Blockchain Technology (BCT) is a growing digital technology that in recent years has gained widespread traction in various industries in the public and private sectors. BCT is a decentralized ledger that records every transaction made in the network, known as a ‘block’, the body of which is comprised of encrypted data of the entire transaction history. BCT was introduced as the working mechanism that forms the operational basis of Bitcoin, the first digital cryptocurrency to gain mainstream appeal. The introduction of decentralized data exchange technology in any industry would require strengthened security, enforce accountability, and could potentially accelerate a shift in workflow dynamics from current centralized architectures to a decentralized, cooperative chain of command and affect a cultural and societal change by encouraging trust and transparency. BCT aims at creating a system that would offer a robust self-regulating, self-monitoring, and cyber-resilient data transaction operation, assuring the facilitation and protection of a truly efficient data exchange system. In the state of Florida, climate change and unpredicted weather disasters have put pressure on state and local decision-makers to adapt quick and efficient post-disaster recovery systems. Part of the recovery efforts is the reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure. The introduction of new technologies in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry can contribute to addressing recovery and rebuilding after the event of a natural disaster. With parallel technological advancement in geospatial data and Geographic Information System (GIS), as well as worsening climatic conditions, concerns can be suitably addressed by employing an integrated system of both Building Information Modeling (BIM) and BCT. While several potential applications of BIM must provide solutions to disaster-related issues, few have seen practical applications in recent years that indicate the potential benefits of such implementations. The feasibility of BIM-based applications still rests on the reliability of connectivity and cyber-security, indicating a strong use case for using BCT in conjunction with BIM for post-disaster recovery. This research depicts a survey of BCT and its applications in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries and examines the potential incorporation within the BIM process to address post-disaster rebuilding problems. Moreover, the study investigates the potential application of BCT in improving the framework for automating the building permitting process using Smart Contract (SC) technologies and Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), as well as discussing future research areas. The study proposes a new conceptualized framework resulting from the integration of BCT and BIM processes to improve the efficiency of building permit processes in post-disaster events.
A new framework for a secure and robust consensus in blockchain-based IoT networks is proposed using machine learning. Hyperledger fabric, which is a blockchain platform developed as part of the Hyperledger project, though looks very apt for IoT applications, has comparatively low tolerance for malicious activities in an untrustworthy environment. To that end, we propose AI-enabled blockchain (AIBC) with a 2-step consensus protocol that uses an outlier detection algorithm for consensus in an IoT network implemented on hyperledger fabric platform. The outlier-aware consensus protocol exploits a supervised machine learning algorithm which detects anomaly activities via a learned detector in the first step. Then, the transactions go through the inherent Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus protocol in the hyperledger fabric for ledger update. We measure and report the performance of our framework with respect to the various delay components. Results reveal that our implemented AIBC network (2-step consensus protocol) improves hyperledger fabric performance in terms of fault tolerance by marginally compromising the delay performance.
Technological advancements have proven to be indispensable for improving patient care, yet they continue to present a host of problems. One of the most pressing concerns is how to improve quality of care while controlling costs. Beyond clinical care, one plausible solution is to share patient information freely and efficiently. Hospitals and clinics may share data internally, but external information sharing remains an issue. Despite the digitization of medical records, there remains a lack of adequate computing infrastructure or unwillingness to share data among providers. Care quality often suffers as a result. Implementing a type of peer-to-peer distributed digital technology, known as a blockchain, to record and transmit transactional data could be a solution to these concerns. Originally, blockchain was developed to record cryptocurrency transactions. However, as blockchain technologies have matured and adopted across dissimilar industries, the feasibility of possible applications of blockchain technology in healthcare is getting more attention. This article explores possible opportunities of adoption of blockchain technology to improve patient data security, privacy, and care while outlining the challenges that practitioners may encounter.
Min Choi, Rupali Shinde, Sechang Oh, Oh‐Young Kwon
In this paper, we present a badge awarding system for performance assessment in education using blockchain technology. Learners will be awarded badges, which are certified for a predetermined level of progress in terms of learning. All the badges are stored in a backpack, which is an environment for storing and presenting the obtained badges. Badges are immutable and verifiable as well as rigid. The use of badges in the education system makes education more interesting, skill-based, and adaptable to changes. The key contribution of our work is in terms of compatibility with Openbadge specification and integrated cooperating platform between digital badge awarding and blockchaining. Our system implementation is compatible with Open Badges of IMS Global Learning Consortium, which is used to earn, issue, and award badges across various platforms. The badges are trusted by the IMS standard, the criteria to earn a badge is verified through the network, and the overall process is transparent compared to the traditional education system. Moreover, all badge awarding events in our system are recorded in a blockchain. Once stored, the contents cannot be tampered with. Thereafter, anyone can check the validity of the badge through the blockchain. Our platform will be useful for distance learning as well as time and location independent learning. The experimental results are as follows. On a Bitcoin-based digital badge publishing platform, the execution time required to award the badge is 24.53 s, while on the Ethereum-based digital badge publishing platform, the execution time to award the badge is only 3.86 s. It can also be used for career management and personal history. The learners can obtain the current knowledge required for a job. Lifelong learning will be also possible with this platform.
