Time, Consensus and Governance by Design for Blockchain and DLT

For blockchain governance, data is an asset, and the time parameter is strategic and sensitive. This document aims to explore this issue for blockchain. It analyses the issues related to two properties associated with the parameter time : the ability to measure time (timestamp), and the guarantee of the ordering between events and proposes an innovative approach promoting blockchain technology as an infinite state machine. It is illustrated by the concept of simultaneous states to take into account uncertainty as a transition between two states. After recalling the mechanisms of the consensus algorithm in the case of the PoW, and analyzing the associated issues, this document proposes two data governance functions that can be derived from the notion of time between two blocks : the alert, and the control loop. This paper proposes the abstract concept of temporal structure, understood as the four functions derived from time parameter in support of the data governance strategy for blockchain in an industrial context, and governance by design the resulting approach.