Blockchain Papers

Mohammad Saidur Rahman, M.A.P. Chamikara, Ibrahim Khalil, Abdelaziz Bouras

No abstract is available for this record.

Minghui Xu, Yihao Guo, Qin Hu, Zehui Xiong · 6 authors

Metaverse has rekindled human beings' desire to further break space-time barriers by fusing the virtual and real worlds. However, security and privacy threats hinder us from building a utopia. A metaverse embraces various techniques, while at the same time inheriting their pitfalls and thus exposing large attack surfaces. Blockchain, proposed in 2008, was regarded as a key building block of metaverses. it enables transparent and trusted computing environments using tamper-resistant decentralized ledgers. Currently, blockchain supports Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Non-fungible Tokens (NFT) for metaverses. However, the power of a blockchain has not been sufficiently exploited. In this article, we propose a novel trustless architecture of blockchain-enabled metaverse, aiming to provide efficient resource integration and allocation by consolidating hardware and software components. To realize our design objectives, we provide an On-Demand Trusted Computing Environment (OTCE) technique based on local trust evaluation. Specifically, the architecture adopts a hypergraph to represent a metaverse, in which each hyperedge links a group of users with certain relationship. Then the trust level of each user group can be evaluated based on graph analytics techniques. Based on the trust value, each group can determine its security plan on demand, free from interference by irrelevant nodes. Besides, OTCEs enable large-scale and flexible application environments (sandboxes) while preserving a strong security guarantee.

Kamal Saluja, Sunil Gupta, Amit Vajpayee, Sanjoy Kumar Debnath · 6 authors

End users are now encircled by an ever-increasing volume of information from edge devices relevant to a range of stakeholders, thanks to the introduction of edge computing in a variety of application domains. However, because of their distrust, these edge devices are unable to communicate significant amounts of data. The non-repudiation and non-tampering features of the block chain are used in this study to provide trust in collaborative edges. To address the limited processing capabilities of edge devices, create a block chain-based huge data sharing architecture in cooperative edges. Then, for high computational reduction, propose a Proof-of-Collaboration consensus technique, in which edge devices participate in block formation by giving their PoC credits. Furthermore, a useless transaction filter technique was proposed for transaction offloading, drastically decreasing the block chain's storage space in edges. Comprehensive tests are carried out to illustrate our proposal's better performance. Using this learning opportunity an environment friendly block chain sustainable infrastructure be created for developing countries.

Suhasini Monga, Dilbag Singh

Medical records management had always been a challenging in healthcare sector. Traditionally, medical records are handled either manually or electronically that are under the stewardship of hospitals/healthcare institutions. A patient centric approach is the new paradigm where patient is an inherent part of the healthcare ecosystem controlling the access and sharing of his/her personal medical care information. Medical care information requires robust security and privacy. Also there are other issues like confidentiality, interoperability, scalability, cost efficiency and timeliness that need to be addressed. To achieve these objectives, this paper proposes a novel-scalable patient centric yet privacy preserving framework for efficient and secure electronic medical records management. In addition, proposed system generates a unified trusted record and authentication role mapping for enforcing secure access control for medical records using complex encryption algorithms. This paper identifies 13 key performance factors for performance comparison of proposed framework with traditional models. Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain acted as a benchmark platform for performance evaluation of MRBSChain on the basis of three metrics (transaction cost, average block time and deployment cost).At last, a comparative analysis of MRBSChain with other state of art blockchain systems on the basis of execution time is presented in the paper.

Adil El Mane, Younes Chihab, Khalid Tatane, Redouan Korchiyne

Since the commercialization of agriculture technology, there has been a surge in interest in agricultural data. However, these data are notoriously chaotic, and analysts are concerned about their authenticity because there is a big possibility that others may have influenced data quality at various points along the data stream. This article suggests a new blockchain architecture to protect the integrity of agricultural data. The goal of this architecture is to provide farmers with safe storage. The agriculture data inserted cannot be modified without some rules. Many procedures are completed automatically using smart contracts to limit the danger of manipulation. One of the suggested architectures is the proof of concept. It connects a traditional farm system with the blockchain accompanied by smart contracts to facilitate the entire agri-supply chain. The conceptual architecture will eliminate the flaws discovered in prior studies. Sensors are used in this approach to provide us with environmental data. As a result, we store our data in blocks using the blockchain system. Then, we built some unique agricultural smart contracts to handle all transactions and automatize decisions based on the source code of these automated contracts. This strategy would be more efficient and secure.

