# Exploring Blockchain Technology through a Modular Lens: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.08283 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08283/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 Apr 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [BC4LLM: Trusted Artificial Intelligence When Blockchain Meets Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06278/) (2023)
- [BF-Meta: Secure Blockchain-enhanced Privacy-preserving Federated Learning for Metaverse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21675/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Blockchain has attracted significant attention in recent years due to its potential to revolutionize various industries by providing trustlessness. To comprehensively examine blockchain systems, this article presents both a macro-level overview on the most popular blockchain systems, and a micro-level analysis on a general blockchain framework and its crucial components. The macro-level exploration provides a big picture on the endeavors made by blockchain professionals over the years to enhance the blockchain performance while the micro-level investigation details the blockchain building blocks for deep technology comprehension. More specifically, this article introduces a general modular blockchain analytic framework that decomposes a blockchain system into interacting modules and then examines the major modules to cover the essential blockchain components of network, consensus, and distributed ledger at the micro-level. The framework as well as the modular analysis jointly build a foundation for designing scalable, flexible, and application-adaptive blockchains that can meet diverse requirements. Additionally, this article explores popular technologies that can be integrated with blockchain to expand functionality and highlights major challenges. Such a study provides critical insights to overcome the obstacles in designing novel blockchain systems and facilitates the further development of blockchain as a digital infrastructure to service new applications.