The Physical Internet and hyperconnected logistics concepts promise an open, more efficient, and environmentally friendly supply chain for goods. Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are increasingly regarded as main enablers of improvements in this domain. We describe how blockchain and smart contracts present the potential of being applied to hyperconnected logistics by showing a concrete example of its implementation.
Huma Saeed, Hassaan Malik, Umair Bashir, Aiesha Ahmad · 8 authors
Blockchain technology (BCT) has emerged in the last decade and added a lot of interest in the healthcare sector. The purpose of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to explore the potential paradigm shift in healthcare utilizing BCT. The study is compiled by reviewing research articles published in nine well-reputed venues such as IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Springs Link, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, Science Direct, PsycINFO, Ovid Medline, and MDPI between January 2016 to August 2021. A total of 1,192 research studies were identified out of which 51 articles were selected based on inclusion criteria for this SLR that presents the modern information on the recent implications and gaps in the use of BCT for enhancing the healthcare procedures. According to the outcomes, BCT is being applied to design the novel and advanced interventions to enrich the current protocol of managing, distributing, and processing clinical records and personal medical information. BCT is enduring the conceptual development in the healthcare domain, where it has summed up the substantial elements through better and enhanced efficiency, technological innovation, access control, data privacy, and security. A framework is developed to address the probable field where future researchers can add considerable value, such as data protection, system architecture, and regulatory compliance. Finally, this SLR concludes that the upcoming research can support the pervasive implementation of BCT to address the critical dilemmas related to health diagnostics, enhancing the patient healthcare process in remote monitoring or emergencies, data integrity, and avoiding fraud.
The blockchain technology is complex and involves a wide range of fields, which leads to the lack of uniform specifications for the development of blockchain applications. Although blockchain used to be divided according to the decentralized degree by some organizations, which are difficult to give developers specific guidance and results. To this end, this paper proposed a feature-oriented classification method of blockchain applications based on the analysis and comparison of current typical blockchain applications and frameworks, including digital currency blockchain, development platform blockchain, decentralized application and extended blockchain, helping developer create blockchain applications of a targeted manner and clarifying the functional architecture of different types of above various blockchain applications. Finally, the above classification method has been verified by the analysis of an extended blockchain.
Paulo Bartolomeu, Emanuel Vieira, Joaquim Ferreira
Cyber-physical housing technology is going through a revolution, started the early 2000s and expected to continue in the years to come. In fact, according to market research reports, connected devices for smart homes will soon have the largest market share of all IoT devices. In contrast with siloed devices and applications, which until recently prevailed even in the most sophisticated dwellings, nowadays it is already possible to glimpse a complex blend of technologies seamlessly integrated to promote the residents' comfort. However, several challenges lie ahead before the technology can fully support such a visionary scenario. One of them is security, especially in scenarios encompassing low-end embedded devices. This paper describes a mechanism allowing limited resource embedded appliances to participate in a network of IoT devices secured by a distributed ledger technology named IOTA. The paper describes the devised proof-of-concept implementation and provides insight on preliminary performance results showing its feasibility.
