To introduce the opportunities brought by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) to the energy Internet, we propose a local vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) energy trading architecture based on fog computing in social hotspots and model the social welfare maximization (SWM) problem to balance the interests of both charging and discharging PHEVs. Considering transaction security and privacy protection issues, we employ a consortium blockchain in our designed energy trading architecture, which is different from the traditional centralized power systems, to reduce the reliance on trusted third parties. Moreover, we improve the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) algorithm and introduce it into a consensus algorithm, called the delegated proof of stake (DPOS) algorithm, to design a more efficient and promising consensus algorithm, called DPOSP, which greatly reduces resource consumption and enhances consensus efficiency. To encourage PHEVs to participate in V2V energy transactions, we design an energy iterative bidirectional auction (EIDA) mechanism to resolve the SWM problem and obtain optimal charging and discharging decisions and energy pricing. Finally, we conduct extensive simulations to verify the proposed DPOSP algorithm and provide numerical results for a comparison with the performance of the genetic algorithm and the Lagrange algorithm in achieving EIDA.
Ride-sharing is a service that enables drivers to share their trips with other riders, contributing to improving traffic congestion as well as assist in reducing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emission and fuel consumption. It has come to the forefront in recent years as a Green service in large cities. However, the majority of existing ride-sharing services rely on a central third party, which makes them subject to a single point of failure and privacy disclosure concerns by both internal and external attackers. Moreover, they are vulnerable to distributed denial of service (DDoS) and Sybil attacks due to malicious users. There is also high service fees paid to the ride-sharing service provider. In this paper, we propose to decentralize ride-sharing services based on a public Blockchain. Our scheme enables drivers to propose ride-sharing services without relying on a trusted third party. To preserve location privacy, riders send cloaked ride requests to hide their exact pick-up/drop-off locations, and departure/arrival dates. Then, by using an off-line matching technique, drivers sends their offers encrypted to ensure data confidentiality. Upon receiving the ride-offers, the rider can find a ride match using some heuristics as well as the bid price included in the offer. To preserve anonymity, riders/drivers use pseudonyms that change per trip to ensure unlinkabilty. We envision the application of this technology in Green Internet of Things connected smart cities, where ride sharing services are common. Finally, we implement our scheme and deploy it in a test net of Ethereum. The experimental results show the applicability of our protocol.
Car sharing allows car owners to share their cars to tenants, making the control rights of vehicles to be frequently transferred among individuals. The existing control schemes for car shearing with centralized architecture are faced with several threatens, e.g., the single point of failure and lack of mutual trust. To this end, we propose a decentralized car-sharing control scheme by using blockchain and smart contracts. Massive base stations of Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) deployed over wide areas are used to jointly build the distributed system with blockchain to replace the untrusted third-party server. Having the smart contract, access control procedures can be performed automatically by an arbitrary base station in the decentralized architecture. The scheme provides a secure platform for the interactions among vehicles, individuals and application providers to avoid some security issues. Several simulations are conducted to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Paolo Bellavista, Marco Cilloni, Giuseppe Modica, Rebecca Montanari · 6 authors
Nowadays, the exploitation of distributed ledger technology (DLT) is increasing among different domains and use cases. Not only within the context of cryptocurrencies, DLT could help the cooperation among untrusted parties in a wide variety of application scenarios. In particular, crowdsensing platforms can benefit from DLT because they need to federate systems belonging to different organizations to share end-user profiles, finally free to move within different domains, maintaining their identity. In this paper, we propose an edge-based distributed ledger architecture for supporting decentralised incentives in a specific mobile crowdsensing paltform called ParticipAct. To motivate the choice we describe two different deployments of ParticipAct, one based on a classical client-server architecture and the other one based on an edge-based model, and we highlight their pro and cons. In particular, our more notable findings rely on an approach based on edge computing and highlight how the three-tier solution improves the scalability, the performance, the security and the fault tolerance of the infrastructure responsible for the management of the federation among untrusted crowdsensing platforms.
With ever increasing people's awareness of low carbon and environmental protection, electric vehicles are gradually gaining wide popularity. However, the driving endurance of the electric vehicle is the biggest shortage that hinders the fully acceptance of this new vehicle technology. To deal with this shortage, this paper proposed a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) electricity trading scheme based on Bayesian game pricing in blockchain-enabled Internet of vehicles (BIoV). Specifically, the Bayesian game is adopted for pricing in the distributed BIoV with incomplete information sharing. The optimal pricing under the linear strategic equilibrium has been obtained which maximizes the utilities of both sides of electricity transaction. The transaction volume is determined from the formulated convex problem that maximizes the social welfare. Then, the pricing game is implemented by the dedicated smart contract. Blockchain guarantees its trustworthiness, security, and reliability. Finally, the experimental results show that referring to the benchmark of static game with complete information, the proposed Bayesian game with incomplete information can achieve approximate satisfaction of users. The degree of approximation can reach to 98% when the pricing ranges of buyers and sellers are close. Moreover, the proposed scheme has great advantages over the static game with complete information in terms of communication overhead and timeliness in the decentralized IoVs.
