With the rapid growth of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, managing an extensive volume of IIoT data becomes a significant challenge. While the conventional cloud storage approaches with centralized data centers suffer from high latency for large-scale IIoT data storage due to increased communication and latency overheads, distributed storage frameworks, such as blockchains, have become promising solutions. In this article, we design and analyze a dual-blockchain framework for secure and scalable distributed data management in large-scale IIoT networks. The proposed framework, namedMapChain-D, consists of a data chain that is mapped to an index chain to provide efficient data storage and lookup.MapChain-Dis designed for practical IIoT applications with storage, latency, and communication constraints. Detailed data exchange protocols are presented for data insertion and retrieval operations inMapChain-D. Based on these, theoretical analyses are provided on the space, time, and communication complexities ofMapChain-Dcompared with conventional single-chain frameworks with local and distributed data storage. We implement ourMapChain-Dprototype using open-source LoRaWAN communications with multiple Raspberry Pi and Arduino devices, Kademlia-based distributed hash table, and Ethereum-based blockchain with proof-of-authority consensus. Experimental results from our prototype show thatMapChain-Dis more suitable to be deployed on resource-constrained IIoT devices. We also highlight the scalability and flexibility ofMapChain-Dwith different number of edge nodes in the system.
Consensus algorithms are applied in the context of distributed computer systems to improve their fault tolerance. The explosive development of distributed ledger technology following the proposal of âBitcoinâ led to a sharp increase in research activity in this area. Specifically, public and permissionless networks require robust leader selection strategies resistant to Sybil attacks in which malicious attackers present bogus identities to induce byzantine faults. Our goal is to analyse the entire breadth of works in this area systematically, thereby uncovering trends and research directions regarding Sybil attack resistance in todayâs blockchain systems to benefit the designs of the future. Through a systematic literature review, we condense an immense set of research records (N = 21,799) to a relevant subset (N = 483). We categorise these mechanisms by their Sybil attack resistance characteristics, leader selection methodology, and incentive scheme. Mechanisms with strong Sybil attack resistance commonly adopt the principles underlying âProof-of-Workâ or âProof-of-Stakeâ while mechanisms with limited resistance often use reputation systems or physical world linking. We find that only a few fundamental paradigms exist that can resist Sybil attacks in a permissionless setting but discover numerous innovative mechanisms that can deliver weaker protection in system scenarios with smaller attack surfaces.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has pushed the Internet of Things (IoT) into a new stage. Facing with the explosive growth of data and the higher quality of service required by users, edge computing and caching are regarded as promising solutions. However, the resources in edge nodes (ENs) are not inexhaustible. In this paper, we propose an incentive-aware blockchain-assisted intelligent edge caching and computation offloading scheme for IoT, which is dedicated to providing a secure and intelligent solution for collaborative ENs in resource optimization and controls. Specifically, we jointly optimize offloading and caching decisions as well as computing and communication resources allocation to minimize the total cost for tasks completion in the EN. Furthermore, a blockchain incentive and contribution co-aware federated deep reinforcement learning algorithm is designed to solve this optimization problem. In this algorithm, we construct an incentive-aware blockchain-assisted collaboration mechanism which operates during local training, with the aim to strengthen the willingness of ENs to participate in collaboration with security guarantee. Meanwhile, a contribution-based federated aggregation method is developed, in which the aggregation weights of EN gradients are based on their contributions, thereby improving the training effect. Finally, compared with other baseline schemes, the numerical results prove that our scheme has an efficient optimization utility of resources with significant advantages in total cost reduction and caching performance.
Social media's decentralization gives users control of their data, contributing to privacy, ownership, and dissemination. The challenge is to develop a decentralized social media platform with the same features and performances as its centralized counterpart. This study aims to demonstrate and evaluate the performance of decentralized social media in terms of throughput and scalability. The prototype application is developed on NEAR (Near Protocol Blockchain), a non-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chain with sharding. The results show that the use of NEAR to store post content is not a scalable solution, and the workaround of using IndexedDB as a local database to store information reduces response time and increases throughput and scalability. Collaboration of on-chain and off-chain storage strategies performs better for decentralized social media applications.
Christian Pulmano, Maria Regina Justina E. Estuar, Marlene M. De Leon, Hans Calvin Tan ¡ 6 authors
The Philippinesâ ICT agenda to promote participatory e-Governance, industry and countryside development, and ICT user protection and information security can be addressed by Blockchain. This study used Hyperledger Fabric to develop a Blockchain network for a secured and validated system for issuing, distributing, and sharing digital credentials. For the initial prototype, the network was tested on two use cases: national identification system and academic credentials. Chaincodes were developed for each type of digital credential and deployed into designated Channels in the network. Initial results show that a Blockchain-based system using the Hyperledger Fabric framework is feasible for developing a secure digital credential platform. The current architecture can support the implementation of the initial use cases and can also accommodate the addition of new use cases in the future. The current iteration of our work provides the groundwork for developing a production-level ready platform. Future work for this study includes the development of the end-user web application where users can interact with the network and initiate transactions. The deployment of the Blockchain network may pave the way toward decentralized e-Participatory governance.
