Beginning in 2030, sixth generation (6G) mobile communication is expected to play a key role by collecting billions of things, humans, and robots, resulting in zettabytes of digital information. The key features of 6G include inherent connected intelligence in the telecommunication networks with devices from different vendors. Hence, trust should be enforced among devices, sub-networks, and applications, especially for mission-critical services. Currently, trust-based intrusion detection can measure an entity's trustworthiness by collecting statistics or sending consultation messages, while it may become inefficient in the era of 6G due to the overloaded traffic and potential latency. In this article, we discuss the challenges of deploying trust-based intrusion detection in 6G, and design BCTrustFrame, a framework of blockchain-based trust management with IPFS, which aims to enhance the effectiveness of trust evaluation via the collaboration of blockchain and IPFS technology. We also perform a case study to demonstrate the viability and performance.
A smart city is a comprehensive concept created by multiple digital industries. Smart city is a new generation of information technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and geospatial information to promote smart new ideas for urban planning, construction, management and services, power city operation and administrative management, industrial development, and public services in various fields. It is a modern high-end urban development form. A smart city is to establish a city center system by connecting terminals, applying information technology and network, and ultimately promoting the efficiency improvement and economic structure optimization in various fields. However, in the construction of smart cities, due to the sharing of a large amount of data, a lot of data leakage is caused, and data protection faces many challenges. The article first introduces the structure of smart cities, the challenges faced by smart cities in data protection and data privacy protection; then summarizes the characteristics, applications, and challenges of blockchain technology in the application of blockchain in smart cities, and makes reference to references. The corresponding comparisons are made, and the future challenges are finally summarized and proposed.
In recent years, technological research and studies have accelerated in the agriculture and food industry to protect and improve the trust of consumers. In 2008, with the publication of the white paper on “Bitcoin: Peer-to-peer Electronic Cash Payment System” by Satoshi Nakamoto, the world met with blockchain technology, where there are no middlemen and transfers are made securely. In the following years, with the development of Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin and the interpretation of the concept of Smart Contracts with blockchain technology, blockchain technology has begun to influence all sectors, thanks to its benefits such as increasing transparency and reliability in contracts between parties. Blockchain technology, in addition to providing solutions to financial systems that have become dysfunctional, also brings alternatives to supply chain management, where data needs to be transferred securely and quickly. Blockchain applications used in FSC emerge as a technology that will enable us to solve problems such as food security, food integrity, food fraud, etc. In this paper, It has been studied on how to use blockchain technology in the food supply chain, how to choose the suitable blockchain platform, and how It will be facilitating for solutions such as tracking from field to fork, back-tracking are examined the data saved in the blocks and the working mechanism will be discussed in the background.
Bi-Ying Wang, Zheng Chang, Shancang Li, Timo Hämäläinen
Recently, integrating satellite networks (e.g., low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation) into the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem has emerged as a potential paradigm to provide more reliable, ubiquitous, and seamless network services. The LEO satellite networks serves as a key enabler to transform the connectivity across industries and geographical border. Despite the convenience brought from the LEO satellite networks, it arises security concerns, in which the essential one is to secure the communication between the IoT devices and the LEO satellite network. However, some challenges inheriting from the LEO satellite networks need to be considered, which are: the dynamic topology; the resource-constraint satellites; the relative long latency; and multiple beams authentication. In particular, the centralized authentication schemes are no longer suitable for the emerging LEO satellite-assisted IoT ecosystem. In this article, we first introduce the architecture of the LEO satellite network-assisted IoT ecosystem. Then, we propose an efficient and privacy-preserving blockchain-based authentication scheme. The proposed authentication scheme takes the advantages of certificateless encryption and consortium blockchain to provide lightweight key pair computation without appealing devices’ information and efficient signature querying and verification. In addition, a fast authentication mechanism is implemented in the scheme in order to reduce the time complexity from querying a certain record for the authentication within a satellite among multiple beams. With the analysis of the storage and computation complexity, the performance evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Blocks and chains are the building blocks of the blockchain, which is a community network. Blocks and chains are two terms used to describe collections of data information. The most fundamental need for a blockchain is that these postings be connected by cryptography, which is the case here. Cryptography. the entries in each block are added to as the list grows. Although the concept of blockchain cryptography is difficult, we have made it easier for you to understand. Asymmetric-key cryptography and hash functions are used in blockchains. Hash functions provide participants with a complete image of the internet. The SHA-256 hashing algorithm is often used in blockchains. In Bitcoin, where addresses are tracked by public-private key pairs, blockchains are often used. The public key in blockchain cryptography is a person's address. All participants have access to the participant's public key. The private key is used to get access to the address database and to authorise activities using the address. To ensure the integrity of the blockchain ledger, encryption plays a key role. Each event on the blockchain is recorded using encrypted data. As long as each user has access to their cryptographic keys, they may buy or trade cryptocurrencies. The root hashes of all transactions are stored in blockchains via cryptographic hashing. If somebody attempts to tamper with any data upon that blockchain, the main hash will have a completely new hash. Root hash comparisons may be performed on any other system to check whether the data is safe.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Blockchain is a distributed ledger in which transactions are grouped in blocks linked by hash pointers. Blockchain-based solutions provide trust and privacy because of the resistance to the inconsistency of data and advanced cryptographic features. In various fields, blockchain technology has been implemented to ensure transparency, verifiability, interoperability, governance, and management of information systems. Processing large volumes of data being generated through emerging technologies is a big issue. Many researchers have used Blockchain in various fields integrated with IoT, i.e., industry 4.0, biomedical, health, genomics, etc. Blockchain has the attributes of decentralization, solidness, security, and immutability with a possibility to secure the system design for transmission and storage of data. The purpose of the consensus protocols is to keep up the security and effectiveness of the blockchain network. Utilizing the correct protocol enhances the performance of the blockchain applications. This article presents essential principles and attributes of consensus algorithms to show the applications, challenges, and opportunities of blockchain technology. Moreover, future research directions are also presented to choose an appropriate consensus algorithm to enhance the performance of Blockchain based applications
Warlley Paulo Freire, Wilson S. Melo, Vinicius D. do Nascimento, Paulo R. Nascimento · 5 authors
Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) is a strategic field of study that seeks to provide a coastal country with an effective monitoring of its maritime resources and its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). In this scope, a Maritime Monitoring System (MMS) aims to leverage active surveillance of military and non-military activities at sea using sensing devices such as radars, optronics, automatic Identification Systems (AISs), and IoT, among others. However, deploying a nation-scale MMS imposes great challenges regarding the scalability and cybersecurity of this heterogeneous system. Aiming to address these challenges, this work explores the use of blockchain to leverage MMS cybersecurity and to ensure the integrity, authenticity, and availability of relevant navigation data. We propose a prototype built on a permissioned blockchain solution using HyperLedger Fabric-a robust, modular, and efficient open-source blockchain platform. We evaluate this solution's performance through a practical experiment where the prototype receives sensing data from a Software-Defined-Radio (SDR)-based low-cost AIS receiver built with a Raspberry Pi. In order to reduce scalability attrition, we developed a dockerized blockchain client easily deployed on a large scale. Furthermore, we determined, through extensive experimentation, the client optimal hardware configuration, also aiming to reduce implementation and maintenance costs. The performance results provide a quantitative analysis of the blockchain technology overhead and its impact in terms of Quality of Service (QoS), demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of our solution in the scope of an MMS using AIS data.
Abstract:The DApp (Decentralised application) being developed enables easy verification of credentials by storing the certificates on Ethereum blockchain network using IPFS (Inter Planetary File System) which is a distributed file system, thereby making the information stored immutable and secure. The website is being developed in three phases. In the first phase, the college enrolls students and uploads their credentials on the Ethereum blockchain. In the second phase, students can view their credentials and access requests sent by companies. In the third phase, companies can send access requests to students whose credentials they want to verify. Once the students accept the access requests, companies can view and verify the certificates.