<strong>What is Blockchain?</strong> Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology – a digital, decentralized database that records transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively. Cryptography can be used to verify and secure transactions and control the creation of new units of a particular cryptocurrency. The decentralized nature of blockchain implementation makes it hard to alter records, even when many computers are involved. A public blockchain is like an open ledger anyone can read or write. That's why it is more attractive than other cryptocurrencies controlled by its developers. Public blockchains usually use a Proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. During the blockchain hype, there is often a lack of clarity regarding how it will impact the world economy. Many believers in blockchain envision a decentralized future where most things are automated, and transaction costs are reduced. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were created to achieve this goal of decentralizing various industries, but due to their association with criminal activities, blockchain has not been fully adopted. Another issue is that blockchain is still a new technology, and few people are well versed in it. As a result, they fail to see its potential. <strong>Decentralization</strong> Decentralization in blockchain refers to the movement of control and decision-making from a centralized entity (person, organization, or group) to a dispersed network. Decentralized networks aim to lower the level of trust that users must place in one another and inhibit their capacity to assert authority or control over one another in a manner that degrades the network's functionality. The idea of decentralization is not new. When developing a technology solution, there are three basic network architectures: centralized, distributed, and decentralized. While blockchain technology frequently uses decentralized networks, a blockchain application itself cannot simply be classified as "decentralized" or "centralized." Instead, decentralization should be applied to all components of a blockchain program on a sliding scale. Greater and more equitable service can be accomplished by decentralizing the management and access to resources in an application. Decentralization often has some drawbacks, such as a decreased transaction throughput, but in most cases, these drawbacks are worth the better stability and service levels they offer. There are many benefits to decentralizing the administration of and access to resources within an application. Even if there are certain downsides to decentralization, such as a reduction in transaction throughput, in the long run, these disadvantages are outweighed by the benefits of increased service quality and stability. <strong>Distributed Ledger</strong> Distributed ledgers are databases that are shared across the network and scattered across several sites. Distributed ledgers are ledgers that have been extended around the globe and are under global control. As a result, several parties in various locations and institutions hold and restructure dispersed ledgers. <strong>Immutable Ledger</strong> In a blockchain, the term "immutable ledger" refers to any records that can't be changed. This means that you can't change data easily. This makes sure that security is pretty tight. If something is immutable, it is hard to make changes without the help of other people. With blockchain implementation, the basis of many transactions becomes an immutable ledger. This means that everyone in the network has access to a ledger that can't be altered. As a result, it is harder to commit fraud, and it provides an additional level of security. <strong>What Gives Blockchain Its Power?</strong> Let's understand how blockchain technology works. <strong>Security</strong>: Blockchain is a decentralized network. As a result, for any blockchain transaction to take place, all network members must have a consensus. A transaction cannot go through without most of the network's agreement. Therefore, <strong>blockchain implementation</strong> ensures that all transactions are protected to the highest level. <strong>Transparency</strong>: Blockchain is public, and anyone can access the network. Since blockchain technology is a decentralized system, any transaction on a blockchain network can be seen by everyone in that network. <strong>Reliability</strong>: Blockchain is a highly secured decentralized network. All nodes in the blockchain network must agree and accept any request to access any data stored there. In other words, the network highly secures any data stored in a blockchain. Since transactions are immutable, the data cannot be altered retroactively. <strong>Scalability</strong>: Blockchain technology can process large volumes of information quickly. For example, blockchain can be implemented to increase efficiency in the banking industry, especially in Africa. <strong>Accuracy:</strong> Each client account on the network has its specific and unique transaction history that can be used to profile clients. With all this data available on the blockchain, a bank can monitor client transactions and make more accurate lending decisions by generating reports based on analysis of these transactions. <strong>Privacy</strong>: The distributed nature of blockchain technology provides enhanced privacy. In a centralized system, all the data is stored on a single server. And since that server has access to all the information, it is possible to view details of any transaction on that account. This can be extremely disturbing, especially if you are one of the users accessing information needed by someone else. With blockchain implementation, even though no new data is added every time a new transaction occurs, data cannot be accessed by anyone except those authorized. <strong>Conclusion</strong> Blockchain offers a good solution for many applications requiring transparency, decentralization, integrity, and security without requiring a trusted third party. The technology can potentially disrupt many industries, including banking, payments, remittances, capital markets, asset management, insurance, and lending. However, several challenges in blockchain implementation must be addressed to realize the full potential of blockchain for different applications and use cases. At MicroAgility, Our blockchain consultants can help you understand how blockchain can be used in your business and assist you in implementing the technology. We have vast experience in adopting cutting-edge technologies in clients' businesses. We know how to implement blockchain technology based on your needs and requirements for different domains, ensuring security, confidentiality, and scalability. Our blockchain consulting services can help you choose the most suitable solution for your business and bring it to the next level with seamless implementation. <strong>MicroAgility dedicated blockchain consulting teams consist of diverse talent, including: </strong> <strong>Project Managers/Scrum Masters</strong> with extensive and hands-on expertise in Blockchain projects. <strong>Business Analysts</strong> to help you recommend ideal business requirements for blockchain solutions tailored to your needs. <strong>Software Engineers & Solution Architects</strong> to help build a custom architecture of blockchain solutions for your business <strong>UX Designers </strong>to design user-friendly, state-of-the-art digital interfaces for your blockchain platforms and applications. <strong>Blockchain Developers/Quality Engineers</strong> to develop customized blockchain applications and platforms. Contact us today to hire blockchain consultants and learn more about our services.
