Carlos A. Estrada, S. Naranjo, Veronica J. Toasa, Sang Guun Yoo
In the context of today's digital era, blockchain technology has established itself as one of the transformative innovations that pushes the boundaries of data management and security. Given this situation, the present work carries out a systematic literature review of this technology. It examines three essential aspects of the blockchain world. First of all, the various fields of application of this technology are analyzed, which go beyond the field of cryptocurrencies and extend to other industries such as the internet of things, supply chains, health, identity management, business, and much more. Secondly, the most used platforms for the development of blockchain applications are studied, such as Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, Solana among others; each platform has its particular characteristics, compatible programming languages and recommended application areas. Finally, an analysis of the consensus protocols is carried out, such as Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of Authority, RAFT, among others. This literature review provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain, shedding light on its versatility, challenges, and transformative potential in a variety of industries. It offers a solid foundation for those interested in exploring and taking advantage of the blockchain revolution in the 21st century.
In blockchains, mempool controls transaction flow before consensus, denial of whose service hurts the health and security of blockchain networks. This paper presents MPFUZZ, the first mempool fuzzer to find asymmetric DoS bugs by exploring the space of symbolized mempool states and optimistically estimating the promisingness of an intermediate state in reaching bug oracles. Compared to the baseline blockchain fuzzers, MPFUZZ achieves a > 100x speedup in finding known DETER exploits. Running MPFUZZ on major Ethereum clients leads to discovering new mempool vulnerabilities, which exhibit a wide variety of sophisticated patterns, including stealthy mempool eviction and mempool locking. Rule-based mitigation schemes are proposed against all newly discovered vulnerabilities.
Muhammad Aslam Jarwar, Sajjad Ali, Inayatullah Inayatullah, Sayed Chhattan Shah
As the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) persists, it becomes imperative to deliberate on strategies for protecting the security and privacy inside the confines of resource constrained devices and their data, while also preserving optimal performance. This research paper offers an innovative solution at the intersection of IoT middleware and Blockchain technology, specifically the Hyperledger fabric. Through the use of a distributed decentralized ledger, we overcome many of the limitations of current IoT networks. This paper outlines a robust layered IoT model that could be applied to any use case, providing security and privacy at the edge of IoT devices. We conducted an implementation setup to test the model and validate the security measures embedded through Blockchain design. Additionally, we improved IoT devices interoperability through the use of semantic ontologies. Overall, this research contributes to the ongoing effort to create a secure and efficient IoT ecosystem.
Fernando Bereta dos Reis, Mark Borkum, Monish Mukherjee, Hayden Reeve · 5 authors
This report explores the potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT) as a transformative tool to enhance fault-tolerant operations in electrical distribution systems. Leveraging DLT's core attributes, including an immutable decentralized ledger, distributed consensus mechanisms, and state replication capabilities, this study focuses on three critical use cases. A central aspect of this research centers on the utilization of a consensus-driven ledger, providing actors within the system, such as distributed resources, with access to a reliable data repository. This empowers these actors to collaborate effectively and make informed decisions, all securely recorded on the blockchain. The first use case concentrates on data configuration, utilizing mathematical criteria---particularly, the chi-squared test for gross error detection---to identify trustworthy sensors for advanced decision-making. Building upon this foundation of trust, the second use case, topology identification, accurately determines circuit breaker states, unveiling the distribution network's topology. Ultimately, the third use case leverages this trust to execute switching actions, reconfiguring feeders and restoring power to disconnected customers after fault events. The concept of trust serves as a cornerstone in this approach, marking a departure from traditional fault location, isolation, and service restoration (FLISR) methods. Additionally, the blockchain-based architecture introduces decentralization, empowering disconnected areas to make autonomous decisions, even when communication with a central control center is disrupted. The primary contributions of this report are twofold: (1) a novel approach for evaluating distribution system voltage areas while preserving data ownership and (2) the implementation of interactions between distribution network areas using the actor model. Unlike the previous sequential approach for evaluating the area connection voltages, which required a radial network topology, this study's area model reduction enables a more versatile approach. The area model reduction addresses issues of prolonged data waiting times and multiple points of failure within the previous approach. Notably, the presented evaluation for the reduced network model area connection reveals a significant increase in the differences in voltage magnitudes. Simulation and evaluation of area agents across four distinct cases elucidate the area-level interaction behavior during a fault event. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed distributed FLISR (DFLISR) approach can successfully restore service to an affected area. Varying message delays and message loss probabilities in each simulation case underscore their impacts on restoration times, ranging from 3 min and 32 s to 6 min and 19 s. In contrast, power is not restored in an area in one of our simulation cases.