Giulia Rafaiani, Paolo Santini, Marco Baldi, Franco Chiaraluce
The growing interest in Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT) poses the challenge of finding robust solutions for the certification and notarization of data produced and collected by embedded devices. The blockchain and distributed ledger technologies represent a promising solution to address these issues, but rise other questions, for example regarding their practical feasibility. In fact, IoT devices have limited resources and, consequently, may not be able to easily perform all the operations required to participate in a blockchain. In this paper we propose a minimal architecture to allow IoT devices performing data certification and notarization on the Ethereum blockchain. We develop a hardware-software platform through which a lightweight device (e.g., an IoT sensor), holding a secret key and the associated public address, produces signed transactions, which are then submitted to the blockchain network. This guarantees data integrity and authenticity and, on the other hand, minimizes the computational burden on the lightweight device. To show the practicality of the proposed approach, we report and discuss the results of benchmarks performed on ARM Cortex-M4 hardware architectures, sending transactions over the Ropsten testnet. Our results show that all the necessary operations can be performed with small latency, thus proving that an IoT device can directly interact with the blockchain, without apparent bottlenecks.
Cryptocurrency mining and blockchain technology using renewable energy as the main electricity source has gained attention for sustainable development in financial areas. However, very few studies have been reported concerning the power usage of cryptocurrencies using renewable energy. In this article, we report the effect of overclocking and undervolting on power usage and the hash rate for mining dogecoin with solar energy as renewable energy. The mining rig used in this work consists of different graphics processing units (GPUs) and non-LHR (lite hash rate) cards. The UnMineable software has been used for mining dogecoin as well as for wallet integration. The results indicate that mining dogecoin with solar energy as renewable energy consumes 2000 Watts power with overclocking and 1700 Watts power with undervolting technique. This work implicates the potential future of crypto-mining with renewable energy and the hardware configuration associated with it, which is expected to reduce e-waste and improve sustainable development. To reduce the e-waste and high electricity consumption, we have introduced two important techniques named GPU optimization and use of renewable energy for mining, which helps the miners to reduce the e-waste and electricity consumption significantly at the same time getting most out of the GPU by not having any impact on the environment.
Sandi Rahmadika, Philip Virgil Astillo, Gaurav Choudhary, Daniel Gerbi Duguma · 6 authors
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has risen to prominence as a possible backbone in the health sector, with the ability to improve quality of life by broadening user experience while enabling crucial solutions such as near real-time remote diagnostics. However, privacy and security problems remain largely unresolved in the safety area. Various rule-based methods have been considered to recognize aberrant behaviors in IoMT and have demonstrated high accuracy of misbehavior detection appropriate for lightweight IoT devices. However, most of these solutions have privacy concerns, especially when giving context during misbehavior analysis. Moreover, falsified or modified context generates a high percentage of false positives and sometimes causes a by-pass in misbehavior detection. Relying on the recent powerful consolidation of blockchain and federated learning (FL), we propose an efficient privacy-preserving framework for secure misbehavior detection in lightweight IoMT devices, particularly in the artificial pancreas system (APS). The proposed approach employs privacy-preserving bidirectional long-short term memory (BiLSTM) and augments the security through integrating blockchain technology based on Ethereum smart contract environment. The effectiveness of the proposed model is bench-marked empirically in terms of sustainable privacy preservation, commensurate incentive scheme with an untraceability feature, exhaustiveness, and the compact results of a variant neural network approach. As a result, the proposed model has a 99.93% recall rate, showing that it can detect virtually all possible malicious events in the targeted use case. Furthermore, given an initial ether value of 100, the solution's average gas consumption and Ether spent are 84,456.5 and 0.03157625, respectively.
With the continuous development of the Internet of Energy, the access of a large number of distributed renewable energy has caused difficulties in energy management. The traditional energy management mode cannot meet the needs of existing energy management and trading. Therefore, this paper proposes an integrated energy management platform based on blockchain, which allows multiple decentralized energy management systems to conduct unified identity authentication. At the same time, an editable and verifiable anonymous authentication (EVAA) scheme integrating blockchain in the Internet of Energy is designed, which combines the idea of chameleon hash (CH) and the algorithm of elliptic curve encryption (ECC) to realize the dual identity authentication of user information. Finally, the generated certificate is stored in the chain through blockchain consensus. The scheme is mainly constructed using multiple secure cryptographic algorithms, which combine the advantages of blockchain for information authentication. Thus, it can accomplish user cross-system authentication and transaction, and achieve more secure editable anonymous identity authentication through the algorithm performance test, compared with the existing similar schemes under the unified test standard. This paper not only ensures the operation efficiency, but also reflects the obvious advantage of realizing higher intensity security performance.
