Ehtisham Ul Haque, Adil Shah, Jawaid Iqbal, Syed Sajid Ullah · 6 authors
Abstract Recent research has focused on applying blockchain technology to solve security-related problems in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. However, the inherent scalability issues of blockchain technology become apparent in the presence of a vast number of IoT devices and the substantial data generated by these networks. Therefore, in this paper, we use a lightweight consensus algorithm to cater to these problems. We propose a scalable blockchain-based framework for managing IoT data, catering to a large number of devices. This framework utilizes the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm to ensure enhanced performance and efficiency in resource-constrained IoT networks. DPoS being a lightweight consensus algorithm leverages a selected number of elected delegates to validate and confirm transactions, thus mitigating the performance and efficiency degradation in the blockchain-based IoT networks. In this paper, we implemented an Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for distributed storage, and Docker to evaluate the network’s performance in terms of throughput, latency, and resource utilization. We divided our analysis into four parts: Latency, throughput, resource utilization, and file upload time and speed in distributed storage evaluation. Our empirical findings demonstrate that our framework exhibits low latency, measuring less than 0.976 milliseconds. The proposed technique outperforms Proof of Stake (PoS), representing a state-of-the-art consensus technique. We also demonstrate that the proposed approach is useful in IoT applications where low latency or resource efficiency is required.
Fueled by the growing popularity of proof-of-stake blockchains, there has been increasing interest and progress in permissioned consensus protocols, which could provide a simpler alternative to existing protocols, such as Paxos and PBFT. In particular, the recently proposed Streamlet protocol provides a surprisingly simple and streamlined consensus approach, which crystallizes years of research in simplifying and improving classical consensus protocols. While the simplicity of Streamlet is a major accomplishment, the protocol lacks certain practical features, such as supporting a stable block proposer, and it makes strong assumptions, such as synchronized clocks and the implicit echoing of all messages. Most importantly, it requires sending $O(N^3)$ messages per block in a network of $N$ nodes, which poses a significant challenge to its application in larger networks. To address these limitations, we introduce Pipelet, a practical streamlined consensus protocol. Pipelet employs the same block-finalization rule as Streamlet, but attains state-of-the-art performance in terms of communication complexity and provides features that are crucial for practical applications, such as clock synchronization and stable block proposers. At the same time, Pipelet retains the simplicity of Streamlet, which presents significant practical advantages, such as ease of implementation and verification.
This study presents a series of structured and adaptive processes aimed at tracking and verifying transactions recorded on the blockchain. Permissioned blockchains are employed across diverse enterprises for various purposes, including data recording, management, the utilization of blockchain services, and authentication. However, the processes of data tracking and transactions incur substantial resource and time expenditure. Furthermore, there is potential for information asymmetry within the blockchain ledger due to data breach attacks. Consequently, we propose a contract structured as a hash chain to mitigate resource and time consumption in the tracking and verification processes by organizing transaction hash values and content in a hash chain format based on cryptography. We generate a hash chain for the recorded transactions along the process line and expedite the tracking and verification process by navigating the relevant hash chain. This approach achieves faster and more accurate tracking procedures compared to conventional transaction tracking processes, simultaneously maintaining data symmetry within the blockchain ledger. We conduct a comparative analysis of a contract-based hash-chain-employing structure and two contracts related to tracking in terms of tracking time, CPU usage, and network traffic, among other metrics. The findings suggest that structuring transaction data in the form of a hash chain significantly enhances the efficiency and integrity of the data-tracking and verification processes. Consequently, in this study, we advocate for the adoption of contracts based on the hash chain format when leveraging the blockchain for tracking and verification purposes across various institutions.