Today, the world is highly depended on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system for all kind of financial transactions. Whether Banks or people, everyone relies on UPI transactions for personal or commercial purposes. Since it provides a simple interface with round the clock availability, the financial activities became easier and faster. But the security concerns are still there, for which continuous research processes are carried on all around the world. In the context of UPI system, the information security needs to be assured both during storage and transit. For providing security in information storage and data transfer, the best solution till now is Blockchain Technology enabled Smart Banking systems. The decentralized feature and use of smart contracts of Blockchain will help the transactions to be immutable, more secured and distributed. The usage of high degree cryptographic encryptions and usage of appropriate consensus algorithms can make the data purely tamper proof. This paper describes the features that should be possessed by a Blockchain technology enabled UPI system that will help to have high security for all the financial activities and transactions.
Shaik Mulla Almas, Pathan Mahamood Khan, K. Kavitha
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) forms the cornerstone of blockchain systems, introducing a paradigm shift in data management, transparency, and security. This abstract provides a concise overview of the fundamental aspects of DLT within the context of blockchain technology, elucidating its key principles and applications.DLT is a decentralized and distributed database architecture that facilitates the secure and transparent recording of transactions across a network of nodes. By decentralizing control and consensus mechanisms, DLT mitigates single points of failure and enhances the robustness of data storage and verification.
William Frederic O. Wells, Glenn Walter V. Lim, Cedric Angelo M. Festin, Wilson M. Tan
Private blockchains are uncompetitive with the throughput of distributed databases. HotStuff(RS) is a recent BFT-SMR consensus protocol that is supposedly a faster alter-native to the established IBFT and QBFT protocols. Despite its promise, HS remains untested in private Ethereum blockchains. Previous work evaluates HS as a standalone protocol but never in a blockchain environment due to the difficulty of implementing BFT-SMR protocols. Our work addresses this gap by implementing and evaluating Basic HotStuff(BHS), a HS variant that trades latency for simplicity, against IBFT and QBFT in a private Ethereum blockchain. We create a consensus module for BHS in GoQuorum 22.7.4 and measure the performance of BHS, IBFT, and QBFT under varying (i) network sizes, (ii) transaction loads, and (iii) network conditions. Our work shows that, at scale, BHS significantly outperforms IBFT and QBFT under low-bandwidth conditions and has the lightest network traffic under all network conditions.
Current eCommerce warranty systems are often inadequate due to fraudulent claims, difficulty proving ownership, and inconsistent utilization. This research proposes a blockchain-based eCommerce warranty system that uses nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to improve authenticity, ownership, and consistency. By converting warranty certificates into decaying NFTs, the proposed system enables consumers to digitally certify their product warranty, enhancing the integrity of the system and mitigating fraudulent warranty claims. Additionally, the system allows for easy ownership transfer and simplifies the resale process. This research will demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed system through simulations and prototypes, potentially revolutionizing eCommerce warranty systems.
Internet of Things (IoT) as a ubiquitous networking paradigm has been experiencing serious security and privacy challenges with the increasing data in diversified applications. Fortunately, this will be, to a great extent, alleviated with the emerging blockchain, which is a decentralized digital ledger based on cryptography and offers potential benefits for IoT. Currently, the resource limitations of IoT devices have prevented blockchain from flexibly storing the ever-increasing IoT data. To address this challenge, in this article, we introduce a scalable blockchain paradigm with cloud/fog/edge services and virtualization technology. They also develop an innovative scalable blockchain-based architecture of IoT data storage (SBIT) to tackle its security and scalability concerns through on-chain block validation in IoT, and off-chain data storage in cloud/fog/edge servers. We start by investigating the traditional IoT and identifying the existing issues related to its security and scalability. Then, we explicitly present the details of the scalable blockchain and SBIT, along with a case study. Finally, we summarize the emerging challenges and discuss the future directions for further research on blockchain-based IoT.