Baofeng Ji, Mingkun Zhang, Ling Xing, Xiaoli Li · 7 authors
The huge increase in the communication network rate has made the application fields and scenarios for vehicular ad hoc networks more abundant and diversified and proposed more requirements for the efficiency and quality of data transmission. To improve the limited communication distance and poor communication quality of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), an optimal intelligent routing algorithm is proposed in this paper. Combined multi-weight decision algorithm with the greedy perimeter stateless routing protocol, designed and evaluated standardized function for link stability. Linear additive weighting is used to optimize link stability and distance to improve the packet delivery rate of the IoV. The blockchain system is used as the storage structure for relay data, and the smart contract incentive algorithm based on machine learning is used to encourage relay vehicles to provide more communication bandwidth for data packet transmission. The proposed scheme is simulated and analyzed under different scenarios and different parameters. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the packet loss rate and improve system performance.
Supply chain management (SCM) faces a critical security issue because of the asymmetry of information delivered to various parties in the ecosystem and the lack of corresponding supervision. In response, we propose the use of blockchain technology to address the SCM security issues and put forward a blockchain-based SCM framework. We apply design science paradigm to guide the blockchain-based SCM framework development and implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype. We use Hyperledger Fabric and Composer to develop the prototype artifact. Performance evaluation results issued from Hyperledger Caliper prove the superiority and robustness of the proposed blockchain-based framework in terms of security and efficiency requirements, and performance metrics including throughput and latency. Also, the evaluation results show that the IT artifact is stable, and the high stability can reduce the risks of system vulnerabilities and breakdown.
Background: Several product lifecycle management systems (PLMs) have been implemented in the industrial sector for managing the data of the product from the design up to the disposal or recycling stage. However, these PLMs face certain challenges in managing the complex and decentralized product lifecycles. Methods: To this aim, this work investigates the currently implemented PLMs used in industries through the exploration of various software reviews and selection websites. Accordingly, these existing PLMs are quantitatively compared and analyzed. Results: The analysis shows that most of the existing PLMs do not contain all the required features; therefore, industries integrate different software to create a full-fledged PLM system. However, this practice results in reducing the overall system efficiency. In this context, this paper assesses and recommends a blockchain-based innovative solution that overcomes the challenges of existing PLMs, hence increasing the overall system efficiency. Furthermore, this work argues, in a logical way, that the recommended blockchain-based platform provides a secure and connected infrastructure for data handling, processing, and storage at different stages of the product lifecycle. Conclusions: This work can be considered among the first to compare the currently implemented PLMs with a novel blockchain-based method. Thus, the stakeholders can utilize the outputs of this research in their analysis and decision-making processes for implementing the blockchain in their organizations.
Blockchain technologies have seen a steady growth in interest from industries as the technology is gaining maturity. It is offering a novel way to establish trust amongst multiple stakeholders without relying or trusting centralised authorities. While its use as a decentralised store of value has been validated through the emergence of cryptocurrencies, its use case in industrial applications with multiple stakeholder ecosystems such as industrial supply chain management, is still at an early stage of design and experimentation where private blockchains are used as opposed to public blockchains. Many enterprise blockchain projects failed to gain traction after initial launches, due to inefficient design, lack of incentives to all stakeholders or simply because the use of blockchain was not really necessary in the first place. There has been a need for a framework that allows blockchain designers and researchers to evaluate scenarios when a blockchain solution is useful and design the key configurations for an enterprise blockchain solution. Literature on blockchain architectures are sparse and only applicable to specific use cases or functionalities. This paper proposes a comprehensive Enterprise Blockchain Design Framework (EBDF), that not only identifies the relevant use cases when a blockchain must be utilised, but also details all the characteristics and configurations for designing an enterprise blockchain ecosystem, applicable to multiple industries. To validate the EBDF, we apply the same to the Vortal e-Procurement ecosystem allowing for multiple platforms to interoperate with greater transparency and accountability over the proposed blockchain framework. In this use case, many vendors bid for procurement procedures, often for publicly managed funds where it is extremely vital that full transparency and accountability is ensured in the entire process. Ensuring that certain digital certification functions, such as timestamps are independent from e-Procurement platform owners has been a challenge. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution for not only ensuring transparency and immutability of records, but also providing for interoperability across different platforms by acting as a trusted third-party. The applied framework is used to design a Hyperledger based blockchain solution with some of the key architectural elements that could fulfil these needs while presenting the advantages of such a solution.
