Domain Name Service (DNS) has become an essential element of the Internet in current era. The traditional DNS extends its authority down to the Top Level Domains (TLDs) and individual names before returning to the Root Server. To avoid the cons related to centralized authority scheme of the traditional DNS, recently many techniques based on the decentralized Internet with support of Blockchain (BC) are emerging. Hence, currently a variety of protocols and mechanisms are focusing on implementation of the Decentralized Naming Services which in turn supports concept of decentralized internet services. These Decentralized Naming Services are totally based on Blockchain architectures and provides various pros like resistance to single point of failure, resistance to censorship and permanent proof of ownership. Blockchain Domain Names act as Digital Identity in Decentralized Internet. Security is major concern in any DNS system and the similar challenges exists in the Blockchain DNS system too. Further, there is a lot of diversity being observed in decentralized internet space as a Domain name in a Blockchain DNS can refer to a website/portal or a wallet or a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) or simply be parked. Also, currently, there is rampant growth in development of decentralized applications with no standards implemented - neither across Blockchains nor regions. Hence, there is a need to detect security exploits carried out using malicious domains in Blockchain DNS system and implement mitigation measures accordingly. In this research work, we study and analyze malicious domain names in decentralized BC system. We explored Ethereum transaction dataset for detecting malicious transactions using Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) algorithms with good accuracy of 99% and 95% using Decision Tree and 1 Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) respectively. We also applied ML techniques on Ethereum wallet dark list dataset for detection of domain names that were vii used for phishing attacks. We received 96% accuracy after handling data imbalance by Random Forest model. Model predicted nature of domain based on 17 features that were extracted from Ethereum wallet dark list dataset like number of consonants, vowels, digits, symbols and their ratios to length of domain.
To enhance security and confidentiality in P2P communication, we implement a blockchain-enabled system of identity management and mutual authentication protocol, Be-Mutual. It provides user-centric identity management based on blockchain addresses and employs mutual authentication based on asymmetric encryption to prevent unauthorized access. We address the complexity of blockchain addresses, a significant chal-lenge in real-world applications such as Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) and Decentralized Wireless (DeWi), by integrating the Blockchain-enabled Domain Name System (Be-DNS) into BeMutual. BeDNS maps complex blockchain addresses to easy-to-remember domain names, improving user experience without sacrificing security. The proposed BeMutual system, combining blockchain-based identity management, mutual authentication, and domain name resolution, offers a pioneering solution for secure and user-friendly P2P communication in decentralized environments.
Transactive Energy Markets (TEM) have the potential to reduce wasted energy, increase the utilisation of renewable energy resources and enable independence in the energy sector. Blockchain has been utilised in TEMs in the literature aiming to acquire transparency, security and trustless operations. Though public blockhain enables leveraged transparency and fairness, the majority of proposals suggest adoption of private or consortium blockchains mainly due to performance concerns. In this paper, we created a TEM environment where consumers, prosumers and suppliers bid for price agreement upon a game theory model and then deployed it on localised Ethereum blockchain infrastructure. To compare the performance, we created a centralized TEM environment keeping all the settings the same. The obtained results show that public blockchains may be adaptable to TEMs to enhance system transparency and fairness as well as automated and trustless transactions. Conducted test results show that our proposal exhibit a similar scalability trend as the referenced centralized system.
The growing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) has triggered several researches in the industry and academic world. The objective is finding a good trade-off between security, privacy and reliability, without loosing scalability potential. To this end, blockchain technology, previously only applied in the context of cryptocurrencies, has been integrated with IoT applications (BIoT) to fulfill all these needs, bringing a decentralized approach and promoting new business logic ideas to the field. Despite the promising benefits of this integration, BIoT has faced scalability concerns, due to the complex task of handling massive data transactions that can be generated in monitoring IoT applications. In order to contribute with an alternative solution to this problem, this paper proposes a completely decentralized architecture designed for Smart Agriculture. It explores the InterPlanetary Name System (IPNS), as a name system that can be updated over time; the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), as a Distributed File System (DFS) to store the IoT data; and a multichain network, built with public and private blockchains, delivering a full Web3 approach that can be applied in IoT data marketplace. Results obtained from evaluating a simulated Smart Vineyard scenario demonstrated that IoChain is capable of effectively managing massive data transmissions and dealing with the appearances of new IoT devices, without increasing transaction fees or transaction processing time.
