Towards Reference Architecture for Cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Architectural Analysis

Bit coin is a new protocol with a potential to revolutionize financial system. Bit coin has a complex structure, where several interacting components build a peer-to-peer currency and a payment system without relying on any trusted third party. Bit coin is continually improved by an open source community, and various Bit coin libraries, APIs, and alternative implementations are being developed. Nevertheless, there is no up-to-date protocol specification or architecture description since the official whitepaper was published back in 2008. In this paper, we provide an up-to-date protocol specification and architectural analysis of the Bit coin system. We perform this analysis as the first step towards specification of the crypto currency reference architecture. The future reference architecture will serve as a starting architectural point for the development of new systems that leverage Bit coin protocol in different contexts and for various purposes. We also discuss whether the current architecture satisfies the system's primary purpose, i.e., Providing a pure decentralized version of the crypto currency.