Blockchain is one of the latest innovations that is increasingly attracting the attention of various stakeholders in different fields, including the education sector. This is primarily due to its attractive features, such as decentralization, transparency, traceability, security, and reliability. Despite its advantages, blockchain still faces several challenges, and the acceptance rate of this technology is still low. Thus, the purpose of this study was to conduct a review of published articles that have discussed the challenges of adopting blockchain in the education sector. The review contained scientific papers published from 2017 to 2022 and, from the screened records, 32 articles were analyzed in full-text form. In this review, 14 challenges were reported and classified, based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework. In addition, this review showed that organizational and environmental barriers received little attention in the literature, compared to technological barriers.
Blockchain, or distributed ledger, is an innovative technology that is emerging in various sectors and industries across the globe. It has attracted the attention of different interest groups such as energy companies, SMEs and start-ups, information technology developers, financial institutions, national authorities, and the university community. Through, for example, the decentralization of authority in transactions, Internet of Things (IoT) implementation, and smart contracting, the improvement of the daily business operations is firmly forecasted. In the energy sector, digitalization is already present in solutions such as smart grids, smart meters, electric vehicles, etc. Moreover, a new concept of the Internet of Energy (IoE) has been introduced in the academic literature. In this article, the level of trust and maturity of Blockchain technology implementation is investigated through the Blockchain Maturity Questionnaire, developed by the authors. The database consists of responses from upper management professionals from the renewable energy industry. The analysis reveals the state of know-how about Blockchain, the main benefits and bottlenecks associated with its implementation as well as willingness to integrate this technology in the case companies’ future operations. The insight from the industry experts helped to provide a “Roadmap for Blockchain Adoption” in future energy systems. This curiosity study yields numerous applications not only for the renewable energy industry experts but also for the interest groups coming from different industries, as well as public authorities and researchers scrutinizing the fields taken into its scope.
An Enterprise Resource-Planning (ERP) system is a complex, highly integrated software package for business organizations. However, an ERP system still has its limits, since the ERP business model is centered around individual enterprises. Today there is a great need for closer interactions between enterprises worldwide, a necessity that ERP systems face great difficulties with, when expanding to a full-on ecosystem. By integrating Blockchain Technology (BT) with ERP, we are entering a new epoch of decentralization, allowing organizations to function frictionless in a unified ecosystem. This study highlights the importance of integrating BT and ERP systems as well as explores the major prospective pillars for utilizing BT and ERP. This paper contributes to the academic literature, since there is little research evidence concerning the technical and business aspects of BT and ERP, so it fills the gap by exploring the main potential areas for deploying BT and ERP systems.
The emergence of blockchain technology makes it possible to address disparate distributed system security concerns in formerly ridiculous practices. A key factor of this ability is the decentralization of the symmetrically distributed ledgers of blockchain. Such decentralization has replaced several security functionalities of centralized authority with the use of cryptographic systems. That is, public or asymmetric cryptography is the key part of what makes blockchain technology possible. Recently, the blockchain experience introduces the chance for the healthcare field to implement these knowhows in their electronic records. This adoption supports retaining and sharing the symmetrical patient records with the appropriate alliance of hospitals and healthcare providers in a secure decentralized system, using asymmetric cryptography like hashing, digitally signed transactions, and public key infrastructure. These include specialized applications for drug tracking, applications for observing patients, or Electronic Health Records (EHR). Therefore, it is essential to notice that the principled awareness of the healthcare professionals is the leading point of the right perception ethics. In this work, we provide a thorough review of the issues and applications of utilizing blockchain in the healthcare and medical fields emphasizing the particular challenges and aspects. The study adopted a systematic review of secondary literature in answering the research question. Specifically, this paper aims to investigate how blockchain technology can be applied to improve the overall performance of the healthcare sector and to explore the various challenges and concerns of the application of blockchain in the healthcare system.