The performance bottleneck of blockchain has shifted from consensus to serial smart contract execution in transaction validation. Previous works predominantly focus on inter-contract parallel execution, but they fail to address the inherent limitations of each smart contract execution performance. In this paper, we propose PaVM, the first smart contract virtual machine that supports both inter-contract and intra-contract parallel execution to accelerate the validation process. PaVM consists of (1) key instructions for precisely recording entire runtime information at the instruction level, (2) a runtime system with a re-designed machine state and thread management to facilitate parallel execution, and (3) a read/write-operation-based receipt generation method to ensure both the correctness of operations and the consistency of blockchain data. We evaluate PaVM on the Ethereum testnet, demonstrating that it can outperform the mainstream blockchain client Geth. Our evaluation results reveal that PaVM speeds up overall validation performance by 33.4×, and enhances validation throughput by up to 46×.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could potentially have a broader transformational effect than mere blockchain because they challenge the traditional notions of ownership and is, therefore, a more fundamental challenge to our established economic and social structures. This paper provides a systematic review of the NFT literature outlining the research opportunities for NFTs.
The International Conference of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and Data Analytics is an annual gathering of experts, researchers, and professionals from around the world who share a passion for advancing the fields of artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and data analytics.The conference provides a platform for knowledge exchange, networking, and collaboration in these rapidly evolving domains.Our conference is dedicated to exploring the latest research, trends, and best practices in artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and data analytics.We seek to create an atmosphere of learning, sharing, and innovation where experts can come together to exchange ideas and collaborate on new projects.At our conference, attendees can expect to hear from a variety of thought leaders, industry professionals, and academics who are at the forefront of their fields.We offer keynote speeches, panel discussions, and technical sessions covering a wide range of topics, from machine learning and natural language processing to distributed ledgers and decentralized applications.
Huizhong Li, Yujie Chen, Shi Xiang, Xingqiang Bai · 9 authors
Enterprise-grade permissioned blockchain systems provide a promising infrastructure for data sharing and cooperation between different companies. However, performance bottlenecks seriously hinder the adoption of these systems in many industrial applications that process complex business logic and huge transaction volumes. Our research identifies two key factors that limit the system performance: 1) At the block level, the serial dependency of inter-block processing severely limits the system throughput. A new block must wait for the completion of all previous blocks. 2) At the transaction level, the lack of efficient intra-block transactions concurrency makes it difficult to achieve high performance, especially when dealing with multiple CPU-heavy contracts which are commonly used in industrial scenarios.
Blockchain has great application value in the field of finance, Internet of Things, digital copyright, decentralization is the most fundamental feature of blockchain. Decentralization increases the fault tolerance and security of the whole blockchain network, ensuring that the data cannot be tampered with, but decentralization greatly increases the amount of message communication in the whole system, so the whole blockchain network is very inefficient in the case of consensus of multiple nodes. The consensus algorithm is the core technology for implementing decentralization.In this paper, we propose a CG-PBFT consensus algorithm based on credit list grouping hierarchy, which aims to solve the problems of wasteful communication resources and inefficiency caused by too many broadcast messages in PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance algorithm). The implementation of the CG-PBFT algorithm is divided into three main steps: First, by selecting nodes with higher credit value as group leader nodes, the harm of malicious nodes to the whole consensus system can be significantly reduced. Second, the optimal grouping according to the communication delay between nodes can improve the efficiency of the whole consensus system. Finally, the intra-group consensus is performed first in the consensus phase, followed by the global consensus, which can significantly reduce the network overhead. Experiments demonstrate that the CG-PBFT consensus algorithm has lower network overhead, lower network latency, and higher Byzantine node fault tolerance.