Nischal Aryal, Fariba Ghaffari, E. Bertin, Noël Crespi
The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) introduces openness and intelligence into the existing, tightly-coupled RAN ecosystem. Openness promotes collaboration among various vendors to provide diverse components (hardware, software, or both) for the RAN ecosystem, while intelligence handles complex network activities using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although O-RAN design addresses many issues in traditional RANs, such as vendor lock-in, lack of flexibility, and limited innovation, it raises several management and security concerns related to collaboration, access management, privacy, trust, and availability. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) offer a viable method of establishing trust among entities, managing resources efficiently, and automating complex network tasks. Several DLT properties, such as distributed architecture, high automation through smart contracts, immutability, and transparency, could position DLT-based ideas as game changers in a multi-vendor O-RAN ecosystem. Furthermore, this technology has the potential to introduce new business models and establish secure and trusted micro-payments among vendors and network participants. In this paper, we first present a taxonomy for discussing existing O-RAN challenges. Based on the taxonomy, we then examine the possibility of incorporating DLT-based solutions in O-RAN architecture to address these challenges.
Dae-Geun Yoon, SungJin Mun, Kisung Park, Sungkee Noh
With the onset of the AI era, the demand for personal data is on the rise. Numerous companies are gathering user data to enhance their services. As the utilization of this personal data surges, its intrinsic value also escalates. Despite individuals being the source of this valuable personal data, it's the centralized service providers that reap the profits. This research introduces a blockchain-based trading framework for personal data utilizing Decentralized Identifiers (DID) Non-Fungible Token (NFT). The proposed system empowers users to amass personal data within their designated storage space provided by the system. DID and NFT serve the roles of verifying user identity and establishing data ownership, respectively, all without relying on centralized systems. To guarantee data integrity and transaction history, Ethereum is employed, which constitutes a decentralized blockchain nodes. The operational demonstration of our system is showcased through a monitoring setup that offers real-time insights into user data and trading activities. The research validates that our proposed system enables seamless personal data transactions between two parties - a seller and a buyer - eliminating the need for centralized service providers.
The peer-to-peer (P2P) based distributed file system known as IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) has recently garnered significant attention as a decentralized storage solution in the Web3 landscape. However, IPFS operates on a voluntary participation basis, which can limit data availability. To enhance automated data availability on IPFS, an extended solution known as IPFS Cluster is being developed. This solution leverages a data replication approach. This paper proposes a Reed-Solomon based distributed content storage mechanism for IPFS, enhancing data availability and significantly improving storage efficiency compared to traditional replication methods. This technology is anticipated to serve as a fundamental building block for efficiently storing, managing, and utilizing large-scale, high-capacity digital content in various Web3 environments.
Early open blockchain designs face low throughput, high latency, and prohibitive costs for setting up a full node. New designs improve this with innovative mechanisms for handling transactions and the blockchain state, often assuming locality properties in the workload of transactions. Temporal locality allows efficient space management such as light nodes or snapshot-based bootstrap. Disjoint access parallelism, which depends on spatial locality, enables parallel processing of non-conflicting transactions. We analyze locality properties and their interplay in the largest transactional workload available to date, that of Ethereum. Our results show that, although transactions generally display good locality, a minority of accounts are responsible for caching- or parallelism-unfriendliness, calling for specific identification and handling in future blockchain designs.
