M.Santhosh Kumar, G C Akshatha, Manthan D Bangre, M Dhanush · 5 authors
Blockchain technology is used to decentralize ledger to keep transaction records. The record of transactions is persistent in a peer-to-peer network. This eliminates central authority needed to confirm the transactions. The participants verify the transactions in peer-to-peer networks. The need for any central authority for any kind of trade settlement, voting, or money transactions is nullified. Blockchain technology has been revolutionizing Information Technology (IT) for the past few years. It is being used in supply chain, health sector, Internet of Things, asset management, banking sector, payments and many more. Blockchain allows decentralization, transparency, security and increased efficiency in the applications. With the increasing awareness of cryptocurrency, the significance of blockchain is obtaining its popularity across the globe.Cars being the most popular mode of transport used by the majority of the population across the globe. Because of the increasing prices of new cars, the popularity of used cars (second hand cars) has increased exponentially over all these years. Identifying this opportunity in the used cars segment, we propose an application that uses blockchain to connect buyers and sellers. By implementing decentralization, we aim to solve security related issues in existing centralized applications. We have implemented an e-auction methodology on top of Ethereum Blockchain. The proposed application allows bidders to directly bid the products over the Internet. The blockchain technology with low transaction cost is used to develop the smart contract of public bid and sealed bid.
Ryan Shivers, Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, Md Jobair Hossain Faruk, Hossain Shahriar · 6 authors
Ride-hailing and ride-sharing applications have recently gained popularity as a convenient alternative to traditional modes of travel. Current research into autonomous vehicles is accelerating rapidly and will soon become a critical component of a ride-hailing platforms architecture. Implementing an autonomous vehicle ride-hailing platform proves a difficult challenge due to the centralized nature of traditional ride-hailing architectures. In a traditional ride-hailing environment the drivers operate their own personal vehicles so it follows that a fleet of autonomous vehicles would be required for a centralized ride-hailing platform to succeed. Decentralization of the ride-hailing platform would remove a roadblock along the way to an autonomous vehicle ride-hailing platform by allowing owners of autonomous vehicles to add their vehicles to a community-driven fleet when not in use. Blockchain technology is an attractive choice for this decentralized architecture due to its immutability and fault tolerance. This thesis proposes a framework for developing a decentralized ride-hailing architecture that is verifiably secure. This framework is implemented on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. The evaluation of the implementation is done by applying known security models, utilizing a static analysis tool, and performing a performance analysis under heavy network load.
Eighteen percent of the world’s population do not have access to electricity, impeding economic, social, and human development. The electricity access challenge can be attributed to the significant investment gap needed to finance new power projects, requiring new and innovative financing options. Independent Power Projects, funded, built, owned, and operated by the private sector and constituted via a special purpose vehicle—a legal entity whose sole purpose is implementing a power project—have become one of the fastest-growing sources of investment in the electricity sector. The limitations of traditional finance sources, including high credit, liquidity, margining, third-party, legal, and process risks, means that funds for these projects are expensive and raised only after a long and arduous process. The present article addresses these challenges by describing a novel decentralized autonomous organization, a blockchain-agnostic special purpose vehicle underpinned by a trio of autonomous mechanisms—mobilization, collateralization, andsettlement. These mechanisms enable seamless finance mobilization for the special purpose vehicle from a location-independent crowd, revenue collection from the electricity buyer in a risk-mitigated manner, and disbursal of eventual project revenues to investors.
Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are introduced to improve individuals’ quality of life by offering a wide range of services. They collect a huge amount of data and exchange them with each other and the infrastructure. The collected data usually includes sensitive information about the users and the surrounding environment. Therefore, data security and privacy are among the main challenges in this industry. Blockchain, an emerging distributed ledger, has been considered by the research community as a potential solution for enhancing data security, integrity, and transparency in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). However, despite the emphasis of governments on the transparency of personal data protection practices, CAV stakeholders have not been successful in communicating appropriate information with the end users regarding the procedure of collecting, storing, and processing their personal data, as well as the data ownership. This article provides a vision of the opportunities and challenges of adopting blockchain in ITS from the “data transparency” and “privacy” perspective. The main aim is to answer the following questions: (1) Considering the amount of personal data collected by the CAVs, such as location, how would the integration of blockchain technology affect transparency , fairness , and lawfulness of personal data processing concerning the data subjects (as this is one of the main principles in the existing data protection regulations)? (2) How can the trade-off between transparency and privacy be addressed in blockchain-based ITS use cases?
