BoCB: Performance Benchmarking by Analysing Impacts of Cloud Platforms on Consortium Blockchain.

Consortium blockchain has recently witnessed unprecedented popularity due to its implicit features and potential capabilities. On the other hand, cloud computing has become a mature technology and has reshaped numerous other innovative technologies through its flexible and efficient on-demand computing services. Consortium blockchain's performance issues undermine its wider acceptance but unleashing the cloud’s computing capabilities can help to develop the full potential of blockchain. In other words, cloud technology and blockchain's potential integration can be envisaged as a next-generation information technology, highly characterised by scalable and secure solutions, respectively. In this context, it is important to understand what benefits blockchain gains from cloud integration in terms of performance. This article presents a comprehensive, empirical analysis for an in-depth study of the performance of the blockchain, specifically consortium (but not limited to) implemented on the cloud, ranging from identifying potential performance bottlenecks, to configuring system parameters. Furthermore, this article presents a novel framework for blockchain on cloud benchmarking (BoCB) and implement it by a Hyperledger Fabric application on four different commercial Cloud platforms. The evaluation results of the blockchain performance on heterogeneous cloud platforms can help developers select the best possible configuration and resources to optimise their applications accordingly.