Blockchain applications for legal metrology

Abstract

Blockchain technology has become a promising approach in many domains. It first came up with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, where it is used to maintain a distributed ledger, a public list of all transactions. It is assumed that the use of a blockchain as a cryptocurrency, or in general for financial services, was just the first stage, called Phase 1.0. The second phase began with the integration of smart contracts. In Phase 3.0, the focus lies on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which efficiently implement smart contracts. In the future, it is assumed, that by the use of DAOs many benefits for the public sector emerge. In this paper, blockchain applications of Phase 2.0 and 3.0 are analyzed for measuring instruments under legal control. An example are smart meters, where by smart contracts, a new coin/token within the blockchain can be created whenever the electric meter rotates. Promising areas of application in legal metrology, like a decentralized audit trail to log, e.g., software updates and hinder uncertified manipulations, the complete automation of the legally supervised update mechanism by smart contracts, or an alternative to public key infrastructures are being proposed in this paper.