Blockchain Based Distributed Package Management Architecture

Application management in Linux based operating systems is managed by package managers. The package repositories of most Linux distributions provide software through central servers. While having a central server provides a unique verified and maintained version, servers often separate official and community packages, and users frequently use community packages. However, some highly demanded community packages may not be stored in official repositories. While central servers are open to a single point of failure, using community packages without any security check may be insecure. In this paper, we introduce the idea of a distributed package management architecture for Linux systems based on blockchain technology. In the proposed system, package providers are considered as miners, building a package is mining, and proof-of-work is reproducible packaging by the miners. The blockchain keeps the hash of the package contents. Creating and testing a package will return to the packager as reliability scores. This system will have the following advantages. Packages will be verified through consensus, single points of failure will be eliminated ensuring availability, packages are stored in a distributed network. The goal is to keep the operating system alive with a decentralized, reliable, and transparent blockchain-based package management system.