Dinh C. Nguyen, Ming Ding, Pubudu N. Pathirana, Aruna Seneviratne
The beginning of 2020 has seen the emergence of coronavirus outbreak caused by a novel virus called SARS-CoV-2. The sudden explosion and uncontrolled worldwide spread of COVID-19 show the limitations of existing healthcare systems to timely handle public health emergencies. In such contexts, innovative technologies such as blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have emerged as promising solutions for fighting coronavirus epidemic. On the one hand, blockchain can combat pandemics by enabling early detection of outbreaks, protecting user privacy, and ensuring reliable medical supply chain during the outbreak tracking. On the other hand, AI provides intelligent solutions for identifying symptoms caused by coronavirus for treatments and supporting drug manufacturing. Motivated by these, in this paper we present an extensive survey on the use of blockchain and AI for combating coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemics based on the rapidly emerging literature. First, we introduce a new conceptual architecture which integrates blockchain and AI specific for COVID-19 fighting. Particularly, we highlight the key solutions that blockchain and AI can provide to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Then, we survey the latest research efforts on the use of blockchain and AI for COVID-19 fighting in a wide range of applications. The newly emerging projects and use cases enabled by these technologies to deal with coronavirus pandemic are also presented. Finally, we point out challenges and future directions that motivate more research efforts to deal with future coronavirus-like epidemics.
Open access
5 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
COVID-19 diagnosis using AI
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
Blockchain systems have received much attention and promise to revolutionize many services. Yet, despite their popularity, current blockchain systems exist in isolation, that is, they cannot share information. While interoperability is crucial for blockchain to reach widespread adoption, it is difficult to achieve due to differences among existing blockchain technologies. This paper presents a technique to allow blockchain interoperability. The core idea is to provide a primitive operation to developers so that contracts and objects can switch from one blockchain to another, without breaking consistency and violating key blockchain properties. To validate our ideas, we implemented our protocol in two popular blockchain clients that use the Ethereum virtual machine. We discuss how to build applications using the proposed protocol and show examples of applications based on real use cases that can move across blockchains. To analyze the system performance we use a real trace from one of the most popular Ethereum applications and replay it in a multi-blockchain environment.
The world is becoming more interconnected every day. With the high technological evolution and the increasing deployment of it in our society, scenarios based on the Internet of Things (IoT) can be considered a reality nowadays. However, and before some predictions become true (around 75 billion devices are expected to be interconnected in the next few years), many efforts must be carried out in terms of scalability and security. In this study we propose and evaluate a new approach based on the incorporation of Blockchain into current IoT scenarios. The main contributions of this study are as follows: i) an in-depth analysis of the different possibilities for the integration of Blockchain into IoT scenarios, focusing on the limited processing capabilities and storage space of most IoT devices, and the economic cost and performance of current Blockchain technologies; ii) a new method based on a novel module named BIoT Gateway that allows both unidirectional and bidirectional communications with IoT devices on real scenarios, allowing to exchange any kind of data; and iii) the proposed method has been fully implemented and validated on two different real-life IoT scenarios, extracting very interesting findings in terms of economic cost and execution time. The source code of our implementation is publicly available in the Ethereum testnet.
Blockchain is a new technology for processing complex and disordered information with respect to business and other industrial applications. This work is aimed at studying the consensus algorithm of blockchain to improve the performance of blockchain. Despite their advantages, the proof of stake (POS) algorithm and the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) algorithm have high latency, low throughput, and poor scalability. In this paper, a blockchain hybrid consensus algorithm which combines advantages of the POS and PBFT algorithms is proposed, and the algorithm is divided into two stages: sortition and witness. The proposed algorithm reduces the number of consensus nodes to a constant value by verifiable pseudorandom sortition and performs transaction witness between nodes. The algorithm is improved and optimized from three dimensions: throughput, latency, and scalability. The experimental results show that the improved hybrid consensus algorithm is significantly superior to the previous single algorithms for its excellent scalability, high throughput, and low latency.