Blockchain and related Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are anticipated to transform a the world of web from a centralised document-sharing platform to a comprehensive decentralised platform that facilitates the exchange of digital currency and supports autonomous management of digital assets. The central server is susceptible to attacks, distrust and collusion. If the web can assure reliable, safe, and responsible updates among independent participants without the need for a centralized server, the perception of a decentralised web can be re-instantiated. One of the essential technologies required to restore the openness of the internet while maintaining its security is distributed ledger technology (DLT). DLTs may now totally handle business and legal transactions online, creating a more trustworthy and accountable environment. Blockchain technology marks a major breakthrough by removing the need for a centralised trusted authority in a widely distributed network. Instead, a consensus must be reached among several sources of trust, based on an algorithm, that this transaction may be believed to be legitimate. The consensus algorithms in blockchain technology offer an immutable and permanent record of a transaction that is immutable, trustworthy and secured. Consensus algorithms are however energy consuming because of their computation heavy nature. This has been a biggest inhibition towards blockchain adoption. The energy needs for committing a blockchain transaction is also governed by whether it is a public/permissioned blockchain, its consensus algorithm, onchain-offchain data and the code complexity of smart contracts. The paper presents a state-of art evaluation of the current blockchain platforms and cryptos and evaluate them with the energy consumptions. Additionally, it also proposes a framework architecture of a green blockchain application. A green blockchain refers to the implementation of environmentally sustainable algorithms, tools and platforms in blockchain technology, aiming to reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions, and promote eco-friendly operations with energy-efficient algorithms and strategies.
Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) is a high throughput, low power consumption consensus mechanism is which elected participants or witnesses vote to accept blocks to be included in the blockchain ledger. However, DPoS is prone to centralization of voting power which can introduce bias and degrade the usability of the blockchain. In this work, we propose the concept of virtual stake which measures the truthfulness of witness voting throughout the round. Virtual stake at the end of a round is used as incentive for the next election of witnesses, but electors have a discretionary right to cast a portion of their votes for candidate witnesses regardless of their past behavior. Virtual stake is also used to guide the process of selecting the leader(s) to propose blocks for voting in PBFT cycles within the round, which prevents mis.behaving witnesses from submitting blocks. We describe and solve the analytical model of witness behavior, assuming that witnesses can be categorized into behavioral classes with different probability of truthful voting, false voting, and abstention. Our results show the impact of class populations, and voting behavior on virtual stakes, distribution of votes, and, most importantly, on overall consensus probability. The impact of centralization and witness misbehavior in voting can be countered by an increase of voting groups and decrease of round size, although further control of voting process during a round may be necessary to maintain the desired performance level of the blockchain system.
Yuanfang Chi, Haihan Duan, Wei Cai, Z. Jane Wang · 5 authors
Parallel Web3 metaverses play a vital role in preventing monopolistic markets and fostering fair and profound user experiences. Meanwhile, ensuring interconnections and interoperability among these metaverses is crucial, allowing users to seamlessly transition between different Web3 environments while maintaining their digital identities and assets. In this tutorial paper, we provide an overview of the significance and current landscape of interoperability in parallel metaverses. Furthermore, we identify key challenges in achieving interoperability in parallel Web3 metaverses within the blockchain industry, including the technical complexities and practical business considerations. Then, we suggest that decentralized knowledge inference can be used as a potential solution for facilitating knowledge sharing among parallel metaverses. Finally, we outline the technical and economic approaches of decentralized knowledge inference to inspire future research in this field.
Different from “read” based Web1 and “read-write” based Web2, “read-write-own” based Web3 is proposed as a typical user-centric Internet to open the new generation of the World Wide Web. Web3 is the internet religious fundamentalism for data rights owned by users based on identity, data, network, and service, which requires the support of full-process data protection provided by a zero-trust and zero-touch environment. However, as to the traditional layered architecture like TCP/IP, data protection is an overlaid function, which is far away from the full-process data protection requirements. To this end, in order to build a zero-trust and zero-touch environment, a Web3 architecture is presented in this article as a promising paradigm. Meanwhile, the key principles for Web3 architecture designing are discussed, covering interoperability and interpretability of data, trustworthiness throughout network lifecycle, incentive for collaboration and sharing, and human-centric experience. Moreover, in order to achieve these principles, four aspects of enabling technologies are presented, including semantic, incentive, decentralized, and spatial technologies. Finally, some main challenges and open issues are also identified as a future direction for further work.