Abstract Alongside the rise of ‘last-mile’ delivery in contemporary urban logistics, drones have demonstrate commercial potential, given their outstanding triple-bottom-line performance. However, as a lithium-ion battery-powered device, drones’ social and environmental merits can be overturned by battery recycling and disposal. To maintain economic performance, yet minimise environmental negatives, fleet sharing is widely applied in the transportation field, with the aim of creating synergies within industry and increasing overall fleet use. However, if a sharing platform’s transparency is doubted, the sharing ability of the platform will be discounted. Known for its transparent and secure merits, blockchain technology provides new opportunities to improve existing sharing solutions. In particular, the decentralised structure and data encryption algorithm offered by blockchain allow every participant equal access to shared resources without undermining security issues. Therefore, this study explores the implementation of a blockchain-enabled fleet sharing solution to optimise drone operations, with consideration of battery wear and disposal effects. Unlike classical vehicle routing with fleet sharing problems, this research is more challenging, with multiple objectives (i.e., shortest path and fewest charging times), and considers different levels of sharing abilities. In this study, we propose a mixed-integer programming model to formulate the intended problem and solve the problem with a tailored branch-and-price algorithm. Through extensive experiments, the computational performance of our proposed solution is first articulated, and then the effectiveness of using blockchain to improve overall optimisation is reflected, and a series of critical influential factors with managerial significance are demonstrated.
Evgenia Kapassa, Marinos Themistocleous, Klitos Christodoulou, Elias Iosif
Blockchain technology is highly coupled with cryptocurrencies; however, it provides several other potential use cases, related to energy and sustainability, Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, smart mobility and more. Blockchain can offer security for Electric Vehicle (EV) transactions in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) concept, allowing electricity trading to be performed in a decentralized, transparent and secure way. Additionally, blockchain provides the necessary functionalities for IoV decentralized application development, such as data exchange, personal digital identity, sharing economy and optimized charging pattern. Moreover, blockchain technology has the potential to significantly increase energy efficiency, decrease management costs and guarantee the effective use of the energy recourses. Therefore, its application in the IoV concept provides secure, autonomous and automated energy trading between EVs. While several studies on blockchain technology in smart grids have been conducted, insufficient attention has been given to conducting a detailed review and state-of-the-art analysis of blockchain application in the IoV domain. To this end, this work provides a systematic literature review of blockchain-based applications in the IoV domain. The aim is to investigate the current challenges of IoV and to highlight how blockchain characteristics can contribute to this emerging paradigm. In addition, limitations and future research directions related to the integration of blockchain technology within the IoV are discussed. To this end, this study incorporates the theoretical foundations of several research articles published in scientific publications over the previous five years, as a method of simplifying our assessment and capturing the ever-expanding blockchain area. We present a comprehensive taxonomy of blockchain-enabled applications in the IoV domain, such as privacy and security, data protection and management, vehicle management, charging optimization and P2P energy trading, based on a structured, systematic review and content analysis of the discovered literature, and we identify key trends and emerging areas for research. The contribution of this article is two-fold: (a) we highlight the limitations presented in the relevant literature, particularly the barriers of blockchain technology and how they influence its integration into the IoV and (b) we present a number of research gaps and suggest future exploratory areas.
Jonathan Grey, Oshani Seneviratne, Isuru S. Godage
The use of blockchain in cyber-physical systems, such as robotics, is an area with immense potential to address many shortcomings in robotic coordination and control. In traditional swarm robotic applications, where homogeneous robots are utilized, it is possible to replace a robot if it malfunctions, and it can be assumed that all robots are interchangeable. However, in many real-world applications spanning from search and rescue missions to future household robotic appliances, heterogeneous robots will need to work together with the other robots and human agents to achieve specific tasks. Nevertheless, no such system exists. Therefore, we propose a system that utilizes a token economy for robotic agents that makes agents responsive to token acquisition as an incentive for collaboration in achieving a given task. The economy enables the system to self-govern, even under Byzantine and adversarial settings. We further incorporate a novel subcontracting framework within a blockchain environment to allow the robotic agents to efficiently and cost-effectively perform complex jobs requiring multiple agents with various capabilities. We conducted a thorough evaluation of the system in a prototype warehouse application scenario, and the results are promising.