Yuhong Li, Kun Ouyang, Nanxuan Li, Rahim Rahmani · 6 authors
Being able to obtain various environmental and driving data from vehicles is becoming more and more important for current and future intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) to operate efficiently and economically. However, the limitations of privacy protection and security of the current ITSs are hindering users and vehicles from providing data. In this paper, we propose a new ITS architecture by using blockchain technology solving the privacy protection and security problems, and promoting users and vehicles to provide data to ITSs. The proposed architecture uses blockchain as a trust infrastructure to protect users' privacy and provide trustworthy services to users. It is also compatible with the legacy ITS infrastructure and services. In addition, the hierarchical organization of chains enables the scalability of the system, and the use of smart contracts provides a flexible way for introducing new services in the ITS. The proposed architecture is demonstrated by a proof of concept implementation based on Ethereum. The test results show that the proposed architecture is feasible.
Friederike Rühmann, Sai Aashirvad Konda, Paul Horrocks, Nina Taka
The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands unprecedented resources and efforts. Remittances as one of the largest development finance flows are an important source of income for millions of households in developing countries and offer tremendous potential to contribute towards the achievement of Agenda 2030. However, the high cost of sending remittances limits their full potential. The global average cost of sending USD 200 is 6.9% of the remittance. SDG 10 C aims to reduce the cost to less than 3% and to eliminate remittance corridors with cost higher than 5% by 2030. Blockchain technology promises to disintermediate banks, transform the financial landscape and drastically reduce the cost of cross-border transactions, yet there is a need for further evidence on this topic. The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) has developed this paper to provide an overview of diverse perspectives on the intersection of blockchain technology and remittances by exploring the opportunities and challenges of this technology for reducing the cost of remittances. The paper identifies several limitations, such as data privacy risks, regulatory uncertainty and last-mile delivery, among others, while investigating whether blockchain technology is the solution to reduce the cost of remittances.
Blockchain, as an emerging technology and a disruptive innovation, has attracted attention from both academia and industry. However, there are many potential risks associated with it, such as the technical risk, the legal risk and the privacy risk. A comprehensive risk analysis is crucial for cost-effective deployment of blockchain technology. Important adoption decisions, including when to deploy blockchain, how to plan the investment, how to transfer current businesses onto blockchain, and how to price the blockchain service depend on this risk analysis. Yet very little study exists concerning the blockchain adoption planning with risks analysis. This research presents a cost-and-risk analysis framework and an adoption planning method for the case of blockchain application in carbon trading. Design requirements implied by the analysis are inferred and the architecture of a novel hybrid blockchain system is proposed. The system leverages the advantages of blockchain technology and incorporates institutional risk control framework. The optimal adoption strategy of this system is derived through modelling of users’ and the organizer’s behavior.
André Schweizer, Patricia Knoll, Nils Urbach, Heiko A. von der Gracht · 5 authors
The advancements in the fields of IT and robotics are provoking the fourth industrial revolution and transforming our economy toward the machine economy. Billions of economically autonomous machines engaging in business relationships raise novel requirements regarding security, privacy, regulation, business models, trustful transaction processing, and interoperability. A technology that promises to provide solutions to these challenges is blockchain. Neither practice has spawned productive solutions nor has research been able to assess the phenomenon profoundly. First investigations focus on specific use cases, but existing work does not examine the overall impact and role of blockchain in the machine economy. However, this knowledge is of particular importance for various stakeholders. In this article, we address this research and knowledge gap by conducting a study with 50 blockchain and machine economy experts. We establish a sound research fundament by following a literature assessment, group discussion, interviews, and qualitative data analysis. As main research instrument, we chose a Delphi study, which has a long-proven record of application in prospective studies and has been applied to examine future premises, estimates, and challenges across nearly all disciplines. This allows us to derive six key findings leading to a transparent picture of blockchain's role in the machine economy.
