Van Duy Tran, Shingo Ata, Thi Hong Tran, Duc Khai Lam · 5 authors
The collection and examination of student data, encompassing academic achievements, awards, and certifications, assume an essential function within the field of education as a means of showing students’ capabilities. Nevertheless, it is crucial to note that regular paper-based records are vulnerable to both physical destruction and the act of fabrication, while standard databases can have security holes. Moreover, the process of manually gathering physical papers from centralized organizations is both laborious and complicated. To address the concerns above and foster sustainability in the field of education, this study first suggests using Scorechain. This innovative solution integrates blockchain technology into a comprehensive data-management system for managing all student-related data. Secondly, by utilizing the inherent security features of blockchain technology, Scorechain develops a stable multi-role hierarchy, increasing the integrity and reliability of data. This also facilitates the efficient transfer of information among various stakeholders, including parents, recruiters, and educational institutions, thus fostering transparency and accountability. Lastly, the Scorechain system facilitates collaboration and data exchange among universities inside a shared network. Scorechain was constructed using the Rust programming language and is based on the Substrate blockchain architecture. It underwent careful development, testing, and analysis to ensure operational efficiency. The feasibility and long-term viability of Scorechain in genuine educational contexts are highlighted as blockchain technology facilitates seamless integration into the education sector.
R. Hanumantharaju, Shreenath Kn, Sowmya BJ, Srinivasa Kg
Intrusion detection is a familiar phrase in the information and network security domain. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a device or software that will keep track of the networks, for unlawful movements, and policy breaches that arise within the network. There are different forms of IDS, Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) helps in identifying unauthorized activities on the host, Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) helps in identifying attacks in the network, whereas Distributed Intrusion Detection System (DIDS) consists of multiple IDS over a large area of network where individual IDS communicates with each other or with the central the authorized central server. The proposed work has a three-layered architecture for DIDS for securing data sharing among different IDS. The bottom layer uses multiple IDS, the fog layer is supported with Blockchain functionality, and the cloud service at the upper layer stores required data permanently for future analysis. The fog computing-based architecture for DIDS tries to implement the application in a scalable and trustless environment using distributed ledger technology. The evaluation of the proposed work is carried out for fog, cloud, and integrated fog-cloud with the Blockchain functionality and without Blockchain functionality in measuring performance metrics related to throughput, service latency, response time, block creation time, and block execution time.
Due to the immutability of blockchain, the integration with big-data systems creates limitations on redundancy, scalability, cost, and latency. Additionally, large amounts of invaluable data result in the waste of energy and storage resources. As a result, the demand for data deletion possibilities in blockchain has risen over the last decade. Although several prior studies have introduced methods to address data modification features in blockchain, most of the proposed systems need shorter deletion delays and security requirements. This study proposes a novel blockchain architecture called Unlichain that provides data-modification features within public blockchain architecture. To achieve this goal, Unlichain employed a new indexing technique that defines the deletion time for predefined lifetime data. The indexing technique also enables the deletion possibility for unknown lifetime data. Unlichain employs a new metadata verification consensus among full and meta nodes to avoid delays and extra storage usage. Moreover, Unlichain motivates network nodes to include more transactions in a new block, which motivates nodes to scan for expired data during block mining. The evaluations proved that Unlichain architecture successfully enables instant data deletion while the existing solutions suffer from block dependency issues. Additionally, storage usage is reduced by up to 10%.
Filip Rezabek, Kilian Glas, Richard von Seck, Achraf Aroua · 6 authors
The recent developments and research in distributed ledger technologies and blockchain have contributed to the increasing adoption of distributed systems. To collect relevant insights into systems' behavior, we observe many evaluation frameworks focusing mainly on the system under test throughput. However, these frameworks often need more comprehensiveness and generality, particularly in adopting a distributed applications' cross-layer approach. This work analyses in detail the requirements for distributed systems assessment. We summarize these findings into a structured methodology and experimentation framework called METHODA. Our approach emphasizes setting up and assessing a broader spectrum of distributed systems and addresses a notable research gap. We showcase the effectiveness of the framework by evaluating four distinct systems and their interaction, leveraging a diverse set of eight carefully selected metrics and 12 essential parameters. Through experimentation and analysis we demonstrate the framework's capabilities to provide valuable insights across various use cases. For instance, we identify that a combination of Trusted Execution Environments with threshold signature scheme FROST introduces minimal overhead on the performance with average latency around \SI{40}{\ms}. We showcase an emulation of realistic systems behavior, e.g., Maximal Extractable Value is possible and could be used to further model such dynamics. The METHODA framework enables a deeper understanding of distributed systems and is a powerful tool for researchers and practitioners navigating the complex landscape of modern computing infrastructures.
