejiang Province, and two second prizes for the National Science and Technology Progress Award.