Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 34 (2022) 6719–6742

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of King Saud University –

Computer and Information Sciences
journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com

Emerging Trends in Blockchain Technology and Applications: A Review

and Outlook
Ahmed G. Gad a,⇑, Diana T. Mosa a, Laith Abualigah b,c, Amr A. Abohany a
a
Faculty of Computers and Information, Kafrelsheikh University, Kafrelsheikh, Egypt
b
Faculty of Computer Sciences and Informatics, Amman Arab University, 11953 Amman, Jordan
c
School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Pulau Pinang 11800, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: At present times, Blockchain technology is gaining more attraction with every passing day, as it has rev-
Received 19 July 2021 olutionized the traditional trade due to its distributed ledger feature, every record in this ledger is
Revised 24 January 2022 secured by rules of cryptography which makes it more secure and tamper-free. This naturally led to
Accepted 5 March 2022
the emergence of various types of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, which builds on a technology com-
Available online 16 March 2022
monly known as Blockchain. The rapid evolution of research on Blockchain calls for more research studies
for investigating and analyzing the current knowledge in this field through a systematic technical study
Keywords:
that shows the impact and significance of the related literature since the inception of the technology in
Blockchain
Cryptocurrency
2013. From this point, in this paper, a state-of-the-art review is conducted on the most influential articles,
Consensus conference papers, and review papers related to Blockchain published from 2013 to 2020 and indexed by
Systematic review the Web of Science Core CollectionTM (WoS) world’s literature database. To attain the desired objective,
Web of Science (WoS) after presenting an inevitable, brief overview of Blockchain technology, the collected papers have closely
Funding agencies been analyzed along seven key research questions. Subsequently, vital valuable findings, such as the top
Blockchain applications 10 influential papers, yearly publications and citation trends, the favorite publication venues, the hottest
Open challenges research areas, and the most supportive funding bodies are reported, which may offer several implica-
Future directions
tions about the status quo and emerging trends and frontiers of Blockchain, to guide towards establishing
a baseline for both fresh and experienced researchers and practitioners before initiating a future research
project on Blockchain. Furthermore, a rigorous discussion is provided on Blockchain application in diver-
sified domains, along with different versatile use cases. Lastly, a brief insight is presented into open chal-
lenges and potential future advancements in the field of Blockchain. Summing up, this paper is meant to
assist newbies in exploring and designing new Blockchain solutions, bearing in mind existing demands
and challenges.
Ó 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6720
2. Blockchain overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6722
2.1. The structure of Blockchain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6722
2.2. How Blockchain works? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6722
2.3. Characteristics of Blockchain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6723
2.4. Types of Blockchain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6724
3. Research methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6724
3.1. Research questions and motives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6724
3.2. Locating an apposite research engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6724
3.3. Search query string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6725

⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A.G. Gad), [email protected] (D.T. Mosa), [email protected] (L. Abualigah), [email protected]
(A.A. Abohany).
URLs: https://ahmedgad.com (A.G. Gad), https://www.amrabohany.software (A.A. Abohany).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2022.03.007
1319-1578/Ó 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
A.G. Gad, D.T. Mosa, L. Abualigah et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 34 (2022) 6719–6742

3.4. Literature search protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6725

4. Descriptive analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6726
4.1. RQ1: How are Blockchain publications distributed and cited in recent years?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6726
4.2. RQ2: From the number of publications, what are the main research areas investigated in Blockchain? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6726
4.3. RQ3: According to the number of citations, which Blockchain papers are the most influential? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6727
4.4. RQ4: Which publication venues are the most popular to publish Blockchain papers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6727
4.5. RQ5: Which funding agencies are the topmost supportive of Blockchain research works? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6727
4.6. RQ6: From the given main research areas, what are the key application areas of the Blockchain domain?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6727
4.6.1. Financial applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6729
4.6.2. Business and industrial applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6729
4.6.3. Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6731
4.6.4. Health-care management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6731
4.6.5. Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6731
4.6.6. Security and Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6732
4.6.7. Internet of Things (IoT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6732
4.6.8. Big Data management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6733
4.6.9. Cloud and edge computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6733
4.6.10. Miscellaneous applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6733
4.7. RQ7: Which are challenges and perceived deficiencies currently pressing for further investigation along with future research
opportunities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6734
4.7.1. Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6734
4.7.2. Blockchain interoperability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6734
4.7.3. Security and privacy issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6734
4.7.4. Quantum resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6734
4.7.5. Selfish mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6735
4.7.6. Artificial intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6736
4.7.7. Lack of governance, standards, and regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6736
5. Discussion on research streams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6736
6. Research validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6737
7. Conclusions and remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6738
Declaration of Competing Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6738
CRediT authorship contribution statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6738
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6738

1. Introduction (Kshetri, 2018), health-care (Esposito et al., 2018), and reputation

systems (Dennis and Owen, 2015). Incorporating business transac-
Since the digital cryptocurrency, so-called Bitcoin, has been tions, information security, privacy, and guarantee of safety within
innovated in 2008 (Nakamoto, 2008), a diverse range of research- an online environment has become necessary to enhance produc-
ers and practitioners have paid considerable interest to Blockchain tion. The use of information and communication technology has
technology. Blockchain technology acts as the ledger used for tak- enhanced economic growth (Farhadi et al., 2012). It is worth men-
ing records of all Bitcoin transactions as seen in Bitcoin applica- tioning that over $1 billion were invested in 2016 only by technol-
tions (Fanning and Centers, 2016). The records of transactions are ogy companies and financial services on deploying Blockchain.
made justly public within the Blockchain framework, putting the Moreover, the next few years are expected quite to witness a dra-
aspect of privacy to the test. Everyone within the modern business matic increase in this amount (Harty, 2018).
technology environment would be able to ascertain the details of On another side, system security concerns within the Internet
transactions because the current traditional banking system can have sparked debate on the security and privacy of online transac-
maintain this form of privacy through confidential record-keeping. tions, which the emergence of Blockchain technology development
Blockchain is roughly defined as an individually connected has solved. Gupta and Dubey (2016) have explained that privacy,
array of blocks, each comprising several transactions that yield a security, and trust are key issues for electronic technologies in
distributed, incontrovertible data store that can be used in a broad the present day and that e-commerce security is critical to the
range of applications (Fanning and Centers, 2016), including elec- components that influence e-commerce, such as data security,
tronic voting, crowdfunding, distributed resources, governing of integrity, privacy, and other wider areas of the information secu-
public records, and identity management. Following (Yli-Huumo rity context (Nakamoto, 2008). A primary reason why banks exist
et al., 2016), currency transactions between individuals or organi- is to intervene as a reliable and trustworthy third party in financial
zations are normally consolidated and managed by a third-party transactions (Fanning and Centers, 2016). For instance, an econ-
company. Blockchain enables technology to act as the driving force omy lacking banks and centers its commerce on peer-to-peer trad-
of the next vital revolution within the information technology per- ing as a dynamic factor would make it difficult for both parties in
spective. Several implementations of Blockchain technology are the trade ventures to be trusted. Buying a product online does
extensively used in modern-day business and each implementa- not guarantee that the buyer would get genuine items, which could
tion has its distinct strength in various industries, ranging from be caused by fraud or fake product deliveries. The solution to this
Internet of Things (IoT) (Panarello et al., 2018) and finance stalemate is the adoption of Blockchain technology (Casino et al.,
(Fanning and Centers, 2016) to supply chain management 2019), which has been proposed in this article. With the help of

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Blockchain, people currently have an alternative, trusted third covered in the survey. In Table 1, it is clear the reasons why
party to facilitate these online transactions. Exploring Blockchain another systematic review is necessary, highlighting how this
technology subjects is critical as it fosters trust between peer-to- review is different from peers in terms of the involved aspects.
peer networks due to its considerations regarding security and pri- One of the most notables with the compared systematic reviews
vacy concerns within the Internet environment for business- is that each of them is closed to the discussion of a certain main
oriented personalities and organizations. subject area and its linkage to Blockchain. For example, the studies
Over the recent years, Blockchain technology has grown rapidly, (Wang et al., 2019; Pournader et al., 2020; Queiroz et al., 2019) dis-
opening up plenty of knowledge gaps for the research community. cussed only Blockchain application to supply chains. Others solely
As a result, recent years have witnessed a remarkable amount of addressed the use of Blockchain in the health-care domain (Agbo
research endeavors in the domain of Blockchain (Cruz et al., et al., 2019; Hölbl et al., 2018), agriculture (Bermeo-Almeida
2018). Based on the data gathering method adopted in this study, et al., 2018), business administration (Alharby and Van Moorsel,
Web of Science (WoS) has been alone indexing more than 7000 sci- 2017; Batubara et al., 2018; Konstantinidis et al., 2018), and so
entific papers in recent years. With the increasing number of pub- on. Also, some of these reviews are limited/very limited to either
lications in the Blockchain domain, comprehensive research proposing inclusive research questions, presenting reflective visu-
studies are needed to investigate an overview of the current body alizations, or conducting year-wise comparisons that infer trend-
of relative knowledge. To this end, researchers and practitioners ing of the underlying subject. Meanwhile, ours (present study) is
have been provided – through a few review papers – with recent relatively more comprehensive and not tied to just one area or
achievements and challenges regarding Blockchain (Panarello domain, making it a good thorough reference for researchers and
et al., 2018). Nevertheless, it has not been yet reported a systematic practitioners: (i) we conduct a state-of-the-art review on Block-
literature review of the recent scientific studies conducted under chain papers indexed by WoS by formulating seven research ques-
the domain, based on WoS as a literature database. Hence, for tions along with motives behind them (see Section 3.1), (ii) a
the steady progress in this area to be maintained, a rigorous review descriptive analysis is done along with many supporting visualized
of the state-of-the-art in Blockchain domain is a must to explore representations, pursuing satisfactory answers to the research
the topic, adopting the major aim of providing another helpful questions (see Section 4), and (iii) we reveal the yearly publication
guide to the Blockchain community. trends since the inception of the Blockchain technology in 2013 up
There appears to be a lack of concrete, systematic reviews of the to now.
Blockchain literature in a more comprehensiveness sense. For Moreover, these above-mentioned shortcomings of previous
example, some researchers preferred to solely focus on Blockchain studies have primarily prompted us to conduct this work. In partic-
applications within a certain domain (e.g., health-care Agbo et al., ular, this paper contributes to the systematic collection, character-
2019; Hölbl et al., 2018; Chukwu and Garg, 2020, energy sector ization and analysis of the Blockchain research papers dated
Andoni et al., 2019; Parmentola et al., 2021, supply chains and between 2013 and 2020 and indexed by WoS Core CollectionTM
logistics Pournader et al., 2020; Queiroz et al., 2019; Fosso (for the sake of simplicity, hereafter referred to as WoS). A system-
Wamba et al., 2020, industry Mistry et al., 2020; Li et al., 2019, edu- atic procedure was adopted to collect and select articles from the
cation Alammary et al., 2019, agriculture Bermeo-Almeida et al., scientific database, WoS, to realize a number of carefully picked
2018). Others opted to discuss the QoS aspects (e.g., privacy articles. To meet this demand, a systematic study of Blockchain lit-
Liang and Ji, 2021, scalability Sanka and Cheung, 2021, security erature has been undertaken to enlighten scholars and practition-
Gupta et al., 2020) in the Blockchain. Table 1 lists some of existing ers who are active in the Blockchain discipline. The proposed study
well-cited systematic literature reviews in this context and their aims to help naive readers, researchers, and practitioners under-
contrast against our study with regard to subject area (main topic), stand and learn about Blockchain technology by inspiring learning
formulation of research questions, visual representations of find- to reduce the current knowledge gap by conducting an compre-
ings, year-wise comparisons of publication trending, and years hensive systematic review of the current WoS literature about

Table 1
Present study’s differentiation from existing systematic literature reviews.