Andrei C. Azevedo, Eder J. Scheid, Muriel Figueredo Franco, Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville
Besides the main blockchain use-case of exchanging cryptocurrencies, Distributed Applications (DApps) can also be developed on top of such a technology. However, due to the size of popular blockchains and price, testing these DApps in a real-world environment becomes challenging. Thus, blockchain emulators were proposed to address such as issue. This paper presents the experience of emulating an Ethereum network using a Docker-based lightweight testbed developed for Software Defined Networks (SDN).
Blockchain technology has gained popularity in various applications, including finance transactions and beyond. However, developing blockchain application systems is challenging due to stringent quality requirements, such as performance, scalability, and security. Software architecture plays a critical role in realizing key quality requirements. Nonetheless, little work has been performed on software architectures for blockchain applications since blockchain application development is still a new field. This paper proposes twelve architectural patterns for blockchain application software architectures based on 400 cross-industry real-world applications available on the Internet. We determine the key components of each application guided by a blockchain application taxonomy we developed. We then identify typical architectural patterns from the interactions of these components guided by well-known software patterns, such as peer-to-peer, layered, pipe-filter, and access control. Based on the roles of these patterns, we organize them into four architectural views comprising four structural, two interactional, four transactional, and two security patterns. We describe each pattern in detail using a standard form and demonstrate the patterns through a real-world blockchain application. The use of patterns can be valuable in addressing blockchain’s unique challenges, but creativity remains essential in crafting innovative solutions. Mixing architectural patterns according to varying requirements can help developers communicate effectively.
Jongbeen Han, Yunhyeong Seo, Sangjin Lee, Sunggon Kim · 5 authors
A blockchain is designed to establish consistent and reliable agreements in an untrusted and decentralized environment. In addition, the blockchain enables transaction processing and the creation of smart contracts. It empowers end users to execute contracts without any intermediate entities. However, there are some issues when it comes to retrieving information, such as the state and history of smart contracts and regular transactions in the blockchain. For example, in a smart contract, user-defined data structures can be used to recall the state of the smart contract for a range query, which can decrease the general performance. In addition, an external database can be required to retrieve regular transactions for range queries, which increases management costs. To achieve this, we propose a new scheme that enables SQL query operations to retrieve a smart contract and regular transaction information within the blockchain system. To achieve this, we combine an embedded relational database with an Ethereum-based blockchain system to provide the SQL query. It enables range queries on smart contracts without requiring user-defined data structures and decreases management costs for regular transactions without any external database. We implement the proposed blockchain system on quorum, which is an Ethereum-based blockchain system. Also, we evaluate the proposed system using a synthetic benchmark. The performance of retrieving smart contract data is improved by up to approximately 22×, with low memory usage compared with the existing system. Moreover, the proposed system demonstrates a similar search performance to the existing system, even when considering external databases in regular transactions.
This paper explores the potential for improving blockchain performance through the implementation of an adaptive consensus machine. Blockchains, as immutable distributed ledgers, have found applications in various domains such as cryptocurrency, supply chains, healthcare, and more. The two main types of blockchains are permissionless and permissioned, each with its own advantages and limitations. The proposal suggests monitoring transaction metrics on the blockchain to enable the adaptive machine to adjust operational parameters of the consensus protocol or even switch to a different consensus strategy. This autonomic approach aims to enhance the overall performance of the blockchain by utilizing self-defined policies and goals. The paper discusses the use of off-chain structures for recording transactions and the trade-offs between latency and cost. Furthermore, it highlights the potential improvements that can be achieved by adapting classic consensus algorithms in permissioned blockchains. By incorporating adaptive and autonomic techniques, blockchain platforms can achieve enhanced efficiency and performance.
Early open blockchain designs face low throughput, high latency, and prohibitive costs for setting up a full node. New designs improve this with innovative mechanisms for handling transactions and the blockchain state, often assuming locality properties in the workload of transactions. Temporal locality allows efficient space management such as light nodes or snapshot-based bootstrap. Disjoint access parallelism, which depends on spatial locality, enables parallel processing of non-conflicting transactions. We analyze locality properties and their interplay in the largest transactional workload available to date, that of Ethereum. Our results show that, although transactions generally display good locality, a minority of accounts are responsible for caching- or parallelism-unfriendliness, calling for specific identification and handling in future blockchain designs.
