A Microservices-Based Virtualized Blockchain Framework for Emerging 5G Data Networks

The paper addresses the possibility of leveraging a microservices-based paradigm to leverage blockchain technology in the emergent programmable distributed infrastructure for 5G and future networks. Different use-cases such as user data privacy management, healthcare emergency services, or edge information delivery, and for emerging 5G use-cases leveraging such distributed blockchain infrastructure are considered. In particular, for data privacy related management, a separation of the control plane and the user/data plane is considered to record blockchain transaction data in the control plane, while recording a hash associated with the transaction in the user/data plane. The paper also discusses possible future extensions in emerging future networks.