Blockchain Papers

Mohammad Reza Nosouhi, Shui Yu, Wanlei Zhou, Marthie Grobler · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Shahidatul Sadiah, Toru Nakanishi

Recently, crowd sensing has been intensively researched, due to the rapid growth of sensor-integrated mobile devices. Crowd sensing is a participatory sensing service where a server gathers and analyzes sensing data submitted from mobile devices of lots of users. In crowd sensing, the user's anonymity is desired, since the server gathers sensitive data from the participants including their GPS locations and moving path. However, the anonymous data submission may compromise the trust of the sensing data, because anonymous users may submit inappropriate sensing data, but they cannot be traced. Therefore, as the system to achieve both anonymity and trust in crowd sensing, ARTSense has been proposed. In the system, the trust of the sensing data is assessed on the sensed environment, other users' sensing, and the reputation of the user, and furthermore the reputation of the user is anonymously managed on the feedback from the trust assessment for the data. However, the anonymous reputation system of ARTSense has the efficiency problem, i.e., the user needs to wait a random time after the data submission phase before requesting the reputation update, which causes the communication delay. In this paper, we propose an efficient anonymous reputation system for crowd sensing, which can be integrated to the trust assessment in ARTSense. In the proposed system, during the data submission, the reputation update is anonymously completed. This is because the server does not manage the reputation of each user, but each user manages his/her reputation in the user side, where the the validity of the reputation is ensured by a certificate and anonymously checked by zero-knowledge proofs. Therefore, the proposed system achieves the better efficiency with no delay.

Yongbin Zhao, Meng Cui, Lijuan Zheng, Rui Zhang · 7 authors

For the medical industry, there are problems such as poor sharing of medical data, tampering, and leakage of private data. In view of these problems, a blockchain-based electronic medical record access control research scheme based on the role-based access control model is proposed in this article. First, the appropriate access control strategy is adopted to solve the leakage problem of the user’s medical privacy information during the access process. Then, the information entropy technology is used to quantify the medical data, so that the medical data can be effectively and maximally utilized. Using the distributed general ledger characteristics of blockchain and its inherent security attributes, data islands can be eliminated, data sharing among medical systems can be promoted, access records can be prevented from being tampered with, and medical research and precise medical treatment can be better supported. Through this research, not only can user’s medical privacy information protection be realized during the service process but also patients can manage their own medical data autonomously, which is beneficial to privacy protection under the medical data sharing.

Anum Nawaz, Tuan Nguyen Gia, Jorge Peña Queralta, Tomi Westerlund

The edge and fog computing paradigms enable more responsive and smarter systems without relying on cloud servers for data processing and storage. This reduces network load as well as latency. Nonetheless, the addition of new layers in the network architecture increases the number of security vulnerabilities. In privacy-critical systems, the appearance of new vulnerabilities is more significant. To cope with this issue, we propose and implement an Ethereum Blockchain based architecture with edge artificial intelligence to analyze data at the edge of the network and keep track of the parties that access the results of the analysis, which are stored in distributed databases.

Zuhaib Akhtar

With the introduction of the term blockchain in 2008, it's interest has been increasing in the community since the idea was coined. The reason for this interest is because it provides anonymity, security and integrity without any central third party organisation in control of data and transaction. It has attracted huge interest in research areas due to its advances in various platforms, limitations and challenges. There are various Distributed Ledger Technologies that demonstrates their special features which overcome limitations of other platforms. However, implementations of various distributed ledger technologies differ substantially based on their data structures, consensus protocol and fault tolerant among others. Due to these variations, they have a quite different cost, performance, latency and security. In this paper, working and in-depth comparison of major distributed ledger technologies including their special features, strengths and weaknesses is presented and discussed by identifying various criteria.