S.M. Shahnewaz Siddiquee, Md. Mosaraf Hossain Khan, Fahad Saleh Al–Ismail, Aasim Ullah · 6 authors

The advancement in blockchain applications in the smart sustainable city infrastructure is evaluated in this paper through a comprehensive mapping review. The evaluation is carried out by posing four research questions that address current developments in blockchain technology in the context of smart cities and point out areas where additional study is needed. This study also includes a scoping of blockchain applications in a smart city context to highlight the obstacles to incorporating blockchain technology into smart city infrastructure. Finally, some suggestions for overcoming the problems of incorporating blockchain technology with smart city infrastructure are offered. This research will help researchers and policymakers gain a better understanding of blockchain applications in smart cities.

A. B. Pawar, M.A. Jawale, P. William, Gurpreet Singh Chhabra · 7 authors

Early identification of lung cancer is essential since the disease progresses quickly. Early-stage lung cancer diagnosis will be the first usage of the Internet of Things (IoT). With a worldwide network of IoT devices and a high degree of trust in the model's accuracy, on-the-fly training for IoT devices is very essential. As many as a million lives are saved each year because to early detection of illness, which seals the airways and prevents infection. Image processing and machine learning techniques provided the first evidence of malignant growth. Symptoms of lung cancer generally don't show up until the disease has advanced very far. At this stage, getting medical help becomes quite difficult. A whistling sound, hoarseness, weight gain in the face and/or an increase in the size of the upper chest may appear first, followed by the curling or rising of your fingers or the experience of pain when swallowing. Sputum with a red or rust-colored hue is a sign of malignancy, as is shortness of breath and chronic chest pain. In addition to identifying and arranging lung knobs, a lung computed tomography image may also be utilised to estimate their risk level. Preparation does not have as much of an impact on ECNN's accuracy and temporal complexity as it did on previous frameworks. They are made up of abnormal cells that form a tumour. An uncontrolled development and destruction of the lungs. Various kinds of lung cancer begin to develop as a result of this process, which continues until a tumour forms. Lung cells are damaged when they come into contact with airborne contaminants. + The new approach offered is ECNN+.

Vijayant Pawar, Shelly Sachdeva

Summary In the Covid‐19 pandemic, information about the medical equipment such as personal protective equipment, ventilators, testing kits, oxygen cylinders, ICU beds, and patient diagnostic status is a black box for the patients. This article proposes a blockchain‐assisted Covid‐19 big data chain (CovidBChain) framework to handle the Covid‐19 data, which is of colossal size (volume), coming from different sources (variety) and generated at every time instance (velocity). CovidBChain is proposed to protect electronic health records and Covid‐19 equipment's information from illegal modification. CovidBChain provides transparency, access control, and integrity to Covid‐19 data. The status of critical equipment like ventilator, Covid‐19 beds, oxygen cylinder, and ICU status each such operation is integrated into the CovidBChain as a transaction. A prototype has been simulated using Ganache, Metamask, InterPlanetary File System, and Reactjs. The comparative assessment using proof‐of‐work (PoW) and proof‐of‐authority (PoA) deduces that the upload and retrieval time in PoA is less than PoW, while the transaction cost is more in PoW. The overhead of message exchange communication is reduced by a factor of in PoA as compared to the PoW approach. CovidBChain has been tested on the Ethereum official test network Ropsten for PoW and Goerli for PoA.