Measurement of energy especially electricity consumption becomes an issue in big cities. Electricity usage monitoring is becoming more crucial and there is a need for the instant view of active energy usage. Solutions like smart grids are possible. Smart grids give a view in macro-level, there is also a need of a micro-level view. We mean a small region's or customer's usage when we mean micro-level view. The privacy of the personal data and the user's trust in the system should also be considered in these scenarios. This study aims to propose such an alternative system which uses blockchain technology and Internet of Things (IoT) devices for the metering and billing of the customer for the electric network. The trust and privacy issues are aimed to be solved. Blockchain can provide safer and more transparent solutions with its decentralized structure. Raspberry Pi is used to simulate metering, Hyperledger Fabric is selected as a blockchain system. A scalable and energy efficient energy tracking system with blockchain and IoT devices is proposed. A prototype system is formed and the possible usage scenario is simulated on the prototype.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The growing demand for human-independent comfortable lifestyle has emboldened the development of smart home. A typical keenly intellective home includes many Internet of things contrivances that engender processes and immensely colossal data to efficiently handle its users’ demands. This incrementing demand raises a plethora of concern cognate to a smart home system in terms of scalability, efficiency, and security. All these issues are tedious to manage, and the existing studies lack the granularity for surmounting them. Considering such a requisite of security and efficiency as a quandary at hand, this article presents a secure and efficient smart home architecture, which incorporates the blockchain and the cloud computing technologies for a cumulated solution. Because of the decentralized nature of blockchain technology, it can serve the processing services and make the transaction copy of the collected sensible user data from smart home. To ensure the security of smart home network, our proposed model utilizes the multivariate correlation analysis technique to analyze the network traffic and identify the correlation between traffic features. We have evaluated the performance of our proposed architecture using different parameters like throughput and discovered that blockchain is an efficient security solution for the future Internet of things network.
Ajayi Oluwashina Joseph, Joseph Raffety, Philip Morrow, Lin Zhiwei · 7 authors
The proliferation of the Internet of Things has seen it adopted to practically all aspects of life. There has been an increase in demand for more IoT devices which are manufactured by several companies. This has however left need to address vulnerabilities within and threats to these devices. In many cases, these vulnerabilities arise from manufacturer focus on functionality rather than security. Secure by design IoT devices are rare in the market today. Efforts to address this are being made by the IoT research community, however, more effort is required. Deficiencies of current efforts include accountability of devices and privacy of data generated across the IoT landscape. The aim of this Ph.D. research is to improve the security, privacy, veracity, and trust. The approach developed in this study will be based on non-repudiation of actions among self-organized IoT devices in an IoT Ecosystem by leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). A proposed system architecture which relies on the Distributed Ledger Technology and its related features will enable services to be applied to the IoT landscape to achieve aspects of end to end IoT security. The initial progress to date is presented within this manuscript.