Mathieu Galtier, Camille Marini

Machine learning is promising, but it often needs to process vast amounts of\nsensitive data which raises concerns about privacy. In this white-paper, we\nintroduce Substra, a distributed framework for privacy-preserving, traceable\nand collaborative Machine Learning. Substra gathers data providers and\nalgorithm designers into a network of nodes that can train models on demand but\nunder advanced permission regimes. To guarantee data privacy, Substra\nimplements distributed learning: the data never leave their nodes; only\nalgorithms, predictive models and non-sensitive metadata are exchanged on the\nnetwork. The computations are orchestrated by a Distributed Ledger Technology\nwhich guarantees traceability and authenticity of information without needing\nto trust a third party. Although originally developed for Healthcare\napplications, Substra is not data, algorithm or programming language specific.\nIt supports many types of computation plans including parallel computation plan\ncommonly used in Federated Learning. With appropriate guidelines, it can be\ndeployed for numerous Machine Learning use-cases with data or algorithm\nproviders where trust is limited.\n

Yuling Chen, Jinyi Guo, Changlou Li, Wei Ren

In the big data era, data are envisioned as critical resources with various values, e.g., business intelligence, management efficiency, and financial evaluations. Data sharing is always mandatory for value exchanges and profit promotion. Currently, certain big data markets have been created for facilitating data dissemination and coordinating data transaction, but we have to assume that such centralized management of data sharing must be trustworthy for data privacy and sharing fairness, which very likely imposes limitations such as joining admission, sharing efficiency, and extra costly commissions. To avoid these weaknesses, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based fair data exchange scheme, called FaDe. FaDe can enable de-centralized data sharing in an autonomous manner, especially guaranteeing trade fairness, sharing efficiency, data privacy, and exchanging automation. A fairness protocol based on bit commitment is proposed. An algorithm based on blockchain script architecture for a smart contract, e.g., by a bitcoin virtual machine, is also proposed and implemented. Extensive analysis justifies that the proposed scheme can guarantee data exchanging without a trusted third party fairly, efficiently, and automatically.

Bo Yin, Yulei Wu, Tianshi Hu, Jiaqing Dong · 5 authors

With the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT), mobile crowdsensing (MCS), i.e., outsourcing sensing tasks to mobile devices or vehicles, has been proposed to address the problem of data collection in the scenarios such as smart city. Despite its benefits for a wide range of applications, MCS lacks an efficient incentive mechanism, restricting the development of IoT applications, especially for Internet of Vehicles (IoV)-a typical example of IoT applications; this is because vehicles are usually reluctant to participate these sensing tasks. Moreover, in practice, some sensing tasks may arrive suddenly (called an emergent task) in the IoV environment, but the resources of a single vehicle may be insufficient to handle, and thus multivehicles collaboration is required. In this case, the incentive mechanisms for the participation of multiple vehicles and the task scheduling for their collaborations are collectively needed. To address this important problem, we first propose a new model for the scenario of two vehicles collaboration, considering the situation of the emergent appearance of a task. In this model, for a general sensing task, we propose a bidding mechanism to better encourage vehicles to contribute their resources, and the tasks for those vehicles are scheduled accordingly. Second, for an emergent task, a novel time-window-based method is devised to manage the tasks among vehicles and to incent the vehicles to participate. Finally, we develop a blockchain framework to achieve the secured information exchange through smart contract for the proposed models in IoV.

Konstantinos Rantos, George Drosatos, Antonios Kritsas, Christos Ilioudis · 6 authors

In the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, the volume of data generated by devices in the user’s environment is continually increasing and becoming of particular value. In such an environment the average user is bound to face considerable difficulties in understanding the size and scope of his/her collected data. However, the provisions of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require data subjects to be able to control their personal data, be informed, and consent to its processing in an intelligible manner. This paper proposes ADVOCATE platform, a user-centric solution that allows data subjects to easily manage consents regarding access to their personal data in the IoT ecosystem. The proposed platform also assists data controllers to meet GDPR requirements, such as informing data subjects in a transparent and unambiguous manner about the data they will manage, the processing purposes, and periods. The integrity of personal data processing consents and the immutable versioning control of them are protected by a blockchain infrastructure. Finally, the paper provides a prototype implementation of the proposed platform that supports the main consents management functionality.

