Blockchain Papers

Yongping Zhang, Pengyuan Zhang, Fei Tao, Yang Liu · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Geraldo Jose Dolce Uzum Martins, Rodrigo Franco Gonçalves, Benedito Cristiano Aparecido Petroni

In the last few years, two technological events emerged. First, the rising of Industry 4.0 concepts and technologies such as IoT allowed the direct link between machines on the shop floor, establishing a machine-to-machine communication (M2M). Second, blockchain enables transactions such payments and contracts without a formal reliable or accreditation institutions, such as banks or government. Goal: The goal of this paper is to explore the state-of-art of the blockchain technology applied to the manufacture sector. In this sense, the option of the M2M transaction being intermediated by blockchain on the shop floor is a hypothesis to be tested. Moreover, it could be questioned if these subjects are being appreciated by the academia. Design / Methodology / Approach: a systematic review of the literature was conducted, considering blockchain, the industrial context, and the Industry 4.0 related technologies. Results: As a result, only 12 papers that were classified according to their application fields and practice stages were obtained. Limitations of the investigation: this field of application is brand new; thus, the available literature is scarce; only 12 papers were obtained. Practical implications: As the main result, it was identified that the possibilities of blockchain applications to Industry have been poorly explored by literature. Originality / Value: The paper addresses the possibility of application of blockchain in M2M-based manufacture, and detaches the research gap in the academic literature related to it.

Yongjun Ren, Yan Leng, Fujian Zhu, Jin Wang · 5 authors

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are expected to play a vital role in the field of patient-health monitoring shortly. They provide a convenient way to collect patient data, but they also bring serious problems which are mainly reflected in the safe storage of the collected data. The privacy and security of data storage in WBAN devices cannot meet the needs of WBAN users. Therefore, this paper adopts blockchain technology to store data, which improves the security of the collected data. Moreover, a storage model based on blockchain in WBAN is proposed in our solution. However, blockchain storage brings new problems, for example, that the storage space of blockchain is small, and the stored content is open to unauthorized attackers. To solve the problems above, this paper proposed a sequential aggregate signature scheme with a designated verifier (DVSSA) to ensure that the user's data can only be viewed by the designated person and to protect the privacy of the users of WBAN. In addition, the new signature scheme can also compress the size of the blockchain storage space.

Gowri Ramachandran, Bhaskar Krishnamachari

The advent of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies enable IoT and smart city application developers to conceive new types of applications and solutions for identity management, trust, and data monetization. However, architecting blockchain-based IoT applications remain challenging due to the heterogeneous nature of blockchain platforms and lack of guidelines on how to interface existing components in the IoT ecosystem with the emerging Blockchain technology. This article explains the characteristics of blockchain and IoT technologies and presents a general reference architecture that can be used to develop many blockchain-based peer-to-peer IoT applications.

Tiago M. Fernández‐Caramés, Óscar Blanco-Novoa, Iván Froiz-Míguez, Paula Fraga‐Lamas

Industry 4.0 has paved the way for a world where smart factories will automate and upgrade many processes through the use of some of the latest emerging technologies. One of such technologies is Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which have evolved a great deal in the last years in terms of technology (e.g., control units, sensors, UAV frames) and have significantlyr educed their cost. UAVs can help industry in automatable and tedious tasks, like the ones performed on a regular basis for determining the inventory and for preserving item traceability. In such tasks, especially when it comes from untrusted third parties, it is essential to determine whether the collected information is valid or true. Likewise, ensuring data trustworthiness is a key issue in order to leverage Big Data analytics to supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. In such a case, blockchain, another Industry 4.0 technology that has become very popular in other fields like finance, has the potential to provide a higher level of transparency, security, trust and efficiency in the supply chain and enable the use of smart contracts. Thus, in this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a UAV-based system aimed at automating inventory tasks and keeping the traceability of industrial items attached to Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags. To confront current shortcomings, such a system is developed under a versatile, modular and scalable architecture aimed to reinforce cyber security and decentralization while fostering external audits and big data analytics. Therefore, the system uses a blockchain and a distributed ledger to store certain inventory data collected by UAVs, validate them, ensure their trustworthiness and make them available to the interested parties. In order to show the performance of the proposed system, different tests were performed in a real industrial warehouse, concluding that the system is able to obtain the inventory data really fast in comparison to traditional manual tasks, while being also able to estimate the position of the items when hovering over them thanks to their tag's signal strength. In addition, the performance of the proposed blockchain-based architecture was evaluated in different scenarios.

