A Decision Support System for Blockchain Platform Selection

Abstract

The blockchain technology is a new innovation with the potential to disrupt the world as we currently know it, despite several limitations and challenges to overcome. One of these challenges for software producing organizations is selecting the right technology for their case. In this research, we haveve identified this selection process as a multi-criteria decision making problem. Based on this we have created a Decision Support System which aids developers during the technology selection process of blockchain platforms. Contemporary solutions to this problem were only rather simplistic decision-trees, which struggle with complexity and adaptations. The novelty of this Decision Support System lies in being a feature-based artifact which incorporates ISO Software Quality Aspects and feature prioritization based on the MoSCoW-technique. These contemporary generic blockchain features have been gathered through nine interviews with blockchain experts. Based on prioritized features as input, the Decision Support System gives a score for feasible solutions (e.g. Ethereum or Hyperledger) as result. This Decision Support System was evaluated in three different case-studies for organization creating blockchain-based solutions. In addition to this, the artifact has been validated by a blockchain-domain expert. The main difficulties and obstacles of this whole research were grounded in the immaturity of the blockchain domain as a whole.