Blockchain has become very popular as the underlying technology powering Bitcoin. However, the benefits behind this technology further surpass just supporting cryptocurrencies. Blockchain can be defined as a digital ledger that allows to capture transactions conducted among several parties on real-time and serves as a decentralized database where each participant keeps an identical copy of the ledger. The appeal behind blockchain resides on its peer-to-peer network infrastructure along cryptographic capabilities. This combination enables users to conduct transactions without a trusted third-party intermediary. Benefits in accounting are even more promising as blockchain will provide a triple entry accounting system where all transactions are immutable and have been time stamped, recorded on real-time and encrypted The purpose of this paper is to review extant research on this technology and assess the impact of blockchain in the audit profession, including new risks, change in procedures and additional opportunities.
Faisal Jamil, Shabir Ahmad, Naeem Iqbal, Do‐Hyeun Kim
Over the past several years, many healthcare applications have been developed to enhancethe healthcare industry. Recent advancements in information technology and blockchain technologyhave revolutionized electronic healthcare research and industry. The innovation of miniaturizedhealthcare sensors for monitoring patient vital signs has improved and secured the human healthcaresystem. The increase in portable health devices has enhanced the quality of health-monitoringstatus both at an activity/fitness level for self-health tracking and at a medical level, providing moredata to clinicians with potential for earlier diagnosis and guidance of treatment. When sharingpersonal medical information, data security and comfort are essential requirements for interactionwith and collection of electronic medical records. However, it is hard for current systems to meetthese requirements because they have inconsistent security policies and access control structures.The new solutions should be directed towards improving data access, and should be managed bythe government in terms of privacy and security requirements to ensure the reliability of data formedical purposes. Blockchain paves the way for a revolution in the traditional pharmaceuticalindustry and benefits from unique features such as privacy and transparency of data. In this paper,we propose a novel platform for monitoring patient vital signs using smart contracts based onblockchain. The proposed system is designed and developed using hyperledger fabric, which isan enterprise-distributed ledger framework for developing blockchain-based applications. Thisapproach provides several benefits to the patients, such as an extensive, immutable history log, andglobal access to medical information from anywhere at any time. The Libelium e-Health toolkitis used to acquire physiological data. The performance of the designed and developed system isevaluated in terms of transaction per second, transaction latency, and resource utilization usinga standard benchmark tool known as Hyperledger Caliper. It is found that the proposed systemoutperforms the traditional health care system for monitoring patient data.
Intan Permatasari, Meryam Essaid, Hyeonwoo Kim, Hongtaek Ju
A good archive management system must consider information security aspects, such as availability, confidentiality, and integrity. The Cilegon E-Archive (CEA) system is a centralized system for managing the lifecycle of archives. The existing CEA system has several problems, including a single point of failure, low data availability, and difficulty in proving the originality of files. This paper introduces a prototype for a new CEA system that integrates IPFS and the Ethereum private network. In addition, CEA DApp is developed as an interface for users in interacting with CEA system, and its functionality is managed by a smart contract. The results show that the conducted improvements into the CEA system highly improved the system security in terms of preventing archival forgeries.
Designing an efficient difficulty control algorithm is an essential problem in Proof-of-Work (PoW) based blockchains because the network hash rate is randomly changing. This paper proposes a general difficulty control algorithm and provides insights for difficulty adjustment rules for PoW based blockchains. The proposed algorithm consists a two-layer neural network. It has low memory cost, meanwhile satisfying the fast-updating and low volatility requirements for difficulty adjustment. Real data from Ethereum are used in the simulations to prove that the proposed algorithm has better performance for the control of the block difficulty.