Paweł Szałachowski, Daniël Reijsbergen, Ivan Homoliak, Siwei Sun

Bitcoin is the most successful cryptocurrency so far. This is mainly due to its novel consensus algorithm, which is based on proof-of-work combined with a cryptographically-protected data structure and a rewarding scheme that incentivizes nodes to participate. However, despite its unprecedented success Bitcoin suffers from many inefficiencies. For instance, Bitcoin's consensus mechanism has been proved to be incentive-incompatible, its high reward variance causes centralization, and its hardcoded deflation raises questions about its long-term sustainability. In this work, we revise the Bitcoin consensus mechanism by proposing StrongChain, a scheme that introduces transparency and incentivizes participants to collaborate rather than to compete. The core design of our protocol is to reflect and utilize the computing power aggregated on the blockchain which is invisible and "wasted" in Bitcoin today. Introducing relatively easy, although important changes to Bitcoin's design enables us to improve many crucial aspects of Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies making it more secure, efficient, and profitable for participants. We thoroughly analyze our approach and we present an implementation of StrongChain. The obtained results confirm its efficiency, security, and deployability.

Xiaolong Liu, Khan Muhammad, Jaime Lloret, Yu‐Wen Chen · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Matevž Pustišek, Dejan Dolenc, Andrej Kos

In this paper, we present Low-Bandwidth Distributed Applications Framework (LDAF)-an application-aware gateway for communication-constrained Internet of things (IoT) devices. A modular approach facilitates connecting to existing cloud backend servers and managing message formats and APIs' native application logic to meet the communication constraints of resource-limited end devices. We investigated options for positioning the LDAF server in fog computing architectures. We demonstrated the approach in three use cases: (i) a simple domain name system (DNS) query from the device to a DNS server, (ii) a complex interaction of a blockchain-based IoT device with a blockchain network, and (iii) difference based patching of binary (system) files at the IoT end devices. In a blockchain smart meter use case we effectively enabled decentralized applications (DApp) for devices that without our solution could not participate in a blockchain network. Employing the more efficient binary content encoding, we reduced the periodic traffic from 16 kB/s to ~1.1 kB/s, i.e., 7% of the initial traffic. With additional optimization of the application protocol in the gateway and message filtering, the periodic traffic was reduced to ~1% of the initial traffic, without any tradeoffs in the application's functionality or security. Using a function of binary difference we managed to reduce the size of the communication traffic to the end device, at least when the binary patch was smaller than the patching file.

Alessandro Bellini, Emanuele Bellini, Monica Gherardelli, Franco Pirri

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a remarkable data producer and these data may be used to prevent or detect security vulnerabilities and increase productivity by the adoption of statistical and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. However, these desirable benefits are gained if data from IoT networks are dependable—this is where blockchain comes into play. In fact, through blockchain, critical IoT data may be trusted, i.e., considered valid for any subsequent processing. A simple formal model named “the Mirror Model” is proposed to connect IoT data organized in traditional models to assets of trust in a blockchain. The Mirror Model sets some formal conditions to produce trusted data that remain trusted over time. A possible practical implementation of an application programming interface (API) is proposed, which keeps the data and the trust model in synch. Finally, it is noted that the Mirror Model enforces a top-down approach from reality to implementation instead of going the opposite way as it is now the practice when referring to blockchain and the IoT.

