Digital Twins for Dynamic Management of Blockchain Systems

Blockchain systems are challenged by the so-called Trilemma tradeoff: decentralization, scalability, and security. Infrastructure and node configuration, choice of the Consensus Protocol, and complexity of the application transactions are cited among the factors that affect the tradeoff balance. Given that Blockchains are complex, dynamic systems, a dynamic approach to their management and reconfiguration at runtime is deemed necessary to reflect the changes in the state of the infrastructure and application. This paper introduces the utilization of DigitalTwins for this purpose. The novel contribution of the paper is the design of a framework and conceptual architecture of a Digital Twin that can assist in maintaining the Trilemma tradeoffs of time-critical systems. The proposed Digital Twin is illustrated via an innovative approach to the dynamic selection of Consensus Protocols. Simulation results show that the proposed framework can effectively support the dynamic adaptation and management of the Blockchain.