B. Saravana Balaji, P. Raja, Anand Nayyar, Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban · 5 authors
Blockchain technology is increasingly used worldwide to enhance the performance and profit of any environment through its defining characteristics, such as security, auditability, immutability, and inconspicuousness. Owing to these characteristics, the blockchain can be used in various non-financial operations of some domains, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed computing. However, implementing blockchain technology in IoT is not always a feasible solution because blockchain deployment is costly, it has limited extensibility and provides irregular bandwidth and latency. In this regard, a simple size extensible (SSE) blockchain has been proposed to provide an optimal solution for IoT environments by satisfying the needs of the IoT environment as well as ensuring end-to-end security. The implementation of the proposed blockchain develops an overlay network to obtain a distributed environment where the blockchain is handled by the resources present therein. Two novel algorithms were introduced into the proposed system to minimize the irregularity and latency on one hand, and to maximize the throughput of the system on the other. The shared-time depending agreement algorithm (STD) minimizes the irregularity in the extraction operation and latency. The other, the shared throughput administration algorithm (STA) justifies the overall collection of the transmission load in the network and maintains the performance of the blockchain. The proposed system was applied to smart home IoT appliances to test the performance of the proposed system. The experimental results show that the proposed blockchain system minimizes nearly 70% of the data irregularity, latency, and furthermore, 30% of the blockchain extensibility is maximized as compared to the existing systems.
With the rapid development of industrial internet of thing (IIoT), the distributed topology of IIoT and resource constraints of edge computing conduct new challenges to traditional data storage, transmission, and security protection. A distributed trust and allocated ledger of blockchain technology are suitable for the distributed IIoT, which also becomes an effective method for edge computing applications. This paper proposes a resource constrained Layered Lightweight Blockchain Framework (LLBF) and implementation mechanism. The framework consists of a resource constrained layer (RCL) and a resource extended layer (REL) blockchain used in IIoT. We redesign the block structure and size to suit to IIoT edge computing devices. A lightweight consensus algorithm and a dynamic trust right algorithm is developed to improve the throughput of blockchain and reduce the number of transactions validated in new blocks respectively. Through a high throughput management to guarantee the transaction load balance of blockchain. Finally, we conducted kinds of blockchain simulation and performance experiments, the outcome indicated that the method have a good performance in IIoT edge application.
Shreya Joshi, Ms Bhavyaa, Suhani Gupta, Lalita Luthra
Blockchain is considered to be a disruptive core technology. Although many researchers have realized the importance of blockchain, but the research of it is still emerging. It is the record-keeping technology behind bitcoin and is one of the hottest and fastest growing skills in the IT sector today. It serves as an immutable ledger which allows transactions to take place in a decentralized man Blockchain-based applications are rising up, covering numerous fields including finance, healthcare, product management, Internet of Things (IoT), and many more. However, there are still some challenges of blockchain technology such as scalability and security problems which need to be overcome. This paper comprises of a comprehensive study of Blockchain technology. We have included here a deep dive into how blockchains work, its architecture, consensus and various applications. Furthermore, technical challenges are briefly listed.
Badr Eddine Sabir, Mohamed Youssfi, Omar Bouattane, Hakim Allali
The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming an indispensable part of the actual Internet and continues to extend deeper into the daily lives of people, offering distributed and critical services. Mobile agents are widely used in the context of IoT and due to the possibility of transmitting their execution status from one device to another in an IoT network, they offer many advantages such as reducing network load, encapsulating protocols, exceeding network latency, etc. Also, Blockchain Technology is growing rapidly allowing for the addition of an approved security layer in many areas. Security issues related to mobile agent migration can be resolved with the use of Blockchain. This paper aims to demonstrate how Blockchain Technology can be used to secure mobile agents in the context of the IoT using Ethereum and a Smart Contract. The transactions within the Blockchain are used to detect the malevolent mobile agents that could infiltrate the IoT systems. The proposed model aims to provide a secure migration of mobile agents to ensure security and protect the IoT applications against malevolent agents. The case of a smart home with multiple applications is applied to verify the proposed solution. The model presented in this paper could be extended to a wider selection of IoT systems outside of the smart home.