Daniel Montero Hernández, Jorge Peña Queralta, Tomi Westerlund

The increased use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices -- from basic sensors to robust embedded computers -- has boosted the demand for information processing and storing solutions closer to these devices. Edge computing has been established as a standard architecture for developing IoT solutions, since it can optimize the workload and capacity of systems that depend on cloud services by deploying necessary computing power close to where the information is being produced and consumed. However, as the network scale in size, reaching consensus becomes an increasingly challenging task. Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), which can be described as a network of distributed databases that incorporate cryptography, can be leveraged to achieve consensus among participants. In recent years DLTs have gained traction due to the popularity of blockchains, the most-well known type of implementation. The reliability and trust that can be achieved through transparent and traceable transactions are other key concepts that bring IoT and DLT together. We present the design, development and conducted experiments of a proof-of-concept system that uses DLT smart contracts for efficiently selecting edge nodes for offloading computational tasks. In particular, we integrate network performance indicators in smart contracts with a Hyperledger Blockchain to optimize the offloading on computation under dynamic connectivity solutions. The proposed method can be applied to networks with varied topologies and different means of connectivity. Our results show the applicability of blockchain smart contracts to a variety of industrial use cases.

Omar Said

Recently, global healthcare has made great progress with the use of Internet of Things technology. However, for there to be excellent patient care, there must be a high degree of safety for the IoT health system. There has been a massive increase in hacking systems and the theft of sensitive and highly confidential information from large health centers and hospitals. That is why establishing a highly secure and reliable healthcare system has become a top priority. In this paper, a security scheme for the IoT-enabled healthcare environment, LBSS, is proposed. This security scheme comprises three security mechanisms. The first mechanism is based on the blockchain technology and is used for transaction integrity. The second mechanism is used to store the healthcare system data in a secure manner through the distribution of its data records among multiple servers. The third mechanism is used to access the healthcare data after applying a proposed authorization test. To minimize the security overhead, the healthcare data is prioritized in regard to its importance. Therefore, each security mechanism has specific steps for each level of data importance. Finally, the NS3 package is used to construct a simulation environment for IoT-enabled healthcare systems to measure the proposed security scheme performance. The simulation results proved that the proposed healthcare security scheme outperformed the traditional models in regard to the performance metrics.

Sasikumar Asaithambi, Logesh Ravi, Hossam Kotb, Ahmad H. Milyani · 8 authors

The number of unsecured and portable Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the smart industry is growing exponentially. A diversity of centralized and distributed platforms have been implemented to defend against security attacks; however, these platforms are insecure because of their low storage capacities, high power utilization, single node failure, underutilized resources, and high end-to-end delay. Blockchain and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are growing technologies to create a secure system and to ensure safe network connectivity. Blockchain technology offers a strong and trustworthy foundation to deal with threats and problems, including safety, privacy, adaptability, scalability, and security. However, the integration of blockchain with SDN is still in the implementation phase, which provides an efficient resource allocation and reduced latency that can overcome the issues of industrial IoT networks. We propose an energy-efficient blockchain-integrated software-defined networking architecture for Industrial IoT (IIoT) to overcome these challenges. We present a framework for implementing decentralized blockchain integrated with SDN for IIoT applications to achieve efficient energy utilization and cluster-head selection. Additionally, the blockchain-enabled distributed ledger ensures data consistency throughout the SDN controller network and keeps a record of the nodes enforced in the controller. The simulation result shows that the proposed model provides the best energy consumption, end-to-end latency, and overall throughput compared to the existing works.

Meghana Kshirsagar, Gauri Vaidya, Yao Yao, Smita Kasar · 5 authors

Abstract Health care interoperability unfolds the way for personalized health care services at a reduced cost. Furthermore, a decentralized system holds the promise to prevent compromises such as cyber‐attacks due to data breaches. Hence, there is a need for a framework that seamlessly integrates and shares data across the system stakeholders. We propose SEquestered aNd SynergIstic BLockchain Ecosystem (SENSIBLE), a blockchain‐powered, knowledge‐driven data‐sharing framework that gives patients complete control of their medical history and can extract rich information hidden in it using knowledge graphs (KGs). By incorporating both blockchain and KGs, we can provide a platform for secure data sharing among stakeholders by maintaining data privacy and integrity through data authentication and robust data integration. We present a Proof‐of‐Concept of the SENSIBLE network with Ethereum to share dynamic knowledge across stakeholders. Dynamic knowledge generation on the blockchain provides a two‐fold advantage of cooperation and communication amongst the stakeholders in the health care ecosystem. This leads to operational ease through sharing relevant portions of complex information while also ensuring the isolation of sensitive medical data.