Research Publication Main topic Research Visual Year-wise Years covered

year questions? representation? comparisons?
Wang et al. (2019) 2019 Blockchain technology for future supply chains Yes No No –
Andoni et al. (2019) 2019 Blockchain technology in the energy sector No Limited No –
Alharby and Van 2017 Blockchain-based smart contracts Yes No No –
Moorsel (2017)
Agbo et al. (2019) 2019 Blockchain technology in health-care No Yes Yes 2016 – 2018
Hölbl et al. (2018) 2018 Use of Blockchain in health-care Yes Limited Yes 2015 – 2018
Pournader et al. (2020) 2020 Blockchain applications in supply chains, Yes No No –
transport, and logistics
Queiroz et al. (2019) 2019 Blockchain and supply chain management Very limited No Yes 2013 – 2018
integration
Batubara et al. (2018) 2018 Challenges of Blockchain technology adoption Very limited Very limited No 2016 – 2017
for e-government
Bermeo-Almeida et al. 2018 Blockchain in agriculture Yes Limited Very limited 2016 – 2018
(2018)
Konstantinidis et al. 2018 Blockchain for business applications Yes Very limited No 2015 – 2017
(2018)
Casino et al. (2019) 2019 Blockchain-enabled applications across diverse No Limited Yes 2014 – 2018
sectors
Taylor et al. (2020) 2020 Blockchain cyber-security applications Yes Very limited Very limited 2015 – 1018
Conoscenti et al. (2016) 2016 Blockchain for the IoT Yes No No –
Present study – A synthesis of the above Yes Yes Yes 2013 – 2021

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Blockchain and its applications. This manuscript mainly synthe- Table 2

sizes the past developments in the field along five important Block header components.

dimensions: Component Definition

Block version Keeps track of changes and updates throughout the
1)Top-ten highly cited papers, protocol.
2)Annual publications and citation trends, Merkle tree Is made up of all hashed transaction hashes within the
3)The trendiest research areas, root hash transaction.
Timestamp Provides the date and time of day of a particular event as a
4)The most supportive funding agencies, and fraction of a second for a permanent, encoded record of
5)The most popular publication venues for Blockchain researches. when that event occurred.
nBits The difficulty target which is simply used to adjust how
In addition, this study sheds intense light on some key new much is the hardness for the miners to manage to solve the
block.
insights and future research directions beyond Bitcoin and cryp-
Nonce Usually starts with 0 and increases for every hash
tocurrencies regarding applications of Blockchain derived from calculation, and is altered by miners to create different
previous studies addressed in this paper, as well as some current permutations and generate a correct hash in the sequence.
open issues and challenges, opening up new avenues towards fur- Parent block Links to the previous block, or its parent block, effectively
ther future researches in the field. However, since Blockchain tech- hash securing the chain.

nology is constantly growing at a very fast pace, we have to

mention that our study cannot, in any way, be considered owned by each participant in the network. While the public key
exhaustive. used in decryption is visible to everyone and is distributed
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 throughout the network, the transaction is signed or encrypted
introduces an overview of Blockchain architecture and its working using the private key, which facilitates the decryption of the subse-
nature. Section 3 outlines the methodological approach adopted quent transaction.
herein to perform the systematic review. In Section 4, the retrieved
literature is analyzed descriptively. We present discussion on the 2.2. How Blockchain works?
conceivable phenomena of the trends observed in the analytics
and comparisons in Section 5, threats to validity in Section 6, and In a decentralized Blockchain network, a private key
finally conclude the paper in Section 7. cryptography-based digital signature is employed at a node to ini-
tiate a transaction, considered digital assets transferred as a data
2. Blockchain overview structure between peers in the network. An unconfirmed transac-
tion pool is used to store all transactions, and a flooding protocol,
In principle, Blockchain can be defined as a digitalized public known as Gossip protocol, is used to propagate those transactions
ledger, in which all digital transactions would be recorded as a data in the network. Then, based on some preset criteria, these transac-
structure ‘‘Completed Transaction Blocks” or in chronological tions need to be chosen and validated by peers (Karame et al.,
order, and this is stored across a network in a distributed manner. 2012; Kroll et al., 2013; Nakamoto, 2008).
Consensus Agreement between various parties is roughly
2.1. The structure of Blockchain defined as consensus. This term originated from the idea of war,
where a few generals may prefer to attack while others prefer to
Like a public ledger, the information of all transactions is stored retreat. Therefore, an agreement must be reached, or mission fail-
in a sequence of blocks that make up the Blockchain. A reference ure is more likely to occur if only a few generals are ready for war.
hash belonging to the previous block (the parent block) links these Due to being a distributed network, reaching consensus in Block-
blocks to each other. While ‘‘Genesis block” refers to the starting chain is a major challenge. The distributed nodes cannot be verified
block with no parent block. As shown in Fig. 1 and Table 2, a block for their identical ledgers by an existing central node. Therefore,
in Bitcoin, one major Blockchain instance, is composed of the block the consistency of nodes should be ensured by a protocol. Thus,
header (80-byte long) which includes metadata, such as block ver- consensus plays a major role here (Zheng et al., 2017). A foolproof
sion (4-byte), Merkle tree root hash (32-byte), timestamp (4-byte), consensus mechanism should maintain the coherence and sanity
nBits (4-byte), nonce (4-byte), and parent block hash (32-byte), as of data. The problems of double-spending and Byzantine generals
well as the block body (Liang et al., 2017). could be effectively eliminated through the consensus mechanisms
For example, in an untrustworthy environment, say the Block- of Blockchain (Gramoli, 2020). For example, Proof-of-Work (PoW),
chain network, an asymmetric cryptography-based digital signa- Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
ture is used to validate and authenticate transactions (Zheng (PBFT) are common consensus algorithms (implemented proto-
et al., 2017). In this process, a private key and public key pair are cols) by which, in certain situations, a decentralized network has

Fig. 1. Structure of a Blockchain consisting of a sequence of blocks.

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to agree. A brief comparison of the Blockchain common consensus system, any two peers (P2P) can conduct a transaction in the
algorithms is presented in Table 3. Blockchain network without authentication by the central
To make the idea more concrete, let us assume that someone agency. That way, various consensus procedures can be used
requests a transaction of paying a number of Bitcoins to another by Blockchain to reduce the trust concern. Moreover, the server
person, fulfilled by broadcasting a message in the Blockchain net- costs (the costs of development and operation) can be reduced,
work with information on the transaction amount and the public and at the central server, the performance overheads can be mit-
address of the sender, employing digital signatures (public and pri- igated. In contrast, there are some trade-offs with Blockchain in
vate keys) (Karame and Androulaki, 2016). To validate a transac- many cases. For example, in consensus mechanisms such as
tion, Blockchain uses an algorithm called Elliptical Curve Digital PoW cases of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the server and energy
Signature (ECDS), which ensures that money is only spent by its require higher costs, while the performance is also lower.
true possessors (Yuan and Wang, 2018; Conti et al., 2018). To  Persistency: Thanks to Blockchain, an infrastructure is provided
sum up, the procedure for verifying and validating the requested to quantify the truth (Jabbar and Bjørn, 2017) and validate the
transaction can be outlined as follows: data of producers and consumers. Assuming a 10-block Block-
chain, block No. 10 contains the previous block’s hash, and
1)The transaction is broadcast on a P2P (Peer to Peer) network of the current block’s information is used to create a new block.
nodes/computers. Therefore, in the existing chain, all blocks are linked together.
2)The network of nodes uses well-known techniques, such as Current transactions are even related to the prior transaction.
ECDS, to validate the transaction and user’s status. Now, if any transaction is simply updated, it will significantly
3)A verified transaction may be information for cryptocurrency, change the block’s hash. If any information is modified, the hash
records, contracts, etc. data for all previous blocks must be changed, which is a difficult
4)Once the transaction is verified, a new block of data is created for task that requires a great deal of work. In addition, after a miner
the ledger by linking that transaction to other transactions. generates a block, other users in the network confirm it. Hence,
5)Then, the new block is permanently unalterably appended to the the network will detect any potential manipulation or
existing Blockchain. falsification of data. For this reason, Blockchain equates to an
6)The transaction is considered valid and final. immutable distributed ledger which can roughly be taken as
tamper-proof.
Fig. 2 demonstrates the verification process, assuming a single  Anonymity: To avoid the exposure of identity, a user can inter-
simple transaction (among a bunch of transactions), between two act with a Blockchain network by having multiple randomly
different participants in a Blockchain network. generated addresses within the network (Wang et al., 2017).
As it is a decentralized system, users’ private information is
2.3. Characteristics of Blockchain not monitored or recorded by a central authority. Given its
trustless environment, Blockchain has the potential to provide
There are several key elements that distinguish Blockchain a certain amount of anonymity.
technologies, which can be summarized as follows (Zheng et al.,  Auditability: In a Blockchain network, a digital distributed led-
2017): ger and a digital timestamp are used to respectively record and
validate all transactions. Therefore, if any node in the network is
 Decentralization: In conventional centralized systems, a central accessed, previous records could be easily audited and traced
trusted agency, say a central bank, is utilized to validate each (Yu et al., 2018). For example, in Bitcoin, it is possible to itera-
transaction. Therefore, trust, the main issue in decentralization, tively trace all transactions, making it easy for the data state
is required – along with fail-over, availability, and lift resilience in the Blockchain to be auditable and transparent. However,
– where a better solution could be obtained by creating a decen- tracing money to its origin becomes very hard when the money
tralized P2P Blockchain architecture. Unlike a centralized is tumbled through many accounts.

Table 3
Comparison of Blockchain common consensus algorithms.

Algorithm Description Practical Pros Cons

example
Proof-of- A random value ‘Nonce’ is used by miners to form the Bitcoin and  Very safe as it is less prone to  High energy consumption
Work block header for resolving a mathematical problem in the Ethereum Sybil attacks.  Driven by dedicated rewards
(PoW) hope of obtaining the block header’s hash value which  51% computing power for solving the hash, it may
should not exceed the previous value or a predefined  Miners can get Bitcoins as a run into problems as the
value. Thus, it is unpredictable to know who will generate reward rewards diminish
the next block in the network.  Prevents illegal chain fraud
Proof-of- Blockchain adopts the randomization concept to predict Peercoin  Potentially faster than PoW  Encourages miners to stick to
Stake (PoS) the next generator in the network. The single richest protocol their stakes rather than con-
person can dominate the network as that person is less  Low energy consumption verting them into the currency
likely to attack the network. The underlying idea of PoS is  Less potential for hardware  Economic penalties for fraudu-
that it is easier to acquire computing equipment than to centralization lent attempts
acquire a digital currency.  Reduced possibility of a selfish
mining attack
Practical A new round block will be determined based on the Hyperledger  Fast and efficient  The exact participation of
Byzantine following rules. The entire PBFT process is divided into Fabric  Handles one-third of the faulty groups must be approved by
Fault three phases, which are pre-prepared, prepared, and or adversarial nodes parties
Tolerance commit. At least two nodes’ vote is required in favor of a  Small groups can keep a strong  Comes at the cost of anonymity
(PBFT) node entering the next node. The node sends a request to organization because trust is
all other nodes in the network. decoupled from resource
ownership

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Fig. 2. Working nature of Blockchain.

