Blockchain has attracted significant attention in recent years due to its potential to revolutionize various industries by providing trustlessness. To comprehensively examine blockchain systems, this article presents both a macro-level overview on the most popular blockchain systems, and a micro-level analysis on a general blockchain framework and its crucial components. The macro-level exploration provides a big picture on the endeavors made by blockchain professionals over the years to enhance the blockchain performance while the micro-level investigation details the blockchain building blocks for deep technology comprehension. More specifically, this article introduces a general modular blockchain analytic framework that decomposes a blockchain system into interacting modules and then examines the major modules to cover the essential blockchain components of network, consensus, and distributed ledger at the micro-level. The framework as well as the modular analysis jointly build a foundation for designing scalable, flexible, and application-adaptive blockchains that can meet diverse requirements. Additionally, this article explores popular technologies that can be integrated with blockchain to expand functionality and highlights major challenges. Such a study provides critical insights to overcome the obstacles in designing novel blockchain systems and facilitates the further development of blockchain as a digital infrastructure to service new applications.

翻译：区块链因其通过去信任化革新各行业的潜力，近年来备受关注。为全面审视区块链系统，本文从宏观层面对主流区块链系统进行概述，并从微观层面分析通用区块链框架及其关键组件。宏观层面的探索勾勒出区块链从业者多年提升性能的整体图景，而微观层面的研究则深入区块链构建模块以促进技术深度理解。具体而言，本文提出一种通用模块化区块链分析框架，将区块链系统解构为交互模块，并在微观层面重点考察网络、共识与分布式账本三大核心模块。该框架与模块化分析共同为设计可扩展、灵活且适配应用场景的区块链系统奠定基础，以满足多样化需求。此外，本文探讨了可与区块链集成的扩展功能的主流技术，并突出关键挑战。本研究为克服新型区块链系统设计障碍提供了关键见解，并推动区块链作为数字基础设施服务于新应用的进一步发展。