Sharding technology can address the throughput and scalability limitations that arise when single-chain blockchain are applied in the Internet of Things (IoT). However, existing sharding solutions focus on addressing issues like malicious nodes clustering and cross-shard transactions. Existing sharding solutions cannot adapt to the performance disparities of edge nodes and the characteristic of three-dimensional data queries in building IoT. This leads to problems such as shard overheating and inefficient data query efficiency. This paper proposes a dual-layer architecture called S-DAG, which combines sharded blockchain and DAG blockchain. The sharded blockchain processes transactions within the building IoT, while the DAG blockchain stores block headers from the sharded network. By designing an Adaptive Balancing Load Algorithm (ABLA) for periodic network sharding, nodes are divided based on their load performance values to prevent the aggregation of low-load performance nodes and the resulting issue of shard overheating. By combining the characteristics of the KD tree and Merkle tree, a block structure known as 3D-Merkle tree is designed to support three-dimensional data queries, enhancing the efficiency of three-dimensional data queries in building IoT. By deploying and conducting simulation experiments on various physical devices, we have verified the effectiveness of the solution proposed in this paper. The results indicate that, compared to other solutions, the proposed solution is better suited for building IoT data management. ABLA is effective in preventing shard overheating issue, and the 3D-Merkle tree significantly enhances data query efficiency.
Ample acceptance of Blockchain Technology in today's business world has increased number of use cases tremendously beyond cryptocurrencies for which it was originally developed. Hyperledger Fabric, as an enterprise-grade permissioned Blockchain platform, offers a secure and scalable infrastructure for diverse applications, including financial services. Since performance evaluation of the platform play major role in acceptability of the technology for various applications, in this research article we are presenting a comprehensive performance analysis of the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain platform with the help of standard benchmarking tool-Hyperledger Caliper for Cross-Border Fund Transfer (CBFT) application and results are validated using existing queuing theory based theoretical model for Hyperledger Fabric. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the most popular Blockchain platform's performance under various workloads and network conditions. By capturing the interactions between network participants and consensus mechanisms, we have presented latency analysis along with the insights into the platform's scalability and efficiency. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of Blockchain technology and aids in the design of more efficient and robust Blockchain-based applications.
As a result of the ubiquitous network applications and services, exacerbated by the overarching digital revolution the need and demand for efficient and dependable connectivity solutions have surged to unprecedented levels. Quality of Service (QoS)-based routing has emerged as a critical solution, enabling service differentiation, efficient resource allocation, and improved network performance. In this study, we introduce a novel Genetic Algorithm-powered QoS-aware Cross-Network Traffic Engineering framework,GATE-BC, at the confluence of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Blockchain (BC) technologies.GATE-BCorchestrates end-to-end (E2E) QoS traffic, providing resource-efficient, reliable, and latency-tolerant delivery of intelligent network services in BC-enabled SDNs. Leveraging BC features such as decentralization, transparency, and immutability,GATE-BCeliminates the need for centralized entities in QoS-supported cross-network routing models. We compareGATE-BCframework with three other traffic management and engineering approaches: QoSChain (QC), Hierarchical Routing Approach (HRA), and Distributed Routing Approach (DRA). The extensive simulations reveal thatGATE-BCoutperforms the other routing strategies in terms of Path Setup Time (PST), Network Message Overhead (NMO), Request Acceptance Ratio (RAR), Network Bandwidth Consumption (NBC), Average Path Length (APL), and Average Network Length (ANL) metrics under various network topologies. Furthermore,GATE-BCemploys three different feasible path selection strategies based on bandwidth (GATE-BC_BW), delay (GATE-BC_D), and reliability (GATE-BC_R) QoS parameters to satisfy the service levels requested.
In the emerging and well-rooted field of Vehicular Adhoc-Networks (VANETs), the imperative of secure content exchange via Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication for better safety emphasizes the importance of strong communication protocols. Implementing Information-Centric Networking (ICN) in VANETs allows for more efficient resource utilization via name-based content requests and delivery techniques. However, the dynamic and open nature of VANETs creates major security risks, necessitating rigorous defence against malicious attacks. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel trust-aware VANET framework that integrates ICN and Blockchain for content security. Our method uses authenticated vehicle data to ensure content integrity across the network, resulting in effective and efficient security measures. Through precise simulation, our technique exhibits resilience against malicious assaults by improving bandwidth utilization, throughput transactions, network content utilization, and content delivery in the face of hostile scenarios. The experimental results confirm the efficacy and feasibility of our proposed technique, highlighting its potential to improve VANET content security in real-world applications.
