Obstacles and Challenges in Transforming Applications for Distributed Data Ledger Integration

Abstract

The application opportunities of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) for replicated, shared and synchronized data, across multiple nodes in a network, may create new possibilities in computing. There are notable differences between applications designed from scratch for being DLT-enabled and established IT applications that assume fundamentally a centralized computing architecture. This short paper reflects on the challenges in transforming established, conventional IT applications to be DLT-enabled. If such a transformation can be implemented successfully, repeatedly, and with acceptable effort, this means that today’s currently deployed IT applications may subsequently take advantage of beneficial properties of DLT. However, there are still a variety of aspects that need to be considered—this short paper contributes to that discussion.