IoChain: A Decentralized Multichain-Based Architecture for IoT Smart Agriculture Using IPNS

Abstract

The growing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) has triggered several researches in the industry and academic world. The objective is finding a good trade-off between security, privacy and reliability, without loosing scalability potential. To this end, blockchain technology, previously only applied in the context of cryptocurrencies, has been integrated with IoT applications (BIoT) to fulfill all these needs, bringing a decentralized approach and promoting new business logic ideas to the field. Despite the promising benefits of this integration, BIoT has faced scalability concerns, due to the complex task of handling massive data transactions that can be generated in monitoring IoT applications. In order to contribute with an alternative solution to this problem, this paper proposes a completely decentralized architecture designed for Smart Agriculture. It explores the InterPlanetary Name System (IPNS), as a name system that can be updated over time; the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), as a Distributed File System (DFS) to store the IoT data; and a multichain network, built with public and private blockchains, delivering a full Web3 approach that can be applied in IoT data marketplace. Results obtained from evaluating a simulated Smart Vineyard scenario demonstrated that IoChain is capable of effectively managing massive data transmissions and dealing with the appearances of new IoT devices, without increasing transaction fees or transaction processing time.