Title: A comprehensive survey on security, privacy and authentication in blockchain

Authors: Turki Ali Alghamdi; Nadeem Javaid

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, College of Computer and Information Systems, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, 21955, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Computer Science, COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan

Abstract: In this paper, a comprehensive survey of security, privacy and authentication issues of blockchain is conducted. Additionally, a comparative analysis of existing security mechanisms that are adopted in literature to make the systems secure is presented. A brief survey of closely related survey papers is also provided after critically analysing their contributions and organisation. Besides, a mathematical equation is formulated to compute the recency score of a particular survey paper based on the number of recent papers included in it. Furthermore, critical analysis of the existing techniques and strategies is provided. In addition, the most frequently asked question by the researchers, i.e., when should we use blockchain?, is answered via an extended version of a decision tree. At the end, future research directions are provided to lay a solid research foundation for the upcoming researchers.

Keywords: authentication; blockchain; consensus; critical analysis; database; encryption; privacy; recency; security; smart contracts; survey.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWGS.2023.133501

International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 2023 Vol.19 No.3, pp.259 - 286

Received: 08 Feb 2022
Received in revised form: 14 Nov 2022
Accepted: 23 Nov 2022
Published online: 18 Sep 2023 *

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