A blockchain provides decentralization and trustlessness features for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which expands the application scenarios of IIoT. To address the problem that blockchains cannot actively obtain off-chain data, the blockchain oracle is proposed as a bridge between the blockchain and external data. However, the existing oracle schemes make it difficult to solve the problem of low quality of service caused by frequent data changes and heterogeneous devices in IIoT, and the current oracle node selection schemes are difficult to balance security and quality of service. To tackle these problems, this paper proposes a secure and reliable oracle scheme that can obtain high-quality off-chain data. Specifically, we first design an oracle node selection algorithm based on a Verifiable Random Function (VRF) and reputation mechanism to securely select high-quality nodes. Second, we propose a data filtering algorithm based on a sliding window to further improve the consistency of the collected data. We verify the security of the proposed scheme through security analysis. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can effectively select high-quality nodes, reduce data differences, and improve the quality of service of the oracle. In the oracle network with malicious nodes accounting for 10%, the data accuracy rate is increased by about 4%, and the data variance is reduced by about 45% on average.
In Bitcoin Core (BTC), there exists an upper limit of the block size around 1MB, which causes the Bitcoin scalability problem that severely limits transaction processing capacity.On the other hand, Bitcoin SV (BSV) forked from BTC is known to eliminate this limit.In BSV, the size of mined blocks is generally not uniform, but a mixture of various different sizes.Block miners in BSV can get more transaction fees as a reward, while there is a risk that the success rate of block mining decreases because it has to take a longer time to verify all the transactions in the block.For this reason, the selection of block size depends on mining strategy of each miner.To the best of our knowledge, there has been no detailed report on how each miner selects a block size.In this paper, we firstly formulated the Bitcoin scalability problem using a mathematical model of transaction processing capacity.Then, we investigated the probability distributions of block size in both Scaling Test Network (STN) and Mainnet of BSV.As a result, we found that the aggregate block size distribution in STN follows an exponential distribution, while that in the Mainnet follows a power-law distribution whose exponent is around one.We demonstrated a theoretical explanation of the difference between two distributions in the STN and Mainnet with a unified manner based on an underlying incentive mechanism.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Ahmad J. Alkhodair, Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos
The most essential component of every Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is the Consensus Algorithm (CA), which enables users to reach a consensus in a decentralized and distributed manner. Numerous CA exist, but their viability for particular applications varies, making their trade-offs a crucial factor to consider when implementing DLT in a specific field. This article provided a comprehensive analysis of the various consensus algorithms used in distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and blockchain networks. We cover an extensive array of thirty consensus algorithms. Eleven attributes including hardware requirements, pre-trust level, tolerance level, and more, were used to generate a series of comparison tables evaluating these consensus algorithms. In addition, we discuss DLT classifications, the categories of certain consensus algorithms, and provide examples of authentication-focused and data-storage-focused DLTs. In addition, we analyze the pros and cons of particular consensus algorithms, such as Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS), Bonded Proof of Stake (BPoS), and Avalanche. In conclusion, we discuss the applicability of these consensus algorithms to various Cyber Physical System (CPS) use cases, including supply chain management, intelligent transportation systems, and smart healthcare.
Guzmán Llambías, Bruno Bradach, Juan J. Nogueira, Laura González · 5 authors
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) to manage data in a decentralised way. During the last years, interoperability has become one of the main challenges within blockchain research as blockchains increasingly require integration between each other. Indeed, blockchains work by design in silos of information as interoperability is not a native feature. The main efforts in the field are focused on blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, interoperability in DLT remains as an almost untouched area of work as they introduce additional requirements focusing on privacy and identity. Although there are some interoperability solutions for DLT, they are either high-level design proposals not providing concrete implementations or focus on interoperability issues between business applications and blockchain platforms. In this paper we propose a gateway-based platform-to-platform interoperability solution for DLT, which comprises a detailed solution design and a reference implementation. The proposal was assessed through the development of a social security case scenario and the evaluation through two interoperability frameworks. A reference implementation was built using two DLT: Hyperledger Fabric and Corda. The experimental results shows that it is possible to achieve technical interoperability between two heterogeneous DLT platforms using a gateway-based interoperability solution, relaxing decentralisation, data privacy, identity and authorisation management properties.
