To draw a roadmap of current research activities of the blockchain community, we first conduct a brief overview of state-of-the-art blockchain surveys published in the past 5 years. We found that those surveys are basically studying the blockchain-based applications, such as blockchain-assisted Internet of Things (IoT), business applications, security-enabled solutions, and many other applications in diverse fields. However, we think that a comprehensive survey toward the essentials of blockchains by exploiting the state-of-the-art theoretical modelings, analytic models, and useful experiment tools is still missing. To fill this gap, we perform a thorough survey by identifying and classifying the most recent high-quality research outputs that are closely related to the theoretical findings and essential mechanisms of blockchain systems and networks. Several promising open issues are also summarized for future research directions. We hope this survey can serve as a useful guideline for researchers, engineers, and educators about the cutting-edge development of blockchains in the perspectives of theories, modelings, and tools.

中文翻译：

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区块链最新技术调查

为了绘制区块链社区当前研究活动的路线图，我们首先对过去 5 年发表的最新区块链调查进行简要概述。我们发现，这些调查基本上都是在研究基于区块链的应用程序，例如区块链辅助物联网 (IoT)、商业应用程序、安全解决方案以及许多其他不同领域的应用程序。然而，我们认为仍然缺少通过利用最先进的理论模型、分析模型和有用的实验工具对区块链的本质进行的全面调查。为了填补这个空白，我们通过识别和分类与区块链系统和网络的理论发现和基本机制密切相关的最新高质量研究成果来进行彻底的调查。还为未来的研究方向总结了几个有前途的开放问题。我们希望本次调查能够为研究人员、工程师和教育工作者从理论、模型和工具的角度对区块链的前沿发展提供有用的指导。