Nawari O. Nawari, Shriraam Ravindran

A Blockchain Technology (BCT) is an emergent digital technology that in recent years has gained widespread traction in various industrial, public, and business sectors; primarily in financial and banking realms owing to the rapid increase of cryptocurrency valuation in recent years. A blockchain Technology (BCT) is, in essence, a decentralized ledger that records every transaction made in the network, known as a ‘block’, the body of which comprises of encrypted data of the entire transaction history. It was introduced as the working mechanism that formed the operational basis of Bitcoin, the first digital cryptocurrency to gain extensive mainstream appeal. The introduction of decentralized technology in any industry would require strengthened security, enforce accountability, and could potentially accelerate a shift in workflow dynamics from the current centralized architectures to a decentralized, cooperative chain of command and affect a cultural and societal change by encouraging trust and transparency. It was evident that the underlying principles characteristic of BCT functional attributes and secure digital infrastructure could find application in nearly any conceivable industry. BCT aims at creating a system that would be a robust self-regulating, self-monitoring and cyber-resilient system that assures the facilitation and protection of truly efficient data exchange system. This research depicts a survey of blockchain technology and its applications in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry and examines the potential incorporation within the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process. Furthermore, the paper investigates how employing distributed ledger technology (DLT) could be advantageous in the BIM workflow by emphasizing network security, providing more reliable data storage and management of permissions, ensuring change tracing and data ownership. The focus on collaboration and the distributed nature of both technologies imply the suitability for implementing an integrative framework, and in extension, posit that effectively leveraging DLT’s robust, reliable, and secure network infrastructure, and BIM workflow processes can be significantly enhanced. The paper examines the fundamentals of distributed ledgers, their prospective future applications and current advances, and their categorization based on intrinsic characteristics of consensus reaching and permissions. Moreover, the study investigates the potential application of BCT in improving the framework for automating the design review process such as using Smart Contract (SC) technologies and Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), as well as discussing future research areas. HLF is the underlying BCT infrastructure that can serve to highlight key postulations to elucidate the idealized BIM workflow aptly.

Younchan Jung, Marnel Peradilla, Ronnel Agulto

The existing LTE mobile system uses the vertical model to handle the session-based security management. However, the goal of this paper is to propose a packet key-based security management scheme on the blockchain control plane to enhance the existing session key-based security scheme and overcome the limitation that the existing vertical model, as well as the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) based horizontal model, confronts within solving end-to-end security management. The proposed blockchain-based security management (BSM) scheme enables each peer to easily obtain the necessary parameters required to manage the packet key-based security system. The important features of the BSM scheme include the renewal process, which enables the different packet data streams to use completely different security parameters for the security management. In addition, because even blind values cannot be exposed to the possible attackers, our BSM scheme guarantees very secure end-to-end data transfer against active attacks such as falsification of data and transactions. Finally, this paper compares the BSM scheme with the existing vertical model to prove the advantageous effects on latency.

Yongjun Ren, Fujian Zhu, Jian Qi, Jin Wang · 5 authors

Edge computing provides a unified platform for computing, networking, and storage resources, enabling data to be processed in a timely and efficient manner near the source. Thus, it has become the basic platform for industrial Internet of things (IIoT). However, computing′s unique features have also introduced new security problems. To solve the problem, in this paper, blockchain-based identity management combining access control mechanism is designed under edge computing. The self-certified cryptography is utilized to realize the registration and authentication of network entities. We bind the generated implicit certificate to its identity and construct the identity and certificate management mechanism based on blockchain. Secondly, an access control mechanism based on Bloom filter is designed and integrated with identity management. Moreover, for secure communication in resource-constrained edge devices, a lightweight secret key agreement protocol based on self-authenticated public key is constructed. These mechanisms work together to provide data security guarantees for IIoT such as authentication, auditability, and confidentiality.

Rajat Chaudhary, Anish Jindal, Gagangeet Singh Aujla, Shubhani Aggarwal · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Marten Sigwart, Michael Borkowski, Marco Peise, Stefan Schulte · 5 authors

As more and more applications and services depend on data collected and provided by Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it is of importance that such data can be trusted. Data provenance solutions together with blockchain technology are one way to make data more trustworthy. However, current solutions do not address the heterogeneous nature of IoT applications and their data. In this work, we identify functional and non-functional requirements for a generic IoT data provenance framework, and conceptualise the framework as a layered architecture. Using a proof-of-concept implementation based on Ethereum smart contracts, data provenance can be realised for a wide range of IoT use cases. Benefits of a generic framework include simplified adoption and a more rapid implementation of data provenance for the IoT.

Bin Cao, Yixin Li, Lei Zhang, Long Zhang · 7 authors

Blockchain has been regarded as a promising technology for Internet of Things (IoT), since it provides significant solutions for decentralized network which can address trust and security concerns, high maintenance cost problem, etc. The decentralization provided by blockchain can be largely attributed to the use of consensus mechanism, which enables peer-to-peer trading in a distributed manner without the involvement of any third party. This article starts from introducing the basic concept of blockchain and illustrating why consensus mechanism plays an indispensable role in a blockchain enabled IoT system. Then, we discuss the main ideas of two famous consensus mechanisms including Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), and list their limitations in IoT. Next, two mainstream Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) based consensus mechanisms, i.e., the Tangle and Hashgraph, are reviewed to show why DAG consensus is more suitable for IoT system than PoW and PoS. Potential issues and challenges of DAG based consensus mechanism to be addressed in the future are discussed in the last.