We develop a general and practical framework to address the problem of the optimal design of dynamic fee mechanisms for multiple blockchain resources. Our framework allows to compute policies that optimally trade-off between adjusting resource prices to handle persistent demand shifts versus being robust to local noise in the observed block demand. In the general case with more than one resource, our optimal policies correctly handle cross-effects (complementarity and substitutability) in resource demands. We also show how these cross-effects can be used to inform resource design, i.e. combining resources into bundles that have low demand-side cross-effects can yield simpler and more efficient price-update rules. Our framework is also practical, we demonstrate how it can be used to refine or inform the design of heuristic fee update rules such as EIP-1559 or EIP-4844 with two case studies. We then estimate a uni-dimensional version of our model using real market data from the Ethereum blockchain and empirically compare the performance of our optimal policies to EIP-1559.
Matheus Acauã Dias, Marco Aurélio Amaral Henriques
Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar e comparar o desempenho de dois mecanismos de consenso Proof-of-Stake para blockchains públicas: Casper (proposto pelo grupo da criptomoeda Ethereum) e Committeeless Proof-of-Stake (CPoS, proposto pelo grupo ReGrAS/Unicamp). O estudo se baseia em uma análise teórica e prática dos dois mecanismos, com o intuito de identificar vantagens e limitações de cada um, a fim de oferecer uma compreensão mais aprofundada sobre esses mecanismos identificando limitações e melhorias.
Ye Cheng, Yihao Guo, Minghui Xu, Qin Hu · 6 authors
A metaverse breaks the boundaries of time and space between people, realizing a more realistic virtual experience, improving work efficiency, and creating a new business model. Blockchain, as one of the key supporting technologies for a metaverse design, provides a trusted interactive environment. However, the rich and varied scenes of a metaverse have led to excessive consumption of on-chain resources, raising the threshold for ordinary users to join, thereby losing the human-centered design. Therefore, we propose an adaptive and modular blockchain-enabled architecture for a decentralized metaverse to address these issues. The solution includes an adaptive consensus/ledger protocol based on a modular blockchain, which can effectively adapt to the ever-changing scenarios of the metaverse, reduce resource consumption, and provide a secure and reliable interactive environment. In addition, we propose the concept of Non-Fungible Resource (NFR) to virtualize idle resources. Users can establish a temporary trusted environment and rent others' NFR to meet their computing needs. Finally, we simulate and test our solution based on XuperChain, and the experimental results prove the feasibility of our design.
This paper presents SymbIoT, an extensible hybrid simulation-emulation testbed to investigate the integration of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) within the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) continuum. By adopting a joint software and hardware-based approach, we amalgamate the flexibility of software solutions and the real-world applicability offered by integrating comparable IoT hardware. The versatility of SymbIoT lies in its extensibility, offering flexibility in parameters including consensus algorithms, block size, node count and topology, throughput limitation, and use-case application deployment. SymbIoT facilitates comprehensive empirical studies of blockchain implementations within IIoT, focusing on performance, scalability, and security considerations. The testbed provides a platform for innovative and pragmatic experimentation in blockchain and IIoT integration, holding promise for shaping future applications and solutions in this cross-disciplinary field. We also present results from preliminary experimentation, indicating the applicability of the testbed for IIoT and broader IoT-to-cloud scenarios.
Abstract A Blockchain is one distributed ledger system, and keeps the high redundancy of ledger copies to make the assurance of network security. However, the continuously duplicated full copies also impose a tremendous amount of demand on some nodes for data storage. The development of blockchain technologies in the IoT(Internet of Things) application scenario is hampered by the restricted storage capacities of terminal devices used in the IoT edge computing scenario, which makes it difficult to load the full copy with infinite growth. Our paper suggests a collaborative ledger storing model based on Chord Ring to address the issues with lightweight blockchains in data storage. On-chain blocks are split by Chord Ring structure and stored in various node clusters in a decentralized manner, and off-chain blocks at various levels are provided with PoW(Proof of Work) consensus asynchronously and archived centrally to the cloud storage on a regular basis. The theoretical and experimental analysis indicates that this model can reduce the data storage redundancy of blockchains while ensuring the high availability of data and the high decentralization of the network.
Traditional blockchain systems still struggle with limited throughput, particularly those compatible with EVM, which are crucial in many blockchain applications. One of the main reasons arises from serial execution, which doesn’t exploit parallelism in transaction execution. Although some recent literature introduced concurrency control mechanisms to execute transactions in parallel, they do not work efficiently in real-world blockchains where proposers and validators have different execution contexts, which means varying execution deterministic levels and execution quantities.