In this paper, a novel framework that uses wireless mobile miners (MMs) for computation purposes in a blockchain system is proposed. In the introduced system, the blockchain ledger is located at the communication nodes (CNs), and the MMs associated with CNs process the blockchain's proof-of-work (PoW) computation to verify the originality of the data. The MM that is the first to finish its PoW will receive a reward by sending its computing result to the CNs that are connected to other MMs. In the considered scenario, a blockchain forking event occurs if the MM having the shortest PoW delay fails to be the first to update its computing result to other MMs. To enable such mobile operations for a blockchain with minimum forking events, it is imperative to maintain low-latency wireless communications between MMs and CNs. To analyze the sensitivity of the system to latency, the probability of occurrence of a forking event is theoretically derived. The system is then designed so as to compute the forked block's PoW again to recover from a forking event. For this case, the average energy consumption of an MM is derived as a function of the system parameters such as the number of MMs and power consumed by the computing, transmission, and mobility processes of the MMs. Simulation results verify the analytical derivations and show that using a larger number of MMs can reduce the energy consumption by up to 94.5% compared to a blockchain system with a single MM.
Ashutosh Dhar Dwivedi, Lukáš Malina, Petr Dzurenda, Gautam Srivastava
There continues to be a recent push to taking the cryptocurrency based ledger system known as Blockchain and applying its techniques to non-financial applications. One of the main areas for application remains Internet of Things (IoT) as we see many areas of improvement as we move into an age of smart cities. In this paper, we examine an initial look at applying the key aspects of Blockchain to a health application network where patients health data can be used to create alerts important to authenticated healthcare providers in a secure and private manner. This paper also presents the benefits and also practical obstacles of the blockchain-based security approaches in IoT.
Recently, there have been increasing calls for healthcare providers to provide controls for patients over their personal health records. Nevertheless, security issues concerning how different healthcare providers exchange healthcare information have caused a flop in the deployment of such systems. The ability to exchange data securely is important so that new borderless integrated healthcare services can be provided to patients. Due to its decentralized nature, blockchain technology is a suitable driver for the much-needed shift towards integrated healthcare, providing new insights and addressing some of the main challenges of many healthcare areas. Blockchain allows healthcare providers to record and manage peer-to-peer transactions through a network without central authority. In this paper, we discuss the concept of blockchain technology and hurdles in their adoption in the healthcare domain. Furthermore, a review is conducted on the latest implementations of blockchain technology in healthcare. Finally, a new case study of a blockchain-based healthcare platform is presented addressing the drawbacks of current designs, followed by recommendations for future blockchain researchers and developers.
Ali Alammary, Samah Alhazmi, Marwah Almasri, Saira Gillani
Recently, blockchain technology has gained considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. This is mainly due to its unique features including decentralization, security, reliability, and data integrity. Despite this growing interest, little is known about the current state of knowledge and practice regarding the use of blockchain technology in education. This article is a systematic review of research investigating blockchain-based educational applications. It focuses on three main themes: (1) educational applications that have been developed with blockchain technology, (2) benefits that blockchain technology could bring to education, and (3) challenges of adopting blockchain technology in education. A detailed results analysis of each theme was conducted as well as an intensive discussion based on the findings. This review also offers insight into other educational areas that could benefit from blockchain technology.
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) separates the network control plane and data plane, which provides a network-wide view with centralized control (in the control plane) and programmable network configuration for data plane injected by SDN applications (in the application plane). With these features, a number of drawbacks of the traditional network architectures such as static configuration, non-scalability and low efficiency can be effectively avoided. However, SDN also brings with it some new security challenges, such as single-point failure of the control plane, malicious flows from applications, exposed network-wide resources and a vulnerable channel between the control plane and the data plane. In this paper, we design a monolithic security mechanism for SDN based on Blockchain. Our mechanism decentralizes the control plane to overcome single-point failure while maintaining a network-wide view. The mechanism also guarantees the authenticity, traceability, and accountability of application flows, and hence secures the programmable configuration. Moreover, the mechanism provides a fine-grained access control of network-wide resources and a secure controller-switch channel to further protect resources and communication in SDN.
