Blade: A Blockchain-supported Architecture for Decentralized Services

Decentralized services and applications provide a multitude of advantages for their users, such as improved privacy, control, and independence from third parties. Anyhow, decentralization comes at the cost of certain disadvantages, such as increased application complexity or communication overhead. This aggravates the development and deployment of decentralized services and applications. In this paper we present Blade, a software platform that aims to ease the effort of development and deployment of decentralized services by implementing reusable solutions for recurring challenges developers are facing when designing decentralized service architectures. Blade implements such functionality in a Blade server instance, which can be deployed on a lightweight device, such as a NAS, Raspberry Pi, or router at home. This allows users without expert knowledge to run a Blade instance with already existing hardware with little overhead. Blade supports polyglot Blade modules that implement extended functionality, such as interfaces, frontends, and business logic of decentralized applications. Blade modules are installed via a decentralized, Ethereum-based marketplace that can be accessed via the Blade instances. For identity management, Blade relays on smart contracts, which implement an Ethereum-based registry. This allows users to create and manage their identities in a self-sovereign manner without the need of a central entity. This way, Blade builds a decentralized service ecosystem that supports developers of decentralized applications and services.