Philipp Frauenthaler, Michael Borkowski, Stefan Schulte

The suitability of a particular blockchain for a given use case depends mainly on the blockchain's functional and non-functional properties. Such properties may vary over time, and thus, a selected blockchain may become unsuitable for a given use case. This uncertainty may hinder the widespread adoption of blockchain technologies in general. To mitigate the impact of volatile blockchain properties, we propose a framework that monitors several blockchains, allows the user to define functional and non-functional requirements, determines the most appropriate blockchain, and enables the switchover to that chain at runtime. Our evaluation using a reference implementation shows that switching to another blockchain can save cost and enable users to benefit from better performance and a higher level of trust.

Lei Hang, Do‐Hyeun Kim

With the rapid development of communication technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is getting out of its infancy, into full maturity, and tends to be developed in an explosively rapid way, with more and more data transmitted and processed. As a result, the ability to manage devices deployed worldwide has been given more and advanced requirements in practical application performances. Most existing IoT platforms are highly centralized architectures, which suffer from various technical limitations, such as a cyber-attack and single point of failure. A new solution direction is essential to enhance data accessing, while regulating it with government mandates in privacy and security. In this paper, we propose an integrated IoT platform using blockchain technology to guarantee sensing data integrity. The aim of this platform is to afford the device owner a practical application that provides a comprehensive, immutable log and allows easy access to their devices deployed in different domains. It also provides characteristics of general IoT systems, allows for real-time monitoring, and control between the end user and device. The business logic of the application is defined by the smart contract, which contains rules and conditions. The proposed approach is backed by a proof of concept implementation in realistic IoT scenarios, utilizing Raspberry Pi devices and a permissioned network called Hyperledger Fabric. Lastly, a benchmark study using various performance metrics is made to highlight the significance of the proposed work. The analysis results indicate that the designed platform is suitable for the resource-constrained IoT architecture and is scalable to be extended in various IoT scenarios.

Besfort Shala, Ulrich Trick, Armin Lehmann, Bogdan Ghita · 5 authors

The increasing number of intelligent Machine-to-Machine Communication (M2M) devices in the end-user domain provide good resources for creating and sharing M2M application services. Therefore, transferring the role of a traditional centralized service provider to decentralized peers (end-users) acting as service providers is very promising. However, the future of decentralized M2M application services which are independently provided or consumed by several end-users in the M2M community depends on trust. Untrustworthy peers trying to deploy malfunctioning services for others mitigate the benefits of decentralized systems. Nowadays, the concept of distributed ledger and blockchain has an increased popularity regarding trustless computing among communities operating without centralized authorities. This research publication provides a comprehensive analysis and approach merging the concepts of M2M application services, trust and distributed ledger technologies. Moreover, this publication presents an optimized Trust Evaluation System which is used to ensure trustworthiness among peers in a M2M community. To improve the Trust Evaluation System the integration of blockchain for data storage is introduced. Additionally, blockchain technology is used to extend the existing trust model of the Trust Evaluation System to enable tamper-proof data and detection of untrustworthy peers. This publication reviews several existing approaches in the academic and industry sector to highlight the limitations of the blockchain regarding the consensus and proposes a novel Trust Consensus Protocol. This research publication also provides a practical evaluation of the proposed protocol.

Ritik Banger

This study has been undertaken to all the segments and functioning of BlockChain and Cryptocurrency. They have become one of the hottest topics in the tech and finance world. This technology directly affects the financial world. It is safe, secure, and fast and expanding with a predicted rate of 42.8% by 2020. The immense potential this technology holds for future growth gives rise to the concept of BitCoin, Ethereum, etc. There are more than 2000 startups based on BlockChain Technology with a high market inclination.

Abbas Yazdinejad, Reza M. Parizi, Ali Dehghantanha, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

5G mobile networks provide additional benefits in terms of lower latency, higher data rates, and more coverage, in comparison to 4G networks, and they are also coming close to standardization. For example, 5G has a new level of data transfer and processing speed that assures users are not disconnected when they move from one cell to another; thus, supporting faster connection. However, 5G comes with its own technical challenges, such as those relating to authentication handover and user privacy protection. In 5G, for example, the frequent displacement of the users among the cells as a result of repeated authentication handovers often lead to a delay, contradicting the 5G objectives. Using inefficient authentication handover could also cause performance degradation among heterogeneous 5G cells, and increases the possibility of occurring user privacy and security issues. In this paper, we propose a new authentication approach that utilizes blockchain and software defined networking (SDN) techniques to remove the unnecessary re-authentication in repeated handover among heterogeneous cells. The proposed approach is designed to assure the low delay, appropriate for the 5G network in which users are replaced with the least delay among heterogeneous cells using their public and private keys provided by the devised blockchain component while protecting their privacy. In our comparison between Proof-of-Work (POW)-based and network-based models, the delay of our authentication handover is shown to be less than 1 ms. Also, our approach demonstrates less signaling overhead and energy consumption compared to peer models.

