A Trust and Reputation System for IoT Exploiting Distributed Ledger\n Technology

Abstract

The advent of Bitcoin, and consequently Blockchain, has ushered in a new era\nof decentralization. Blockchain enables mutually distrusting entities to work\ncollaboratively to attain a common objective. However, current Blockchain\ntechnologies lack scalability, which limits their use in Internet of Things\n(IoT) applications. Many devices on the Internet have the computational and\ncommunication capabilities to facilitate decision-making. These devices will\nsoon be a 50 billion node network. Furthermore, new IoT business models such as\nSensor-as-a-Service (SaaS) require a robust Trust and Reputation System (TRS).\nIn this paper, we introduce an innovative distributed ledger combining Tangle\nand Blockchain as a TRS framework for IoT. The combination of Tangle and\nBlockchain provides maintainability of the former and scalability of the\nlatter. The proposed ledger can handle large numbers of IoT device transactions\nand facilitates low power nodes joining and contributing. Employing a\ndistributed ledger mitigates many threats, such as whitewashing attacks. Along\nwith combining payments and rating protocols, the proposed approach provides\ncleaner data to the upper layer reputation algorithm.\n