STTR Phase I: A DLT Machine Learning Platform for Blockchain Warehousing

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project improves the use of large-scale databases, data warehouses, and the software that used to commercially data-mine these resources.In the era of big data, many applications, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, critically rely on data functionalities including efficiency, interoperability, and analysis. However, their data subsystems are challenged to meet these needs due to multiple technical limitations, such as centralized storage, homogeneous data formats, and tightly coupled workflows. This STTR project will develop a new framework to overcome these limitations to improve big data applications in various scientific fields, such as biological sciences, astronomy, and computational chemistry.At the end of this Phase I project, the requisite knowledge and foundational materials for developing a blockchain-based data warehousing middleware will be produced.This STTR Phase I project proposes to advance the specific knowledge and commercialization of DLTs (Distributed Ledger Technologies) and blockchains by creating novel and innovative environments for further development for DLTs and blockchains as a "virtuous cycle", starting with bottlenecks identified in modern data warehouses. The DLT tool developed here advances blockchain protocols, specifically for removing quadratic and speculative costs from orthodox protocol-based approaches to blockchains on conventional hardware and instituting linearizable and constant costs with other innovative programming methods (e.g., probabilistic pruning). New statistical, topological, and computational approaches will be researched and developed for these purposes, including for development of techniques applicable for machine learning, artificial intelligence, peta-scale and exa-scale computing, advanced scientific computing, and pedagogical academic development of future generations. The expected results include a new set of protocols and a unified tool for integrating data types and multiple networks into conventional data warehouses, especially for advancement of data warehouses struggling to keep pace with new blockchain data, metadata, and real-time analytics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.