Ivan Jovović, Siniša Husnjak, Ivan Forenbacher, Sven Maček
The Industry 4.0 is experiencing significant challenges, including the need for an increased amount of data transmission with improved security, transparency and credibility. The 5th Generation Mobile Network (5G) and Blockchain are innovative emerging technologies that can respond to these needs. 5
Tim K. Mackey, Tsung-Ting Kuo, Basker Gummadi, Kevin A. Clauson · 9 authors
Blockchain is a shared distributed digital ledger technology that can better facilitate data management, provenance and security, and has the potential to transform healthcare. Importantly, blockchain represents a data architecture, whose application goes far beyond Bitcoin - the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain and has popularized the technology. In the health sector, blockchain is being aggressively explored by various stakeholders to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient outcomes, enhance compliance, and enable better use of healthcare-related data. However, critical in assessing whether blockchain can fulfill the hype of a technology characterized as 'revolutionary' and 'disruptive', is the need to ensure that blockchain design elements consider actual healthcare needs from the diverse perspectives of consumers, patients, providers, and regulators. In addition, answering the real needs of healthcare stakeholders, blockchain approaches must also be responsive to the unique challenges faced in healthcare compared to other sectors of the economy. In this sense, ensuring that a health blockchain is 'fit-for-purpose' is pivotal. This concept forms the basis for this article, where we share views from a multidisciplinary group of practitioners at the forefront of blockchain conceptualization, development, and deployment.
(1) Background: Large eHealth systems should have a mechanism to detect unauthorized changes in patients’ medical documentation, access permissions, and logs. This is due to the fact that modern eHealth systems are connected with many healthcare providers and sites. (2) Methods: Design-science methodology was used to create an integrity-protection service model based on blockchain technology. Based on the problem of transactional transparency, requirements were specified and a model was designed. After that, the model’s security and performance were evaluated. (3) Results: a blockchain-based eHealth integrity model for ensuring information integrity in eHealth systems that uses a permissioned blockchain with off-chain information storage was created. In contrast to existing solutions, the proposed model allows information removal, which in many countries’ eHealth systems is a legal requirement, and is based on a blockchain using the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm. (4) Conclusion: A blockchain can be used to store medical data or only security-related data. In the proposed model, a blockchain is mainly used to implement a data-integrity service. This service can be implemented using other mechanisms, but a blockchain provides a solution that does not require trusted third parties, works in a distributed eHealth environment, and supports document removal.
Healthcare information exchange is an important research topic, which can benefit both healthcare providers and patients. In healthcare data sharing, many cloud-based solutions have been proposed, but the trustworthiness of a third-party cloud service is questionable. Recently, blockchain has been introduced in healthcare record sharing, which does not rely on trusting a third party. However, existing approaches only focus on the records collected from medical examination. They are not efficient in sharing data streams continuously generated from sensors and other monitoring devices. Today, IoT devices have been widely deployed and sensors and mobile applications can monitor patients’ body conditions. The collected data are shared to laboratories and institutions for diagnosis and further study. Moreover, existing approaches are too rigid to efficiently support metadata change. In this paper, an efficient data-sharing scheme is proposed, called MedChain, which combines blockchain, digest chain, and structured P2P network techniques to overcome the above efficiency issues in the existing approaches for sharing both types of healthcare data. Based on MedChain, a session-based healthcare data-sharing scheme is devised, which brings flexibility in data sharing. The evaluation results show that MedChain can achieve higher efficiency and satisfy the security requirements in data sharing.
In the digital healthcare era, it is utmost important to harness medical information scattered across healthcare institutions to support in-depth data analysis. However, the boundaries of cyberinfrastructure of healthcare providers place obstacles on data sharing. In this position paper, we firstly identify the challenges of medical data sharing and management. Then we introduce the background and give a brief survey on the state-of-the-art. Finally, we conclude the paper by discussing a few possible research directions to cope with the challenges in current medical information sharing.
Francesco Restuccia, Kanhere, Salvatore D'Oro andSalil S., Tommaso Melodia, Sajal Kanta Das
One of the key challenges to the IoT's success is how to secure and anonymize billions of IoT transactions and devices per day, an issue that still lingers despite significant research efforts over the last few years. On the other hand, technologies based on blockchain algorithms are disrupting today's cryptocurrency markets and showing tremendous potential, since they provide a distributed transaction ledger that cannot be tampered with or controlled by a single entity. Although the blockchain may present itself as a cure-all for the IoT's security and privacy challenges, significant research efforts still need to be put forth to adapt the computation-intensive blockchain algorithms to the stringent energy and processing constraints of today's IoT devices. In this paper, we provide an overview of existing literature on the topic of blockchain for IoT, and present a roadmap of research challenges that will need to be addressed to enable the usage of blockchain technologies in the IoT.