Companies trying to build new solutions using blockchain are confronted with\na plethora of available concurrent technologies that have many control knobs\nwhich require fine-tuning by experts. Exiting studies that build decision\nmodels for blockchain adoption or selection lack an automated way to use\nnon-functional requirements to provide recommendations. In this paper, we build\na knowledge base for blockchain solutions by analyzing whitepapers and studies,\nbut also our benchmark results performed in a controlled environment. Then, we\nimplement a Multi-Criterion Decision Analysis method to determine the most\nsuitable blockchain solution from companies provided requirements and\npreferences. Finally, we illustrate our approach by running the decision\nprocess on a realistic supply-chain use case. This paper provides a rationale\nfor blockchain deployment choices. While still limited in scope, we plan to\ninclude more blockchain alternative and more flexible requirements inputs in\nfuture work.\n
This study presents conceptual research designed to assess how the sharing economy concept can be leveraged to increase the participation of commercial organisations, such as retailers and transporters, in disaster relief operations. Drawing on social exchange theory, the academic literature on the sharing economy and blockchain, as well as existing resource-sharing practices in commercial and humanitarian logistics, the study develops a theoretical framework for analysing the structure, benefits, and prerequisites of a logistics-sharing system in emergency response. In addition, it proposes to utilise the blockchain distributed ledger technology-a shared data platform that enables authenticated communication and the widespread sharing of real-time information-to facilitate interactions and enhance trust between emergency responders and commercial organisations. It is argued that using commercial logistics resources, including emergency supplies, transport capacity, and storage space, has the potential to improve the mobilisation and deployment of urgently needed relief items and augment the flexibility of emergency response.
The convenience of using private cars has an accompanying parking challenge which becomes a significant issue in congested metropolitans and downtown areas. The explosive increase in the number of vehicles has substantially raised the issue of finding a suitable parking spot, which is both time and resource consuming. At the same time, many private parking spots remain idle, while their owners are not present at home. To promote the utility of private parking spots and mitigate parking issues, smart parking apps can be used. Unfortunately, some of them suffer from privacy issues that affect participation willingness, while others work in a centralized environment where the availability of service is not guaranteed in the presence of malicious users. In this work, we propose Blockchain-based Smart parking with Fairness, reliability and Privacy protection, called BSFP. Specifically, group signatures, bloom filters, and vector-based encryption are leveraged to protect the user's privacy. The decentralized nature of blockchain is utilized to achieve reliability in smart parking, and the smart contract is used to realize fairness. Comprehensive security analysis and experimental results based on the real-world dataset show that BSFP achieves fairness, reliability and privacy protection with high efficiency.
Blockchain – also known as distributed ledger – technology is set to revolutionise data and business process management and transactions. Blockchain adoption, pioneered initially as a financial tec...
The fast penetration of Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) has become the primary growth engine of the automotive industry in recent years. Urban vehicular network consisting of ICVs is evolving towards a distributed intelligent platform for pervasive sensing, connecting and computing in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and smart cities. In this paper, we propose that parked vehicles (PVs) could be exploited for environment perception and model inference. We describe the system architecture and its typical application scenarios of distributed environment perception for city roads, parking lots, as well as for commercial and residential buildings. PVs are motivated to assist in deep learning model inference for the captured image data in such applications. Regarding the diversity of PVs in deep learning capability, a differential incentive mechanism is elaborately designed based on contract theory to emulate PVsparticipation. The experiment on the dataset of German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark is conducted to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
The increase of the number of electric vehicles leads to serious valley imbalance in the power grid. In order to achieve peak cutting and valley filling, according to the energy storage characteristics of electric vehicles, this paper proposes an electric vehicle group (EVG) energy trading method based on smart contract and double auction matching mechanism, and constructs the electric energy transaction process of the electric vehicle and electric vehicle in the electric vehicle group under the unbalanced load of the power grid. Through deploying the double auction matching algorithm to the smart contract, the automatic execution of matching transaction and automatic clearing of transaction cost are realized, which saves the economic cost of manual matching mode. In addition, the multi-stage quotation method proposed greatly improves the number of transactions. The simulation experiment based on Monte Carlo simulation shows that the power transaction method can not only effectively alleviate the valley problem of power grid load, achieve the effect of reducing and raising Valley, but also can improve the transaction efficiency.
Gonzalo Munilla Garrido, Daniel Miehle, André Luckow, Florian Matthes
The increase of renewable energy generated in certain countries has outpaced the expansion of their power grid, causing grid congestion. Currently, grid operators use flexibility measures to counter this challenge. However, these measures struggle to cope with the growth in renewables. There are numerous proposals to improve flexibility measures using distributed energy resources such as electric vehicles (EVs). However, there is a need for a platform whereby EVs can be leveraged directly by grid operators. In answer to the decentralized quality of EVs and the requirements defined by our automotive industry partner, we propose a platform based on a distributed ledger technology (DLT). To achieve this goal, we first designed a concept for a decentralized flexibility market for the stakeholders of the ecosystem. The concept serves as the blueprint for the implementation of the platform. With the design and its implementation and simulation, we validated the use case and technical feasibility of the chosen DLT. We conclude that our prototype has the potential to allow grid operators to leverage idle EVs in aggregation to mitigate congestion.
