The Green Blockchains of Circular Economy

Abstract

Eco-friendly systems are necessitated nowadays, as the global consumption is increasing. A data-driven aspect is prominent, involving the Internet of Things (IoT) as the main enabler of a Circular Economy (CE). Henceforth, IoT equipment records the system’s functionality, with machine learning (ML) optimizing green computing operations. Entities exchange and reuse CE assets. Transparency is vital as the beneficiaries must track the assets’ history. This article proposes a framework where blockchaining administrates the cooperative vision of CE-IoT. For the core operation, the blockchain ledger records the changes in the assets’ states via smart contracts that implement the CE business logic and are lightweight, complying with the IoT requirements. Moreover, a federated learning approach is proposed, where computationally intensive ML tasks are distributed via a second contract type. Thus, “green-miners” devote their resources not only for making money, but also for optimizing operations of real-systems, which results in actual resource savings.