A blockchain platform selection method with heterogeneous multi-criteria Decision-Making based on hybrid distance measures and an AHP-EWM weight method

The blockchain platforms (BPs) have emerged as important tools for improving enterprise data security. However, the selection of a suitable BP for is a challenging issue for enterprises. In this paper, a novel heterogenous multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model is proposed to facilitate the BP selection and evaluation process. First, the evaluation criteria for BPs are defined through an analysis of popular BPs. Second, based on the defined evaluation criteria, multiple types of fuzzy numbers are adopted to accurately represent the evaluation criteria. Then, to deal with multiple types of fuzzy numbers, a hybrid distance measure is proposed to determine the negative and positive ideal separation matrices of the evaluation criteria. In addition, using the axiomatic design's information content metric the as basis, an improved method is proposed to unify the evaluation of multiple types into a single number. An improved weight method is then proposed based on the combination of objective and subjective weighting to obtain the comprehensive weights of the criteria. Finally, a closeness degree metric is introduced to obtain the ranking order of all BP alternatives. An example case is analyzed to illustrate how to evaluate and select a suitable BP. The superiority of the proposed heterogeneous model is verified by comparisons with state-of-the-art methods.