Data Management in Appendable-Block Blockchains: A Case Study for IT Life-Cycle Management

Blockchain has been adopted in multiple areas that require secure and decentralized storage of information. One of them is the management of device lifecycle, which typically employs a centralized storage model. However, the application of traditional blockchains in this context has been growing and presenting challenges, particularly in terms of latency, performance, and scalability. Consequently, new blockchain topologies have been developed to enhance these properties by altering their data structure. An example of this is the appendable-block blockchain model, which removes transaction insertion of block insertion, allowing new data to be added to an auxiliary chain from the main block. The main goal of this work is to expand appendable-block blockchain, addressing contributions and enhancements in storage, persistence, and efficient data access. Besides, this work aims to investigate the process of information retrieval for related lifecycle events from the same device or component, i.e., within the same context. In order to achieve this, we present a real-use case study of a patent that addresses the storage and retrieval of data related to the lifecycle of devices within a company.