Towards Decentralized IoT Updates Delivery Leveraging Blockchain and\n Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Abstract

We propose CrowdPatching, a blockchain-based decentralized protocol, allowing\nInternet of Things (IoT) manufacturers to delegate the delivery of software\nupdates to self-interested distributors in exchange for cryptocurrency.\nManufacturers announce updates by deploying a smart contract (SC), which in\nturn will issue cryptocurrency payments to any distributor who provides an\nunforgeable proof-of-delivery. The latter is provided by IoT devices\nauthorizing the SC to issue payment to a distributor when the required\nconditions are met. These conditions include the requirement for a distributor\nto generate a zero-knowledge proof, generated with a novel proving system\ncalled zk-SNARKs. Compared with related work, CrowdPatching protocol offers\nthree main advantages. First, the number of distributors can scale indefinitely\nby enabling the addition of new distributors at any time after the initial\ndistribution by manufacturers (i.e., redistribution among the distributor\nnetwork). The latter is not possible in existing protocols and is not account\nfor. Secondly, we leverage the recent common integration of gateway or Hub in\nIoT deployments in our protocol to make CrowdPatching feasible even for the\nmore constraint IoT devices. Thirdly, the trustworthiness of distributors is\nconsidered in our protocol, rewarding the honest distributors' engagements. We\nprovide both informal and formal security analysis of CrowdPatching using\nTamarin Prover.\n