Table 2.
List of blockchain entities, their category and responsibilities
| Entities | Category | Role & responsibilities |
|---|---|---|
| End User | Consumer | End users could be investment businesses looking to profit from previously established blockchain networks. They may be unaware of the blockchain’s capabilities. |
| Blockchain exchanges and support organizations | Resource providers | The support organization provides resources to the end users. Coinbase, Binance, and Bitfinex are some instances of bitcoin exchanges [68]. |
| Blockchain Consortium [36] | Developers | The blockchain consortium helps the progress of blockchain technology in specific industries by coordinating activities such as conferences, open-source projects, and workshops. |
| Blockchain node owners | Owner | The groups, individuals, or organizations that construct, administer, and monitor the entire nodes in the blockchain. |
| Blockchain mining Software and Hardware (S&H) providers | Miner | The providers provide customised and dedicated S&H for the mining process. This will leads to more rewards than commodity S&H. This attracts industry people to facilitate blockchain-based software, chipsets, and various implementation services, which leads to a financial reward for nodes. |
| Blockchain mining pools | Resource provider | Blockchain mining pools provide miners to pool their resources to get the puzzle solved [86]. Some examples of mining pools are bitclub, Btc.com, and blockchain.com. |
| Blockchain infrastructure providers | Resource providers | They provide packaged or individual products consisting of network, infrastructure, mining software, servers, etc., to the groups or organization that wants to utilize the power of blockchain for the best result [130]. |
| Blockchain solution developers | Developers | A pool of blockchain-skilled people, system consultants, and integrators from organizations or freelancers. They help to define and implement use cases and prepare meaningful and understandable solutions. |
| Bitcoin | Framework | Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency payment network that uses cryptographic techniques to guard money and transactions [99]. It is a public and non-permissioned blockchain network. |
| Multichain | Framework | MultiChain is a platform that helps create private or consortium blockchain networks in a simple way [52]. MultiChain is based on blockchain protocol and software used in bitcoin. But it has significant mining and privacy differences. It allows permissions to be defined at the network level. |
| Ethereum | Framework | Ethereum is a open-source decentralized technology [20]. It enables users to build operations and is a forum for various blockchain applications. |
| Hyperledger | Framework | Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned distributed ledger platform and designed for enterprises [21]. It introduces sharing concepts where ledger sharing can happen in only selected participants. |
| R3 Corda | Framework | Corda is an open-source distributed ledger platform that empowers businesses’ private interactions. Corda’s design is different from a traditional blockchain system as it does not use a chain of blocks linked by hash to store data [59]. |