In modern cities, consumers with distributed energy resources (DERs) can trade energy by managing their consumption and supply. Blockchain is considered to provide technical support for establishing a distributed energy market, while the current mainstream blockchain technology cannot meet the requirement of efficiency and scalability under such a transaction scenario. In addition, the potential defaults of market players also hinder market implementation. Therefore, a reputation-based distributed energy trading mechanism and the corresponding blockchain consensus method considering reputation management are proposed in this paper. Firstly, a distributed reputation management mechanism is designed to systematically evaluate the user’s behavior in the market. Secondly, to address the limitations of traditional consensus methods in the distributed energy market distributed reputation control is introduced into the node model of blockchain, and a new energy blockchain consensus method named DPoR is proposed to solve the technical bottleneck under the distributed energy trading scenario. We also present a corresponding transaction mechanism to encourage market participants to maintain their reputations. Finally, the simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed transaction mechanism in this paper, and the presented blockchain consensus mechanism can meet the performance requirements under distributed energy trading scenarios in terms of high efficiency, low consumption, and openness.
Blockchain makes heavy use ofcryptographic hashingto achieve integrity and consensus in a peer-to-peer network, but hashing causes some inefficiencies. For example, blockchain stores data with their hash digest as a key in the database, so the blockchain always reads and writes data in arandomorder. This can affect blockchain performance, especially for account-based blockchains such as Ethereum, which must maintain a huge, hash-based data structure for accounts, called thestate trie. Also, Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm requires the miners to find a nonce that makes the block hash lower than a difficulty threshold, but ASICs with parallel hashing have made PoW use a large dataset such as theEthashDAG for memory-hardness and ASIC-resistance. Unfortunately, verification of the nonce is not easy for many light clients, which cannot deal with the overhead caused by the dataset. This paper proposes a novel PoW mining algorithm namedTrie-Hashimototo address these issues. Trie-Hashimoto adds a nonce field in a state trie node. It then makes the miners find a nonce of every newly-created trie node for a new block such that each node has a hash digest whoseprefixis equal to the block number. This can accelerate the database performance by storing the trie nodes in asequentialorder. The way for Trie-Hashimoto to achieve memory-hardness is also different. It uses the block headers that any client must maintain, obviating a separate dataset. Furthermore, it allows partial verification using a few Merkle proofs of accounts, so that a client with minimal resources or even a smart contract in another interoperable blockchain can verify a block with a high probability. Finally, Trie-Hashimoto discourages big mining pools by increasing the network overhead among the miners. Our experiment on the Geth client with 500K blocks and 100M accounts shows that Trie-Hashimoto improves the transaction execution time tangibly, reducing the full synchronization time by half. It also shows that Trie-Hashimoto has enough memory-hardness as Ethash. Lastly, a Trie-Hashimoto mining pool should exchange messages highly frequently, proportional to the total number of miners.
The last decade has changed the trends of using peering networks. One of the areas of use of P2P networks is communication between people. Today, it is very important that communication is as protected as possible, especially if it is carried out between employees of the enterprise, because the number of cyber threats is constantly increasing. Modern approaches to the security of peering networks consist of data encryption, node authentication, detection and prevention of malicious nodes, access restriction, traffic monitoring, etc. However, one of the very first steps is the exchange of identification data itself, and this process must be as secure and secure as possible. The article proposes a method of secure exchange of identification data between peering network nodes, based on the use of NFC technology in combination with proof of zero knowledge. NFC is used for direct data exchange over the radio interface, which, thanks to its short range, makes it impossible to intercept data. To establish a connection, nodes must exchange identifiers, public encryption keys, and network addresses. In order to find out whether a node is not malicious, mutual verification of nodes using zero-knowledge proof is assumed. A unique identifier of the GUID type generated by each of the nodes acts as a secret that is not disclosed. Nodes first exchange public keys that encrypt and exchange identifiers. After decryption with their private keys, the nodes check whether the received value is equal to the initial one. In case of equality of values, the nodes are mutually verified and exchange identification data. The method proposed in the article is aimed at ensuring fault tolerance and confidentiality. It also provides protection against traffic interception attacks and the reliability of the verification process.
