SoK: Evolution, Security, and Fundamental Properties of Transactional Systems: [Systematization of Knowledge Paper]

Abstract

Transaction processing systems underpin modern commerce, finance, critical infrastructure, and emerging Self-Sovereign Digital Identity (SSDI) protocols, yet their security has never been studied holistically across the full evolutionary arc of these systems. Over five decades, transaction processing has progressed through four distinct generations, from centralized databases, to distributed databases, to blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), and most recently to multi-context systems that span cyber-physical components under real-time constraints. Each generation has introduced new transaction types and, with them, new classes of vulnerabilities; successful exploits now cause billions of dollars in annual losses. Despite this, security research remains fragmented by domain, and the foundational ACID transaction model has not been revisited to reflect the demands of contemporary systems.