Those working on Blockchain technologies have described several new innovative directions and novel services in the Internet of things (IoT), including decentralized trust, trusted and verifiable execution of smart contracts, and machine-to-machine communications and automation that reach beyond the mere exchange of data. However, applying blockchain principles in the IoT is a challenge due to the constraints of the end devices. Because of fierce cost pressure, the hardware resources in these devices are usually reduced to the minimum necessary for operation. To achieve the high coverage needed, low bitrate mobile or wireless technologies are frequently applied, so the communication is often constrained, too. These constraints make the implementation of blockchain nodes for IoT as standalone end-devices impractical or even impossible. We therefore investigated possible design approaches to decentralized applications based on the Ethereum blockchain for the IoT. We proposed and evaluated three application architectures differing in communication, computation, storage, and security requirements. In a pilot setup we measured and analyzed the data traffic needed to run the blockchain clients and their applications. We found out that with the appropriate designs and the remote server architecture we can strongly reduce the storage and communication requirements imposed on devices, with predictable security implications. Periodic device traffic is reduced to 2400 B/s (HTTP) and 170 B/s (Websocket) from about 18 kB/s in the standalone-device full client architecture. A notification about a captured blockchain event and the corresponding verification resulted in about 2000 B of data. A transaction sent from the application to the client resulted in an about 500 B (HTTP) and 300 B message (Websocket). The key store location, which affects the serialization of a transaction, only had a small influence on the transaction-related data. Raw transaction messages were 45 B larger than when passing the JSON transaction objects. These findings provide directions for fog/cloud IoT application designers to avoid unrealistic expectations imposed upon their IoT devices and blockchain technologies, and enable them to select the appropriate system design according to the intended use case and system constraints. However, for very low bit-rate communication networks, new communication protocols for device to blockchain-client need to be considered.
Efficient information flow in an intelligent system is vital for effectively controlling the entire system. Currently, intelligent systems are used in many industries related to energy production, sustainable agriculture/transport, and intelligent building/cities. Information technology (IT) and information and communication technologies (ICT) play vital roles in introducing technical or technological innovation in these industries as well as establishing a collaborative network. Also, the digitization of existing systems has been quite effective at creating a sustainable global environment as it allows more efficient and well-balanced control of socio-economic factors. However, it has become clear that adopting an intelligent system to achieve innovation, sustainability, and safety may well depend on the quality of the algorithms to be used for that very system. Despite recent controversies, new and renewable energies are considered as a realistic alternative to fossil fuels, which have been integral to modern industries but are regarded as a cause of environmental or economic problems, not to mention their limited deposits. Therefore, since renewable energies will gradually replace existing energy sources but require more time to be fully available, it is essential to find a method of managing them in a fair and transparent way. The United States, Japan, and some European countries are attempting to achieve such a goal by utilizing a blockchain system, but the issues pertaining to its functionality, security, or efficiency have yet to be addressed. This study introduces a viable consensus algorithm (Hyper Delegation Proof of Randomness, or HDPoR algorithm) for blockchain and attempts to validate its parallel computing capability through simulations. This study also attempts to design an efficient but secure peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction service model for these energies for the future where blockchain-based systems will hold a key position in the digitalized world. As its main contribution, this study introduces an effective method of applying blockchain to a new and renewable energy transaction system by presenting a consensus algorithm that can improve its infrastructure and performance.
Sidra Malik, Volkan Dedeoglu, Salil S. Kanhere, Raja Jurdak
Traceability and integrity are major challenges for the increasingly complex supply chains of today's world. Although blockchain technology has the potential to address these challenges through providing a tamper-proof audit trail of supply chain events and data associated with a product life-cycle, it does not solve the trust problem associated with the data itself. Reputation systems are an effective approach to solve this trust problem. However, current reputation systems are not suited to the blockchain based supply chain applications as they are based on limited observations, they lack granularity and automation, and their overhead has not been explored. In this work, we propose TrustChain, as a three-layered trust management framework which uses a consortium blockchain to track interactions among supply chain participants and to dynamically assign trust and reputation scores based on these interactions. The novelty of TrustChain stems from: (a) the reputation model that evaluates the quality of commodities, and the trustworthiness of entities based on multiple observations of supply chain events, (b) its support for reputation scores that separate between a supply chain participant and products, enabling the assignment of product-specific reputations for the same participant, (c) the use of smart contracts for transparent, efficient, secure, and automated calculation of reputation scores, and (d) its minimal overhead in terms of latency and throughput when compared to a simple blockchain based supply chain model.
