Abstract

Today’s permissioned blockchain systems come in a standalone fashion and require the users to integrate yet another full-fledged transaction processing system into their already complex data management landscape. This seems odd as blockchains and traditional DBMSs share considerable parts of their processing stack. Therefore, rather than replacing the established infrastructure, we advocate to “chainify” existing DBMSs by installing a lightweight blockchain layer on top. Unfortunately, this task is challenging: Users might have different black-box DBMSs in operation, which potentially behave differently. To deal with such setups, we introduce a new processing model called Whatever-Voting (WV), pronounced [weave]. It allows us to create a highly flexible permissioned blockchain layer coined chainifyDB that (a) is centered around bullet-proof database technology, (b) can be easily integrated into an existing heterogeneous database landscape, (c) is able to recover deviating organizations, and (d) adds only up to 8.5% of overhead on the underlying database systems while providing an up to 6x higher throughput than Hyperledger Fabric.