2.4. Types of Blockchain 3. Research methodology

Typically, Blockchain technologies may fall into one of three First, we present the motives behind this study and the research
main categories (Zheng et al., 2017): questions derived from such motives. Second, we describe a num-
ber of required consecutive steps that we followed to identify rel-
 Public Blockchain: The transaction can be checked and verified evant studies. The methodology identifies detailed steps to collect
by everyone in the network, and the process of getting consen- the initial set of articles as well as the inclusion and exclusion cri-
sus is also available to public. Bitcoin and Ethereum are a few teria to obtain a filtered set of studies.
examples of a public Blockchain. Public Blockchain is shown in
Fig. 3a.
3.1. Research questions and motives
 Private Blockchain: Here, the Blockchain is available for every
node to participate, the node is restricted and has strict author-
As mentioned earlier, this research mainly aims at conducting a
ity management to access the data. Examples of private Block-
state-of-the-art review on Blockchain papers indexed by WoS. To
chains include but are not limited to database management,
this end, seven Research Questions (RQs), along with motives
Bankchain, Multichain, and Monax. Private Blockchain is
behind them, are outlined in Table 5. We set out to answer them.
depicted in Fig. 3b.
 Federated/Consortium Blockchain: It is an amalgamation of
public and private Blockchains. Moreover, it means that an 3.2. Locating an apposite research engine
authorized node can be chosen in advance. Moreover, it usually
has business-to-business partnerships. The data can also be seen Accommodating our needs, an appropriate research engine was
as partially decentralized. Examples of consortium Blockchain pursued before collecting Blockchain papers. Among many existing
can be Hyperledger and R3CEV. Consortium Blockchain is shown scientific databases (e.g., Scopus, EBSCO, Google Scholar, etc.), WoS
in Fig. 3c. has been selected as a data source for Blockchain research. This
particular selection of WoS is attributable to several reasons: (i)
Blockchain is convenient, and both have an advantage, so the it is considered as the first and global leading citation index in
types of Blockchain do not matter. However, sometimes remote the scientific community, (ii) it houses high-quality and influential
control like private or consortium Blockchains may be needed, research publications owing to its rigorous selection process, (iii)
depending on what place we use it or what service we offer (Lin WoS currently covers more than 21,100 peer-reviewed, high-
and Liao, 2017). Table 4 illustrates how public Blockchain, private quality scholarly journals (including Open Access journals), books,
Blockchain, and federated/consortium Blockchain are different and conference proceedings published worldwide, and is therefore
from each other. fully respected among academics, and (iv) it has some beneficial

Fig. 3. Types of Blockchain networks.

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Table 4
Classification and main characteristics of Blockchains.

Characteristic Public Blockchain Private Blockchain Federated/Consortium Blockchain

Access Anyone Single organization Multiple organizations
Participants Anonymous (Pseudo) Known identities Known identities
Read/Write Unpermissioned Permissioned Permissioned
permission
Security Could be malicious Trusted Trusted
Consensus Consensus mechanism, PoW, PoS Pre-approvd participants (The Pre-approvd participants (The
mechanism voting/mutliparty-consensus algorithm) voting/mutliparty-consensus algorithm)
Network type Decentralized Partially decentralized Decentralized (a hybrid between public and
private)
Transaction Slow (10 min or more) Lighter and faster (100x ms) Lighter and faster (100x ms)
approval speed
Data in No finality Enabled finality Enabled finality
Blockchain
Energy High Low Low
consumption
Scalability High High Low
Protocol efficiency Low High High
Transparency Low High High
Immutability Infeasible to tamper Controlled and Could be tampered Could be tampered
Observation Disruptive in terms of disintermediation Cost effective due to low latency Cost effective due to low latency
Examples Bitcoin, Ethereum, Algorand, EOS, Litecoin, Multichain, Blockstack, Bankchain Hyperledger, R3 (Banking), EWF (Energy), B3i
Factomm, Blockstream (Insurance), Ripple, Corda

analytical features which are impressive for the research

community.
Table 5
Research questions and motivations. 3.3. Search query string
No. Question Motivation
To extract the papers, we identified a query string of related
RQ1 How are Blockchain publications It would help predict the future
terms like ‘‘Blockchain”, ‘‘cryptocurrency”, ‘‘Bitcoin”, ‘‘Ethereum”,
distributed and cited in recent pattern by identifying annual
years? publications and citation trends and ‘‘smart contract”. The initial results of our findings are illus-
in Blockchain. trated in Fig. 4, where the yearly publication trends are revealed
RQ2 From the number of publications, It would enable researchers to over all selected query strings. It is worth mentioning that WoS
what are the main research areas recognize the volume of research data was accessed on 6th January 2021.
investigated in Blockchain? efforts put into every area of
Blockchain, making it easier to
Since the publication of Nakamoto’s paper in 2008 (Nakamoto,
identify potential future research 2008), the number of Bitcoin publications has been escalating con-
lines. tinuously, as shown in Fig. 4. However, between 2016 and 2020,
RQ3 According to the number of It would give researchers and publication trends have experienced a major change as researchers
citations, which Blockchain practitioners a deeper insight into
have started paying more attention to Blockchain than other
papers are the most influential? the most attention-grabbing
Blockchain papers, helping them topics. Based on our findings, in 2019 and 2020, WoS has signifi-
produce high-quality research cantly indexed 3101 and 1754 Blockchain-related research items,
work by adopting pioneering respectively, thereby incentivizing us to adopt our search query
studies and research methods, string as ‘Blockchain’. A detailed overview of our findings is given
thereby impressing the
Blockchain community.
in Table 6.
RQ4 Which publication venues are the It would walk Blockchain
most popular to publish researchers through the process 3.4. Literature search protocol
Blockchain papers? of making a proper decision
where – among different journals
and conferences – to publish their
The three main parts of each paper, title, abstract, and key-
research outcomes. words, were minded while searching using the selected query
RQ5 Which funding agencies are the It would report on institutions or
topmost supportive of Blockchain organizations that are investing
research works? more in Blockchain, releasing an
opportunity for scholars and
those generally excited about
Blockchain to apply for a
Blockchain job or to initiate any
research collaboration.
RQ6 From the given main research It would help identify the
areas, what are the key potential application areas
applications of the Blockchain focused on Blockchain technology
domain? by synthesizing the collected
literature across different areas.
RQ7 Which are challenges and It would help further investigate
perceived deficiencies currently the Blockchain area, hoping to
pressing for further investigation bring out new developments in
along with future research the field.
opportunities?
Fig. 4. Publication trends for each topic per year.

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Table 6
Yearly number of publications of different topics.

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Total

Blockchain 2 10 26 134 602 1,924 3,455 2,949 9,102
Cryptocurrency 0 14 33 57 122 367 699 545 1,837
Bitcoin 22 105 154 203 338 677 1,019 789 3,307
Ethereum 0 2 3 14 65 306 500 379 1,269
Smart contract 0 0 2 22 72 300 554 444 1,394

string. In 2013, the first ever Blockchain paper was published, and 4.1. RQ1: How are Blockchain publications distributed and cited in
therefore, our search was narrowed down to the closed period recent years?
from 2013 to 2020. Subsequently, as of 6th January 2021, 9,084
research papers, including articles (4,342), proceedings papers Observing Figs. 6 and 7, we can get some insights into the pub-
(4,074), reviews (357), early access papers (343), editorial materi- lications and citations of Blockchain research papers indexed by
als (241), book chapter (161), meeting abstracts (31), book reviews WoS. Fig. 6 indicates the rapid growth of the number of Blockchain
(29), letters (18), news items (18), books (13), corrections (10), publications in recent years. It started with publishing only two
data papers (2), retracted publications (1), and retractions (1) were papers in 2013, reaching the maximum in 2019 and 2020, where
retrieved from WoS. Only 8,923 English language papers were in each year, more than 2,500 papers have been published.
included. In order for the final results to be more robust and reli- The number of citations is expected to increase as the number
able, we decided to include only papers of document type: article of Blockchain published papers increases. The results sketched in
(4,219 papers), proceedings paper (4,058 papers), and review Fig. 7 should support this hypothesis. The first citations were only
(351 papers). After a quick screening, some duplicate papers and eight in 2014, followed by 39, 103, and 774 citations in 2015, 2016,
more news items were found during the pilot study and were sub- and 2017. Nevertheless, since 2018, the number of citations for
sequently excluded from retrieving 8,573 records. Moreover, after Blockchain papers within WoS has changed drastically (i.e.,
investigating the titles and abstracts of all research papers, 8,435 5,135, 18,056, 32,124 citations in 2018, 2019, and 2020 respec-
records matched the query and ultimately constructed our final tively). Moreover, those papers that have not yet been cited were
dataset. Overall, several studies have primarily focused on the also analyzed. Fig. 8 provides an annual comparison of the total
technical aspects of Blockchain technology and/or the Blockchain number of papers with the number of papers not cited. According
architecture and were subsequently excluded and sorted because to our findings, out of 8,435 Blockchain papers indexed by WoS
of exclusion. Basically, we identified and filtered the relevant stud- from 2013 to 2020, 3,569 papers ( 42%) have received no cita-
ies in three phases. Fig. 5 summarizes the search process and we tions yet. Yes, a wrong first impression might be made on these
elaborate on each of these phases hereafter. results. It is noteworthy that the highly cited papers are elaborately
Setting them aside, retrieved papers not conforming to the subject to an in-depth analysis in Section 4.3.
inclusion criteria are addressed in this article’s introductory sec- However, if we look carefully at the results, we can find that in
tions, specifically ‘‘Introduction” and ‘‘Blockchain overview”. In only 2019 and 2020, 3,007 non-cited papers ( 84% of all 3,569
addition, refinement features of WoS (e.g., related documents non-cited papers) have been published. This is highly expected
search, multiple refinements of results, etc.) were extensively given the strict selection criteria for publications being indexed
involved. In case of the non-availability of a particular study’s in WoS, which may, in turn, lead to a paper’s citation lag.
abstract, the relevance of the retrieved full text was assessed. All
potentially relevant papers were retrieved in full-text format.
4.2. RQ2: From the number of publications, what are the main research
Because this systematic literature review is conducted based on
areas investigated in Blockchain?
inclusion and exclusion criteria, specific databases, and specific
keywords, the authors would like to put aside the claim that this
There are different knowledge domains provided by WoS, based
review is extensive and free from limitations. However, in its
on which, in this section, all retrieved Blockchain papers were clas-
actual form, the review is believed to relatively represent the col-
sified. Each research area comprises a total number of Blockchain
lected body of literature.
papers that were used to rank the various knowledge domains,
as shown in Fig. 9. As depicted by Fig. 9, the most significant num-
4. Descriptive analysis ber of Blockchain papers has covered the ‘‘COMPUTER SCIENCE”
subject area with 5,301 papers, followed by ‘‘ENGINEERING” with
To find satisfactory answers to the RQs presented in Section 3.1, 3,124 papers, ‘‘TELECOMMUNICATIONS” with 2,114 papers, ‘‘BUSI-
a descriptive analysis was conducted after retrieving and selecting NESS ECONOMICS” with 841 papers, and ‘‘SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY
papers. OTHER TOPICS” with 261 papers. Here, it should be noted that a

Fig. 5. Number of papers (records) included in descriptive analysis.

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been cited 941 times (within WoS) and thus ranked as the most
cited (influential) paper, among many others. The ‘‘IEEE ACCESS”
journal was the publication of this paper in 2016. In addition, the
highest annual average number of citations has been scored by this
paper. It is highly notable that of the ten highly-cited papers, the
USA has hosted five papers.