Blockchain's properties in addressing trust in highly decentralized environments can make it an enabler for novel sharing economy services. In this paper, we demonstrate the practicality of blockchain-based Secure IoT as a Service (SIoTaaS), where an IoT device can be rented from a service provider, securely and in a privacy-preserving fashion. Our framework allows the simultaneous operations of distinct providers of IoT-based sharing economy services at a large scale. Multiple parties can securely share text and multimedia in the context of location and point-of-interest sharing, perform financial transactions by hiding true identity of parties involved in various online transactions, perform user and IoT registration, transfer value transactions via Ethereum tokens between providers and consumers, as well as raw IoT data payload. This can turn smart room IoT devices, such as smart locks, light bulbs, air conditioning and fans into rentable business entities within a secure sharing economy platform. We will demonstrate such a proof of concept IoT sharing economy framework, which is specifically designed to support the temporary IoT needs of very large numbers of users, such as Hajj pilgrims concentrating for a short period of time at a single area in Saudi Arabia.
This paper proposes an architecture for dynamic decentralized marketplace for trading of Internet of Things data. To this end, we introduce a 3-tier framework which consists of provider, consumer and broker. The framework is realized using multiple trustless broker which matches and selects potential data provider based on the consumers requirements. Rather than using a centralized server to manage the contract between provider and consumer, the framework leverages smart contract-based agreement for automatically enforcing the terms of the contract to the involved parties.
Blockchain is an innovative distributed ledger technology which has attracted a wide range of interests for building the next generation of applications to address lack-of-trust issues in business. Blockchain as a service (BaaS) is a promising solution to improve the productivity of blockchain application development. However, existing BaaS deployment solutions are mostly vendor-locked: they are either bound to a cloud provider or a blockchain platform. In addition to deployment, design and implementation of blockchain-based applications is a hard task requiring deep expertise. Therefore, this paper presents a unified blockchain as a service platform (uBaaS) to support both design and deployment of blockchain-based applications. The services in uBaaS include deployment as a service, design pattern as a service and auxiliary services. In uBaaS, deployment as a service is platform agnostic, which can avoid lock-in to specific cloud platforms, while design pattern as a service applies design patterns for data management and smart contract design to address the scalability and security issues of blockchain. The proposed solutions are evaluated using a real-world quality tracing use case in terms of feasibility and scalability.
Internet of Things (IoT) is reshaping the incumbent industry to smart industry featured with data-driven decision-making. However, intrinsic features of IoT result in a number of challenges, such as decentralization, poor interoperability, privacy, and security vulnerabilities. Blockchain technology brings the opportunities in addressing the challenges of IoT. In this paper, we investigate the integration of blockchain technology with IoT. We name such synthesis of blockchain and IoT as blockchain of things (BCoT). This paper presents an in-depth survey of BCoT and discusses the insights of this new paradigm. In particular, we first briefly introduce IoT and discuss the challenges of IoT. Then, we give an overview of blockchain technology. We next concentrate on introducing the convergence of blockchain and IoT and presenting the proposal of BCoT architecture. We further discuss the issues about using blockchain for fifth generation beyond in IoT as well as industrial applications of BCoT. Finally, we outline the open research directions in this promising area.
Mobile Ad-hoc Cloud (MAC) is the constellation of nearby mobile devices to serve the heavy computational needs of the resource-constrained edge devices. One of the major challenges of MAC is to convince the mobile devices to offer their limited resources for the shared computational pool. Credit-based rewarding system is considered as an effective way of incentivizing the arbitrary mobile devices for joining the MAC network and to earn the credits through computational crowdsourcing. The next challenge is to get the reliable computation as incentives attract the malicious devices to submit fake computational results for claiming their reward and we have used the blockchain based reputation system for identifying the malicious participants of MAC. This paper presents a malicious node identification algorithm integrated within the Iroha based permissioned blockchain. Iroha is a project of hyperledger which is focused on mobile devices and thus light-weight in nature. It is used for keeping the track of rewarding and reputation system driven by the malicious node detection algorithm. Experiments are conducted for evaluating the implemented test-bed and results show the effectiveness of algorithm in identifying the malicious devices and conducting reliable data analysis through the blockchain based computational crowdsourcing in MAC.