Francesco Buccafurri, Vincenzo De Angelis, Roberto Nardone
The Internet of Things is constantly capturing interest from modern applications, changing our everyday life and empowering industrial applications. Interaction and the collaboration among smart devices offer new challenges to security since they conflict with economic and energy consumption requirement constraints. On the other hand, the lack of security measures could negatively impact the concrete adoption of this paradigm. This paper focuses on the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, widely adopted in the Internet of Things. This protocol does not implement natively secure authentication mechanisms, which are demanded to developers. Hence, this paper proposes a novel OTP (one-time password)-authentication schema for MQTT, which uses the Ethereum blockchain to implement a second-factor out-of-band channel. The proposal enables the authentication of both local and remote devices preserving user privacy and guaranteeing trust and accountability via Ethereum smart contracts.
Traditional IT security mechanisms are generally not well-suited for IoT devices, where processing and network connectivity should be kept at minimal. Consequently, IoT devices have been recently identified as an easy target for cyber-attacks, like for example on the Mirai botnet Distributed Denial of Service attacks in 2016, where various devices were hacked into and taken over. Different solutions have been developed aiming at guaranteeing the security at both the devices application layer and the network layers. Few succeeded to deliver the flexibility necessary for IoT devices. Even fewer have implemented an effective threats detection system, and just a handful have realised all the previous in a fully decentralised fashion, including this one. This Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) attestation system is maintained and supported by most, or all, IoT devices because it is based on a light-weight DLT protocol. It comprises of a system for authorisation and authentication for the individual devices as well as includes an anomalies detection system based on smart contracts. A demonstration was built to support a Smart City use case. The objective is to guarantee, in a decentralised manner, the security of low computational power devices executing the sensing function and their connectivity, and therefore the correct functioning of the system. On the demonstrator, the system was ran using DLT supported by the sensors connectivity bridge (built using Raspberry Pi’s). The system proved to be rapid to develop, flexible with regards to systems changes and resilient to attacks to both individual IoT devices and to the DLT.
Li-e Wang, Yan Bai, Quan Jiang, Victor C. M. Leung · 6 authors
By facilitating multiple independent owners to jointly control a distributed network, blockchain can be used to solve the problem of device collaboration in complex networks (e.g., 5G, health care industries) through a distributed consensus mechanism. However, the state-of-the-art blockchain-based solutions cannot meet the demand of high transaction rate for those applications, due to the unavoidable data synchronization cost in decentralized systems. To address this issue, recent research splits blockchain nodes into multiple groups as parallel shardings to improve scalability at the cost of increased communication and storage per node. This paper proposes a fast and secure distributed blockchain protocol to reduce the traffic complexity while enhancing the transaction rates and the capability of fault-toleration. We introduce Proof-of-Behavior (PoB), a behavior-based incentive mechanism, for stimulating honest behavior and neutralizing malicious attacks. We design a blockchain protocol by integrating PoB with Raft, another classic consensus protocol with supervision, called Beh-Raft-Chain. Our approach replaces Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) with Behavior-based Raft to lower the traffic complexity to O(n) and boost the capability of fault-toleration from n/4 to n/3, where n is the scale of blockchain. In our solution, we weigh all nodes based on their money and behaviors, and then set an adjustment parameter to increase the probability of candidate nodes being chosen beyond only a few nodes with the highest weight, in order to incentivize honest behavior in our mechanism. Our comparative experiments confirm Beh-Raft-Chain's theoretical low complexity and high fault-toleration properties.
Sina Rafati Niya, Eryk Schiller, Ile Cepilov, Burkhard Stiller
In Industry 4.0 (I4), the Industrial Internet of Things (I2oT) data streams are prone to significant data manipulation risks. The integration of Blockchains (BC) with I2oT may become a solution preventing from this problem. This paper provides a blockchain-agnostic Blockchain I2oT (BI2oT) architecture called BIIT that allows developing a broad range of BC applications fully integrating Internet of Things (IoT). The mechanisms introduced in BIIT aim at solutions that provide data reliability, limit the computational overhead, and enhance energy efficiency. BIIT is evaluated through real-world experimentation.