4.4. RQ4: Which publication venues are the most popular to publish
Blockchain papers?

The most popular venues with at least 80 Blockchain papers are

reported in Table 8. ‘‘IEEE ACCESS” and ‘‘LECTURE NOTES IN COM-
Fig. 6. Number of Blockchain papers yearly published and indexed by WoS. PUTER SCIENCE” publications have, respectively, published 50 and
43 papers, thereby proving themselves as the trendy publication
venues for Blockchain researches. To quantify their impact on the
Blockchain community, those shortlisted venues were also evalu-
ated based on other factors, including the number of citations (in
both cases with and without self-citations), per-paper average cita-
tions, and H-index. Based on the obtained results, supremacy has
been seen to relate to ‘‘IEEE ACCESS” regarding the total number
of citations and H-index, compared to other publication venues.
Notably, ‘‘FUTURE GENERATION COMPUTER SYSTEMS” ranked first
based on the number of citations per paper, confirming the jour-
nal’s reliable reference.

4.5. RQ5: Which funding agencies are the topmost supportive of

Blockchain research works?
Fig. 7. Blockchain papers’ citations (within WoS) per year.

Among the 8,435 papers analyzed in this research, the most

number of papers (i.e., 1,116 papers) have been supported by
‘‘NATIONAL NATURAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION OF CHINA” (NSFC),
followed by ‘‘NATIONAL KEY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PRO-
GRAM OF CHINA” with 317 papers, and ‘‘NATIONAL SCIENCE
FOUNDATION” (NSF) with 226 papers. Detailed information about
the most supporting funding agencies is exhibited in Fig. 10. Those
funding organizations were also evaluated in terms of the total
number of citations received by their supported papers. Accord-
ingly, Fig. 10 shows that more citations (i.e., 9,896 citations) have
been received by NSFC-backed Blockchain papers compared to
other organizations.

4.6. RQ6: From the given main research areas, what are the key
Fig. 8. Annual comparison of the total number of papers with the number of papers application areas of the Blockchain domain?
not cited.
In this subsection, some ‘‘seminal” works (135) of the selected
papers (8,435) are solely picked based on the high impact of papers
single paper might simultaneously belong to several knowledge according to the number of citations and then distributed based on
domains. the application area. The ten main application areas based on
Furthermore, based on the number of citations, those knowl- which the Blockchain technology has been investigated are finan-
edge domains with more than 200 coverage rates were evaluated. cial applications (17 papers), business and industrial applications
Once again, the same pattern was also observed with ‘‘COMPUTER (20 papers), education (9 papers), health-care management (8
SCIENCE”, where the most number of citations (i.e., 36,572 cita- papers), governance (23 papers), security and privacy (11 papers),
tions) were obtained, followed by ‘‘ENGINEERING” (22,147 cita- IoT (16 papers), Big Data management (13 papers), cloud and edge
tions), ‘‘TELECOMMUNICATIONS” (14,708 citations), ‘‘BUSINESS computing (4 papers), and miscellaneous applications (14 papers).
ECONOMICS” (5,558 citations), and ‘‘SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY Fig. 11 presents the percentage (%) of articles according to the
OTHER TOPICS” (1,792 citations). application area.
Since cryptocurrencies represent a large percentage of existing
4.3. RQ3: According to the number of citations, which Blockchain Blockchain networks, most authors have typically categorized
papers are the most influential? Blockchain applications both into financial and non-financial ones
(Crosby et al., 2016; Tasatanattakool and Techapanupreeda, 2018).
The top 10 Blockchain papers that are most cited according to Others have opted to classify them based on the Blockchain version
WoS are listed in Table 7. As shown in Table 7’s most right column, (i.e., 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0) (Swan, 2015; Zhao et al., 2016). In order for
these papers are also ranked according to the yearly average cita- this study to be more robust and comprehensive, an application-
tions. Up to the date of this research, a paper entitled ‘‘Blockchains oriented classification is additionally proposed, similar to that pro-
and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things”, authored by Chris- posed in Casino et al. (2019) and Zhao et al. (2016). To this end,
tidis and Devetsikiotis (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016), has considering the heterogeneity of Blockchain solutions, a compre-
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Fig. 9. Coverage of knowledge domains of Blockchain papers within WoS.

Table 7
Top 10 cited Blockchain references indexed as of WoS (from 2013 to 2020).

Author(s) Paper’s title Source Institution (of first Country Publication Citations Yearly
(journal/confernce) author) Year (within average
WoS) citations
Christidis and Blockchains and Smart Contracts for IEEE ACCESS North Carolina USA 2016 941 (#1) 235.25
Devetsikiotis (2016) the Internet of Things State University (#1)
Zyskind et al. (2015) Decentralizing Privacy: Using IEEE SECURITY AND Massachusetts USA 2015 565 (#2) 113 (#7)
Blockchain to Protect Personal Data PRIVACY WORKSHOPS Institute of
Technology
Zheng et al. (2017) An Overview of Blockchain IEEE 6TH Sun Yat-sen China 2017 444 (#3) 148 (#6)
Technology: Architecture, INTERNATIONAL University
Consensus, and Future Trends CONGRESS ON BIG DATA
Kosba et al. (2016) Hawk: The Blockchain Model of IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON University of USA 2016 431 (#4) 107.75
Cryptography and Privacy- SECURITY AND PRIVACY Maryland (#8)
Preserving Smart Contracts
Xu et al. (2018) Industry 4.0: state of the art and INTERNATIONAL Old Dominion USA 2018 429 (#5) 214.5
future trends JOURNAL OF University (#2)
PRODUCTION RESEARCH
Androulaki et al. (2018) Hyperledger Fabric: A Distributed PROCEEDINGS OF THE IBM Corporate USA 2018 403 (#6) 201.5
Operating System for Permissioned THIRTEENTH EUROSYS (#3)
Blockchains CONFERENCE
Khan and Salah (2018) IoT security: Review, Blockchain FUTURE GENERATION Bahauddin Pakistan 2018 396 (#7) 198 (#4)
solutions, and open challenges COMPUTER SYSTEMS Zakariya
University
Yli-Huumo et al. (2016) Where Is Current Research on PLOS ONE Lappeenranta- Finland 2016 382 (#8) 95.5 (#9)
Blockchain Technology?-A Lahti University of
Systematic Review Technology
Tschorsch and Bitcoin and Beyond: A Technical IEEE COMMUNICATIONS Humboldt Germany 2016 382 (#9) 95.5 (#9)
Scheuermann (2016) Survey on Decentralized Digital SURVEYS AND University
Currencies TUTORIALS
Zheng et al. (2018) Blockchain challenges and INTERNATIONAL Sun Yat-sen China 2018 368 184 (#5)
opportunities: a survey JOURNAL OF WEB AND University (#10)
GRID SERVICES

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hensive literature review of Blockchain applications is presented, Other finance-related areas may include over-the-counter mar-
which is visualized in Fig. 12. Below, a proper classification is pro- kets, asset rehypothecation, proxy voting, automated compliance,
vided for the current Blockchain-enabled applications. syndicated loans’ contingent convertible bonds, and commercial
property and casualty claims processing (McLean, 2016;
McWaters et al., 2016). Finally, Blockchain adoption will ultimately
4.6.1. Financial applications
result in cost savings in the financial sector in areas like business
Currently, Blockchain technology is extensively employed in
operations, centralized operations, compliance, and central finance
economic transactions, prediction markets, in the settlement of
reporting (Treat et al., 2017).
financial assets, business services, and the finance community in
general (Haferkorn and Diaz, 2014). Blockchain is expected to have
4.6.2. Business and industrial applications
an important representation in the sustainable development of
In business and management, Blockchain can be a potentially
global economies, thus generating benefits for all society, including
significant source of exciting innovation via automated, improved,
consumers and the current banking system.
and optimized business processes (Ying et al., 2018; Houssein
Compared to traditional fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies have a
et al., 2021; Houssein et al., 2021; Abualigah et al., 2022;
penurious reserve of value as there is no government intervention
Abualigah et al., 2021; Abualigah et al., 2021). Many IoT-
and thus include reduced price stability. However, a speedy and
Blockchain-based e-business models are emerging. For instance,
low-cost medium of exchange is provided by the Blockchain
Zhang and Wen (2017) proposed a business model in which smart
encrypted cryptocurrencies. Several cryptocurrencies have been
contracts on a Blockchain distributed database are used to perform
developed and used for specific purposes, for example, Bitcoin, a
transactions between devices. In Hardjono et al. (2016), a privacy-
very successful and widely used cryptocurrency around the world
preserving system was proposed based on a Blockchain-based IoT
(Zheng et al., 2018). It is worth mentioning that the value of the
network to – without third party authentication – prove prove-
cryptocurrency is measured in fiat currency (Aras and Kulkarni,
nance manufacturing. Moreover, it has been apparent that Block-
2017). The global financial system subsequently pursues
chain applications offer commercialization opportunities and
Blockchain-enabled applications on financial assets (e.g., derivative
considerable enhancement in the overall performance (Klems
contracts, fiat money, securities, etc.) (Lycklama à Nijeholt et al.,
et al., 2017; Kogure et al., 2017), enabling IoT companies to opti-
2017; Paech, 2017). For example, owing to the better performance
mize their operations and improving credibility in e-commerce
attained by Blockchain technology as a means of trustiness among
(Yoo et al., 2017) while saving cost and time. Furthermore,
users, capital markets have been radically changed, and a more
Blockchain-based applications could serve several enterprises by
efficient way has been offered, to perform cryptocurrency payment
adopting them as business process management systems. In such
and exchange (i.e., e-wallets) (Cawrey, 2014), financial auditing
cases, the Blockchain may be used to maintain each business pro-
(Dai and Vasarhelyi, 2017), general banking services (Cocco et al.,
cess instance, and smart contracts could be employed to perform
2017), loan management schemes (Gazali et al., 2017), digital pay-
the workflow routing, thereby reducing cost, as well as automating
ments (Gao et al., 2018), or derivatives and securities transaction
and streamlining intra-organizational processes (Mendling et al.,
(Wu and Liang, 2017). Notably, Barclays and Goldman Sachs, two
2018; Prybila et al., 2020).
of the world’s biggest banks, have established a Blockchain-
enabled framework for the financial market (Crosby et al., 2016)
 Supply chain and logistics: Blockchain technology has success-
by joining forces with R31. The Global Payments Steering Group
fully been integrated with the modern global supply chain.
(GPSG) (Treacher, 2016), including UniCredit, Bank of America, and
After initially sourced goods are manufactured and distributed
Santander, is another example of bank cooperation. XRP, created
to the end-user, goods are simply defined as a supply chain.
by Ripple2, is the cryptocurrency behind GPSG, which enables global
Supply chain managers decisively aim to produce effective
payment and currency exchanges based on a scalable and interoper-
goods for distribution to ensure customer satisfaction even if
able open-source infrastructure.
they have to falter in the budget.
Another interesting area that may impact cryptocurrencies
Information on product tracking, flexibility, sustainability,
and businesses is Prediction Marketplace Systems (PMSs), which
traceability facilities, and improved quality can be distributed
can be considered information providers or oracles. P2P imple-
across the whole supply chain network using Blockchain tech-
mentations of PMS based on Blockchain can be found in Team
nology, thus improving cost, time, and risk management. In
(2017), a PoW type that permits much faster transactions than
Zhu and Kouhizadeh (2019), the use of Blockchain for increased
Bitcoin, an open-source cryptocurrency featuring Scrypt Merged
accountability and transparency has been thoroughly presented
mining. Under the paradigm of the wisdom of crowds, Augu3,
for different phases of product development. The payment can
a decentralized PMS, allows users – before an event to occur –
be automated with a smart contract when returning a product
to trade shares. Users are rewarded when future real-world events
to the issuer or seller. The supply chain can have consensus-
are correctly predicted faster. Bitshares4 are found in Blockchain
verified real-time tracking, connecting all members on the same
as digital tokens referring to specific assets like products or
platform.
currencies. Token holders may earn interest on currencies and
In Toyoda et al. (2017), a Blockchain-based system was
market products, such as gold, oil, and gas. A stack of financial
designed based on consensus to diminish the counterfeits in
services is offered in BitShares 2.0 in a decentralized Blockchain-
the supply chain through Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
based fashion, including banking operations or currency exchange.
along with the verification of the ownership of products. In Tian
Coinsetter5 is a platform for NYC-based Forex trading in Bitcoins.
(2016), the authors proposed an RFID-based traceability system
Another example is Nasdaq-Citi (Rizzo et al., 2017), a platform
for a Blockchain-based agri-food supply chain. In work, the trust
that facilitates investments in private companies, as well as rela-
and traceability in the entire supply chain were proved by
tionship management.
transferring, processing, and distributing authentic data
1
(Mishra et al., 2018). Thus, the conflicts and judgment in the
https://www.r3.com.
2 supply chain can be deduced by the digital records created with
https://ripple.com.
3
https://augur.net. the Blockchain, RFID, and IoT. All critical information about
4
https://bitshares.org. materials, product quality, location, and transaction processes
5
https://www.coinsetter.com. is maintained in the Blockchain-based supply chain process.
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Table 8
Most popular publication venues for Blockchain research.