Yao Sun, Lei Zhang, Gang Feng, Bowen Yang · 6 authors
Blockchain has shown a great potential in Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems for establishing trust and consensus mechanisms without involvement of any third party. Understanding the relationship between communication and blockchain as well as the performance constraints posing on the counterparts can facilitate designing a dedicated blockchain-enabled IoT systems. In this paper, we establish an analytical model for the blockchain-enabled wireless IoT system. By considering spatio-temporal domain Poisson distribution, i.e., node geographical distribution in spatial domain and transaction arrival rate in time domain are both modeled as Poisson point process (PPP), we first derive the distribution of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), blockchain transaction successful rate as well as overall throughput. Based on the system model and performance analysis, we design an algorithm to determine the optimal full function node deployment for blockchain system under the criterion of maximizing transaction throughput. Finally, the security performance is analyzed in the proposed networks with three typical attacks. Solutions such as physical layer security are presented and discussed to keep the system secure under these attacks. Numerical results validate the accuracy of our theoretical analysis and optimal node deployment algorithm.
Mohammad Maroufi, Reza Abdolee, Behzad Mozaffari Tazekand
The Internet of Things (IoT) technology will soon become an integral part of our daily lives to facilitate the control and monitoring of processes and objects and revolutionize the ways that human interacts with the physical world. For all features of IoT to become fully functional in practice, there are several obstacles on the way to be surmounted and critical challenges to be addressed. These include, but are not limited to cybersecurity, data privacy, energy consumption, and scalability. The Blockchain decentralized nature and its multi-faceted procedures offer a useful mechanism to tackle several of these IoT challenges. However, applying the Blockchain protocols to IoT without considering their tremendous computational loads, delays, and bandwidth overhead can let to a new set of problems. This review evaluates some of the main challenges we face in the integration of Blockchain and IoT technologies and provides insights and high-level solutions that can potentially handle the shortcomings and constraints of both IoT and Blockchain technologies.
Blockchains are proposed for many application domains apart from financial transactions. While there are generic blockchains that can be molded for specific use cases, they often lack a lightweight and easy-to-customize implementation. In this paper, we introduce the core concepts of blockchain technology and investigate a real-world use case from the energy domain, where customers trade portions of their photovoltaic power plant via a blockchain. This does not only involve blockchain technology, but also requires user interaction. Therefore, a fully custom, private, and permissioned blockchain is implemented from scratch. We evaluate and motivate the need for blockchain technology within this use case, as well as the desired properties of the system. We then describe the implementation and the insights from our implementation in detail, serving as a guide for others and to show potential opportunities and pitfalls when implementing a blockchain from scratch.
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays an indispensable role for Industry 4.0, where people are committed to implement a general, scalable, and secure IIoT system to be adopted across various industries. However, existing IIoT systems are vulnerable to single point of failure and malicious attacks, which cannot provide stable services. Due to the resilience and security promise of blockchain, the idea of combining blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) gains considerable interest. However, blockchains are power-intensive and low-throughput, which are not suitable for power-constrained IoT devices. To tackle these challenges, we present a blockchain system with credit-based consensus mechanism for IIoT. We propose a credit-based proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism for IoT devices, which can guarantee system security and transaction efficiency simultaneously. In order to protect sensitive data confidentiality, we design a data authority management method to regulate the access to sensor data. In addition, our system is built based on directed acyclic graph -structured blockchains, which is more efficient than the Satoshi-style blockchain in performance. We implement the system on Raspberry Pi, and conduct a case study for the smart factory. Extensive evaluation and analysis results demonstrate that credit-based PoW mechanism and data access control are secure and efficient in IIoT.