Iago Sestrem Ochôa, Luís Augusto Silva, Gabriel de Mello, Bruno Alves da Silva · 8 authors

With the popularization of the Internet-of-Things, various applications have emerged to make life easier. These applications generate a large amount of user data. Analyzing the data obtained from these applications, one can infer personal information about each user. Considering this, it is clear that ensuring privacy in this type of application is essential. To guarantee privacy various solutions exist, one of them is UbiPri middleware. This paper presents a decentralized implementation of UbiPri middleware using the Ethereum blockchain. Smart contracts were used in conjunction with a communication gateway and a distributed storage service to ensure users privacy. The results obtained show that the implementation of this work ensures privacy at different levels, data storage security, and performance regarding scalability in the Internet of Things environments.

Jonathan Passerat‐Palmbach, Tyler Farnan, Robert Miller, Marielle S. Gross · 6 authors

We propose a novel architecture for federated learning within healthcare consortia. At the heart of the solution is a unique integration of privacy preserving technologies, built upon native enterprise blockchain components available in the Ethereum ecosystem. We show how the specific characteristics and challenges of healthcare consortia informed our design choices, notably the conception of a new Secure Aggregation protocol assembled with a protected hardware component and an encryption toolkit native to Ethereum. Our architecture also brings in a privacy preserving audit trail that logs events in the network without revealing identities.

Muneeb Ul Hassan, Mubashir Husain Rehmani, Jinjun Chen

Blockchain has received a widespread attention because of its decentralized, tamper-proof, and transparent nature. Blockchain works over the principle of distributed, secured, and shared ledger, which is used to record, and track data within a decentralized network. This technology has successfully replaced certain systems of economic transactions in organizations and has the potential to overtake various industrial business models in future. Blockchain works over peer-to-peer (P2P) phenomenon for its operation and does not require any trusted-third party authorization for data tracking and storage. The information stored in blockchain is distributed throughout the decentralized network and is usually protected using cryptographic hash functions. Since the beginning of blockchain technology, its use in different applications is increasing exponentially, but this increased use has also raised some questions regarding privacy and security of data being stored in it. Protecting privacy of blockchain data using data perturbation strategy such as differential privacy could be a novel approach to overcome privacy issues in blockchain. In this article, we cover the topic of integration of differential privacy in each layer of blockchain and in certain blockchain based scenarios. Moreover, we highlight some future challenges and application scenarios in which integration of differential privacy in blockchain can produce fruitful results.

Hao Wang, Shenglan Ma, Hong‐Ning Dai, Muhammad Imran · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Le Jiang, Xinglin Zhang

Online social networks (OSNs) are becoming more and more prevalent in people's life, but they face the problem of privacy leakage due to the centralized data management mechanism. The emergence of distributed OSNs (DOSNs) can solve this privacy issue, yet they bring inefficiencies in providing the main functionalities, such as access control and data availability. In this article, in view of the above-mentioned challenges encountered in OSNs and DOSNs, we exploit the emerging blockchain technique to design a new DOSN framework that integrates the advantages of both traditional centralized OSNs and DOSNs. By combining smart contracts, we use the blockchain as a trusted server to provide central control services. Meanwhile, we separate the storage services so that users have complete control over their data. In the experiment, we use real-world data sets to verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Yi-Chang Wu, Yuansong Qiao, Yuhang Ye, Brian Lee

Threat intelligence sharing is posited as an important aid to help counter cybersecurity attacks and a number of threat intelligence sharing communities exist. There is a general consensus that many challenges remain to be overcome to achieve fully effective sharing, including concerns about privacy, negative publicity, policy/legal issues and expense of sharing, amongst others. One recent trend undertaken to address this is the use of decentralized blockchain based sharing architectures. However while these platforms can help increase sharing effectiveness they do not fully address all of the above challenges. In particular, issues around trust are not satisfactorily solved by current approaches. In this paper, we describe a novel trust enhancement framework -TITAN- for decentralized sharing based on the use of P2P reputation systems to address open trust issues. Our design uses blockchain and Trusted Execution Environment technologies to ensure security, integrity and privacy in the operation of the threat intelligence sharing reputation system.

Fariza Sabrina

Smart city is one of the major Internet of Things (IoT) applications and has become an emerging paradigm with the recent advancements of IoT devices and sensors. But the heterogenous nature of a smart city IoT environment makes it vulnerable to many privacy and security concerns and introduces significant challenges for access control of IoT resources especially where access needs to be provided to third parties and external organizations. This paper proposes a new structural relationships-based access control (SRBAC) model that can be used to delegate resource access rights to users in a large scale IoT scenario like smart city while keeping the resource owner in full control. The proposed architecture uses smart contracts and public blockchain for managing access control for external users and a local off-block chain storage for managing access control for organization’s internal users and enforcing fine-grained access control for the resources.

