T. Hemalatha, K. Sangeetha, K. Sasi Kala Rani, K. V. Kanimozhi · 7 authors
This article offers a brief overview about cyber-physical systems enabled by blockchain (CPS). Dissects various blockchain-enabled CPS reported on the operations and blockchain characteristics used in the literature. Base of its time sensitiveness and throughput requirements, we identify and categories key common CPS operations that can be activated by blockchain. We also develop blockchain features and categories in terms of diverse levels of benefits to CPS like security, privacy, immutability, tolerance of defects, interoperability's, data origin, atomicity, automation, information/service sharing and trust. This paper provides an overview of the concept of intelligent cities as well as emerging technologies and a quick overview of cyber-physical systems. It then discusses CPS' potential role in the development of intelligent city apps and some real-life examples of CPS adaptation for city smart projects. A decentralized database based on distributed ledgers has been introduced. Distributed ledgers are a distributed database with a network connection node. These nodes include ledgers that list transactions with timestamps.
Conventional blockchain consensus protocols tailored for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) usually face low transaction throughput, high latency, and elevated communication overhead issues. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose ESBCP, an efficient and secure blockchain consensus protocol for the IoV environment. Firstly, considering the significant performance differences among nodes in the IoV, we designed a blockchain consensus model for the IoV. Roadside units execute a trust evaluation mechanism to select high-quality vehicle nodes for the consensus process, thereby reducing the likelihood of malicious nodes in the consensus cluster. Secondly, we designed a node partition strategy to adapt to the dynamic feature of the IoV. Finally, addressing the mobility of nodes in the IoV, we introduced a dynamic unique node list. Vehicle nodes can promptly select nodes with high reliability from the list of communicable nodes to join their unique node list, while also promptly removing nodes with low reliability from their unique node list. Combining these strategies, we propose DK-PBFT, an improved Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus algorithm. The algorithm meets the efficiency and mobility requirements of vehicular networks. Through theoretical analysis, ESBCP could prevent external and internal security risks while reducing communication overhead. Experimental verification demonstrated that ESBCP effectively reduces consensus latency and improves transaction throughput. Our proposed ESBCP can be used in other application scenarios that require high consensus efficiency.
Awatef Salem Balobaid, Yasamin Alagrash, Ali Fadel, Jamal N. Hasoon
Blockchain technology can be employed in the education sector by building a decentralized system to store and share student records. The records can be encrypted to guarantee their confidentiality and security. With a blockchain-based system, student records can be saved in blocks that are linked and secured via cryptography. The records are decentralized and not controlled by any single entity, making them less susceptible to hacking or tampering. By using blockchain technology, educational institutions can create a more secure and efficient system for storing and sharing student records. This can streamline the process of transferring records between schools, and provide a secure and transparent way for students to access their own records. In this study, we provide a novel Merkle tree-based strategy for preserving the accuracy of student records and outline how to put it into practice. The software architecture resembled blockchain technology and was developed for private network deployment. The key components of our strategy are replacing conventional audit trails with their cryptographically secure equivalent and simplifying the Blockchain framework by avoiding mining. The cryptography system's framework is presented, and the new five dimensions of chaotic map academic records are proposed. Our study utilizes deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences and operations and the chaotic system to strengthen the cryptosystem in the blockchain authentication and authorization process. The significant advantage of this method is enhancing the generation of the hash function, which is the most critical challenge in the blockchain concept. The experimental outcomes and security analysis demonstrated that the proposed method works well in terms of different aspects. The suggested hash function's hash value distribution, sensitivity to tiny message modifications, confusion and diffusion qualities, resilience against birthday attacks, keyspace analysis, collision resistance, efficiency, and flexibility were all considered throughout the study.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
We propose a new coded blockchain scheme suitable for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) network. In contrast to existing works for coded blockchains, especially blockchain-of-things, the proposed scheme is more realistic, practical, and secure while achieving high throughput. This is accomplished by: 1) modeling the variety of transactions using a reward model, based on which an optimization problem is solved to select transactions that are more accessible and cheaper computational-wise to be processed together; 2) a transaction-based and lightweight consensus algorithm that emphasizes on using the minimum possible number of miners for processing the transactions; and 3) employing the raptor codes with linear-time encoding and decoding which results in requiring lower storage to maintain the blockchain and having a higher throughput. We provide detailed analysis and simulation results on the proposed scheme and compare it with the state-of-the-art coded IoT blockchain schemes including Polyshard and LCB, to show the advantages of our proposed scheme in terms of security, storage, decentralization, and throughput.