Publication venue Publications Citations Without self-citations Per-paper average citations H-index
IEEE ACCESS 516 (#1) 5,242 (#1) 4,255 10.16 33
LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 250 (#2) 2,314 (#2) 2,167 9.26 22
SENSORS 109 (#3) 793 (#5) 713 7.28 14
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL 105 (#4) 1,441 (#4) 1,311 13.72 20
IEEE 2018 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON CYBERMATICS 94 (#5) 223 (#6) 223 2.37 7
FUTURE GENERATION COMPUTER SYSTEMS 81 (#6) 1,694 (#3) 1,611 20.91 19

Fig. 10. Topmost supportive funding agencies to Blockchain.

Fig. 11. Distribution of articles based on application area.

In the current supply chain operations, there are problems in

product deletion management like logistics, reverse logistics,
manufacturing, operation, and origination, and Blockchain-
based product management has been accordingly built to
Fig. 12. Different areas of Blockchain applications.
empower product deletion, and rationalization (Zhu and
Kouhizadeh, 2019).
Moreover, due to the low transparency in the current supply  Energy sector: Potential Blockchain applications in the energy
chain and logistics, the reliability and traceability of the infor- sector are broad and could immensely affect both as far as pro-
mation can be further enhanced by Blockchain-IoT combined cesses and platforms (Wang and Su, 2020). For example, Block-
(Conoscenti et al., 2016), an approach to make the IoT-enabled chain may enable new business models and marketplaces and
vehicles track the shipment process. IoT sensors about pressure, thus contribute to reducing costs, can engage prosumers as
temperature, and motion for the connected devices provide enablers in the energy market in order to create energy-
real-time goods’ updates to be stored in the Blockchain. Once efficient communities, can better handle ownership, data secu-
all data is saved on the Blockchain, smart contracts get fired rity, and complexity along with grids (Mengelkamp et al., 2018),
to allow the listed stakeholders to access the information. can – while preserving privacy requirements – guarantee

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accountability, can enhance the energy market system both in when the issuer (hospital or health-care) agrees with that. Before
terms of transparency and trust, can support the power grid the EHRs are sent to an information consumer, the patient, as well
to operate smoothly by enhancing direct P2P trading, and can as a primary doctor, must approve for only specific records to be
as well better manage demand response by providing an effi- sent, for example, mental health records. In short, Blockchain
cient framework toward more transactive energy operations EHR systems can be viewed as a protocol enabling users to access
and effective utility billing processes (Kyriakarakos and and maintain their health data, thus ensuring security and privacy
Papadakis, 2018). Blockchain may also be employed to issue simultaneously.
certificates of origin, particularly for renewable energy sources
and green energy production (Knirsch et al., 2020), to establish 4.6.5. Governance
energy management schemes for electric vehicles (Zhang et al., Blockchain technology helps governments improve their ser-
2018), and to develop P2P energy transaction schemes (Park vices by nurturing a more transparent government-citizen rela-
et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2019). It should be pointed out that tionship. Services delivered by governments can be improved by
Blockchain technology can also act as an enabler of decarboniz- eliminating bureaucracy and reducing waste to prevent tax fraud.
ing the energy sector, facilitating its transition towards more Throughout the years, the official records of citizens and enter-
decentralized energy sources (Di Silvestre et al., 2018). prises have entrusted governments with managing and holding
them. Using transaction disintermediation and record-keeping,
4.6.3. Education Blockchain-based applications might change how governments
Although Blockchain was originally devised for trustless envi- operate at the local or state level (Hou, 2017). Blockchain’s safety,
ronments where currency transactions are carried out, it can be automation, decentralization, and accountability for handling pub-
applied to the online educational market if we regard the learning lic records could make government services more efficient by
process as the currency. Thus, Blockchain learning emerged eventually obstructing corruption. In particular, in a smart city
(Devine, 2015; Abdelkader et al., 2022), in which teachers could context, business, social, and physical infrastructures could be
pack and place blocks into Blockchain, thinking of the learning integrated to serve along with the adoption of Blockchain as a
achievements as coins. From this perspective, in the case of ubiqui- secure communication platform (Jaffe et al., 2017; Bhushan et al.,
tous learning environments, the issues of privacy, security, and 2020). The ultimate aim of Blockchain governance is to provide –
vulnerability can be tackled using Blockchain (Bdiwi et al., 2017), with the same validity – the same services offered by the state
in addition to storing educational records of reputation rewards and its public authorities in an efficient and decentralized manner.
based on a Blockchain-based distributed system (Sharples et al., Such services comprise voting, taxes, marriage contracts, identifi-
2016). Additionally, Blockchain can be used to improve educational cation, attestation, and registration or legal documents (Swanson,
certificate management by enhancing trust and data security in 2015).
digital infrastructures (Xu et al., 2017), and for credit management
(Turkanović et al., 2018). Furthermore, the digital accreditation of  Digital identification: Typically, two interrelated issues are
academic and personal learning could be enhanced by using encountered with online digital identity: personally identifiable
Blockchain-based applications (Grech and Camilleri, 2017). School information, and access control (Potts, 2019). Centralization of
information hubs could also be established based on Blockchain to information on digital identity is of societal, legal, and political
collect, report, and analyze data about school systems for decision- (and arguably philosophical) importance. A pioneer in the field
making support (Bore et al., 2017). Finally, in scholarly publishing, is the world’s largest national digital identity scheme, released
Blockchain can be adopted to better handle a manuscript submis- by the Government of India, run by the Unique Identification
sion by verifying the manuscript itself (Gipp et al., 2017) and striv- Authority of India (UIDAI), with a 12-digit unique number called
ing to conduct appropriate reviews promptly (Spearpoint, 2017). Aadhaar assigned to each resident (Sen, 2019). In the digital age,
a novel and potentially revolutionary decentralization paradigm
4.6.4. Health-care management has been imposed by Blockchain technology on digital identity.
Recently, a digital transformation in health-care has evolved name, access control on the Blockchain in a passcard identity
with many health-care doctors, hospitals, and machineries to dig- company building, is an innovative company in digital authenti-
itally store the respective health records of patients. The digitized cation. A decentralized and trustless service is provided by One-
medical data provide effortless retrieval and sharing in response to Name so that no central institution or company can control
the need to improvise decision-making based on past medical one’s digital identity.
cases, which is very beneficial for maintaining records legally. Another example is the World Citizen Project (McMillan, 2014),
However, medical data digitization brings a high potential of viola- a decentralized passport service for across-the-globe identifica-
tion of the patient’s privacy, and security (Xia et al., 2017; Esposito tion of citizens. Other public services can also be provided based
et al., 2018). Thus, Blockchain could make a tangible impact in the on Blockchain, such as income taxation systems, patent manage-
health-care industry through versatile applications in many areas, ment, and marriage registration (Akins et al., 2014). There are
such as public health-care management, precision medicine, clini- other projects focused on, such as delegate democracy, in which
cal trials, drug counterfeiting, user-oriented medical research, the voting power is taken by delegates instead of parliamentary
sharing patients’ medical data, online patient access, automated representatives (Swanson, 2015). Similarly, a customizable self-
health claims adjudication, and longitudinal health-care records management practice, namely, Holacracy (Robertson, 2015),
(Al Omar et al., 2017; McGhin et al., 2019; Patel, 2019). In particu- was originated for organizations where self-organizing teams
lar, Blockchain-enabled smart contracts could tackle issues regard- – rather than setting up a typical hierarchical organization –
ing findings’ scientific credibility (selective publication, data manage authority and decision-making.
dredging, endpoint switching, and missing data) in clinical trials  Public sector: In public service, we consider that official institu-
(Nugent et al., 2016), as well as problems concerning informed tions do not even participate in devoting such services to
consent of patients (Benchoufi and Ravaud, 2017). citizens as dispute resolution, reputation, virtual notary,
The management of Electronic health-care Records (EHRs) of Proof-of-Integrity (PoI), Proof-of-Ownership (PoO), and Proof-
patients is perhaps the top-ranked area with a capacity to grow of-Existence (PoE). It should be noted that, in a Blockchain,
(Angraal et al., 2017; Kuo et al., 2017). When a consumer requests PoI, PoO, and PoE are easily verifiable and closely related. In
for patient’s EHRs through an issuer, the Bitcoin will be placed the public sector, Blockchain technology is extensively sought
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by many government agencies around the world (Chiang, 2018), Moreover, Liang et al. (2018) tackled modern power systems to
particularly for utilizing inexpensive, open, distributed, and enhance their security against cyber-attacks based on a distributed
secure database technology to increase efficiency by reducing Blockchain protection framework. In Xu et al. (2018), Docker6 con-
bureaucracy and cost and to authenticate many types of tainers were recalled for IoT and their benefits. A novel architecture
persistent documents (Ølnes and Jansen, 2017). Within this was proposed in Rodrigues et al. (2017), which hybridizes smart con-
framework, other applications of Blockchain could be found: tract technology with Blockchain, pursuing flexible and efficient mit-
e-residency approaches, document verification (Sullivan and igation solutions for Distributed DoS (DDoS) across multiple
Burger, 2017), the development of robust regulatory compliance domains, giving a special emphasis on insecure stationery and porta-
frameworks (De Filippi and Hassan, 2018; van Engelenburg ble devices. Tosh et al. (2017) discussed the capability to enable data
et al., 2019), the invention of more transparent and reliable tax- provenance in Blockchain against potential vulnerabilities. Lastly,
ation mechanisms (Nemade et al., 2019), and land management transactional privacy is another challenging Blockchain-related
(Makala and Anand, 2018). problem. Therefore, it has been sought to improve the anonymity
 Voting: It has always been challenging to maintain the fairness of Blockchains through proposing several methods, such as zero-
and privacy of current voting schemes by building a secure elec- knowledge proof or mixing services (Moser, 2013). Mixcoin
tronic voting system that ensures the transparency and flexibil- (Bonneau et al., 2014), and Coinjoin (Maxwell, 2013), or CoinShuffle
ity that the electronic systems provided. Therefore, shared (Ruffing et al., 2014), are examples of implementing that technique,
electronic voting systems can be implemented through the use which can detect dishonest transaction behaviors, and shuffle output
of Blockchain as a service for enhancing security and reducing addresses by using a third party, respectively.
the monetary cost of holding nationwide elections (Boucher,
2016). A Blockchain-based electronic voting system could
ensure secure and cost-effective elections by adopting smart 4.6.7. Internet of Things (IoT)
contracts while ensuring voters’ privacy. A new opportunity IoT is significantly ramping up recently in the Information and
can certainly be offered by Blockchain technology to surmount Communication Technology (ICT) domain (Abd Elaziz et al.,
the barriers and constraints surrounding electronic voting sys- 2021; Abd Elaziz et al., 2021). IoT systems adopt the centralized
tems, which lays the ground for transparency as well as ensures server-client paradigm, integrating things (or smart objects) with
the integrity and safety and of elections (Moura and Gomes, cloud servers through the Internet and thus providing users with
2017). By utilizing an Ethereum private Blockchain, many trans- various services (Miorandi et al., 2012; Abualigah et al., 2021).
actions can be sent per second using every smart contract aspect The Blockchain and IoT technologies are already vast with their
to unburden the Blockchain. Providing higher transaction expansion possibilities. On the other side, these two areas are myr-
throughput per second, specific additional measures would be iad more intertwined. For instance, despite the drawbacks encoun-
required for larger countries (Kshetri and Voas, 2018). BitCon- tered by distributed Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which are
gress (Hassan and De Filippi, 2021), and Liquid Democracy a pillar of technological and human evolution Kumar and Mallick
(Schiener et al., 2015) are two examples of decentralized voting (2018), robust architectures of Blockchains may enhance their
systems with frameworks adopted to enforce distributed deci- IoT architecture by maximizing its potential while minimizing
sion making. In general, Blockchain offers an independently ver- the deficiencies (Kshetri, 2017; Özyilmaz and Yurdakul, 2017).
ifiable, decentralized, open-source, and peer-to-peer network to Blockchain technology and its inherent capabilities mainly drive
be consistent with domestic legislation while gaining the confi- the investments for implementing decentralized IoT platforms
dence required by voters and election organizers (Hsiao et al., (Novo, 2018). The main idea is that in heterogeneous context-
2017). aware scenarios, secure and auditable data are exchanged
(Casino et al., 2016) with an abundance of interconnected smart
devices (Viriyasitavat et al., 2019). Moreover, efficient manage-
4.6.6. Security and Privacy ment and high scalability of the network are enabled by operating
It can be argued that the privacy issues can be managed in in a decentralized and automated fashion (Sharma et al., 2017).
Blockchain by creating and managing digital identities through Public and private transportation systems, and traditional com-
restricting the rules and policies to accept the Blockchain model merce or even e-commerce can be enhanced by implementing
while keeping the privacy for ownership and control (Henry Blockchain-enabled, independent, and secure real-time payment
et al., 2018). With the proliferation of various mobile devices and services (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016). Agglomerating these
their services, vulnerability to malicious nodes is highly expected. characteristics, one example of applications may be the Filecoin
Based on pattern matching schemes, the suspected files can be (Shafagh et al., 2017), an open-source cloud storage marketplace,
detected by proposing a number of anti-malware filters to store protocol, and cryptocurrency. In the future, the cryptocurrency-
and update the virus patterns on a central server. However, mali- based bank account could be directly linked with the respective
cious attackers can easily reach these centralized countermea- IoT devices (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016) so that services
sures. Hence, the security of distributed networks can be could be handled by performing microtransactions in exchange
significantly improved by incorporating Blockchain technology. In (Huckle et al., 2016), while in the smart grid domain, the energy
particular, in Noyes (2016), a novel anti-malware environment, sale may also be allowed using similar approaches (Li et al.,
BitAV, was proposed, where users on Blockchain can distribute 2017). By implementing Blockchain-based IoT solutions, several
the virus patterns. In this way, the fault tolerance is boosted thanks issues could be solved, such as the high cost of maintenance in
to BitAV. It is also shown that, by using BitAV, the fault reliability the case of centralized approaches (Christidis and Devetsikiotis,
(i.e., less vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks) can be 2016). Moreover, the security of IoT and WSNs could be increased
enhanced, and the scanning speed can be improved. Blockchain based on a decentralized, secure P2P model (Ouaddah et al., 2017),
technologies may contribute to improving the reliability of security keeping the systems up-to-date by providing a higher control of
infrastructures. For instance, due to malicious attacks or hardware IoT devices (Lee and Lee, 2017; Boudguiga et al., 2017). Undoubt-
and software flaws, the dilemma of a single point of failure often edly, the use of Blockchain may be limited by the low capabilities
occurs with conventional Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs). Block- of IoT devices in terms of storage and computational power. In
chain can then be adopted for improving the reliability of conven-
tional PKIs when constructing a privacy-aware PKI (Axon, 2015). 6
https://www.docker.com.