The confluence of Internet of Things(IoT) , Blockchain(BC) and Artificial Intelligence(AI) acts as a key accelerator for enabling Machine Economy. To be ready for future businesses these technologies needs to be adapted by extending the IoT capabilities to Economy of Things (EoT) capabilities. In this paper we focus on one such implementation experience for Smart Toll Transaction application in the domain of mobility. Our paper showcases a possible solution by leveraging negotiations, decision making, distributed learning capabilities at the devices level using AI-enabled Multi-Agent Systems and the real-time smart contracts between the Cars and Tolls using Blockchain. This solution also showcases the monetization of real time data coming from various IoT devices which are part of vehicles and infrastructure. While blockchain secures the privacy of the participants it also acts as an economic transactional layer and governance layer between the devices in the networ
The Internet of Things (IoT) suffers from various security vulnerabilities. The use of blockchain technology can help resolve these vulnerabilities, but some practical problems in terms of scalability continue to hinder the adaption of blockchain for application in the IoT. The directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based Tangle model proposed by the IOTA Foundation aims to avoid transaction fees by employing a different protocol from that used in the blockchain. This model uses the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to update a distributed ledger. However, concerns about centralization by the coordinator nodes remain. Additionally, the economic incentive to choose the algorithm is insufficient. The present study proposes a light and efficient distributed ledger update algorithm that regards only the subtangle of each step by considering the Bayesian inference. Experimental results have confirmed that the performance of the proposed methodology is similar to that of the existing methodology, and the proposed methodology enables a faster computation time. It also provides the same resistance to possible attacks, and for the same reasons, as does the MCMC algorithm.
This paper examines the benefits and constraints of applying blockchain technology for the Paris Agreement carbon market mechanism and develops a list of technical requirements and soft factors as selection criteria to test the feasibility of two different blockchain platforms. The carbon market mechanism, as outlined in Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, can accelerate climate action by enabling cooperation between national Parties. However, in the past, carbon markets were limited by several constraints. Our research investigates these constraints and translates them into selection criteria to design a blockchain platform to overcome these past limitations. The developed selection criteria and assumptions developed in this paper provide an orientation for blockchain assessments. Using the selection criteria, we examine the feasibility of two distinct blockchains, Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric, for the specific use case of Article 6.2. These two blockchain systems represent contrary forms of design and governance; Ethereum constitutes a public and permissionless blockchain governance system, while Hyperledger Fabric represents a private and permissioned governance system. Our results show that both blockchain systems can address present carbon market constraints by enhancing market transparency, increasing process automation, and preventing double counting. The final selection and blockchain system implementation will first be possible, when the Article 6 negotiations are concluded, and governance preferences of national Parties are established. Our paper informs about the viability of different blockchain systems, offers insights into governance options, and provides a valuable framework for a concrete blockchain selection in the future.
Md. Mainul Islam, Md. Shahjalal, Moh. Khalid Hasan, Yeong Min Jang
Electric vehicles (EVs) have been gaining remarkable popularity throughout the world over the past few decades as they produce lower emissions by the efficient utilization of renewable energy and pollute less than conventional vehicles. They have emerged as a promising solution of climate change and energy crisis issues. It is an urgent need to develop a secure and reliable energy transaction model for electric vehicles in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) network. In order to solve the problem of energy shortage during peak hours and keep the balance of electricity supply, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based energy transaction model for EVs in V2G network, which enables peer-to-peer energy transactions between EVs and power grid without need of trusted third party.
Murat Kuzlu, Salih Sarp, Manisa Pipattanasomporn, Ümit Cali
Blockchain - a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) - has emerged as one of the leading technologies during the past several years. The objective of this paper is to discuss potential use of blockchain technology to support different smart grid applications.
Although the current ride hailing services have revolutionized the transportation industry in today's world, they are extremely centralized. Central authority has all the control and maintains data about the users. Such platforms raise concerns about the service policies and data reliability. In case the central server faces data tampering or ransomware attacks, all the records of data is either lost or compromised. Blockchain has gained exceptional recognition while addressing aforementioned issues because of its decentralized data auditability, anonymity and immutability. Research on blockchain technology explores the possibility of implementing decentralized application in ride hailing service. Blockchain based ride hailing architecture gives us the opportunity to deviate from centralized platforms to decentralized ones. In this paper we propose our system PEBERS: Practical Ethereum Blockchain based Efficient Ride Hailing Service, in which we demonstrate how decentralized system based on consortium blockchain can be developed to keep track of ride data. In this context we explore smart contracts to build and deploy functionalities such as create ride, auto deposit transfer, cancel and complete ride methods of our decentralized ride hailing application. Our experiments show the driver smart contracts proposed in our system consume less Gas and hence prove that its an efficient system than many other existing systems with respect to the expenses of passengers and profitability of drivers. This is an effort towards providing smarter transportation for a society moving towards smart city concept.