This study investigates the impact of Zlib compression on gas consumption within blockchain systems, focusing particularly on Ethereum transactions. By employing the Ethereum simulator Ganache, we simulate 100 realistic home delivery system datasets to evaluate the performance of compressed versus uncompressed data. The methodology encompasses rigorous statistical analysis to ensure robust results. Our findings reveal that using the Zlib algorithm to compress textual data exceeding 141 bytes before submitting transactions on the Ethereum network reduces the gasUsed while maintaining the system time unchanged. This demonstrates the effectiveness of data compression in optimizing transaction costs without affecting operational efficiency. Additionally, our research extends to analyzing real gasPrice trends on the Ethereum network. We propose a non-linear regression model that accurately predicts hourly gasPrice variations based on the day of the week and the specific time. This provides a valuable tool for users to plan transactions strategically. These insights enhance the understanding of blockchain dynamics and offer practical solutions for improving economic and system efficiency in blockchain operations.
The rapid increase in mobile users, the IoT, and data-hungry applications have brought forth unprecedented demand on the spectrum, which is scarce; on top of that, the existing static spectrum allocation schemes have resulted in a heavily underutilized spectrum which can be mitigated with a Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) scheme with unlicensed users gaining access to the idle spectrum bands of licensed spectrum users opportunistically. Such a DSA and Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) scheme would significantly increase spectral efficiency while facilitating new services and applications beyond 5G (B5G) networks. Even with access to new spectrum bands like terahertz (THz) and Visible light communication and enabling technologies such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Cognitive Radio (CR), implementing a fully realized DSM requires rapid sensing, coordination, and management, and sharing of idle spectrum bands in a fair manner while preserving the security and privacy aspects, limiting interferences. With their decentralized, immutable nature, blockchains promise the execution of spectrum access and sharing in a fully transparent, fair manner while preserving privacy and security. Furthermore, blockchain-based Smart Contracts (SCs) allow automation of DSM, cryptocurrencies, and tokens to facilitate the trading of spectrum and related resources. In addition to that, blockchains act as an interface for integrating AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques into DSM, which provides a certain level of intelligence to the underlying architecture. Although several attempts have been carried out to analyze the research gaps in DSM, a comprehensive analysis addressing the blockchains as the primary solution to address DSM has not been carried out. In this survey, we address the potential of a blockchain-based approach toward realizing a decentralized DSM while presenting future directives to improve the use of blockchains for DSM.
Chen-Da Liu-Zhang, Christian Matt, Søren Eller Thomsen
Messages in large-scale networks such as blockchain systems are typically disseminated using flooding protocols, in which parties send the message to a random set of peers until it reaches all parties. Optimizing the communication complexity of such protocols and, in particular, the per-party communication complexity is of primary interest since nodes in a network are often subject to bandwidth constraints. Previous flooding protocols incur a per-party communication complexity of $$\varOmega (l\cdot \gamma ^{-1} \cdot (\log (n) + \kappa ))$$ bits to disseminate an l-bit message among n parties with security parameter $$\kappa $$ when it is guaranteed that a $$\gamma $$ fraction of the parties remain honest. In this work, we present the first flooding protocols with a per-party communication complexity of $$O(l\cdot \gamma ^{-1})$$ bits. We further show that this is asymptotically optimal and that our protocols can be instantiated provably securely in the usual setting for proof-of-stake blockchains. To demonstrate that one of our new protocols is not only asymptotically optimal but also practical, we perform several probabilistic simulations to estimate the concrete complexity for given parameters. Our simulations show that our protocol significantly improves the per-party communication complexity over the state-of-the-art for practical parameters. Hence, for given bandwidth constraints, our results allow to, e.g., increase the block size, improving the overall throughput of a blockchain.