Mazin Abed Mohammed, Abdullah Lakhan, Karrar Hameed Abdulkareem, Mohd Khanapi Abd Ghani · 9 authors
INTRODUCTION: The Industrial Internet of Water Things (IIoWT) has recently emerged as a leading architecture for efficient water distribution in smart cities. Its primary purpose is to ensure high-quality drinking water for various institutions and households. However, existing IIoWT architecture has many challenges. One of the paramount challenges in achieving data standardization and data fusion across multiple monitoring institutions responsible for assessing water quality and quantity. OBJECTIVE: This paper introduces the Industrial Internet of Water Things System for Data Standardization based on Blockchain and Digital Twin Technology. The main objective of this study is to design a new IIoWT architecture where data standardization, interoperability, and data security among different water institutions must be met. METHODS: We devise the digital twin-enabled cross-platform environment using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol to achieve seamless interoperability in heterogeneous computing. In water management, we encounter different types of data from various sensors. Therefore, we propose a CNN-LSTM and blockchain data transactional (BCDT) scheme for processing valid data across different nodes. RESULTS: Through simulation results, we demonstrate that the proposed IIoWT architecture significantly reduces processing time while improving the accuracy of data standardization within the water distribution management system. CONCLUSION: Overall, this paper presents a comprehensive approach to tackle the challenges of data standardization and security in the IIoWT architecture.
In order to fully unlock the transformative power of distributed ledgers and blockchains, it is crucial to develop innovative consensus algorithms that can overcome the obstacles of security, scalability, and interoperability, which currently hinder their widespread adoption. This paper introduces HybridChain that combines the advantages of sharded blockchain and DAG distributed ledger, and a consensus algorithm that leverages decentralized learning. Our approach involves validators exchanging perceptions as votes to assess potential conflicts between transactions and the witness set, representing input transactions in the UTXO model. These perceptions collectively contribute to an intermediate belief regarding the validity of transactions. By integrating their beliefs with those of other validators, localized decisions are made to determine validity. Ultimately, a final consensus is achieved through a majority vote, ensuring precise and efficient validation of transactions. Our proposed approach is compared to the existing DAG-based scheme IOTA and the sharded blockchain Omniledger through extensive simulations. The results show that IOTA has high throughput and low latency but sacrifices accuracy and is vulnerable to orphanage attacks especially with low transaction rates. Omniledger achieves stable accuracy by increasing shards but has increased latency. In contrast, the proposed HybridChain exhibits fast, accurate, and secure transaction processing, and excellent scalability.
In this article, we consider DAG-based distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), i.e., DLTs where each block can reference several previous blocks hence forming a directed acyclic graph of blocks (BDAG). Each block has a weight (usually a constant normalized to one) and our goal is to compute the heaviest sub-BDAG that does not contain conflicting blocks. First, we prove that computing such a sub-BDAG is NP-complete. Then, we show that the difficulty comes from concurrent conflicts and we present an optimal algorithm that is polynomial if the number of concurrent conflicts is bounded. We also give an efficient incremental version of our algorithm. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our algorithm on random BDAGs against an existing algorithm called GHOSTDAG and show that, in addition to being optimal, our algorithm is also more efficient in practice.
Abstract Blockchain technology is getting more and more attention due to its decentralization, independence and security features. However, in wireless networks it faces a computational challenge: the proof-of-work problem. Mobile edge computing (MEC) leads to a vaild scheme by providing cloud computing capabilities to mobile devices. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) exploits the diversity properties in the power domain to further increase system throughput and spectral efficiency. In this paper, we suggest a new NOMA-based MEC wireless blockchain network to minimize system energy consumption through task offloading decision optimization, user clustering, computing resource and transmit power allocation. In order to effectively figure out this non-convex problem, we first propose a offloading decision and user clustering algorithm, and then propose a computing resource allocation algorithm based on user Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Finally, the transmission power can be easily determined. The numerical simulation results verify that the proposed joint optimization algorithm can effectively decrease the system energy consumption.
