Operations Research in the Blockchain Technology

In the past decade, as a decentralized distributed database technology blockchain has developed rapidly at an unprecedented speed and been applied to a wide range of scenarios far beyond cryptocurrencies, for example, insurance, energy, risk management, and Internet of things (IoT). The blockchain technology combines the achievements from cryptography, computer science, economics, and operations research and has increasingly attracted attention from both academia and industry. Though the operations research has been widely adopted in the blockchain technology, there is a lack of comprehensive survey on the operations research in blockchain-related issues. In order to fill the gap, we analyze the blockchain technology through the perspective of operations research and present a comprehensive review of the operations research problems from the aspects of security and stability, efficiency and performance, and resource allocation. This paper aimed to help the relevant readers in the field of operations research find their own points of interest and conduct in-depth research on the blockchain technology, hoping to promote the rapid development and wider application of the blockchain technology in the near future.