Ashwini Nehe, Ajay Bhagwat, Vaishnavi Lamkhade*, Samiksha Kshirsagar · 6 authors

In any registration process, it is a hassle to always bring physical documents. Not only that, the process is elongated if they are lost, and will contribute to identity theft if unauthorized persons have access to those documents. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to generate a decentralized system, similar to the concept of blockchain, to allow registered persons to access user’s personal records. To further elaborate, this system is designed to be used by three consumers, which are: user, authority, and third-party (requester). Nowadays, majority of systems are susceptible to massive data breaches. However, some researches have theorized that blockchain technology may solve this problem, such as one that uses a real-world example, Aadhaar. In conclusion, this project enhances that the area of blockchain identity is vital in helping society gain control of their personal details. Since most of researches are focused on storage system of businesses using blockchain, personal identities of the people should be digitized on the blockchain as well. An identity verification system that is entirely owned by the individual will increase trust that the data is genuine and reliable.

Qin Wang, Qin Wang, Haitao Zhao, Qianqian Wang · 8 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Maria Kaczorowska

In recent decades land registration systems operating in Europe and worldwide have been subject to modernisation processes consisting in implementation of information and communication technologies. Such reforms have gradually led to facilitating access to land information, improving effectiveness of land registration proceedings and even introducing possibilities to dispose of the ownership of land electronically by developing electronic conveyancing mechanisms. Another innovative concept much discussed nowadays is the application of blockchain technology in the land registration sector. This solution is currently being tested in a number of countries.Distributed ledger technology underlying blockchain is expected to revolutionise land registration by offering a secure architecture to store land transactions with the use of cryptographic protocol. This shall bring advantages of increased trust and processing efficiency as well as reduction of costs. However, the above idea raises concerns given that, under the assumptions of the “original” blockchain model, transactions are irreversible and are carried out without intermediaries, which means the lack of any external control and independent verification of the transactions to be recorded.The article examines potential benefits and risks of automatisation of land transactions as well as practical experiences of selected countries in implementing blockchain in the area of land registration. On this basis, an assessment will be made as to whether blockchain-based registration could indeed replace the existing methodology of registering rights to land.

Trong Thua Huynh, Dang Khoa Pham

The fake certificate is a special global problem in today's digital age. Thousands of universities and educational institutions around the world do not exist but can release hundreds of millions of fake degrees. Verifying the integrity of qualifications is a real challenge for today's employers. Applying the anti-data modifying properties of blockchain technology, this study proposes a solution issuing and verifying digital certificates called EUniCert to solve this problem. By changing the design and integrating new consensus algorithm used in Ethereum platform into the Unicoin network that was used to verify and store the information related to the issued digital certificate, the EUniCert improves the latency to validate transactions as well as the number of verified blocks in the blockchain network compared to the previous solution that we have proposed. We implement a simple blockchain system to illustrate the management operation of the digital certificates on the ethereum platform. Besides, we conduct a simulation to evaluate the performance of our proposal compared with the previous system. The result is that the average latency decreases by 3.27 times as well as the number of verified blocks increases by 11% compared with the previous system.

