TRUST: A lifecycle-oriented system architecture for governed evolution of smart contract applications

Abstract

Context: The growing adoption of distributed and industrial-grade applications built on blockchain infrastructures has intensified the need for systematic approaches to manage the lifecycle of long-running systems, where governance, auditability, and performance constraints must coexist. Objectives: This paper presents TRUST , a lifecycle-oriented system architecture for the governed evolution and integration of smart contract based components. Methods: The architecture incorporates on-chain governance, version traceability, rollback support, and code provenance to enable accountability and observability across successive deployments in multi-stakeholder systems. A full 2 4 factorial evaluation was conducted by treating governance, versioning, provenance, and ABI handling as independent system factors and measuring their effects on latency, throughput, and gas consumption. Results: The results show that governance and provenance introduce controlled and predictable overheads, while compact ABI handling improves throughput and reduces gas consumption by more than 20%. Conclusion: These findings indicate that a lifecycle-oriented architecture can balance accountability and efficiency in governed smart contract applications.