In the healthcare system, electronic medical records are very critical, and they must be authenticated and verified. During the medical check-up, a large amount of patient medical data is generated which includes reports related to blood, life-threatening diseases, and personal information such as credit card numbers and addresses. Any privacy breach in patient medical records will bring various risks. A simple blockchain (Ethereum) can be effective to validate and authenticate stored data by deploying an immutable ledger. However, the main challenge in the simple blockchain is that its data can be easily accessible. In this paper, the authors create a business network for healthcare using Hyperledger fabric, which ensures that data is only available to the concerned person and its access rights are granted and revoked by the concerned participant. Additionally, the authors tested different scenarios to access blockchain security and its benefits.
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.
Natural or man-made disasters pose significant challenges for delivering critical relief to affected populations due to disruptions in critical infrastructures and logistics networks. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-aided disaster relief networks (UDRNs) leverage UAVs to assist existing ground relief networks by swiftly assessing affected areas and timely delivering lifesaving supplies. To meet the growing demands for collaborative, trust-free, and transparent UDRN services, blockchain-based UDRNs emerge as a promising approach through immutable ledgers and distributed smart contracts. However, several efficiency and security challenges hinder the deployment of blockchain-based UDRNs, including the lack of cooperation between smart contracts, lack of dynamic audit for smart contract vulnerabilities, and low forensics robustness against transaction malleability attacks. Towards efficient and secure blockchain-based UDRNs, this paper presents potential solutions: (i) a series of collaborative smart contracts for coordinated relief management, (ii) a dynamic contract audit mechanism to prevent known/unknown contract vulnerabilities; and (iii) a robust transaction forensics strategy with on/off-chain cooperation to resist transaction malleability attacks. Our prototype implementation and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach. Lastly, we outline key open research issues crucial to advancing this emerging field.
The blockchain technology has been widely adopted for various applications due to its decentralization, transparency, and security features. Consensus algorithms, such as Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), are fundamental components of blockchain technology, ensuring the integrity and validity of the blockchain network. However, the current consensus algorithms face challenges such as scalability, energy consumption, and security threats. To address these challenges, a new secure network for streamlined and high-performance consensus algorithm based on blockchain technology has been proposed. This new network incorporates the advantages of PoW and PoS, resulting in a hybrid consensus algorithm that is more efficient and secure than the existing algorithms. Additionally, the new network utilizes a dynamic sharding mechanism to improve scalability, reducing the overall processing time of transactions. The simulation results help identify potential vulnerabilities and inefficiencies in the consensus algorithm. Optimal combinations of block interval and propagation delay are determined based on specific use cases, balancing high throughput with security and consensus stability. The study also validates the security of Proof-of-Work (PoW) by comparing the fraction of generated blocks with the expected blocks based on miners' hashing power. This study establishes a foundation for future improvements in consensus algorithms, contributing to their evolution and facilitating the implementation of blockchain applications in various domains such as finance, healthcare, supply chain management, and more. The proposed solution aims to provide a more robust and efficient blockchain platform that can handle a higher volume of transactions while maintaining its security features.
This manuscript presents an exhaustive review of blockchain-based mixing services, aiming to fill the existing gap between academic innovations and real-world implementations. Starting with an identification of the core functionalities and techniques employed by mixing services, the paper delves into detailed explanations of these operational mechanisms. It further outlines an evaluation framework tailored for a rigorous assessment, highlighting the key vulnerabilities and strengths of various solutions. In addition, the study identifies potential attack vectors that compromise these services. The paper explores the dual nature of mixing services, while they contribute to the preservation of privacy, a cornerstone of blockchain technologies, they can also facilitate illicit activities. By addressing key research questions, this study not only offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of mixing services but also sets the stage for future academic discourse in this evolving field.
