A Blockchain-Based Secure Data Sharing Framework for Distributed Computing Environments

Abstract

The sharing of data across distributed computing environments remains a persistent challenge because participants often operate under heterogeneous administrative domains, inconsistent security policies, and different levels of technical capability. Centralized data sharing platforms provide functional convenience but introduce single points of failure, governance bottlenecks, and concerns about unauthorized access or manipulation. Blockchain technology offers an alternative by providing a tamper-evident distributed ledger that can coordinate identity, access policy, provenance, and audit across multiple parties without requiring a single trusted intermediary. This paper presents a system-level framework for blockchain-based secure data sharing in distributed computing environments. The framework is organized around a layered architecture that separates data storage, access control, consensus, contract execution, and governance. The discussion emphasizes structural trade-offs rather than low-level cryptographic operations. It examines how permissioned and permissionless configurations affect confidentiality, scalability, robustness, and accountability. The paper also addresses incentive design, deployment sustainability, fairness, regulatory alignment, and long-term operational considerations. Through cross-domain analysis of healthcare, Internet of Things, energy trading, and scientific collaboration contexts, the paper identifies architectural principles that can guide the construction of resilient and socially legitimate data sharing infrastructures. It concludes that blockchain-based data sharing is not a universal substitute for institutional trust, but rather a coordination mechanism whose effectiveness depends on careful architectural configuration, inclusive governance, and policy coherence.