Boubakr Nour, Adlen Ksentini, Nicolas Herbaut, Pantelis A. Frangoudis · 5 authors

With advent of 5G, the classical mobile network business model is shifting from a network-operator-oriented business to a more open system with several actors. In this context, the network slice provider will play the role of an intermediate entity between the vertical service provider and the resource provider. To deploy a network slice, the network slice provider will require a brokering mechanism, which allows it to lease resources from different providers in a secure and private way. In this letter, we propose a broker design based on blockchain technology, providing a mechanism that secures and ensures anonymous transactions.

Faisal Jamil, Lei Hang, Kyuhyung Kim, Do‐Hyeun Kim

At present, in pharmacology one of the most serious problems is counterfeit drugs. The Health Research Funding organization reported that in developing countries, nearly 10–30% of the drugs are fake. Counterfeiting is not the main issue itself, but, rather, the fact that, as compared to traditional drugs, these counterfeit drugs produce different side effects to human health. According to WHO, around 30% of the total medicine sold in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is counterfeit. This is the major worldwide problem, and the situation is worse in developing countries, where one out of every 10 medicines are either fake or do not follow drug regulations. The rise of Internet pharmacies has made it more difficult to standardize drug safety. It is difficult to detect counterfeits because these drugs pass through different complex distributed networks, thus forming opportunities for counterfeits to enter the authentic supply chain. The safety of the pharmaceutical supply chain has become a major concern for public health, which is a collective process. In this paper, we propose a novel drug supply chain management using Hyperledger Fabric based on blockchain technology to handle secure drug supply chain records. The proposed system solves this problem by conducting drug record transactions on a blockchain to create a smart healthcare ecosystem with a drug supply chain. A smart contract is launched to give time-limited access to electronic drug records and also patient electronic health records. We also carried out a number of experiments in order to demonstrate the usability and efficiency of the designed platform. Finally, we used Hyperledger Caliper as a benchmarking tool to conduct the performance of the designed system in terms of transactions per second, transaction latency, and resource utilization.

Vasilios A. Siris, Dimitrios Dimopoulos, Nikos Fotiou, Spyros Voulgaris · 5 authors

We present models that utilize smart contracts and interledger mechanisms to\nprovide decentralized authorization for constrained IoT devices. The models\ninvolve different tradeoffs in terms of cost, delay, complexity, and privacy,\nwhile exploiting key advantages of smart contracts and multiple blockchains\nthat communicate with interledger mechanisms. These include immutably recording\nhashes of authorization information and policies in smart contracts, resilience\nthrough the execution of smart contract code on all blockchain nodes, and\ncryptographically linking transactions and IoT events recorded on different\nblockchains using hash and time-lock mechanisms. The proposed models are\nevaluated on the public Ethereum testnets Rinkeby and Ropsten, in terms of\nexecution cost (gas), delay, and reduction of data that needs to be sent to the\nconstrained IoT devices.\n

Koosha Mohammad Hossein, Mohammad Esmaeili, Tooska Dargahi, Ahmad Khonsari

Since the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT), e-health has become one of the main research topics. Due to the sensitivity of patient data, preserving the privacy of patients appears to be challenging. In healthcare applications, patient data are usually stored in the cloud, which makes it difficult for the users to have enough control over their data. However, due to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is the data subject's right to know where and how his data has been stored, who can access his data and to what extent. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based architecture for e-health applications which provides an efficient privacy-preserving access control mechanism. We take advantage of Blockchain (BC) special features, i.e., immutability and anonymity of users, while modifying the classic blockchain structure in order to overcome its challenges in IoT applications (i.e., low throughput, high overhead and latency). To this end, we cluster the miners of BC, store and process data at the nearest cluster to the patient. While our proposal is a work in progress, we provide a security analysis of our proposed architecture.