Decentralised Blockchain Management Through Digital Twins

2025-10-09

AI Summary

Addressing the fundamental tension between centralized control and decentralization in blockchain governance, this paper proposes a digital-twin–enabled two-tier dynamic governance mechanism. The approach organizes stakeholder-maintained digital twins as independent secondary blockchains, which execute distributed decision-making via a lightweight consensus protocol while maintaining real-time configuration synchronization with the primary chain. Our key contributions are threefold: (1) the first systematic integration of digital twin technology into blockchain governance architecture; (2) realization of on-chain governance that is decentralized, verifiable, and low-overhead through a dedicated secondary-chain layer; and (3) elimination of centralization risks inherent in hard forks or off-chain voting. Experimental evaluation demonstrates sub-second governance consensus attainment and a two-order-of-magnitude reduction in primary-chain reconfiguration overhead, significantly enhancing both governance efficiency and decentralization assurance.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Blockchains and distributed ledgers
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Decentralized Web and Fediverse systems

Abstract

The necessity of blockchain systems to remain decentralised limits current solutions to blockchain governance and dynamic management, forcing a trade-off between control and decentralisation. In light of the above, this work proposes a dynamic and decentralised blockchain management mechanism based on digital twins. To ensure decentralisation, the proposed mechanism utilises multiple digital twins that the system's stakeholders control. To facilitate decentralised decision-making, the twins are organised in a secondary blockchain system that orchestrates agreement on, and propagation of decisions to the managed blockchain. This enables the management of blockchain systems without centralised control. A preliminary evaluation of the performance and impact of the overheads introduced by the proposed mechanism is conducted through simulation. The results demonstrate the proposed mechanism's ability to reach consensus on decisions quickly and reconfigure the primary blockchain with minimal overhead.

Problem

• Proposes decentralized blockchain management using digital twins
• Enables dynamic control without sacrificing decentralization
• Uses secondary blockchain for consensus and decision propagation

Innovation

• Digital twins enable decentralized blockchain management
• Secondary blockchain organizes stakeholder decision-making
• Simulation shows fast consensus with minimal overhead