[Paper Review] On the Serverless Nature of Blockchains and Smart Contracts

Vladimir Yussupov, Ghareeb Falazi+2 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Nov 24, 2020

Blockchain Technology Applications and Security39 references4 citations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how blockchains and smart contracts can function as native components within serverless architectures, identifying four key roles: event triggers, FaaS function replacements, orchestration enablers, and multi-cloud integration facilitators. It finds that while major cloud providers offer varying degrees of blockchain integration, Azure provides the most mature support, and highlights a critical trade-off between ease of use and trust in blockchain access mechanisms.

ABSTRACT

Although historically the term serverless was also used in the context of peer-to-peer systems, it is more frequently associated with the architectural style for developing cloud-native applications. From the developer's perspective, serverless architectures allow reducing management efforts since applications are composed using provider-managed components, e.g., Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) offerings. Blockchains are distributed systems designed to enable collaborative scenarios involving multiple untrusted parties. It seems that the decentralized peer-to-peer nature of blockchains makes it interesting to consider them in serverless architectures, since resource allocation and management tasks are not required to be performed by users. Moreover, considering their useful properties of ensuring transaction's immutability and facilitating accountable interactions, blockchains might enhance the overall guarantees and capabilities of serverless architectures. Therefore, in this work, we analyze how the blockchain technology and smart contracts fit into the serverless picture and derive a set of scenarios in which they act as different component types in serverless architectures. Furthermore, we formulate the implementation requirements that have to be fulfilled to successfully use blockchains and smart contracts in these scenarios. Finally, we investigate which existing technologies enable these scenarios, and analyze their readiness and suitability to fulfill the formulated requirements.

Motivation & Objective

• To analyze how blockchain technology and smart contracts align with the principles of serverless computing.
• To identify and classify distinct architectural roles that blockchains and smart contracts can play in serverless systems.
• To define implementation requirements for integrating blockchains and smart contracts into serverless workflows.
• To evaluate the readiness and suitability of existing cloud-based blockchain and serverless services for these scenarios.
• To guide developers in selecting appropriate technologies based on trust, manageability, and functional requirements.

Proposed method

• The authors analyze existing serverless and blockchain patterns to identify four primary roles: blockchain events as triggers, smart contracts as FaaS replacements, blockchains in function orchestration, and blockchains as integration layers across multi-cloud environments.
• They evaluate blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) offerings from major public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Oracle, Alibaba) for their support of serverless integration.
• The study assesses each provider’s ecosystem for native blockchain integration, focusing on API access, event handling, and trust guarantees in blockchain interactions.
• A comparative analysis is conducted to determine the degree of 'blockchain-awareness' across cloud platforms, treating it as a continuum rather than a binary feature.
• The authors identify architectural trade-offs between management simplicity and trust, particularly in how cloud platforms expose blockchain access to serverless components.
• They validate their findings through a review of existing literature and industrial solutions, focusing on real-world deployment feasibility.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 In what ways can blockchains and smart contracts serve as components within serverless architectures?
• RQ2 What are the key implementation requirements for securely and efficiently integrating blockchains into serverless workflows?
• RQ3 How do existing cloud providers support the integration of blockchain and serverless components, and what are the differences in their maturity and trust models?
• RQ4 What trade-offs exist between ease of management and trust when exposing blockchain networks to serverless applications?
• RQ5 Which architectural roles—event triggering, function replacement, orchestration, or integration—can blockchains realistically fulfill in production serverless systems?

Key findings

• Blockchains and smart contracts can serve as event sources to trigger FaaS functions, enabling serverless event-driven architectures with strong consistency guarantees.
• Smart contracts can act as reliable, trustless substitutes for FaaS functions, particularly in scenarios requiring immutability and verifiable execution.
• Blockchains can facilitate function orchestration across multiple serverless platforms, especially in multi-cloud or cross-organization scenarios, by acting as a shared, immutable coordination layer.
• Azure Blockchain Service, Oracle Blockchain Platform, and Alibaba Cloud BaaS offer the most mature support for integrating blockchains into serverless workflows, with Azure providing the broadest native integration.
• A significant trade-off exists between the ease of managing blockchain access via managed cloud services and the level of trust guaranteed, as direct access mechanisms may compromise security.
• The degree of blockchain-awareness in cloud platforms is not binary but exists on a spectrum, directly influencing the feasibility of advanced serverless integration scenarios.