Blockchain interoperability patterns

Introduction

This repository holds the artefacts that raised the results of our first paper on Blockchain Interoperability Patterns to be presented at ICSA 2024. In this paper, we identified six blockchain interoperability patterns through observation of 35 interoperability solutions. A detailed specification was built using the Alexandrian template and was evaluated with five semi-structured interviews with blockchain experts regarding its clarity, completeness, and utility. The artefacts generated in this research were:

• questionnaire: provides the questions conducted to the interviewees that guided the semi-structred interviews.
• our code book: provides the code book used on the research with all the generated codes from the interview transcripts.
• our code analysis: provides a resume of all the codes assigned to each interviewee
• patterns draft: the initial draft of the patterns sent to each interviewee before the interview.
• patterns final version: the final version improved with some of the feedback provided by the interviewees and submitted with the paper.

Results reproduction

Pattern identification

Table VI presents the patterns' identification by interviewee. This can be reproduced by looking at the code analysis and search for the identification row that identifies which pattern was identified by which interviewee.

Pattern clarity

This section presents the opinions made by the interviewees in the interviews and how we coded them related to clarity of the patterns. For each quote in the paper, we make the correspondance with the codes.

• The quote "is not completely clear to me" corresponds to the code Light client was not so clear.
• The quote "I was expecting to read something about Oracles" corresponds to the code Similarity with Oracles (Light Client).
• The quote "Which is the criteria to relate a pattern to others?" corresponds to the code Relationship of the patterns.
• The quote "were not difficult to understand" corresponds to the code General understanding.

Pattern completeness

This section presents the opinions made by the interviewees in the interviews and how we coded them related to completeness of the patterns. For each quote in the paper, we make the correspondance with the codes.

• The quote "Maybe a few use cases that show the usage of all the patterns" corresponds to the code Use case.
• The quote "lacks a reference implementation" corresponds to the code Reference implementation.
• The quote "it does not occur to me any other issue" and "I think you have a good coverage" corresponds to the code Does not know any new pattern.
• The quote "I cannot say that I’m 100% sure" corresponds to the code New patterns.
• The quote "perhaps it is the only case that you are not covering" corresponds to the code Blockchain of blockchains.

Pattern completeness

This section presents the opinions made by the interviewees in the interviews and how we coded them related to utility of the patterns. For each quote in the paper, we make the correspondance with the codes.

• The quote "all the ones you name are useful" corresponds to the code Useful.
• The quote "”if the audience here is a designer... think this level can be enough" corresponds to the code Ease design communication.
• The quote "introductory material" corresponds to the code Learning.
• The quote "make more conscious design decisions" corresponds to the code Less fear.
• The quote "speed them up" corresponds to the code Speed up the design.
• The quote "helps to understand how interoperability works" corresponds to the code Learning.
• The quote "better understanding of the tools used" corresponds to the code Known solutions for existing problems.
• The quote "less investigation" corresponds to the code Reduce development costs.