The Blockchain-based Electronic Health Record (B-EHR) system represents a significant advancement in healthcare data management. Concerns over data confidentiality and security have become increasingly critical in the healthcare sector, given the need for immediate data accessibility. Traditional centralized systems face accessibility issues, necessitating a transformative solution, and blockchain technology emerges as a promising candidate. This research introduces a patient-controlled, blockchain-based system that efficiently manages and safeguards individuals' health-related data. By harnessing the Ethereum network and utilizing tools such as Ganache, Solidity, and web3.js, this system takes a systematic approach to overcome the limitations of centralized systems. Smart contracts, the basis of blockchain technology, serve as the backbone for storing and processing patients' data in a decentralized manner. Transactions are conducted securely through these smart contracts, ensuring patient privacy and data security. Notably, any modifications to transactions can be verified and propagated across the entire distributed network, enhancing data integrity. Complementing this system is a cryptocurrency wallet like MetaMask, providing a centrally controlled repository where records can be swiftly accessed and secured by authorized individuals, including doctors and patients. This integration significantly improves data accessibility and security within the healthcare domain. Ultimately, this research aims to leverage blockchain technology for simultaneous data retrieval, enhancing efficiency, credibility, and accessibility. It offers a robust framework for securely storing data with tailored access permissions and facilitates the safe transfer of patient medical records. In essence, it introduces a swift and secure health record system and an innovative protocol, promoting greater transparency and ownership of sensitive data in the healthcare sector through blockchain integration.
Rahul Mishra, Dharavath Ramesh, Paolo Bellavista, Damodar Reddy Edla
Internet-of-Farming Things (IoFT)-enabled smart agriculture can collect data more reliably and frequently to track the crop’s status and other significant information. Considering that smart agriculture requires working with substantial amounts of sensitive data. In light of this, frequent data processing may threaten the confidentiality and integrity of data and IoFT device privacy. Although numerous privacy-preserving data aggregation methods have been implemented to address these issues, they also have certain security vulnerabilities, such as inadequate data confidentiality, collusion attacks, and malicious data mining attacks. Therefore, we introduce a three-tier architecture-assisted redactable blockchain-based secure data aggregation method with source authentication for the fog-enabled IoFT. This work provides an efficient and secure two-level data aggregation model. The proposed model supports resistance to collusion and malicious data mining threats launched by internal or external attackers. It can also achieve perfect data confidentiality and integrity against a malicious aggregator and an inquisitive control center for an authorized IoFT device. Specifically, the detailed performance analysis and theoretical concrete security proofs demonstrate the practicability and efficiency of the proposed model.
Dinesh Kumar K, N. Duraimutharasan, H J Shanthi, G. Vennila · 6 authors
Blockchain technology garners significant attention and recognition due to several key advantages it offers. Trust, reliability, speed, and transparency are among the prominent benefits that contribute to its growing prominence. The decentralized nature of blockchain allows for a high level of trust as transactions are recorded and verified by multiple participants across the network. This, in turn, enhances reliability as there is no single point of failure. Speed is also a notable advantage, particularly when compared to traditional systems that involve intermediaries and complex processes for verification. Blockchain enables faster and more efficient transaction processing, reducing delays and costs. This research paper aims to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of two prominent distributed ledger technologies, namely blockchain and hashgraph. Both blockchain and hashgraph offer decentralized and secure systems for recording and validating transactions or information. It explores the underlying mechanisms, consensus algorithms, advantages, and limitations of these technologies. It also examines their potential applications and discusses the implications of their respective design choices. By understanding the nuances of blockchain and hashgraph, seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on distributed ledger technologies and aids in decision-making for their appropriate adoption in various domains and applications.
Mahmoud Abbasi, Javier Prieto, Amin Shahraki, Juan M. Corchado
The Internet of Things (IoT) devices utilized in manufacturing industries produce vast volumes of valuable data that can revolutionize productivity and sustainability. While existing centralized data marketplaces facilitate data trading, they are often marred by trust issues, a single point of failure, and significant security and privacy vulnerabilities. Addressing these critical shortcomings, this paper introduces a blockchain-based industrial data trading system that not only ensures secure and transparent data trading but also offers advantages over conventional systems. Unlike traditional marketplaces, our proposed system emphasizes trustworthiness by mitigating third-party risks, enhancing data integrity through decentralized storage, and employing graph technology for efficient blockchain querying. Further, with integrated access control, our system elevates security standards. Preliminary evaluations reveal the system’s potential to offer a more secure, transparent, auditable, and trustworthy data trading environment, distinctly outpacing the capabilities of current marketplaces.