The current explosion in user traffic necessitates the placement of edge servers in proximity to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, allowing computation tasks to be offloaded to edge servers. This strategy aims to minimize the average delay of traffic requests by enabling user/IoT devices to locally execute time-sensitive tasks or offload them to edge servers within the mobile edge computing (MEC) paradigm. This new paradigm will also allow to cache contents at edge servers, but considering such an increasing number of user requests and limited storage capability of edge servers, selection in edge caching decisions is challenging. In addition, while there is general consensus that this technology may provide a variety of benefits, there are serious questions about its security implications. This is because malicious users can manipulate the caching decisions of the edge servers by sending fake traffic requests, which reduces the caching efficiency of the resource-constrained edge servers. Driven by these issues, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based content caching and computation strategy to validate the authenticity of cached content and thus prevent unauthorized requests from malicious users. Specifically, the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is presented to handle low computational work, validate the process of blocks, and manage the transactions between edge servers and legitimate users. Then, a Deep Q Network (DQN)-based solution is proposed to intelligently develop an effective content caching and computation strategy. According to performance evaluation, the proposed model significantly outperforms the conventional methods. It improves the cache hit rate by up to 8.2% on average and reduces the response delay by up to 7.45% on average.
Open access
Caching and Content Delivery
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
This study provides a pioneering analysis of the features and topics of news websites in the Web 3.0 era through a comparison with non-news sites. We first classify over 4,600 Web3 sites into news and non-news types to investigate the feature characteristics of decentralized websites as well as semantic and subject categories. The most novel finding is that Web3 news sites have more features than non-news sites in terms of design systems and functions, interactivity, information quality, and hyperlinks. Furthermore, news web3 domains have more terms in semantic networks associated with information provision (e.g., “source”), whereas non-news domains have more terms associated with finance (e.g., “token”). The integration of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a fundamental component of the Web3 ecosystem, began in the news industry and is at an early stage in terms of functionality and structure. The study’s results are discussed in the context of future Web3 domain development.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital identifiers containing metadata, such as token number, title, content, and image URL, and are linked to digital assets, which are characterized by the fact that, unlike conventional virtual assets, they have their own unique value and cannot be replaced. NFTs cannot be deleted or forged; therefore, they can be used to authenticate the ownership of digital assets. The metadata of the NFTs are uploaded to the interplanetary file system (IPFS), which is a distributed file system, and converted into unique content identifiers (CIDs) that are stored on the blockchain. Digital content (DC) is divided into multiple pieces; it also has its own unique value and is distributed and stored using the IPFS. This study built an NFT-based IPFS testbed and experimented with the process of generating unique values for DC divided into three groups and sharing them. The results confirmed that each DC had a unique hash value and no duplicates existed.
Ethereum is undergoing significant changes to its architecture as it evolves. These changes include its switch to PoS consensus and the introduction of significant infrastructural changes that do not require a change to the core protocol, but that fundamentally affect the way users interact with the network. These changes represent an evolution toward a more modular architecture, in which there exists new exogenous vectors for centralization. This paper builds on previous studies of decentralization of Ethereum to reflect these recent significant changes, and Ethereum's new modular paradigm.
Sarah A. Flanery, Kamalesh Mohanasundar, Christiana Chamon, Srujan Kotikela · 5 authors
With the natural evolution of the web, the need for decentralization has rendered the current centralized education system out of date. The student does not "own" their credentials, as the only way their accomplishments are directly linked to their person and considered valuable is by verification through a stamp of an expensive, prestigious institution. However, going to a university is no longer the only way to acquire an education; open-source learning material is widely available and accessible through the internet. However, our society does not deem these methods of education as verifiable if they do not include a degree or certificate. Additionally, a valid certificate for the vast majority of open-source courses costs a few hundred dollars to obtain. The centralized nature of education inadvertently places students in underprivileged communities at a disadvantage in comparison to students in economically advantaged communities, thus a decentralized approach to education would eliminate the vast majority of such discrepancies. In the present paper, we integrate Decentralized Identity (DID) with Web 3.0 to upload credentials linked directly to the user. Each credential is appended to an Ethereum blockchain that, by design, cannot be altered once uploaded. We include DID document based access controls to display the candidate's upload and verification history. Finally, we utilize TLS protocols to provide a secure connection to the internet for ensuring non-fungibility of credentials and authentication of users.