Trusted Provenance with Blockchain Technology: A Systematic Literature Review

Kurzfassung

Through practices and tools that track and document the origins, evolution, and changes of software components, software development and provenance are intricately connected. The importance of provenance in the digital age has led to significant interest in using blockchain technology to store provenance data in a tamper-proof manner. This study presents an overview of current advancements in blockchain-based provenance storage research, addressing the benefits and challenges of various storage strategies. The storage types identified in the system literature review informed the development of a proprietary system. Due to the incorporation of numerous entities, activities, agents, and relationships, underlying documents can become substantially large. The study indicates that an effective approach to manage extensive data involves external storage while retaining only its fingerprint on the blockchain. This method ensures tamper-proof uploads and maintains traceability in the development process.