The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has raised security concerns, including MQTT protocol-based applications that lack built-in security features and rely on resource-intensive Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. This paper presents an approach that utilizes blockchain technology to enhance the security of MQTT communication while maintaining efficiency. This approach involves using blockchain sharding, which enables higher scalability, improved performance, and reduced computational overhead compared to traditional blockchain approaches, making it well-suited for resource-constrained IoT environments. This approach leverages Ethereum blockchain's smart contract mechanism to ensure trust, accountability, and user privacy. Specifically, we introduce a shard-based consensus mechanism that enables improved security while minimizing computational overhead. We also provide a user-controlled and secured algorithm using Proof-of-Access implementation to decentralize user access control to data stored in the blockchain network. The proposed approach is analyzed for usability, including metrics such as bandwidth consumption, CPU usage, memory usage, delay, access time, storage time, and jitter, which are essential for IoT application requirements. The analysis demonstrated that the approach reduces resource consumption, and the proposed system outperforms TLS and existing blockchain approaches in these metrics, regardless of the choice of the MQTT broker. Additionally, thoroughly addressing future research directions, including issues and challenges, ensures careful consideration of potential advancements in this domain.
Meenakshi Kandpal, Veena Goswami, Rojalina Priyadarshini, Rabindra K. Barik
In recent years, blockchain research has drawn attention from all across the world. It is a decentralized competence that is spread out and uncertain. Several nations and scholars have already successfully applied blockchain in numerous arenas. Blockchain is essential in delicate situations because it secures data and keeps it from being altered or forged. In addition, the market’s increased demand for data is driving demand for data scaling across all industries. Researchers from many nations have used blockchain in various sectors over time, thus bringing extreme focus to this newly escalating blockchain domain. Every research project begins with in-depth knowledge about the working domain, and new interest information about blockchain is quite scattered. This study analyzes academic literature on blockchain technology, emphasizing three key aspects: blockchain storage, scalability, and availability. These are critical areas within the broader field of blockchain technology. This study employs CiteSpace and VOSviewer to understand the current state of research in these areas comprehensively. These are bibliometric analysis tools commonly used in academic research to examine patterns and relationships within scientific literature. Thus, to visualize a way to store data with scalability and availability while keeping the security of the blockchain in sync, the required research has been performed on the storage, scalability, and availability of data in the blockchain environment. The ultimate goal is to contribute to developing secure and efficient data storage solutions within blockchain technology.
In recent years, blockchain has been widely applied in the Internet of Things (IoT). Blockchain oracle, as a bridge for data communication between blockchain and off-chain, has also received significant attention. However, the numerous and heterogeneous devices in the IoT pose great challenges to the efficiency and security of data acquisition for oracles. We find that the matching relationship between data sources and oracle nodes greatly affects the efficiency and service quality of the entire oracle system. To address these issues, this paper proposes a distributed and efficient oracle solution tailored for the IoT, enabling fast acquisition of real-time off-chain data. Specifically, we first design a distributed oracle architecture that combines both Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) devices and ordinary devices to improve system scalability, considering the heterogeneity of IoT devices. Secondly, based on the trusted node information provided by TEE, we determine the matching relationship between nodes and data sources, assigning appropriate nodes for tasks to enhance system efficiency. Through simulation experiments, our proposed solution has been shown to effectively improve the efficiency and service quality of the system, reducing the average response time by approximately 9.92\% compared to conventional approaches.
