A Decentralized Ontology Versioning Model Designed for Inter-operability and Multi-organizational Data Exchange

Current information systems operated in a multi-organization context use centralized or hierarchical data models proven inefficient as the network’s scale rapidly increases. The introduction of blockchain and decentralized specific mechanisms stimulate the use of ontology-based data models. While the adoption of blockchain as a communication medium facilitates the communication and data exchange in a more reliably and securely fashion, this opens new challenges regarding the evolution and versioning of the ontology. This paper proposes a versioning mechanism tailored to the decentralized environment. It provides the conceptual building blocks allowing an ontology to evolve under the supervi…