The distributed ledger technology (DL T) secures data and the execution of program code in a decentral network. This enables new forms of business cooperation without the need of central intermediaries. However, the design process of DLT applications is not a simple task. The engineering process is burdened with the responsibility of choosing a suitable distributed ledger implementation, that will cope with the environmental limitations and transaction loads. The nature of the distributed ledger technology makes an exchange of the technology base at a later point expensive and complicated, since every network participant needs to agree to the change. That makes prototyping and applied field tests difficult. Stochastic simulation is a means that allows to simulate complex systems that are affected by randomly occurring events. In this paper, we contribute to the advance of using stochastic simulation to support DLT application engineering processes by 1) presenting a structured approach in applying stochastic simulation, that is also configurable depending on individual evaluation goals, 2) use hypothesis tests to assess the model quality of the Ethereum block generation process, when using homogeneous Poisson processes and 3) discuss concrete measures that help assessing the feasibility of implementing an application on the Ethereum blockchain, which is demonstrated for German waterway transportation processes.
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a special kind of legal contract that binds a vendor to its customers where the vendor commits to provide certain services in exchange for certain payments from the customers. However, when customers do not get the services that they have subscribed for, it becomes a laborious job for customers to contact or visit the company and claim the correct amount of compensation or service credits. On the other hand, a Smart Contract is a contract that is a computer program that also binds multiple parties into given agreements but is a set of precise rules and is self-enforceable and self-executable. In this paper, we have introduced a novel work where we use fuzzy logic inside the Ethereum-based smart contract for two significant objectives. The first objective is to make the claim of the compensation easier and faster for customers by translating the SLA into a smart contract. The second objective is to make the smart contract even smarter and intelligent by implementing fuzzy logic so that customers who have a hard time understanding the legal jargon and ambiguities of the legal contract and SLA to find out if the compensation amount they are getting when the service is poor is good enough. Since fuzzy logic models semantics of linguistic expressions by capturing vagueness in the fuzzy sets, it becomes easier to solve the problem of contractual ambiguities and expedite the process of claiming compensation when implemented in a Blockchain-based smart contract.
Riya Kakkar, Rajesh Gupta, Sudeep Tanwar, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues
This article proposes a blockchain and coalition game theory-based secure and reliable optimal data pricing scheme for ride sharing. It mainly focuses on securing data sharing between vehicle owners and customers. It employs beyond fifth-generation (5G) as a communication network that facilitates vehicle owners and customers with low latency, high throughput, and high availability for communication. We also formulate a coalition game-theory approach to optimize the payoff of vehicle owners and customers by forming coalitions. The performance of the proposed system beyond 5G is estimated by comparing it with 5G and LTE-A networks. The various performance parameters considered are network latency, throughput, and profit for vehicle owners. The performance results show that the proposed system is efficient and beneficial for both vehicle owners and customers in terms of low latency, high throughput, and profit.
Yuntao Wang, Zhou Su, Jiliang Li, Ning Zhang · 7 authors
With the proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs), private charging pile (PCP) sharing networks are likely to be an integral part of future smart cities, especially in places with limited public charging infrastructure. However, there are a number of operational challenges associated with the deployment of PCPs in such a shared and untrusted environment. For example, how do we formulate efficient PCP sharing strategies in PCP sharing networks, while also taking into consideration the dynamic charging behaviors of EVs? Therefore, in this paper, we propose an energyblockchain-based secure PCP sharing scheme (BBC) for PCP sharing networks. First, an energy blockchain-based framework is designed for PCP sharing networks to facilitate energy sharing services for EVs and PCPs, using both distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency. Then, we devise a reputation-based secure PCP sharing algorithm to improve consensus efficiency with smaller signature sizes. In addition, a distributed reputation mechanism is constructed to assess the trustworthiness of consensus nodes in blockchain, based on ratings, behaviors, and fading. We also model the interactions among EVs and cooperative PCPs as a joint coalition-matching game, and obtain the optimal strategies of PCPs and EVs by analyzing the Nash-stable coalitional structure and stable many-to-one matching pairs. Extensive simulations and the real-world implementation demonstrate that the proposed approach improves the utility of EV users and renewable energy efficiency in PCP sharing networks.