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Buccafurri et al. (2017), an alternative way, a public ledger, was includes the signature, port number, IP address, and the name.
proposed to overcome these drawbacks for the sake of enhancing Thus transactions can be authenticated by the signature and trace-
IoT applications. Dorri et al. (2017) presented other efficient archi- able through the name.
tectures; a secure, lightweight Blockchain-based model was built
tightly for adopting IoT in different application contexts.
4.6.9. Cloud and edge computing
Edge computing, the processing of data at the network edge,
4.6.8. Big Data management
has shown its potential to improve response time, battery life,
Initially, it is a real challenge when a large amount of data needs
bandwidth, data safety, and privacy. The services of the cloud
to be collected, stored, and operated, but the advent of data mining
are pushed into the edge network. In Hatcher and Yu (2018), edge
and machine learning techniques have set the stage for Big Data
computing has been listed for smart home, smart city, and data
analysis (Hatcher and Yu, 2018). Several issues concerning privacy,
sharing and collaboration between networks of long-distance.
security, and centralized trust still stand in the way of the rise of
However, it experiences several challenges concerning system
Big Data in IoT. Then, Blockchain can be adopted to manage the
integration, resource management, the programmability of edge
decentralization of distributed data processing. Unlike other tech-
computing, naming mechanisms, security and privacy issues in
niques, Blockchain empowers data security and solves the privacy
transmission, storage and computation, etc. The authors (Yu
issues in the Big Data domain (Karafiloski and Mishev, 2017). The
et al., 2017; Yu et al., 2013) proposed a cloud computing-based
authors in (Kiyomoto et al., 2017) focused on the way to use Block-
system for enhancing cybersecurity for large enterprise networks
chain technology to anonymize dataset trading. They used Hyper-
with reduced operational delays and can detect threats by parallel
ledger Fabrica to design a Blockchain-based application, in which
cloud computation for both signature and anomaly-based detec-
the nodes – for each data transfer – collect and verify the transac-
tion. Cloud and edge computing both have a significant applica-
tions. In order to stress the importance of trustiness in the Big Data
tion, but with Blockchain, the distribution mechanism, and the
area, Yang et al. (2018) managed to ensure the safe circulation of
consensus process, cloud and edge computing challenges are
data resources by presenting a credible Big Data Blockchain-
resolved. The service contract management of Blockchain for
based sharing model, incorporating the smart contract technology
cloud and edge computing allows programmability for the users.
as well. Do et al. (2017) used a keyword search service along with
Blockchain for distributed centralized large data centres brings
cryptographic primitives to build a system enabling distributed
the consensus and decentralized layer. Sharma et al. (2017) pro-
and secure client data management. Besides, the search and read
posed a cloud architecture based on Blockchain technology with
permissions of the data can be granted by their owner to third par-
fog computing and software-defined networking for the efficient
ties. Similarly, Searchain (Jiang et al., 2020), a Blockchain-based
management of the data produced by the cloud and edge com-
keyword search system, was invented to enable an efficient obliv-
puting. This proposed Blockchain-based architecture provides
ious search (users are unknown to the data supplier, while they
high security, scalability, and resiliency with low latency between
know the chosen keyword and the corresponding ciphertext) in
the computing resources and IoT devices. The cloud computing
decentralized storage over an authorized keyword set. For more
cost and the number of trusted third parties can be reduced sig-
examples, Zyskind et al. (2015) and Azaria et al. (2016) described
nificantly by this architecture. Samaniego et al. (2016) have
systems that enable Blockchain-based decentralized distribution
enlighted edge devices that are less efficient in computational
of sensitive data with PoO.
resources and available bandwidth, leading to fog or cloud. By
Moreover, a Blockchain-based platform enables higher security
measuring the network latency, they have used fog and cloud
in the market of data trading and distribution. To exclusively send
to prove the potential of the IoT application with Blockchain
secured, reliable data to centralized cloud systems, the fog com-
technology.
puters should be appropriately located in the fog computing
(Abualigah and Diabat, 2021; Houssein et al., 2021). Still, signifi-
cant issues may hamper the cloud system due to drawbacks like 4.6.10. Miscellaneous applications
reprocessing and shutdown of fog computers. Major security fea- Blockchain-based applications outside the domains mentioned
tures are brought out by Blockchain technology thanks to digital above are to be described in this subsection. For example, cryp-
signature and consensus among fog computers that enable shar- tocurrency crowd-funding platforms like Swarm, Lighthouse, and
ing and controlling the authenticated transactions. Overcoming bitFyler (Swan, 2015) are starting to use Blockchains (Buccafurri
the security issues of centralized fog computing, Jeong et al. et al., 2017; Zhu and Zhou, 2016). Blockchain can also be used to
(2018) designed a Blockchain-based fog computing platform: manage event tickets securely (Tackmann et al., 2017) or to build
When a fog computer is a shutdown, all transactions are success- autonomous, distributed, secure, and intelligent transport systems
fully restored to the fog computing by the distributed consensus in smart city contexts (Sharma et al., 2017; Adam et al., 2020).
process of Blockchain. The literature has a bulk of cloud-based Blockchain applications may also be adopted as a means of fighting
efficient and decentralized Blockchain solutions which can be poverty (Kewell et al., 2017; Larios-Hernández, 2017) in the
found in Gaetani et al. (2017) and Liang et al. (2017). Such sys- humanitarian sector and philanthropy. As for environmental man-
tems enable the analysis of large volumes of transactions by com- agement, Blockchain technology is expected to make a powerful
bating Big Data challenges (Q. Xu et al., 2018). In Jeong et al. impact, where it could be used within Emission Trading Schemes
(2018), the security issues in fog computing have been as a novel ‘‘emission link” system (Fu et al., 2018). The context of
negotiated. social media can be considered as another exciting application.
Security threats like Sybil attack, IP spoofing, and a single point For instance, end-users could claim ownership, trace, and control
of failure may vulnerate centralized database systems. To ensure all their shared content based on user-centric Blockchain applica-
security issues, Jung et al. (2017) have proposed a Blockchain- tions (Chakravorty and Rong, 2017). Furthermore, some exciting
based searching method as well as a data management system. IT-oriented Blockchain applications may be grid computing
To check the user identity and to authenticate the information, a (Gattermayer and Tvrdik, 2017), Blockchain as a software connec-
digital signature was used for validation to prevent IP spoofing. tor (Teslya et al., 2018), and the establishment of computational
Such a system was developed to locate the gateway and the IP resource sharing systems (Stanciu, 2017). Finally, Blockchain may
address assigned IoT devices by combining UUIDs (Universally also contribute to improving social sharing dynamics (Pazaitis
Unique Identifiers) resulting from these devices. The transaction et al., 2017).
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4.7. RQ7: Which are challenges and perceived deficiencies currently 4.7.3. Security and privacy issues
pressing for further investigation along with future research There is an urgent need to research for tor offers and beyond tor
opportunities? such that privacy issues can be tackled in Blockchain (Henry et al.,
2018). To create and manage digital identities, the rules and poli-
Blockchain technology can be used in a broad spectrum of cies must be restricted to keep privacy for control and ownership
applications to secure data with increased reliability without while accepting the Blockchain model. Transactional privacy is
requiring any central trusted authority. It has attracted researchers another common problem in Blockchain data privacy. The trace-
due to its key characteristics: decentralization, immutability, con- ability of transactions and smart contract operations is of interest
sistency, and security. However, issues and challenges arise like to most businesses and individuals, given that they are propagated
any other emerging technology. In this section, certain limitations across the network. Moreover, transactional privacy cannot be
of Blockchain are discussed, and several avenues of fruitful areas guaranteed enough by such measures as the use of pseudonyms
are developed for drawing further research directions for the (Kosba et al., 2016). For instance, transactional graph structures
future. of cryptocurrencies can be analyzed using existing de-
anonymization approaches (Meiklejohn et al., 2013). Moreover, it
4.7.1. Scalability has already been shown that much sensitive information can be
The prefixed block size and block creation time are efficient for disclosed by Bitcoin’s transactions (Biryukov et al., 2014).
a fixed number of transactions processing, but a high number of Given the similarities between smart contracts and programs,
transactions can cause slower transaction processing. Several errors frequently exist with smart contracts, potentially causing
Blockchain applications experience the scalability issue. For exam- hefty losses. Recent vulnerabilities include the Parity wallet
ple, Bitcoin block size is 1 megabyte, and the average block confir- bug10, the leading cause of the theft of around $280 million, and
mation time is 10 min7. For the high transaction processing, the the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) attack (Siegel,
block confirmation time must be low, but to have the security away 2016), which led to a loss of around $47 million, or thousands of
from the double-spent attack in the subsequent transactions, and recently discovered vulnerable smart contracts (Abualigah et al.,
this average time should be high. To solve this problem, there are 2021). To avoid some of the most critical smart contract vulnerabil-
a few solutions proposed by the researchers. Kim et al. (2018) pro- ities or abuses, many proposals were written to date (Suiche, 2017).
posed solutions like on- and off-chain to change for the main chain Out of them, the most promising proposal could be approaching the
after a transaction processing. Moreover, a side chain to change the problem by limiting the underlying programming language’s expres-
assets of different side chains, a child chain to record the result in the siveness (Chris, 2017). Smart contract checkers (Nikolić et al., 2018)
parent chain, and an interchain for the communication between the is also another solution to trace the vulnerabilities of smart contracts
chains, can be potential solutions. In Henry et al. (2018), the authors and to verify their fairness and correctness. Table 11 lists security
have proposed solutions like lighting protocols, sharding, etc. Fur- and privacy issue-related papers along with their subject area (main
thermore, Rouhani and Deters (2017) have analyzed the better per- topic) and solutions proposed.
formance of Ethereum by addressing the scalability issues. Table 9
lists scalabilty issue-related papers along with their subject area
(main topic) and solutions proposed. 4.7.4. Quantum resilience
Hashes as well as public-key encryption are two basic crypto-
4.7.2. Blockchain interoperability graphic primitives existing at the core of Blockchain and used for
The fast pace growth in the number of Blockchain applications signing transactions. With the early beginnings of Blockchain,
created a huge number of heterogeneous solutions. However, com- quantum computing was way too far. However, it was a must to
plex interoperability issues arise due to the wide diversity of fea- radically revise the situation given recent breakthroughs
tures and implementations, thereby hindering standardization. A (Leymann et al., 2019).
Bitcoin exchange-traded fund is colludely brought to the market In most Blockchains, SHA-256 is the hash algorithm, which
by many companies, especially in the U.S.8. The investment in Bit- would be cracked using 2128 operations using Grover’s algorithm
coins would be easier to access by users and numerous international on a quantum computing machine. While this bolsters SHA-256
funds if the Bitcoin market is more regulated. However, due to the against quantum attacks, this is not the case with the public key
uncontrolled growth of cryptocurrencies, different scenarios causing encryption algorithms most used in Blockchains. Once a big
a crisis may emerge, such as malicious currency exchanges or spec- enough quantum machine is built, the Elliptic Curve Digital Signa-
ulative attacks (Salant, 1983). ture Algorithm (ECDSA) (Johnson et al., 2001), for example, will be
Cryptocurrencies provide many APIs, most of which are not broken, leaving almost all Blockchains insecure. Currently, a signif-
easy to use. Therefore, many solutions have been proposed icant effort is put into evaluating and standardizing post-quantum
towards more interoperable architectures (Kosba et al., 2016). cryptographic primitives. The most promising candidates for the
Blockstream (Scott et al., 2017) is one of the continued efforts, case of public-key cryptography originate from code-based cryp-
which tries to provide hardware and software solutions to compa- tography (Overbeck and Sendrier, 2009) and lattice (Micciancio
nies by coordinating transactions between different Blockchains and Regev, 2009). Apparently, with Blockchain platforms currently
with the major aim of creating new Blockchain-based platforms. designed to last for years to come, a major issue at the moment is
Furthermore, exchanging and purchasing cryptocurrencies are ser- quantum resilience. Nevertheless, in the literature, there are a few
vices offered for gaining more adepts9. Indeed, essential security Blockchain-based quantum-resilient approaches. For instance, in
guarantees are offered by such services for managing all types of Kiktenko et al. (2018), a quantum-safe Blockchain platform was
cryptocurrencies and purchases between cryptocurrencies and legal developed for information-theoretically secure authentication
course’s currencies. Table 10 lists Blockchain interoperability issue- based on an urban fiber network distributed quantum key. More
related papers along with their subject area (main topic) and solu- recently, Rajan and Visser (2019) presented a quantum networked
tions proposed. time machine, in which the Blockchain is encoded into a
secular Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state of non-simultaneously
7
coexisting photons. Table 12 lists quantum resilience issue-
https://blockchain.com/charts.
8
https://www.etf.com/channels/bitcoin.
9 10
https://www.coinbase.com. https://www.parity.io/security-alert-2.