The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of blockchain hardware acceleration. Blockchain technology has achieved significant attention in recent years particularly in the area of cryptocurrency however it is gaining popularity in other applications such as supply chain management and e-government. Based on a structured, systematic review of the relevant literature, we present a classification of the primary areas in blockchain technology that make use of heterogeneous hardware for accelerating certain blockchain functions. Based on these findings, we identify various research gaps and future exploratory directions that are anticipated to be of significant value both for academics and industry practitioners.
Data driven networks applicable for shipping industrial applications to create decentralized system intelligence are considered in this study. Such system intelligence can facilitate to improve the respective operational efficiency in local (i.e. vessel operations) and global (i.e. logistics operations) scales in shipping as the main advantage. The main features of these data driven networks are summarized in the first part of this study. Two applications of digital models and blockchain technologies are discussed and compared with their features to illustrate their similarities and differences in the second part of this study. A digital model represents a vector based mathematical structure derived from ship performance and navigation data sets and has categorized as a low-level information model. It is also believed that the respective data sets from industrial IoT (internet of things) should go through such low-level models to improve their quality. These data driven networks can be used to quantify ship performance and navigation conditions, where the outcome can also be used to improve vessel energy efficiency and reduce engine emissions in a local scale. A blockchain represents a decentralized, distributed and digital ledger system in a public domain and can handle and record transactions executed by many users. That has categorized as a high-level information model due the high quality data sets from industrial processes that these networks are handling. Such data driven networks can be used to formulate various logistics operations in shipping and optimize their operational conditions in a global scale. The outcomes of these data driven networks can be used to improve operational efficiency and reduce the respective costs in the shipping industry.
Internet of Thing devices (IoT devices) are often constrained in terms of computing, memory, storage, power, and network resources. This makes them ill-suited to operate as first-class citizens on a blockchain, such as Ethereum, preventing the IoT devices from attaining the security guarantees that are available to better resourced nodes that are able to operate as full, validating nodes on the blockchain. IoT devices may use so-called light protocols to interact with the blockchain with minimal resource requirements, but these protocols provide only probabilistic security guarantees. In this position paper, we propose a new mechanism where an operator of IoT devices is able to send a “ground truth state” to the devices via a new mechanism, which we call “decentralized beacons”, enabling them to gain full security guarantees of the blockchain state.
Let’s put aside the question whether Blockchain is a real technology or a passing fad – a hype. The ups and downs of your fortunes in Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies in the last couple of years may have clouded your views. Short-term or long-term success, or failure, of cryptocurrencies may depend on the success, or failure, of Blockchain, but it is important to recognize that Blockchain and the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) have far greater uses in wide-ranging applications. One such use of Blockchain is as a key enabling technology of 5G applications. Prof. Chaudhry and Dr. Asad present their research to propose a Blockchain-based Network Slice and Resource Brokerage system to build an open, transparent, and fair 5G ecosystem. They explain the challenges of addressing the massive cooperation required among 5G devices and potential solutions using Blockchain.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
With ever more IoT (Internet of Things) and bigdata applications, the emerging blockchain techniques provide fundamental supports to credibly track the transactions of digital assets. Public blockchains, e.g., bitcoin, are often energy-consuming and low efficient. Therefore, an empirical study of operating permissioned blockchains in clouds is urgently needed. In this paper, we study the performance of Sawtooth, a well-known permissioned blockchain platforms from Hyperledger, in cloud environments. Our results provide insights for blockchain operators to optimize the performance of Sawtooth through adjusting the two configuration parameters, i.e., Scheduler and Maximum Batches Per Block. Our approach can be used to test other blockchain platforms.
Blockchains and smart contracts are an emerging, promising technology, that has received considerable attention. We use the blockchain technology, and in particular Ethereum, to implement a large-scale event-based Internet of Things (IoT) control system. We argue that the distributed nature of the "ledger," as well as, Ethereum's capability of parallel execution of replicated "smart contracts", provide the sought after automation, generality, flexibility, resilience, and high availability. We design a realistic blockchain-based IoT architecture, using existing technologies while by taking into consideration the characteristics and limitations of IoT devices and applications. Furthermore, we leverage blockchain's immutability and Ethereum's support for custom tokens to build a robust and efficient token-based access control mechanism. Our evaluation shows that our solution is viable and offers significant security and usability advantages.
The following topics are dealt with: data privacy; security of data; cryptography; Internet of Things; Internet; computer network security; contracts; authorisation; cryptocurrencies; cloud computing.