A Survey of Distributed Database Systems based on Blockchain

With the prevalence of digital cryptocurrency and online transactions, the amount of data carried in cyberspace has been increasing rapidly. How to ensure the security and reliability of cyberspace data is a challenging problem. Blockchain has been widely recognized as a reliable technical solution for distributed data storage and sharing, and has attracted great attention from both industry and academia. This article first provides a brief introduction to the blockchain technology and distributed database systems, with a focus on the characteristics of decentralization and traceability. Then, it surveys the state-of-the-art work on blockchain-based distributed database systems, and compares these technologies. Afterwards, the application scenarios of blockchain-based distributed database systems are discussed. Finally, some promising research directions and suggestions focused on blockchain-based data storage are presented.