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Table 9
A summary of selected papers on the scalability challenge.

Common challenge Research Subject area Findings (Potential solutions)

For the high transaction processing, the block confirmation time must be low, Kim et al. (2018) Scalability solutions  On- and off-chain to change the main
but to have the security away from the double-spent attack in the on Blockchain chain after a transaction processing
subsequent transactions, and this average time should be high  Aside chain to change the assets of
different side chains
 A child chain to save the result in the
parent chain
 An interchain for communication
between chains
Henry et al. (2018) Blockchain access  Lighting protocols
privacy  Sharding
Rouhani and Deters Ethereum  Pursuing better performance for
(2017) transactions in Ethereum by addressing the scalabil-
private Blockchain ity issues

Table 10
A summary of selected papers on the Blockchain interoperability challenge.

Common challenge Research Subject area Findings (Potential

solutions)
The fast pace growth in the number of Blockchain applications created a huge Kosba et al. The Blockchain model of cryptography  Building interoperable
number of heterogeneous solutions. However, complex interoperability (2016) and privacy-preserving smart contracts architectures
issues arise due to the wide diversity of features and implementations,
thereby hindering standardization
Scott et al. Products and services form the  Hardware and software
(2017) foundations for the financial solutions to companies
infrastructure of the future  Coordinating transac-
tions between different
Blockchains

Table 11
A summary of selected papers on the security and privacy challenge.

Common challenge Research Subject area Findings (Potential solutions)

The traceability of transactions and smart contract operations is of Suiche A decompiler for Blockchain-based  Decompiler for ethereum virtual
interest to most businesses and individuals, given that they are (2017) smart contracts bytecode machine
propagated across the network. Moreover, transactional privacy  Bytecode into readable Solidity-
cannot be guaranteed enough by such measures as the use of syntax contracts
pseudonyms  Static and dynamic analysis of
compiled contracts
Chris (2017) Ethereum and solidity foundations  Limiting the underlying pro-
of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain gramming language’s
programming expressiveness
Nikolić et al. The greedy, prodigal, and suicidal  Smart contract checkers
(2018) contracts at scale  Tracing the vulnerabilities of
smart contracts
 Verifying fairness and correct-
ness of smart contracts

related papers along with their subject area (main topic) and solu- ing, and the public could view the private branch only when
tions proposed. satisfying some requirements. All miners would admit the private
branch due to its lengthiness compared to the current public chain.
4.7.5. Selfish mining Before the publication of the private Blockchain, the resources of
Colluding selfish miners have a ripe opportunity to attack a honest miners are wasted on a useless branch, while the private
Blockchain platform. Generally, it is convinced that the Blockchain chain of selfish miners is mined without competitors. Therefore,
and the happening transaction both could be reversed by the nodes more revenue should go to selfish miners. The selfish pool would
with over 51% computing power. However, according to recent attract rational miners, and the selfish could thus exceed 51%
research, the danger is still exhibited by even nodes with less power quickly.
51% power. In particular, Eyal and Sirer (2014) showed that even Many other selfish mining-based attacks have been proposed to
if cheating is being done using only a small portion of the hashing demonstrate Blockchain insecurity. In stubborn mining (Nayak
power, the network will still be vulnerable. In selfish mining strat- et al., 2016), miners could exploit network-level eclipse attacks
egy, the mined blocks of selfish miners are kept without broadcast- to compose mining attacks to amplify the final gain non-trivially.
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Table 12
A summary of selected papers on the quantum resilience challenge.

Common challenge Research Subject area Findings (Potential solutions)

Evaluating and standardizing post-quantum cryptographic Kiktenko et al. (2018) Quantum-secured  A quantum-safe Blockchain platform for
primitives. The most promising candidates for the case of public- Blockchain information-theoretically secure
key cryptography originate from code-based cryptography and authentication
lattice. Apparently, with current Blockchain platforms, a major  Releasing an urban fiber network dis-
issue at the moment is quantum resilience tributed quantum key
Rajan and Visser (2019) Quantum  A quantum networked time machine
Blockchain using  Encoding Blockchain into a secular Green-
entanglement in berger-Horne-Zeilinger state of non-simul-
time taneously coexisting photons