Blockchain technology is increasingly popular and has been widely applied in many industrial fields, due to its unique properties of decentralization, immutability, and traceability. Blockchain systems in different fields vary, with different block structures, consensus mechanisms and access permission models. These differences make it hard for different blockchain systems to interoperate with each other, which makes them isolated. Cross-chain technologies have been developed to solve this isolation problem in order to improve the interoperability of blockchains. Although some surveys on cross-chain technologies can be found, they are unable to keep up with the latest research progress due to their extremely fast pace of development. Moreover, the literature misses general criteria to evaluate the quality of cross-chain technologies. In this paper, a comprehensive literature review of cross-chain technologies is conducted by employing a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. The preliminaries on blockchain interoperability are first presented. Then, a set of evaluation criteria is proposed in terms of security, privacy, performance, and functionality. The latest cutting-edge works are reviewed based on the proposed taxonomy of cross-chain technologies and their performance is evaluated against our proposed criteria. Finally, some open issues and future directions of cross-chain research are pointed out.
Blockchain has been widely deployed in various fields, such as finance, education, and public services. Blockchain has decentralized mechanisms with persistency and auditability and runs as an immutable distributed ledger. However, blockchain systems suffer from critical scalability issues. In this paper, we present three challenges of the scalability issues, namely, poor data synchronization, time-consuming query process, and excessive data load, and discuss possible research directions from the storage hierarchy perspective.
The consensus algorithm of Bitcoin, namely proof-of-work (PoW), has been criticized for its high energy consumption and centralization of mining power. PoW needs a lot of processing power to execute cryptographic problems and verify network transactions. In contrast, Chia's consensus mechanism is based on proofs-of-space (PoSpace), which utilizes disk space rather than computing power. PoSpace involves generating a large amount of verifiable storage space on the network and requires less energy consumption than PoW. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the algorithms used by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Chia. The paper simulates the PoW and PoSpace processes by Java and compares both mechanisms' memory, CPU usage, and time consumption using VisualVM. The experiment results show that PoSpace costs less space and time resources than PoW. The former is more energy-efficient and decentralized.
Jeyakumar Samantha Tharani, Ryan K. L. Ko, Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy
Ensuring the reliability and integrity of data, command and control in critical infrastructure is becoming challenging. The evolving technologies like 5G, Artificial General Intelligence, and edge computing increase the attack vector in critical infrastructure. A trusted exchange of information among anonymous participants may become possible using Blockchain technology. Decentralised peer-to-peer communication combined with cryptographic mechanisms in Blockchain enhances the integrity and the authenticity of the data shared among entities in smart critical systems. However, the pseudo-anonymous nature of the blockchain may be exploited by adversaries. This increases the threat to accountability and attribution of malicious activities. Visualisation tools may be used as an aid to alleviate such challenges. The existing tools concentrate on tabular or line-based representations without the full potential of visual exploration. This paper proposes a framework for the user-centric visualisation of blockchain transactions. The framework integrates the transaction data, expert domain knowledge, and user feedback to identify malicious or anomalous events. This facilitates tracking crime data movements and locating potential disruption points in critical infrastructures.
The original FlexiChain and its descendants are a revolutionary distributed ledger technology (DLT) for cyber-physical systems (CPS) and their embedded systems (ES). FlexiChain, a DLT implementation, uses cryptography, distributed ledgers, peer-to-peer communications, scalable networks, and consensus. FlexiChain facilitates data structure agreements. This thesis offers a Block Directed Acyclic Graph (BDAG) architecture to link blocks to their forerunners to speed up validation. These data blocks are securely linked. This dissertation introduces Proof of Rapid Authentication, a novel consensus algorithm. This innovative method uses a distributed file to safely store a unique identifier (UID) based on node attributes to verify two blocks faster. This study also addresses CPS hardware security. A system of interconnected, user-unique identifiers allows each block's history to be monitored. This maintains each transaction and the validators who checked the block to ensure trustworthiness and honesty. We constructed a digital version that stays in sync with the distributed ledger as all nodes are linked by a NodeChain. The ledger is distributed without compromising node autonomy. Moreover, FlexiChain Layer 0 distributed ledger is also introduced and can connect and validate Layer 1 blockchains. This project produced a DAG-based blockchain integration platform with hardware security. The results illustrate a practical technique for creating a system depending on diverse applications' needs. This research's design and execution showed faster authentication, less cost, less complexity, greater scalability, higher interoperability, and reduced power consumption.