BCOA: Blockchain Open Architecture

Blockchain as an emerging computing paradigm has revolutionized the next generation internet. The design and realization of blockchain in multiple industries are very challenging tasks due to the complexity of blockchain. Firstly, it refers to the integrations of multiple technologies within communications, distributed system and security. Secondly, it lacks systematic method and theory to guide developers to design the business solutions. To facilitate the down-to-earth application of blockchain, we propose a BlockChain Open Architecture (BCOA) as a reference architecture which divides the blockchain into nine layers: interactions, scenarios, services, components, infrastructure, integration, data architecture, security and privacy and governance. It allows the designers and developers to use this methodology to speedily design solutions for blockchain applications. Finally we use two cases to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed architecture.