One of such strategies is the ‘‘trail stubbornness”, in which the Moreover, the accuracy and effectiveness of data increase with
blocks are still mined even when putting aside the private chain. the race in data acquisition across many AI domains (Halevy et al.,
Yet, in some cases, compared to a non-trail-stubborn counterpart, 2009). For public Blockchain systems, interoperability and stan-
it can result in a 13% gain. Sapirshtein et al. (2016) showed that, dardization will improve market prediction solutions and AI algo-
compared with simple selfish mining, more money could be rithms since, via a public ledger, and data will be available. The
earned, and high profits can be made for smaller miners by other above encourage better AI models (McConaghy, 2016) and scalable,
selfish mining strategies. However, the gains are relatively small. more accurate solutions within multiple contexts, enabling data
Moreover, attackers can still gain from selfish mining even with analytics. Big data management can be much easier with the pres-
less than 25% of the computational resources. In order to tackle ence of a secure and verifiable Blockchain structure (Karafiloski
the underlying problem of selfish mining, a novel approach was and Mishev, 2017). However, the use of Blockchain structure in
presented by Heilman (2014) aiming at choosing which branch data analytics implies too much overhead. Though, typically, it will
to follow by honest miners. More new blocks would be selected not be necessary to process all transactions and, hence, it is possi-
by honest miners, with the appeal of random beacons and times- ble to implement efficient or intermediate auxiliary structures,
tamps. However, forgeable timestamps may be vulnerable to this thereby enhancing the overall efficiency.
approach. Within ZeroBlock (Solat and Potop-Butucaru, 2016); that
is, within a maximum time interval, the network must generate 4.7.7. Lack of governance, standards, and regulations
and accept each block), selfish miners can hardly achieve their It is indeed a major requirement to standardize the Blockchain
expected reward. Table 13 lists selfish mining issue-related papers for its integration, interoperability, governance, sustainability, etc.
along with their subject area (main topic) and solutions proposed. The Blockchain development must follow the rules, laws, policies,
and regulations of the government. It is challenging to manage
4.7.6. Artificial intelligence the governance of the Blockchain platform among different partic-
Smart contracts could be duly utilized to tune the broad adop- ipants. In Anjum et al. (2017), the authors have raised questions on
tion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions, managing particular the Blockchain standards and standardization importance to main-
characteristics or behaviors (e.g., autonomous drones or cars). tain sustainability and trust. Moreover, the work (Kakavand et al.,
Moreover, a wide range of possibilities and real-time implementa- 2017) has reviewed the Blockchain regulation and has measured
tions may also be enabled through intelligent transactions the performance factor. Table 14 lists lack of governance, stan-
between entities and/or devices. New opportunities for AI applica- dards, and regulations issues-related papers along with their sub-
tions are created by recent developments in Blockchain technology ject area (main topic) and solutions proposed.
(Omohundro, 2014). Many Blockchain challenges could be solved
with the help of AI technology. For instance, it is the responsibility 5. Discussion on research streams
of an oracle (a generally trusted third party) to check on the satis-
faction of a contract condition. Alternatively, an intelligent oracle This section discusses the trends observed by comparing and
may be built based on an AI technique. It just trains itself based analyzing the results in the previous section. If we closely observe
on learning from the outside, without control from any party. In the publication trends, we can easily conclude that many research
that way, the smart contract can become smarter with no any directions have been opened up by Blockchain and have recently
argues. On the other hand, our lives are now penetrated by AI. Mis- received special attention from the researchers (more specifically,
behavior committed by AI products could be restricted by a smart since 2017). The impact of Blockchain on the research community
contract integrated with Blockchain. For instance, the misbehavior can be quantified by analyzing citation trends. These findings
of driverless cars could be restricted by laws written in smart should inform young researchers of impressive trends before
contracts. embarking on research work.

Table 13
A summary of selected papers on the selfish mining challenge.

Common challenge Research Subject area Findings (Potential solutions)

Attackers can still gain from selfish Heilman (2014) Fresh Bitcoins  Scrutinizing to find out which branch to follow by honest miners.
mining even with less than 25% of the  More new blocks would be selected by honest miners, with the
computational resources appeal of random beacons and timestamps
Solat and Potop- Timestamp-free  ZeroBlock; that is, within a maximum time interval, the network
Butucaru (2016) prevention of block- must generate and accept each block, with which selfish miners
withholding attack in can hardly achieve their expected reward
Bitcoin

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Table 14
A summary of selected papers on the lack of governance, standards, and regulations challenge.

Common challenge Research Subject area Findings (Potential solutions)

The Blockchain development must follow the rules, laws, policies, Anjum et al. (2017) Blockchain standards for  Emphasizing the Blockchain standards
and regulations of the government. It is challenging to manage compliance and trust and standardization importance to
the governance of the Blockchain platform among different maintain sustainability and trust
participants
Kakavand et al. (2017) Regulation and technology  Reviewing the Blockchain regulation
related to distributed and measuring the performance factor
ledger technologies

Although the four underlying research areas (i.e., ‘‘COMPUTER application areas by researchers in Blockchain technology. Indeed,
SCIENCE”, ‘‘ENGINEERING”, ‘‘TELECOMMUNICATIONS”, ‘‘BUSINESS many issues have yet to be addressed while widely deploying Block-
ECONOMICS”, and ‘‘SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY OTHER TOPICS”) have chain applications. By doing so, Blockchain is expected to become
been extensively covered by most of the Blockchain published more scalable, efficient, and durable. These offered features are not
papers (see Section 4.2), exploration of the results implies that unique if judged individually, and their bulk of mechanisms are pop-
Blockchain can be potentially applied to a wider range of research ular for years. However, given the intense interest by several indus-
domains. Consequently, the trendy research areas are highlighted tries, all these features combined can make Blockchain ideal for
but opportunities for new lines of research are also uncovered. many applications. Moreover, individual characteristics required
Moreover, an abundance of helpful information is revealed by mainly by each application domain are identified, which can facili-
deeply observing the highly-cited papers. This provides young tate defining the Blockchain most suitable along with the corre-
researchers with rigorous guidelines on making a paper popular, sponding mechanisms to tailor the Blockchain to the application’s
among others, by understanding the significant characteristics, actual needs. Lastly, throughout Section 4.7, some challenges and
such as research methodology, structure, results, and evaluation. problems hindering Blockchain development are summarized,
This also helps them improve their scientific writing style. This along with some existing approaches for solving these issues.
would also be helpful for both fresh and experienced scholars to
identify the most exciting research topics for initiating a research 6. Research validity
project. Furthermore, a baseline for research collaboration has
been established by highlighting which authors, institutions, and Although our main objective in this study was to conduct a
countries produce influential papers in the field. For instance, it high-quality sentiment analysis of Blockchain research studies,
was observed that American institutions are paying more attention some inevitable threats were imposed, which may have affected
for conducting high-impact Blockchain researches, and therefore the validity of our results. These threats, along with the actions
more citations were received for publications by those institutions. taken to alleviate their effects, are listed below:
On the other hand, among Asian countries, China is the only active
country in producing highly-cited Blockchain publications.  Paper selection criteria: Some irrelevant or duplicate papers
Given its potential impact on the number of future citations, could be included in the final dataset, so the selection process
selecting a suitable venue for researchers to present their research of papers was a potential threat. A methodological process
findings is a crucial task. This demonstrates how exploring suitable was employed to relieve the effect of this threat by excluding
venues is important for the publication of Blockchain research. papers not related to the main topic, such as letters, news items,
‘‘IEEE ACCESS” and ‘‘LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE” have etc. Moreover, duplicate papers were figured out by manually
been flagged as the most popular venues to publish new Block- screening the initial dataset. Consequently, some repetitive
chain contributions (see Section 4.4). However, as some subseries papers have been identified and excluded.
and conference proceedings are covered by ‘‘LECTURE NOTES IN  Identification of topmost funding agencies: After extracting
COMPUTER SCIENCE”, it can be concluded that the latest Block- the number of papers supported by each of the listed funding
chain research works are mainly published in ‘‘IEEE ACCESS”, as agencies, we have found out that the name of the same funding
the most popular venue, multidisciplinary journal. Another excit- body was reported differently in some of its supported papers.
ing point advocating the popularity of ‘‘IEEE ACCESS” is that its For example, some papers used the abbreviation of the funding
Blockchain papers have received the highest number of citations organization rather than its complete name. The identical names
to the date of conducting this research, followed by ‘‘LECTURE were pursued by searching for every abbreviation separately on
NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE” and ‘‘FUTURE GENERATION COM- the Internet to mitigate this threat. Ultimately, before reporting
PUTER SYSTEMS”. However, the maximum ‘average citations per the results, the number of papers with identical funding agency
paper’ rate have been largely significantly achieved by ‘‘FUTURE names was consolidated. The only nagging threat was that
GENERATION COMPUTER SYSTEMS” in Blockchain research. although some papers were funded, the authors did not even
By monitoring the topmost funding organizations reported in acknowledge supportive agencies.
Section 4.5, China, among other countries, has established itself as  Generalizability of findings: It is a critical point to investigate
a major investor in Blockchain research studies. Blockchain research the generalizability of this study’s outcomes to external scien-
papers supported by Chinese funding bodies, especially ‘‘NATIONAL tific databases, such as Scopus, EBSCO, Google Scholar, etc.
NATURAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION OF CHINA”, have been affirmed to Although this was difficult to conclude, WoS has been selected
be of high quality according to the number of their citations com- as the main literature source, driven by the fact that most of
pared to other funding agencies. Researchers and practitioners its indexed papers have also been indexed by Scopus, EBSCO,
interested in applying for a Blockchain-related position would Google Scholar, etc. However, research fellows could replicate
immensely benefit from such a kind of information. Academics can this systematic study along the lines of the rigorous, transpar-
also be advised on this information before lodging a grant ent, and methodical approach adopted in this study, including
application. reports from other related databases. Conducting such replica-
From the analysis (Fig. 11), it is clear that governance, business, tion studies could help determine the universality of this
industrial, financial, and IoT applications are the most focused research’s findings.
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A.G. Gad, D.T. Mosa, L. Abualigah et al. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences 34 (2022) 6719–6742

Zhu, Q., Kouhizadeh, M., 2019. Blockchain technology, supply chain information, Laith Abualigah received his first degree from Al-Albayt
and strategic product deletion management. IEEE Eng. Manage. Rev. 47 (1), 36– University, Computer Information System, Jordan, in
44. 2011. He earned the M.Sc. degree from Al-Albayt
Zhu, H., Zhou, Z.Z., 2016. Analysis and outlook of applications of blockchain University, Computer Science, Jordan, in 2014. He
technology to equity crowdfunding in china. Financial innovation 2 (1), 1–11. received the Ph.D. degree from the School of Computer
G. Zyskind, O. Nathan, et al., Decentralizing privacy: Using blockchain to protect Science in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, in
personal data, in: 2015 IEEE Security and Privacy Workshops, IEEE, 2015, pp. 2018. He is an Assistant Professor with the Computer
180–184. Science Department, Amman Arab University, Jordan.
He is also a distinguished researcher at the School of
Computer Science, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia.
Ahmed G. Gad received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree from According to the report published by Stanford Univer-
the Faculty of Computers and Information, Mansoura sity in 2020, Abualigah is one of the 2% influential
University, Mansoura, Egypt, in 2013. Since 2017, he has scholars, which depicts the 100,000 top scientists in the world. Abualigah has
been a full-time Teaching Assistant of Information published more than 130 journal papers and books, which collectively have been
Technology with the Faculty of Computers and Infor- cited more than 4700 times (H-index = 32). His main research interests focus on
mation, Kafrelsheikh University, Kafrelsheikh, Egypt. Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm (AOA), Bio-inspired Computing, Nature-
His current major research interests span Meta- inspired Computing, Swarm Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Meta-heuristic
heuristics, Optimization, Machine Learning, Data min- Modeling, and Optimization Algorithms, Evolutionary Computations, Information
ing, Cloud Computing, Scheduling, and Blockchain. Retrieval, Text clustering, Feature Selection, Combinatorial Problems, Optimization,
Advanced Machine Learning, Big data, and Natural Language Processing. Abualigah
currently serves as an associate editor of the journals, Cluster Computing (Springer),
Soft Computing (Springer), and Journal of King Saud University - Computer and
Information Sciences (Elsevier).

Diana T. Mosa received the Ph.D. degree from Mansoura Amr A. Abohany received the B.Sc. degree from the
University, Egypt, in 2014. She has more than 5 scien- Faculty of Computers and Information, Zagazig Univer-
tific research papers published in prestigious interna- sity, Egypt, in 2007, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees
tional journals in the topics of information systems. Her from the Faculty of Computers and Information, Helwan
current research interests include the Internet of Things, University, Egypt, in 2014 and 2018, respectively. He
Machine Learning, and Optimization. has more than 11 scientific research articles published
in prestigious international journals in the topics of
information systems. His current research interests
include Optimization, Machine Learning, and the Inter-
net of Things.

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