The blockchain technology continues to evolve, and new use cases and applications are emerging. A key component of the blockchain ecosystem is the blockchain wallet. This paper presents the key components in the concept behind blockchain wallets, analyzes and systematizes their classification, and proposes an extended working definition. The proposed classification can be viewed as a classical multi-criteria problem for framework design selection of various custom wallet solutions. As a practical solution, the implementation of a desktop version of a non-custodial, software hot wallet, which supports tokens/NFT (ERC-20, ERC-721) with biometric authentication. The wallet is designed for the Antelope/IPFS based platform for data exchange in smart crop production. The technology framework requirements are presented, along with two groups of functionalities - account management and working with tokens, and three main applications for token transfer and user file exchange authentication. The wallet is an extension of the infrastructure and functionalities of the platform prototype. The obtained results provide opportunities for future development in direction of deployment a web-based application and wallet, enabling the client-side of the platform to be implemented as a dApp.
Dinesh Kumar K, N. Duraimutharasan, H J Shanthi, G. Vennila · 6 authors
Blockchain technology garners significant attention and recognition due to several key advantages it offers. Trust, reliability, speed, and transparency are among the prominent benefits that contribute to its growing prominence. The decentralized nature of blockchain allows for a high level of trust as transactions are recorded and verified by multiple participants across the network. This, in turn, enhances reliability as there is no single point of failure. Speed is also a notable advantage, particularly when compared to traditional systems that involve intermediaries and complex processes for verification. Blockchain enables faster and more efficient transaction processing, reducing delays and costs. This research paper aims to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of two prominent distributed ledger technologies, namely blockchain and hashgraph. Both blockchain and hashgraph offer decentralized and secure systems for recording and validating transactions or information. It explores the underlying mechanisms, consensus algorithms, advantages, and limitations of these technologies. It also examines their potential applications and discusses the implications of their respective design choices. By understanding the nuances of blockchain and hashgraph, seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on distributed ledger technologies and aids in decision-making for their appropriate adoption in various domains and applications.
Tooba Faisal, Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, Nishanth Sastry, Simone Mangiante
For the viability of future “mission-critical” applications such as remote surgery and connected cars, the customers must trust the network connection and operators must adhere to the Service Level Agreement (SLA). The key to enabling trust between the customer and the operator is the transparency and accountability of the SLA. That is, the operators ensure the transparent and appropriate execution of SLA clauses (e.g., Quality of Service (QoS) and compensations if the SLA is violated). In this work, we argue that today’s network is highly volatile. Therefore, it is convenient for the operators to provide service guarantees for short-term rather than traditional long-term methods. Consequently, we advocate short-term and dynamic service contracts considering spatial and temporal characteristics rather than typical long-term contracts. We propose a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-focused end-to-end transparent, accountable and automated resource provisioning system architecture in which are installed as smart contracts. In our architecture, resources can be requested and allocated dynamically and automatically with Quality-of-Service (QoS) monitoring. Our architecture is scalable through a side-channel based QoS monitoring protocol that guarantees data integrity and minimises the Permissioned Distributed Ledgers (PDL) updates. To measure the viability of our proposal, we first evaluate resource provisioning in the context of network slicing. Then we assess the DLT performance for smart contract execution, in both permissioned and permission-less settings. In the end, we evaluate the monitoring tools and compare and contrast sketches and bloomfilters, and justify our choice of bloomfilters.
