DAPPaaS: A Customizable Blockchain as a Service Platform for Decentralized Web3 Applications

Abstract

Web3, referring to the next-generation decentralized web, has gained extensive attention from industry and academia. Its popularity drives considerable demand for continuous development and delivery of web3 applications and services. Blockchain is an essential technology that enables web3 but comes with considerable operational cost. Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) is considered as a promising solution for supporting web3 applications; however, existing BaaS platforms are conceptual, built for specific applications, or not optimized for emerging web3 applications. This work analyzes the primary features and fundamental requirements of decentralized web3 applications and articulates the critical role of blockchain for web3. To fill the gap, we introduce DAPPaaS, the first customizable BaaS platform specializing in web3 applications, with carefully designed goals and principles to meet the goals. Our key technical contributions lie on the approaches enabling component modularization, communication efficiency, automated scaling and performance monitoring, distributed deployment, and resource optimization. We implement a real-world application based on DAPPaaS and conduct extensive performance evaluations to validate its utility and efficiency.