Blockchain architecture can be extended to implement a component hosted on the cloud that can provide application integration services like routing, data transformation, protocol translation, extended certificate authority etc. This component can act as a middleware, offering its capabilities as a ‘blockchain as a service’ function in the cloud. The blockchain implementation can provide adapters to connect to the middleware component from within the blockchain network and outside of the network. The blockchain middleware component can be hosted in a secured ‘sandboxed’ environment or inside a secured virtualized container. An external application can interact with the blockchain middleware using adapters and upon obtaining valid certificates to access the blockchain network.