Data created at industrial sites through industrial internet of things devices are now being processed automatically or in real-time in the industrial structure, due to the application of artificial intelligence technology to industrial sites. However, the expenses of autonomous or real-time data processing and steady data processing (analysis, prediction, prescription, and implementation) necessitate a new processing method. We propose a blockchain-based industrial internet of things information reinforcement model in this work that may reliably ensure the integrity of industrial internet of things data produced at industrial locations. The proposed model processes industrial internet of things data that may occur at endpoints at industrial sites into the blockchain by processing data generated by the same industrial internet of things device independently. As a result, the IIoT data sent to the industrial internet of things server can be evaluated more readily, and production accuracy may be enhanced. The proposed model optimizes industrial internet of things information linkage by stochastically reflecting the information based on attribute value frequency. By dynamically aggregating the related data of industrial internet of things information acquired as a seed through hierarchical subnets, the proposed model increases stability and accuracy. Furthermore, the proposed model may be used to enhance an organizations' operational efficiency (consulting and training, for example) and strategic decision-making by utilizing fundamental knowledge about items produced at industrial locations. Furthermore, the proposed model allows for information sharing and system connectivity between industrial locations, allowing for close collaboration between industrial internet of things features. As a result of the performance evaluation, the proposed model included an industrial internet of things sensor to the blockchain, eliminating the need for an extra function in the manufacturing process and reducing the time required to validate the integrity of industrial internet of things data. In addition, as a result of analyzing industrial internet of things data by an algorithm according to the number of simulated clouds, the accuracy of industrial internet of things information was improved by 2.5% to 3%, on average.
A. Sasikumar, Logesh Ravi, Ketan Kotecha, Jatinderkumar R. Saini · 6 authors
In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been industrializing in various real-world applications, including smart industry and smart grids, to make human existence more reliable. An overwhelming volume of sensing data is produced from numerous sensor devices as the Industrial IoT (IIoT) becomes more industrialized. Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a vital part in big data analyses as a powerful analytic tool that provides flexible and reliable information insights in real-time. However, there are some difficulties in designing and developing a useful big data analysis tool using machine learning, such as a centralized approach, security, privacy, resource limitations, and a lack of sufficient training data. On the other hand, Blockchain promotes a decentralized architecture for IIoT applications. It encourages the secure data exchange and resources among the various nodes of the IoT network, removing centralized control and overcoming the industry's current challenges. Our proposed approach goal is to design and implement a consensus mechanism that incorporates Blockchain and AI to allow successful big data analysis. This work presents an improved Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) algorithm-based IIoT network that combines Blockchain and AI for real-time data transmission. To accelerate IIoT block generation, nodes use an improved DPoS to reach a consensus for selecting delegates and store block information in the trading node. The proposed approach is evaluated regarding energy consumption and transaction efficiency compared with the exciting consensus mechanism. The evaluation results reveal that the proposed consensus algorithm reduces energy consumption and addresses current security issues.
Dinh C. Nguyen, Van‐Dinh Nguyen, Ming Ding, Symeon Chatzinotas · 8 authors
The convergence of mobile edge computing (MEC) and blockchain is transforming the current computing services in wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks, enabling task offloading with security enhancement based on blockchain mining. Yet the existing approaches for these enabling technologies are isolated, providing only tailored solutions for specific services and scenarios. To fill this gap, we propose a novel cooperative task offloading and blockchain mining (TOBM) scheme for a blockchain-based MEC system, where each edge device not only handles computation tasks but also conducts block mining for improving system utility. To address the latency issues caused by the blockchain operation in MEC, we develop a new Proof-of-Reputation consensus mechanism based on a lightweight block verification strategy. To accommodate the highly dynamic environment and high-dimensional system state space, we apply a novel distributed deep reinforcement learning-based approach by using a multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed TOBM scheme in terms of enhanced system reward, improved offloading utility with lower blockchain mining latency, and better system utility, compared to the existing cooperative and non-cooperative schemes. The article concludes with key technical challenges and possible directions for future blockchain-based MEC research.