Vehicles on the road, where an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is built, can share a lot of traffic information and drive more safely and efficiently through data sharing. Since incorrect information misleads vehicles and causes confusion in traffic, a vehicular trust model is needed to check the message’s trustworthiness while considering the vehicle’s properties and protecting its privacy. In this paper, we proposed a two layered blockchain-based reputation system, which consists of a local one-day message blockchain and a global vehicle reputation blockchain. It can administrate the reputation score securely and preserve the vehicle’s partial privacy. The proposed model efficiently manages local traffic information through the local one-day blockchain, reducing the memory overhead of vehicles. As the vehicle’s actual identity and activities in other areas are hidden by using one-time public keys, partial privacy of the vehicle is preserved. According to the activity of the vehicle, the vehicle’s reputation score is updated and stored permanently in the global reputation blockchain. We also suggested the location-based practical byzantine fault tolerance (LPBFT), a new consensus algorithm for fast block generating. The LPBFT lowers message propagation time through location-based primary node selection and is about 1.4 times faster than existing PBFT. The simulation results show the efficiency and the feasibility of LPBFT and our proposed protocol.
Today’s cities face numerous challenges due to climate change and urbanization. The concept of a smart city aims to help cities to address these challenges by adapting modern information and communication technology. Smart mobility and transportation form one important aspect of smart cities. Inefficient mobility in cities can lead to problems such as traffic congestion, which results in frustration for residents and a decrease in the quality of life. Against the backdrop of global warming, cities also strive to reduce CO2 emissions, an attempt which requires sustainable and novel mobility concepts. Blockchain is a current technology, said to have huge potential, that is being investigated for application in many facets of smart cities. In the context of smart mobility, blockchain can be used for transactions relating to ridesharing and electric charging, handling of interactions of platoon members, or serving as a foundation for communication between vehicles. Although initial research about this topic exists, it is distributed among different use-cases and applications. This article conducts a systematic literature review to analyze blockchain’s role in mobility and transportation in smart cities, and its potential to increase efficiency in these areas. With this review, we aim to consolidate and summarize the current knowledge about this topic. As a first result, we present the findings from our literature review, which can be divided into five categories of use-cases. We also present a platform for further research about this emerging topic by identifying promising future research avenues. For this purpose, we derive a future research agenda based on our findings.
The recent Airlines management is facing lots of challenges and the pandemic has made it more critical. The airlines' industry needs to come up with a strong solution to uplift the airlines' sector and sophisticate the customers. In this paper, the main objective of the Airlines reservation system is to implement software using java that accompanies blockchain technology considering the airline sector challenges. It helps users to reserve tickets for air service and track the updated status periodically. Blockchain technology keeps the data secured and centralized providing efficient usage via mobile apps or online. The system provides an efficient user interface for both customers and stakeholders and analyzes the behavior of the customer and provides efficient results. This article also explains the demand price prediction and related challenges to be solved efficiently. All the above factors are considered and an efficient solution of application system using Java.
This paper deals with challenges of implementing blockchain (BC) technology in maritime at developing countries, with a research focus on Montenegro and South Africa. Research design and categories analyzed in the paper are chosen due to the search of relevant secondary literature resources. Selected experts in Information Technology (IT) and maritime from aforementioned developing countries were asked about their perception of BC as disruptive technology, its implementation, and implications on maritime and other industries, through a questionnaire, which contains both quantitative and qualitative parts. The results should give the readers insights into the experts’ standpoints concerning rational blockchain adoption in maritime and other industries in developing and transitional economies. The paper is organized into six sections: (1) introduction, (2) literature review on blockchain in maritime, (3) research problem and design, (4) results, (5) discussion, and (6) conclusions.