Sylvie Delacroix, Neil D. Lawrence

From the friends we make to the foods we like, via our shopping and sleeping habits, most aspects of our quotidian lives can now be turned into machine-readable data points. For those able to turn these data points into models predicting what we will do next, this data can be a source of wealth. For those keen to replace biased, fickle human decisions, this data—sometimes misleadingly—offers the promise of automated, increased accuracy. For those intent on modifying our behaviour, this data can help build a puppeteer’s strings. As we move from one way of framing data governance challenges to another, salient answers change accordingly. Just like the wealth redistribution way of framing those challenges tends to be met with a property-based, ‘it’s our data’ answer, when one frames the problem in terms of manipulation potential, dignity-based, human rights answers rightly prevail (via fairness and transparency-based answers to contestability concerns). Positive data-sharing aspirations tend to be raised within altogether different conversations from those aimed at addressing the above concerns. Our data Trusts proposal challenges these boundaries. The current lack of legal mechanisms that may plausibly empower us, data subjects to ‘take the reins’ of our personal data leaves us vulnerable. Recent regulatory endeavours to curb contractual freedom acknowledge this vulnerability but cannot, by themselves, remedy it—nor can data ownership. The latter is both unlikely and inadequate as an answer to the problems at stake. We argue that the power that stems from aggregated data should be returned to individuals through the legal mechanism of Trusts. Bound by a fiduciary obligation of undivided loyalty, the data trustees would exercise the data rights conferred by the GDPR (or other top-down regulation) on behalf of the Trust’s beneficiaries. The data trustees would hence be placed in a position where they can negotiate data use in conformity with the Trust’s terms, thus introducing an independent intermediary between data subjects and data collectors. Unlike the current ‘one size fits all’ approach to data governance, there should be a plurality of Trusts, allowing data subjects to choose a Trust that reflects their aspirations, and to switch Trusts when needed. Data Trusts may arise out of publicly or privately funded initiatives. By potentially facilitating access to ‘pre-authorized’, aggregated data (consent would be negotiated on a collective basis), our data Trust proposal may remove key obstacles to the realization of the potential underlying large datasets. This article proceeds from an analysis of the very particular type of vulnerability concomitant with our ‘leaking’ data on a daily basis, to show that data ownership is both unlikely and inadequate as an answer to the problems at stake. 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José Padarian, Alex B. McBratney

Abstract. Data sharing and collaboration are critical to solving large scale problems. The prevailing soil data-sharing model is based on different groups sending their data to a lead party. This model is of a centralised nature and, consequently, results in the participants ceding their control and governance over their data to the lead party. Here we explore the use of a distributed ledger (blockchain) to solve the aforementioned issues. We explain what a blockchain is and some of its characteristics to then describe some features of a blockchain that makes it an interesting candidate for an inter-institutional database. Finally, we describe the potential use case of developing a global soil spectral library with multiple, independent international institutions constituting the network.

Bin Cao, Mengyang Li, Lei Zhang, Yixin Li · 5 authors

The impact of communication transmission delay on the original blockchain, has not been well considered and studied since it is primarily designed in stable wired communication environment with high communication capacity. However, in a wireless scenario, due to the scarcity of spectrum resource, a blockchain user may have to compete for wireless channel to broadcast transactions following media access control (MAC) mechanism. As a result, the communication transmission delay may be significant and pose a bottleneck on the blockchain system performance and security. To facilitate blockchain applications in wireless industrial Internet of Things (IIoTs), this article aims to investigate whether the widely used MAC mechanism, carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), is suitable for wireless blockchain networks or not. Based on tangle, as an example to analyze the system performance in term of confirmation delay, transaction per second and transaction loss probability by considering the impact of queueing and transmission delay caused by CSMA/CA. Next, a stochastic model is proposed to analyze the security issue taking into account the malicious double-spending attack. Simulation results provide valuable insights when running blockchain in wireless network, the performance would be limited by the traditional CSMA/CA protocol. Meanwhile, we demonstrate that the probability of launching a successful double-spending attack would be affected by CSMA/CA as well.

Paritosh Ramanan, Kiyoshi Nakayama

A key aspect of Federated Learning (FL) is the requirement of a centralized aggregator to maintain and update the global model. However, in many cases orchestrating a centralized aggregator might be infeasible due to numerous operational constraints. In this paper, we introduce BAFFLE, an aggregator free, blockchain driven, FL environment that is inherently decentralized. BAFFLE leverages Smart Contracts (SC) to coordinate the round delineation, model aggregation and update tasks in FL. BAFFLE boosts computational performance by decomposing the global parameter space into distinct chunks followed by a score and bid strategy. In order to characterize the performance of BAFFLE, we conduct experiments on a private Ethereum network and use the centralized and aggregator driven methods as our benchmark. We show that BAFFLE significantly reduces the gas costs for FL on the blockchain as compared to a direct adaptation of the aggregator based method. Our results also show that BAFFLE achieves high scalability and computational efficiency while delivering similar accuracy as the benchmark methods.