Anshuman Kalla, Chamitha de Alwis, Pawani Porambage, Gürkan Gür · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Weizheng Wang, Huakun Huang, Zhimeng Yin, Thippa Reddy Gadekallu · 6 authors

Due to mobile Internet technology's rapid popularization, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can be seen everywhere in our daily lives. While IIoT brings us much convenience, a series of security and scalability issues related to permission operations rise to the surface during device communications. Hence, at present, a reliable and dynamic access control management system for IIoT is in urgent need. Up till now, numerous access control architectures have been proposed for IIoT. However, owing to centralized models and heterogeneous devices, security and scalability requirements still cannot be met. In this paper, we offer a smart contract token-based solution for decentralized access control in IIoT systems. Specifically, there are three smart contracts in our system, including the Token Issue Contract (TIC), User Register Contract (URC), and Manage Contract (MC). These three contracts collaboratively supervise and manage various events in IIoT environments. We also utilize the lightweight and post-quantum encryption algorithm-Nth-degree Truncated Polynomial Ring Units (NTRU) to preserve user privacy during the registration process. Subsequently, to evaluate our proposed architecture's performance, we build a prototype platform that connects to the local blockchain . Finally, experiment results show that our scheme has achieved secure and dynamic access control for the IIoT system compared with related research.

Tri Nguyen, Risto Katila, Tuan Nguyen Gia

Drone-based systems supporting Search and Rescue (SAR) missions help expeditiously improve the possibility of discovering the missing victims. Nonetheless, the current drone-based systems have some limitations, such as the need for humans in control of large-scale drones, drone’s energy inefficiency, repercussion of quality of service (QoS) from abnormalities events, shortages of automaticity and real-time interactions, deficiency of swift decisions from artificial intelligence-based SAR, and underestimation of security issues in SAR systems. Therefore, developing a more advanced drone-based system is necessary to overcome these limitations. However, it is challenging to achieve the target due to trade-off relationships of technologies and strict requirements of time-critical SAR. This paper studies the feasibility of an Internet-of-Drones (IoD) system using blockchain and artificial intelligence at the edge to overcome limitations and improve SAR QoS. An advanced IoD system architecture from drones to a back-end system and end-users terminals has been proposed. Furthermore, advanced edge services and artificial intelligence at the edge have been presented for automatically searching for missing persons. In addition, computation offloading approaches have been provided to improve the energy efficiency of drones and reduce system latency. Last but not least, public and private blockchain, including Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric, for providing secure and decentralized healthcare platform has been investigated and analyzed to enable real-time interaction between healthcare entities and improves healthcare services. The results show that the proposed system helps overcome the limitations and improve the SAR QoS. Besides, the proposed system satisfies the security requirements, including confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, access control, privacy, trust, transparency, availability, automaticity, and tolerance.

Sara Jeza Alotaibi

Blockchain technology is recognised as being a key focus when it comes to modern-day studies and interest on a global scale, with the new block of transactions responsible for the continued growth and expansion of a distributed ledger that details transactional data, complete with immutable and verifiable structures. A greater degree of transparency, privacy, security, and traceability is provided by blockchain when a comparison is drawn with more conventional strategies. As a result of its secure and more progressive elements, blockchain is applied in a number of different arenas, including digital transactions, education, the healthcare industry, the Internet of Things (IoT), trade finance, and the training sector. Importantly, a notable effect on all applied fields has been witnessed as a result of blockchain technology, with data and transactional reliability, as well as privacy, recognised as the most important aspects when it comes to data-sharing in the training arena specifically. Very few models and frameworks are aligned with the guidelines put forth in this sector; as such, this report seeks to consider the pressing need to determine a model and framework to facilitate the sharing of data between training providers in line with the IoT. This study, therefore, centres on the creation of a blockchain model, with the creation of a sole recognition system for professionals seen to be advantageous for all such providers, specifically in the mind of providing a greater degree of clarity and simplification to the system in line with the IoT. The suggested model is focused on a number of different elements that have been identified as a result of studied theories, with consideration of the three different standpoints and professional assessments of 16 unique items.