Xiaoyu Du, Song Tao, Ke Yuan, Yinyin Li · 5 authors
Abstract Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms not only expanded the application areas of UAVs but also brought more complex challenges to security. Both the data collected by UAVs and UAVs themselves are easy targets for hackers. Once a hacker has intercepted communication information or hijacked a UAV, it can cause the disclosure of information and even affect the normal flight of the UAV. In terms of authentication, existing research focuses on building peer-to-peer networks through devices that support blockchain deployments at the edge nodes to form blockchain networks. UAVs cannot run blockchains directly, so fog nodes need to be introduced to assist UAVs in achieving authentication. This paper proposes a UAV authentication solution based on the fog node-assisted blockchain. The solution incorporates smart contracts to ensure trust, along with on-chain registration and authentication for UAVs. In the design of this paper, the main use is made of fog nodes at the edge of each block. The fog nodes serve as agents to register and authenticate the UAVs in their area on the blockchain, thus enabling the authentication of UAVs in different fog node areas. In this paper, the analysis of gas consumption yields a total economic benefit cost of about $$\yen $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>¥</mml:mo> </mml:math> 12.77, which is negligible for the safety of the UAVs. Meanwhile, the paper compares the computational overheads, and within 10 UAVs, the computational overhead of this scheme is less than 50 ms, which is significantly lower than the other two schemes.
Alexander Varfolomeev, Liwa H. Al-Farhani, Liwa H. Al-Farhani
This paper presents a proposal for an authentication scheme for smart building systems and environments based on blockchain, its positive features, and fog computing. The most important feature that can be distinguished in the submitted proposal is its adoption of the principle of decentralization in contrast to traditional centralized documentation protocols, i.e. the proposed authentication system in which users and smart devices are implemented in a distributed and decentralized manner on the blockchain, that will provide a solution to a significant problem of low overall efficiency of the authentication process caused by a bottleneck in such important areas as computing capacity as well as centralized storage of a single authentication authority in the traditional model. There are also benefits from adding fog computing, and because it has higher computing and storage capabilities, it makes the data processing process more efficient, faster, more streamlined, and in line with the common necessities of the real-time IoT environment. The proposed scheme also provides solutions to protect the privacy of user data and increase the level of confidentiality, protection, and security, since a mysterious extractor was used to increase the confidentiality of the proposed model of the authentication system. Comparing a set of security schemes and conducting a security and performance analysis of the proposed scheme, the comparisons showed that the scheme can be characterized as having a good security level and an important efficiency level. The paper focused on specific aspects design of the authentication system, such as the registration and authentication process of all network entities, regardless of the specifics of the implementation of blockchain smart contracts.
Abstract As a distributed ledger technology, blockchain's low throughput is challenging to support large‐scale applications. Sharding is one way to solve this problem, but the security of existing sharded blockchains is not enough. In addition, with the increase of time, the node storage pressure in the shard will also increase. Therefore, SLChain was proposed as a secure and low storage pressure sharding blockchain. SLChain works together between shards for block validation to avoid inconsistencies caused by a single shard being controlled by adversaries. As well as by relying on a reputation‐established confirmation committee that allows blocks to be confirmed quickly and without forking. In addition, a secure ledger pruning mechanism is designed to make the space required for nodes grow very slowly over time, reducing the storage pressure on nodes. The results show that SLChain can improve security and throughput, and the node storage pressure is small.
Christian Berger, Sadok Ben Toumia, Hans P. Reiser
Recent Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) state machine replication (SMR) protocols increasingly focus on scalability to meet the requirements of distributed ledger technology (DLT). Validating the performance of scalable BFT protocol implementations requires careful evaluation. Our solution uses network simulations to forecast the performance of BFT protocols while experimentally scaling the environment. Our method seamlessly plug-and-plays existing BFT implementations into the simulation without requiring code modification or re-implementation, which is often time-consuming and error-prone. Furthermore, our approach is also significantly cheaper than experiments with real large-scale cloud deployments. In this paper, we first explain our simulation architecture, which enables scalable performance evaluations of BFT systems through high-performance network simulations. We validate the accuracy of these simulations for predicting the performance of BFT systems by comparing simulation results with measurements of real systems deployed on cloud infrastructures. We found that simulation results display a reasonable approximation at a larger system scale, because the network eventually becomes the dominating factor limiting system performance. In the second part of our paper, we use our simulation method to evaluate the performance of PBFT and BFT protocols from the "blockchain generation", such as HotStuff and Kauri, in large-scale and realistic wide-area network scenarios, as well as under induced faults.