Scalability is a common issue among the most used permissionless blockchains, and several approaches have been proposed to solve this issue. Tackling scalability while preserving the security and decentralization of the network is a significant challenge. To deliver effective scaling solutions, Ethereum achieved a major protocol improvement, including a change in the consensus mechanism towards Proof of Stake. This improvement aimed a vast reduction of the hardware requirements to run a node, leading to significant sustainability benefits with a lower network energy consumption. This work analyzes the resource usage behavior of different clients running as Ethereum consensus nodes, comparing their performance under different configurations and analyzing their differences. Our results show higher requirements than claimed initially and how different clients react to network perturbations. Furthermore, we discuss the differences between the consensus clients, including their strong points and limitations.
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Intracranial Aneurysms: Treatment and Complications
This paper proposes a framework for efficient remote service support in meta-verse. This work was initiated by a empathy-driven sensitive listening counselor bot enhanced by real and virtual services including digital twins selected by a powerful need/offer matching. This matching is leveraged on ADN (Autonomous Decentralization Network) IBN (Intention Based Network) for efficiency (high performance) exploiting DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) for safety. This framework makes it possible to provide highly efficient teleservice including telemedicine in virtual spaces, which enables eternal evolution. Moreover, this paper introduces a concept for an integrated learning and evolutionary self-improvement of our metaverse system.
Numerous blockchain simulators have been proposed to allow researchers to simulate mainstream blockchains. However, we have not yet found a testbed that enables researchers to develop and evaluate their new consensus algorithms or new protocols for blockchain sharding systems. To fill this gap, we developed BlockEmulator, which is designed as an experimental platform, particularly for emulating blockchain sharding mechanisms. BlockEmulator adopts a lightweight blockchain architecture so developers can only focus on implementing their new protocols or mechanisms. Using layered modules and useful programming interfaces offered by BlockEmulator, researchers can implement a new protocol with minimum effort. Through experiments, we test various functionalities of BlockEmulator in two steps. Firstly, we prove the correctness of the emulation results yielded by BlockEmulator by comparing the theoretical analysis with the observed experiment results. Secondly, other experimental results demonstrate that BlockEmulator can facilitate measuring a series of metrics, including throughput, transaction confirmation latency, cross-shard transaction ratio, the queuing status of transaction pools, workload distribution across blockchain shards, etc. We have made BlockEmulator open-source in Github.
Conor Flynn, Kristin P. Bennett, John Erickson, Aaron Green · 5 authors
With the agile development process of most academic and corporate entities, designing a robust computational back-end system that can support their ever-changing data needs is a constantly evolving challenge. We propose the implementation of a data and language-agnostic system design that handles different data schemes and sources while subsequently providing researchers and developers a way to connect to it that is supported by a vast majority of programming languages. To validate the efficacy of a system with this proposed architecture, we integrate various data sources throughout the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, specifically from DeFi lending protocols, retrieving tens of millions of data points to perform analytics through this system. We then access and process the retrieved data through several different programming languages (R-Lang, Python, and Java). Finally, we analyze the performance of the proposed architecture in relation to other high-performance systems and explore how this system performs under a high computational load.
Van Duy Tran, Shingo Ata, Thi Hong Tran, Duc Khai Lam · 5 authors
The collection and examination of student data, encompassing academic achievements, awards, and certifications, assume an essential function within the field of education as a means of showing students’ capabilities. Nevertheless, it is crucial to note that regular paper-based records are vulnerable to both physical destruction and the act of fabrication, while standard databases can have security holes. Moreover, the process of manually gathering physical papers from centralized organizations is both laborious and complicated. To address the concerns above and foster sustainability in the field of education, this study first suggests using Scorechain. This innovative solution integrates blockchain technology into a comprehensive data-management system for managing all student-related data. Secondly, by utilizing the inherent security features of blockchain technology, Scorechain develops a stable multi-role hierarchy, increasing the integrity and reliability of data. This also facilitates the efficient transfer of information among various stakeholders, including parents, recruiters, and educational institutions, thus fostering transparency and accountability. Lastly, the Scorechain system facilitates collaboration and data exchange among universities inside a shared network. Scorechain was constructed using the Rust programming language and is based on the Substrate blockchain architecture. It underwent careful development, testing, and analysis to ensure operational efficiency. The feasibility and long-term viability of Scorechain in genuine educational contexts are highlighted as blockchain technology facilitates seamless integration into the education sector.