Pietro Danzi, Anders E. Kalør, René Sørensen, Alexander Korsvang Hagelskjær · 7 authors
The pervasive need to safely share and store information between devices calls for the replacement of centralized trust architectures with the decentralized ones. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) are seen as the most promising enabler of decentralized trust, but they still lack technological maturity and their successful adoption depends on the understanding of the fundamental design trade-offs and their reflection in the actual technical design. This work focuses on the challenges and potential solutions for an effective integration of DLTs in the context of Internet-of-Things (IoT). We first introduce the landscape of IoT applications and discuss the limitations and opportunities offered by DLTs. Then, we review the technical challenges encountered in the integration of resource-constrained devices with distributed trust networks. We describe the common traits of lightweight synchronization protocols, and propose a novel classification, rooted in the IoT perspective. We identify the need of receiving ledger information at the endpoint devices, implying a two-way data exchange that contrasts with the conventional uplink-oriented communication technologies intended for IoT systems.
Pietro Danzi, Anders E. Kalør, René Sørensen, Alexander Korsvang Hagelskjær · 7 authors
The pervasive need to safely share and store information between devices\ncalls for the replacement of centralized trust architectures with the\ndecentralized ones. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) are seen as the most\npromising enabler of decentralized trust, but they still lack technological\nmaturity and their successful adoption depends on the understanding of the\nfundamental design trade-offs and their reflection in the actual technical\ndesign. This work focuses on the challenges and potential solutions for an\neffective integration of DLTs in the context of Internet-of-Things (IoT). We\nfirst introduce the landscape of IoT applications and discuss the limitations\nand opportunities offered by DLTs. Then, we review the technical challenges\nencountered in the integration of resource-constrained devices with distributed\ntrust networks. We describe the common traits of lightweight synchronization\nprotocols, and propose a novel classification, rooted in the IoT perspective.\nWe identify the need of receiving ledger information at the endpoint devices,\nimplying a two-way data exchange that contrasts with the conventional\nuplink-oriented communication technologies intended for IoT systems.\n
Cristina Elena Turcu, Cornel Turcu, Iuliana Chiuchisan
The proposed paper presents a literature review regarding the status of integrating the dynamic blockchain technology in the educational field. Blockchain is a relatively new technology and the same is its implementation in education. The emerging need in this area of research, which still is in its infancy, is justified by the possible use cases; some of these cases are in piloting phase, while others have already been adopted by educational institutions. This paper focuses on extending knowledge about blockchain and on identifying the benefits, risks and the associated challenges regarding the successful implementation of blockchain-based solutions in the field of education, fully in line with standards and guidelines for quality assurance.
With the advent of every of new technology, we feel that we are at the dawn of a revolution. Blockchain, also commonly referred to as ‘Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)’ (synonym but not the same), is one of those technologies that have brought revolution in the field of technology. While blockchain technology might be considered as disruptive in various contexts, there is still a need to understand the term and to know the effective areas, particularly different industries (in broader sense), where the technology is applicable. The aim of this paper is to understand the term as defined by various researchers; investigate its effective application in various industries by reviewing different papers; and understand the success rate of blockchain in its various applications.
Patrick Ocheja, Brendan Flanagan, Hiroshi Ueda, Hiroaki Ogata
It is a common practice to issue a summary of a learner’s learning achievements in form of a transcript or certificate. However, detailed information on the depth of learning and how learning or teachings were conducted is not present in the transcript of scores. This work presents the first practical implementation of a new platform for keeping track of learning achievements beyond transcripts and certificates. This is achieved by maintaining digital hashes of learning activities and managing access rights through the use of smart contracts on the blockchain. The blockchain of learning logs (BOLL) is a platform that enable learners to move their learning records from one institution to another in a secure and verifiable format. This primarily solves the cold-start problem faced by learning data analytic platforms when trying to offer personalized experience to new learners. BOLL enables existing learning data analytic platforms to access the learning logs from other institutions with the permission of the learners and/or institution who originally have ownership of the logs. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate how learning records could be connected across institutions using BOLL. We present an overview of how the implementation has been carried out, discuss resource requirements, and compare the advantages BOLL has over other similar tools.