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Digital Archives Relying on Blockchain: Overcoming the Limitations of Data Immutability

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Digital Archives Relying on Blockchain: Overcoming the Limitations of Data Immutability computers Article Digital Archives Relying on Blockchain: Overcoming the Limitations of Data Immutability Hrvoje Stanˇci´c 1,* and Vladimir Brali´c 2,* 1 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia 2 Department of Information Technology, University of Applied Sciences Velika Gorica, 10410 Velika Gorica, Croatia * Correspondence: [email protected] (H.S.); [email protected] (V.B.) Abstract: Archives, both analogue and digital, are primarily concerned with preserving records as originals. Because of this, immutable data as used in a blockchain data structure seem a logical choice when designing such systems. At the same time, archives maintain records which may need to change over the long term. It is a requirement of archival preservation to be able to update records’ metadata in order not only to guarantee authenticity after digital preservation actions but also to ensure that relationships to other records, which might be created after an original record has entered the archive (and has been registered in a blockchain), can be maintained. The need to maintain an archival bond, which represents a network of relationships between aggregation of records, i.e., the relationship connecting previous and subsequent records belonging to the same activity, is a prime example of this requirement. This paper explores realisation of the archival bond in the context of blockchain-based archival system by proposing a supporting database system which enables metadata to be changed as required but also significantly simplifies searching compared to searching on-chain information, while keeping the immutability characteristic of blockchain. Citation: Stanˇci´c,H.; Brali´c,V. Keywords: digital archive; blockchain; database; document; archival bond Digital Archives Relying on Blockchain: Overcoming the Limitations of Data Immutability. Computers 2021, 10, 91. https:// 1. Introduction doi.org/10.3390/computers10080091 One of the key questions in modern society is to what extent digital information can be trusted. Archival institutions have the opportunity to participate in the creation of a Academic Editor: Victoria Lemieux new architecture of trust. However, as traditionally trusted institutions, archives need to constantly prove that they can preserve digital records as trustworthily and as long as Received: 11 June 2021 paper records. This is a challenging task because of the metamorphic aspects of information Accepted: 19 July 2021 Published: 21 July 2021 technologies—they are constantly changing and advancing. Therefore, archives need to constantly monitor ongoing development and react when needed. The reaction should be in Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral the form of digital preservation action, i.e., conversion of records from an (almost) obsolete with regard to jurisdictional claims in file format to the current one, migration from an older generation of storage media to the published maps and institutional affil- new one, emulation of older software solutions in the contemporary software environment, iations. or virtualisation of old systems in the new hardware and software environment, all the time taking care that the records stay trustworthy, i.e., accurate, reliable, and authentic. Batista et al. explore the taxonomy of records’ trustworthiness and explain how the concepts of trust and provenance are closely related as well as how they can be realized in the context of blockchain [1]. Preserving records’ integrity, or the ability to prove that the record did Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. not change over the preservation period, and preserving identity, or the ability to prove This article is an open access article that the record is what it purports to be, represent two prerogatives for confirmation of distributed under the terms and authenticity of digital records. The concept of the archival bond, explained in detail in conditions of the Creative Commons Section2, relates to records’ identity preservation. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// This paper focuses on a particular type of digital record—the digitally signed and/or creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ sealed records. Digital preservation of those records is challenging because digital sig- 4.0/). natures and seals rely on certificates usually issued for the period of two to five years, Computers 2021, 10, 91. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10080091 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/computers Computers 2021, 10, 91 2 of 16 after which their validity expires. Moreover, during that time certificates may be revoked. Such a situation is on the one hand favourable in terms of digital security, but on the other hand highly unfavourable in terms of long-term (e.g., 70 years) digital preservation. One approach to this challenge is regular (re)timestamping, or addition of archival time stamps before the certificates expire, but this approach requires keeping track of the certificate expiration date of many millions of individual records in a digital archive and invoking a preservation action just before that. A more elegant approach was proposed by Brali´c, Kuleš, and Stanˇci´cin 2017 when they developed the TrustChain model—a blockchain-based validity information preservation (VIP) model [2]. The model was upgraded by Brali´c, Stanˇci´cand Stengård in 2020 to encompass digital signature certification chain preserva- tion [3]. This paper continues the research by proposing the TrustChain supporting system model needed for combining an immutable blockchain-based archival system architecture preserving digitally signed and/or sealed records with a concept of incrementally changing the archival bond relying on metadata expansion over time. The paper is structured into several sections. After this introduction, Section2 elabo- rates on the concept of the archival bond with the aim of clarifying how it impacts digital preservation requirements. Next, Section3 provides a brief introduction to blockchain data structures and presents a critical part of the TrustChain system as defined in the previous research of the authors [2,3]. The presented data structure does not allow fast searching or metadata changes so the following sections investigate a data model which would enable those requirements. A literature review, presented in Section4, was used to determine the most appropriate underlying technology for such a system, which is followed by Section 5 where the appropriate logical data model is determined by extraction of mandatory metadata elements of several archival industry standards. Finally, Sections6 and7 use the proposed logical data model to develop and present database models which can be used for building the supporting system based on the technologies determined as the most appropriate in Section4. The models proposed here will enable further development of the TrustChain system following archival standards and requirements. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research and development of the TrustChain system. 2. Archival Bond Duranti states that the concept of the archival bond is at the core of archival science. She explains that the archival bond represents “the network of relationships that each record has with the records belonging in the same aggregation. ( ... ) The archival bond first arises when a record is set aside and thereby connected to another in the course of action” [4], (pp. 215–216). Duranti and MacNeil make clear that “this implies that the entity record is in formation during its period of activity, as the aggregations in which the record belongs are constantly accruing and changing, according to the natural dynamism of the records system. When the records become semi-active (i.e., they are ‘no longer needed for the purpose of carrying out the action for which they were created, but which are needed by the records creator for reference’ [5]) their documentary context is subject to development and change as only some components of each class will be removed from the records system and accumulated together to build up series. When the records become inactive (i.e., they are ‘no longer needed to conduct current business but preserved until they meet the end of their retention period’ [5]) the archival bond is defined and stabilized and not subject to further changes. This means that the archival bond, which is an essential component of the record, changes and develops until the record reaches the point of stability, that is, until the action to which it relates is concluded” [6], (p. 61). Lemieux and Sporny explain that “the archival bond must be made explicit and interpretable in order to ascertain the unique identity of each document as a record of the procedurally bound facts contained within it” [7], (p. 1438). Further, they point out that in the context of blockchain “it is a common mistake to think that because every block of transactions (and thereby every transaction) in a proof-of-work blockchain is transitively bonded to every previous block, by virtue of the way proof of work functions, that the archival bond is preserved. Computers 2021, 10, 91 3 of 16 However, even though the time-ordered nature of the transactional records is preserved, the link to their procedural context, and relationship to other transactional records relating to the same procedure, is not” [7], (p. 1439). This prevents searching records registered on the blockchain according to their archival bond relationships as well as interlinking the records already on-chain with the new ones
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