Tara Renduchintala, Haneen Alfauri, Zebo Yang, Roberto Di Pietro · 5 authors

FinTech has proven its true potential in traditional financial offerings by delivering digital financial services to individuals worldwide. The pandemic has accelerated how people interact with financial services and has resulted in long-term changes to societies and economies. FinTech has expanded access to financial services and has made such changes possible. FinTech or Financial Technology refers to using new technologies for financial services. Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and cloud computing are a few technologies currently being applied to FinTech. In this paper, we consider FinTech, which partly uses blockchain technology. Blockchain technology plays a vital role in the financial sector as it ultimately lifts trust and the need for third-party verification by using consensus-based verification. This survey provides a comprehensive summary of the most relevant blockchain-based FinTech implementations and an overview of FinTech sectors and segments. For each segment, we provide a critique and a discussion on how each blockchain implementation contributes to solving the majority of problems faced by FinTech companies and researchers. This research aims to direct the future of financial solutions by providing an outline of the applications of blockchain technology and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for FinTech. We discuss various implementations, limitations, and challenges of blockchain-based FinTech applications. We conclude this work by exploring possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis and future research directions.

Adarsh Kumar, Neelu Jyothi Ahuja, Monika Thapliyal, Sarthika Dutt · 8 authors

Underwater drones have found a place in oceanography, oceanic research, bathymetric surveys, military, surveillance, monitoring, undersea exploration, mining, commercial diving, photography and several other activities. Drones housed with several sensors and complex propulsion systems help oceanographic scientists and undersea explorers to map the seabed, study waves, view dead zones, analyze fish counts, predict tidal wave behaviors, aid in finding shipwrecks, building windfarms, examine oil platforms located in deep seas and inspect nuclear reactors in the ship vessels. While drones can be explicitly programmed for specific missions, data security and privacy are crucial issues of serious concern. Blockchain has emerged as a key enabling technology, amongst other disruptive technological enablers, to address security, data sharing, storage, process tracking, collaboration and resource management. This study presents a comprehensive review on the utilization of Blockchain in different underwater applications, discussing use cases and detailing benefits. Potential challenges of underwater applications addressed by Blockchain have been detailed. This work identifies knowledge gaps between theoretical research and real-time Blockchain integration in realistic underwater drone applications. The key limitations for effective integration of Blockchain in real-time integration in UUD applications, along with directions for future research have been presented.

Lu Meng, Bin Sun

The current distributed storage solutions are still concentrated in third-party storage service providers, and the stored data are concentrated in a few cloud servers, which inevitably brings the risk of data loss, leakage, and tampering, so it is imperative to study a distributed storage and decentralized storage system. How to maintain the consistency of data in a distributed environment has become a problem in building decentralized applications, until the emergence of blockchain technology, whose decentralized, non-tamperable, and traceable features can solve this problem well. In this paper, we design a decentralized storage system combining Hyperledger Fabric and Inter Planetary File System (IPFS). In addition, from the perspective of security and availability of the decentralized storage system, we study the partitioning and the k-r allocation scheme of the stored data, propose the allocation function about the stored files, derive the mathematical formula of file security and availability based on the allocation function, and discuss the optimal parameter setting of the allocation function based on the formula to guarantee the high security and availability of the stored files. The experimental results show that the performance of the k-r allocation policy based on the minimum number nodes (MNN) is better than that of the k-r allocation policy based on the minimum slices number (MSN); however, with the same security and availability guarantees, the MNN policy will have more copies relative to the MSN policy, which is relatively wasteful of space.

