Blockchain transaction refinery: a traceability refinement mechanism to improve the analysis of permissioned blockchain transactions

Blockchain technology is widely used in financial technology and Internet of Things (IoT) security to ensure data integrity, enhance traceability, and develop highly secure systems. However, limitations exist regarding transaction traceability in permissioned blockchains, such as Hyperledger Fabric, where conventional transaction logs fail to support comprehensive business flow analysis because of excessive validation data and a lack of structured smart contract (SC) management. This study proposes a Blockchain Transaction Refinery (BTR) framework to enhance transaction traceability and semantic analysis of SCs. The feasibility of the BTR framework was verified by applying it to case studies of business transaction refinement of Hyperledger Fabric. Experimental results demonstrate that the refined time of business transaction is 0.067 ms, indicating that the clarity of business transaction refinement is improved via extraction based on the 4W1H business data pattern. This value represents a decrease of 92.31% in the existing logs of Hyperledger Fabric. In addition, the estimated refinement-processing time is 0.03% compared with the overall transaction execution time, indicating that our approach has a minimal effect on the performance of blockchain transaction execution. The proposed framework is expected to serve as a foundational technology for enhancing traceability in blockchain-based business transactions across various domains, including supply chain management and IoT device integration.