Electric Vehicles (EVs) have emerged as one of the most promising solutions for reducing carbon emissions in smart cities. However, due to the limited battery life of EVs and the scarcity of charging stations, EV drivers are not willing to travel long distances. Thus, blockchain-enabled energy trading (BET) has lately been used to securely share energy among EVs via wireless power transfer (WPT) technology. Blockchain is used to ensure the security and privacy of transactions between untrustworthy EVs in the WPT process. Nevertheless, previous works on BET have relied on existing consensus mechanisms built on the requirements of the cryptocurrency systems. These consensus mechanisms have faced significant challenges in maintaining high reliability, throughput, low latency, and network scalability in V2V energy trading that requires real-time services. To address these issues, we propose a new consensus mechanism that leverages the benefits of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) and Proof of Reputation (PoR) called PBFT-based PoR (PPoR). The energy trading process runs in a clustered vehicular network, where validator selection, block generation, and consensus processes are performed in each cluster. We adopt an incentive mechanism based on a Stackelberg game model to optimize the utility of sellers, buyers, and validator nodes, which motivates honest and cooperative nodes. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme reduces buyers’ costs by 21.1% while increasing the utility of sellers by 18%. Moreover, compared to benchmarks, the proposed scheme reduces the transaction processing delay and increases the throughput by more than 47.1% and 15.7%, respectively.
In the last years, the Blockchain-based technologies have gained a huge interest from several industrial sectors, including the automotive. After the description of the concept and the main features of the blockchain technology, the paper gives a review of the car sharing applications and the blockchain applicability to this context. The possibility to implement the blockchain system with Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) opens new frontiers to guaranteeing the user identity security and the antitampering data storage. The Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) are created and exchanged between the issuer and the holder for car charging applications. The verifier is committed to verify the DIDs to ensure the correctness and the security of the exchanged data. They have a crucial role to prevent frauds and to manage security issues.
Dhairya Jadav, Mohammad S. Obaidiat, Sudeep Tanwar, Rajesh Gupta · 5 authors
Blockchain is a prevalent technology whose applications are aimed towards security, privacy, traceability and trust. One such application is autonomous vehicles (AVs). The biggest concern of AVs is their safety. A malicious AV can cause accidents that may be life-threatening. We have proposed a blockchain and ensemble learning-based system to classify the vehicles as malicious to address the aforementioned safety issue. Smart contracts for AVs transaction verification have been designed to count the number of malicious activities performed by any AV. Finally, results show that the proposed model achieved the goal of this paper with an accuracy of 97.5 %.
Profound changes driven by decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization are disrupting the energy industry, bringing new challenges to its key stakeholders. In the attempt to address the climate change issue, increasing penetration of renewables and mobility electrification augment the complexity of the electric grid, thus calling for new management approaches to govern energy exchanges while ensuring reliable and secure operations. The emerging blockchain technology is regarded as one of the most promising solutions to respond to the matter in a decentralized, efficient, fast, and secure way. In this work, we propose an Ethereum-based charging management framework for electric vehicles (EVs), tightly interlinked with physical and software infrastructure and implemented in a real-world demonstration site. With a specifically designed solidity-based smart contract governing the charging process, the proposed framework enables secure and reliable accounting of energy exchanges in a network of trustless peers, thus facilitating the EVs’ deployment and encouraging the adoption of blockchain technology for everyday tasks such as EV charging through private and semi-private charging infrastructure. The results of a multi-actor implementation case study in Switzerland demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed blockchain framework and highlight its potential to reduce costs in a typical EV charging business model. Moreover, the study shows that the suggested framework can speed up the charging and billing processes for EV users, simplify the access to energy markets for charging station owners, and facilitate the interaction between the two through specifically designed mobile and web applications. The implementation presented in this paper can be used as a guideline for future blockchain applications for EV charging and other smart grid projects.
Siqi Zeng, Kosuke Kaneko, Yan Ke, Haowen Tan · 5 authors
This paper proposes a design of escrow scheme with blockchain technology. The purpose of this design is to solve the problem in overtaking service [1]. To achieve the objective, we take several simulations to evaluate the performance of our design. The paper will also introduce the reason why introducing the escrow scheme into blockchain technology. And the paper will briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the design.