Abstract As a distributed ledger technology, blockchain's low throughput is challenging to support large‐scale applications. Sharding is one way to solve this problem, but the security of existing sharded blockchains is not enough. In addition, with the increase of time, the node storage pressure in the shard will also increase. Therefore, SLChain was proposed as a secure and low storage pressure sharding blockchain. SLChain works together between shards for block validation to avoid inconsistencies caused by a single shard being controlled by adversaries. As well as by relying on a reputation‐established confirmation committee that allows blocks to be confirmed quickly and without forking. In addition, a secure ledger pruning mechanism is designed to make the space required for nodes grow very slowly over time, reducing the storage pressure on nodes. The results show that SLChain can improve security and throughput, and the node storage pressure is small.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading in a blockchain environment has established the foundation of trust among microgrids. However, the default behaviors caused by uncertainties associated with renewable energy and microgrids profit-seeking still trigger a crisis of trust. Therefore, this study proposes a two-stage credit management strategy (TSCMS) for P2P electricity trading among microgrids to reduce the default behaviors, which contains credit-based risk control optimization stage and credit-based P2P electricity trading stage. In the first stage, a robust control optimization of credit-based risk preference is proposed to realize flexible management of renewable energy uncertainty through adaptive robustness factor, thus well balancing the reliability and economy of trading. In the second stage, a queuing priority is provided using equivalent price conversion to realize credit-based rewards and punishments. Experimental results show that the proposed TSCMS can enhance the trust of microgrids and create a reliable trading environment.
Logging is a critical function to enable auditing and enhance security of distributed applications. This paper describes the design of Mnemosyne, a distributed logger running over Named Data Networking(NDN), to meet this need for NDN-based distributed applications. Mnemosyne assures the immutability of logged events by interlocking all event records in a DAG-based ledger. Mnemosyne provides a high logging throughput and system resiliency against network component failures. We implemented Mnemosyne and evaluated its design through an emulated deployment setting.
The emergence of distributed energy and prosumers has greatly promoted the reform of the energy market. Blockchain technology provides a very potent solution for distributed energy transactions, however, blockchain technology still develops slowly in the energy field due to the unstable performance of the imperfect system. This paper aims to narrow this gap by the following steps. First, a function-driven integration method is proposed to combine the merit of blockchain distributed ledger and traditional centralized databases. Then a hybrid energy blockchain system architecture is designed, including the blockchain layer, smart contract layer, database layer, and client layer. Further, a peer-to-peer market mechanism considering energy storage arbitrage and fully automated matchmaking is developed on the hybrid blockchain system. The case study proves the effectiveness and safety of the system. The proposed architecture of combined blockchain and database technologies effectively paves the way for constructing a more reasonable and feasible distributed energy trading platform.
Leonhard Balduf, Maciej Korczyński, Onur Ascigil, Navin V. Keizer · 7 authors
Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) is one of the largest peer-to-peer filesystems in operation. The network is the default storage layer for Web3 and is being presented as a solution to the centralization of the web. In this paper, we present a large-scale, multi-modal measurement study of the IPFS network. We analyze the topology, the traffic, the content providers and the entry points from the classical Internet. Our measurements show significant centralization in the IPFS network and a high share of nodes hosted in the cloud. We also shed light on the main stakeholders in the ecosystem. We discuss key challenges that might disrupt continuing efforts to decentralize the Web and highlight multiple properties that are creating pressures toward centralization.
In spite of multiple advantages of the adoption of blockchain (BC), it still faces some integration challenges in modern applications, such as the Internet of Things. These challenges include low throughput rates in permissionless settings. To solve this challenge, several state-of-the-art works proposed sharding (i.e., partitioning) the BC infrastructure. Sharding the network into smaller shards improves the total system throughput, regardless of the node-shard assignment criteria. Most previous work applied a Random Sharding (RS) approach, i.e., randomly allocating nodes into predefined shards, to satisfy the required unpredictability property of node-shard allocation. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain Optimized and Secure Sharding (BOSS) protocol that aims to optimize the node-shard allocation resulting in increased throughput using a variant of the evolutionary Genetic Algorithm. The RS-equivalent levels of security and unpredictability are guaranteed by deploying a distributed random tuning mechanism for the intra-shard weight. We designed BOSS as an extension of the well-defined RS-based RapidChain protocol. We show that the proposed methods can be adapted to other sharding protocols that originally used RS techniques. We implemented and tested our protocol with more than 362,880 cases that covered seven configurable system and optimization parameters. Our evaluation revealed ≈17% average enhancement in scalability, along with a negligible <0.5% mean absolute difference in security levels. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that optimizes inter- and intra-shard scalability, with publicly verifiable solutions in permissionless BCs, while maintaining RS-equivalent security and unpredictability.