Chaoran Li, Jusheng Liu, Guanyu Qian, Ziyi Wang · 5 authors

With the informatization development and digital construction in the healthcare industry, electronic medical records and Internet medicine facilitate people's medical treatment. However, the current data storage method has the risk of data loss, leakage, and tampering, and can't support extensive and secure sharing of medical data. To realize effective and secure medical data storage and sharing among offline medical institutions and Internet medicine platforms, this study used a combined private blockchain and consortium blockchain to design a medical blockchain double-chain system (MBDS). This system can store encrypted medical data in distributed storage mode and systematically integrate the medical data of patients in offline medical institutions and Internet medicine platforms, to achieve equality, credibility, and data sharing among participating nodes. The MBDS system constructed in this study incorporated Internet medicine care services into the current healthcare system and provided new solutions and practical guidance for the future development of collaborative medical care. This study helped to solve the problems of medical data interconnection and resource sharing, improve the efficiency and effect of disease diagnosis, alleviate the contradiction between doctors and patients, and facilitate personal health management. This study has substantial theoretical and practical implications for the research and application of medical data storage and sharing.

Tianyu Bai, Yangsheng Hu, Jianfeng He, Hongbo Fan · 5 authors

The issue of identity authentication for online medical services has been one of the key focuses of the healthcare industry in recent years. Most healthcare organizations use centralized identity management systems (IDMs), which not only limit the interoperability of patient identities between institutions of healthcare, but also create isolation between data islands. The more important matter is that centralized IDMs may lead to privacy disclosure. Therefore, we propose Health-zkIDM, a decentralized identity authentication system based on zero-knowledge proof and blockchain technology, which allows patients to identify and verify their identities transparently and safely in different health fields and promotes the interaction between IDM providers and patients. The users in Health-zkIDM are uniquely identified by one ID registered. The zero-knowledge proof technology is deployed on the client, which provides the user with a proof of identity information and automatically verifies the user's identity after registration. We implemented chaincodes on the Fabric, including the upload of proof of identity information, identification, and verification functions. The experiences show that the performance of the Health-zkIDM system can achieve throughputs higher than 400 TPS in Caliper.

Samuyelu Bommu, Aravind Kumar M, Kiranmai Babburu, Nangineni Srikanth · 11 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Asad Aftab, Chrysostomos Chrysostomou, Hassaan Khaliq Qureshi, Semeen Rehman

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is an imminent and corporal technology that enables the connectivity of smart physical devices with virtual objects contriving in distinct platforms with the help of the internet. The IoT is under massive experimentation to operate in a distributed manner, making it favourable to be utilized in the healthcare ecosystem. However, un- der the IoT healthcare ecosystem (IoT-HS), the nodes of the IoT networks are unveiled to an aberrant level of security threats. Regulating an adequate volume of sensitive and personal data, IoT-HS undergoes various security challenges for which a distributed mechanism to address such concerns plays a vital role. Although Blockchain, having a distributed ledger, is integral to solving security concerns in IoT-HSs, it undergoes major problems, including massive storage and computational requirements. Also, Holochain, which has low computational and memory requirements, lacks authentication distribution availability. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid Holochain and Blockchain-based privacy perseverance and security framework for IoT-HSs that combines the benefits Holochain and Blockchain provide, overcoming the computational, memory, and authentication challenges. This framework is more suited for IoT scenarios where resource needs to be optimally utilized. Comprehensive security and performance analysis is conducted to demonstrate the suitability and effectiveness of the proposed hybrid security approach for IoT-HSs in contrast to the Blockchain-only or Holochain-only based approaches.

Peter Mell, Dylan Yaga

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose price is pegged to that of another asset (typically one with low price volatility). The market for stablecoins has grown tremendously - up to almost $200 billion USD in 2022. These coins are being used extensively in newly developing paradigms for digital money and commerce as well as for decentralized finance technology. This work provides a technical description of stablecoin technology to enable reader understanding of the variety of ways in which stablecoins are architected and implemented. This includes a descriptive definition, commonly found properties, and distinguishing characteristics, as well as an exploration of stablecoin taxonomies, descriptions of the most common types, and examples from a list of top stablecoins by market capitalization. This document also explores related security, safety, and trust issues with an analysis conducted from a computer science and information technology security perspective as opposed to the financial analysis and economics focus of much of the stablecoin literature.