An Architecture for Distributed Electronic Documents Storage in Decentralized Blockchain B2B Applications

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of distributed storage of electronic documents (both metadata and files) in decentralized blockchain-based b2b systems (DApps). The need to reduce the cost of implementing such systems and the insufficient elaboration of the issue of storing big data in DLT are considered. An approach for building such systems is proposed, which allows optimizing the size of the required storage (by using Erasure coding) and simultaneously providing secure data storage in geographically distributed systems of a company, or within a consortium of companies. The novelty of this solution is that we are the first who combine enterprise DLT with distributed file storage, in which the availability of files is controlled. The results of our experiment demonstrate that the speed of the described DApp is comparable to known b2c torrent projects, and subsequently justify the choice of Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum Enterprise for its use. Obtained test results show that public blockchain networks are not suitable for creating such a b2b system. The proposed system solves the main challenges of distributed data storage by grouping data into clusters and managing them with a load balancer, while preventing data tempering using a blockchain network. The considered DApps storage methodology easily scales horizontally in terms of distributed file storage and can be deployed on cloud computing technologies, while minimizing the required storage space. We compare this approach with known methods of file storage in distributed systems, including central storage, torrents, IPFS, and Storj. The reliability of this approach is calculated and the result is compared to traditional solutions based on full backup.