Synergy of Blockchain Technology and Data Mining Techniques for Anomaly Detection

Blockchain and Data Mining are not simply buzzwords, but rather concepts that are playing an important role in the modern Information Technology (IT) revolution. Blockchain has recently been popularized by the rise of cryptocurrencies, while data mining has already been present in IT for many decades. Data stored in a blockchain can also be considered to be big data, whereas data mining methods can be applied to extract knowledge hidden in the blockchain. In a nutshell, this paper presents the interplay of these two research areas. In this paper, we surveyed approaches for the data mining of blockchain data, yet show several real-world applications. Special attention was paid to anomaly detection and fraud detection, which were identified as the most prolific applications of applying data mining methods on blockchain data. The paper concludes with challenges for future investigations of this research area.