Eder J. Scheid, Daniel Lakic, Bruno Rodrigues, Burkhard Stiller
Due to the growing interest in the blockchain (BC), several applications are being developed, taking advantage of the benefits that such technology promises to deliver, such as removal of Trust Third Parties (TTP) to verify transactions and data immutability. However, these applications require certain aspects, such as high transaction throughput or data privacy, that early BC implementations (e.g., Bitcoin) did not provide. Thus, a myriad of novel BC implementations was developed, which introduced the issue of choosing the right implementation for a specific use-case. This paper presents a framework, called PleBeuS, to address this selection issue by allowing users to specify policies that rule the automatic selection of the BC that data will be stored. The selection process relies on a cost-aware approach and considers both public and private implementations and their technical characteristics. Moreover, PleBeuS communicates with a BC-agnostic interoperability API to enforce transactions. The evaluation of the PleBeuS prototype showed that it is possible to automatically select a BC-based on user policies, considering cost thresholds and technical details (e.g., BC throughput, deployment), and reduce manual interaction.
Blockchain, as a promising solution to develop secure distributed ledgers, has drawn a huge attention over the last decade. By introducing a pseudonymous payment model with no central authority, blockchain marked the new generation of online payment systems, known as Cryptocurrencies. For most of the existing cryptocurrencies, scalability has become a challenging problem. When dealing with an ever increasing number of users, miners, and transactions, the technology is unable to scale and provide the same performance as centralised systems (e.g. centralised payment systems).Without addressing this fundamental scalability problem, such a promising technology may not be able to be adopted in mainstream. This paper provides an attempt to analyse the scalability of existing blockchain protocols and look at the major factors affecting scalability, namely throughput and latency. We also describe the HTNZ protocol, a new approach to improve the scalability of Satoshi Nakamoto's model [1], validated by experimental results. HTNZ introduces two new components, namely, sideBlock and helper. SideBlock has a slightly different structure of block and increases the number of transactions that can be processed per each interval.
I P S P Wardhana, Gede Rasben Dantes, Kadek Yota Ernanda Aryanto
Abstract The falsification and embezzlement of personal data are still found in several cases in the past year. The reason is personal data in physical form are easily manipulated and difficult to be distinguished from the original. The most detrimental impact is if a person’s personal data is used for credit application fraud in the banking industry. Implementation of blockchain technologies, one of which is Ethereum, allows the use of contracts as a rule that must be fulfilled by the parties involved. All stored transactions are perpetual (cannot be deleted or changed), easy to be audited, transparent, and distributed at each participating node. This study aimed to develop a smart contract for personal data transactions with a case study of credit submission at the Bank. The authors developed a trial application using the prototype method in the process of assessment. Assessment was done by black box testing method in the scope of the lab with 10 credit submission data to be transacted. It is resulting in all credit submission data can be transacted and stored in the smart contract. The interview resulted in an opinion that blockchain technology can be used to store personal data and submit credit submissions at the Bank. The results of the analysis on assessments and interviews conclude that blockchain technology can be used as a medium to store personal data and secure credit applications. For future research, testing transactions can be done on Testnet networks with changing several blocks of data.
Blockchain and other forms of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) provide an opportunity to integrate digital information, management, and contracts to increase trust and collaboration within the construction industry. DLT enables direct peer-to-peer transactions of value across a distributed network by providing an immutable and transparent record of these transactions. Furthermore, there is potential for business process optimization and automation on the transaction level through the use of smart contracts, which are code protocols deployed on supported DLT systems. However, DLT research in the construction industry remains at a theoretical level; there have been few implementation case studies to date. One potential reason for this is a knowledge gap between use-case ideas and the DLT technical system implementation. This paper aims to reduce this gap by (1) reviewing and categorizing proposed DLT use cases in construction literature, (2) providing an overview of DLT and its design options, (3) proposing an integrated framework to match DLT design options with desired characteristics of a use case, and (4) analysing the use cases using the new framework. Together, the use case categories and proposed decision framework can guide future implementers toward more connected and structured thinking between the technological properties of DLT and use cases in construction.
While Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the most widely used consensus mechanism for blockchain, it received harsh criticism due to its massive waste of energy for meaningless hash calculation. Some studies have introduced Proof-of-Stake to address this issue. However, such protocols widen the gap between rich and poor and in the worst case lead to an oligopoly, where the rich control the entire network. Other studies have attempted to translate the energy consumption of PoW into useful work, but they have many limitations, such as narrow application scope, serious security issues and impractical incentive model. In this paper, we introduce AxeChain, which can use the computing power of blockchain to solve practical problems raised by users without greatly compromising decentralization or security. AxeChain achieves this by coupling hard problem solving with PoW mining. We model the security of AxeChain and derive a balance curve between power utilization and system security. That is, under the reasonable assumption that the attack power does not exceed 1/3 of the total power, 1/2 of total power can be safely used to solve practical problems. We also design a novel incentive model based on the amount of work involved in problem solving, balancing the interests of both the users and miners. Moreover, our experimental results show that AxeChain provides strong security guarantees, no matter what kind of problem is submitted.
M.E in Computer Engineering from SVBIT, GTU, Gandhinagar, India., Pratik Patel, Pinkal Chauhan, M.E in Computer Engineering from LDRP, Gandhinagar, India.
In our everyday lives, IoT plays a vital role. It is crucial to sense, capture and share data from connected devices via internet. Existing system proposed centralized client/server approach where central authority keeps a record of all the activities. Failure of such centralized authority makes the whole system fail. A decentralized / distributed approach is therefore needed if a single failure point is avoided. In this paper contains information to integrating Blockchain in IoT ecosystem in order to achieve access control. We proposed smart contract based architecture which consist multiple permission contract, one decision contract and one entry contract, to achieve distributed and secure IoT device access control. To conclude system framework, we provide a case study in an IoT system with two laptops and one Raspberry Pi single-board computers, where the PCs, DC and EC are implemented based on the Ethereum smart contract platform to achieve the access control.
Hanumantharaju R, K. N. Shreenath, K. G. Srinivasa, Swetha Namburu
Mobile edge computing is a recent trend to complement the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem in the computing sector. IoT is the internet connected communications related to physical devices and everyday objects. The emergence of intelligent living spaces has been due to the rapid development of IoT technologies. Blockchain is one such technology that expands the list of information also referred to like records that are saved as blocks in the Blockchain which are connected using cryptographic algorithms. Within a Blockchain IoT environment, when data or device authentication information is stored in a Blockchain, authentication information can be displayed when verifying Block chain’s transactions, which are also referred to as proof of work. A principle of Zero-knowledge proof (ZKF) is implemented in this paper which is a way of proving that knowledge is known without exposing any data to the user. The proposed model uses a Mobile application where users can prove without revealing users' passwords. Blockchain stores client information that can prevent data from being manipulated. The results of applying the ZKF theory for data security are shown through a web application and NFC.
Anti-forgery information, transaction verification, and smart contract are functionalities of blockchain technology that can change the traditional business processes of IT applications. These functionalities increase the data transparency, and trust of users in the new application models, thus resolving many different social problems today. In this work, we take all the advantages of this technology to build a blockchain-based authentication system (called the Vietnamese Educational Certification blockchain, which stands for VECefblock) to deal with the delimitation of fake certificate issues in Vietnam. In this direction, firstly, we categorize and analyze blockchain research and application trends to make out our contributions in this domain. Our motivating factor is to curb fake certificates in Vietnam by applying the suitability of blockchain technology to the problem domain. This study proposed some blockchain-based application development principles in order to build a step by step VECefblock with the following procedures: designing overall architecture along with business processes, data mapping structure and implementing the decentralized application that can meet the specific Vietnamese requirements. To test system functionalities, we used Hyperledger Fabric as a blockchain platform that is deployed on the Amazon EC2 cloud. Through performance evaluations, we proved the operability of VECefblock in the practical deployment environment. This experiment also shows the feasibility of our proposal, thus promoting the application of blockchain technology to deal with social problems in general as well as certificate management in Vietnam.