Blockchains can provide integrity and authenticity, but their limited storage capacity can be a challenge when it comes to storing large amounts of data. To address this issue, off-chain storage solutions such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) can be utilized. This has led to the emergence of various applications that utilize both blockchain and IPFS. After reviewing a large body of literature utilizing blockchain and IPFS, we found that the coordinated interaction between blockchain and IPFS can help solve many problems and provide many research opportunities. Therefore, this survey paper aims to introduce the interaction mechanism between blockchain and IPFS. We first provide a general overview and comparison of different P2P data networks to help understand why IPFS is suitable as the storage layer for blockchains. Subsequently, we use select applications that leverage blockchain and IPFS to show how the mechanism works and explore new developments in this area. Specifically, we identify research areas and provide a qualitative comparison of these different applications. From the comparison, we derive research goals related to the interaction mechanism between blockchain and IPFS.
Multimedia networking is the area of study associated with the delivery of heterogeneous data including, but not limited to, imagery, video, audio, and interactive content. Multimedia and communication network researchers have continually struggled to devise solutions for addressing the three core challenges in multimedia delivery: security, reliability, and performance. Solutions to these challenges typically exist in a spectrum of compromises achieving gains in one aspect at the cost of one or more of the others. Networked videogames represent the pinnacle of multimedia presented in a real-time interactive format. Continual improvements to multimedia delivery have led to tools such as buffering, redundant coupling of low-resolution alternative data streams, congestion avoidance, and forced in-order delivery of best-effort service; however, videogames cannot afford to pay the latency tax of these solutions in their current state. The Secure Multi-Channel Internet Memory Information Control (S-MIMIC) protocol was developed as a novel solution to address these challenges by leveraging recent developments in blockchain and distributed ledger technology. Multiple algorithms were developed within the S-MIMIC protocol to perform create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) interactions via distributed ledger and blockchain technologies. Performance of the the S-MIMIC protocol was evaluated by porting its capabilities into an open source First-Person Shooter (FPS) videogame developed within the Unity3D game engine. SMIMIC efficacy was evaluated across the dimensions of confidentiality, integrity, availability and read/write performance. Though performance evaluation of the S-MIMIC focused on implementation within videogames, this protocol may be used to augment data delivery in multiple industries to include: medical information, legal documents, financial transactions, and many other applications that require security, reliability and performance guarantees.
With the improvement of people's awareness of environmental protection, electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming more and more popular, and the issue of vehicle to grid (V2G) energy trading is also put on the agenda. To protect the security and privacy of EVs when they trade energy with the grid, many scholars have introduced the emerging blockchain technology. However, there are few studies on the blockchain consensus algorithm for the EVs charging scenario, while the consensus is exactly the core technology in blockchain for reaching agreement in distributed systems, which to some extent determines the efficiency of V2G. Therefore, aiming at the above scenario, this paper proposes two low-complexity consensus algorithms, namely (PBFT-enabled RAFT) PRAFT and (RAFT-enable PBFT) RPBFT, which are combined the typical blockchain consensus PBFT and RAFT, and can be respectively applied to two EVs charging scenarios. In our V2G model, charging piles (CPs) and charging stations (CSs) will participate in the blockchain consensus as nodes. Through theoretical analysis and simulation, and compared with other methods, these two consensus algorithms have high scalability, low communication complexity, low storage overhead, high throughput, and low latency. Meanwhile they can also avoid the risk of Byzantine leader in RAFT. Finally, we demonstrate the two consensus algorithms in a real charging scenario, which show their transaction latency and energy consumption can well adapt to the EVs charging scenario in V2G networks.
Andrea Nanetti, Paola Benussi, Andrea Erboso, Dusit Niyato
To commemorate the 700 years since Marco Poloâs death (1324â2024), the State Archive of Venice, the National Library of Saint Mark, and the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Humanities and Arts (IVSLA) are curating and editing a diplomatic codex (CDP) of documents relevant to the study of the historical figure of Marco Polo (1254â1324). IVSLA will publish the CDP as a prestigious and traditional book, and the Engineering Historical Memory initiative will publish it online. This paper presents and discusses how the CDP is exploring the use of blockchain technology among parties who might not necessarily trust each other (i.e., authors and readers) to 1) launch ongoing participatory editing by entrusting multiple users with the task of promoting substantiated modifications to critical editions of archival documents and 2) share the digital assetâs history while duplicating and reusing archival documentsâ digital reproductions. Thus, the online CDP can be construed as a practice-led research project exploring the disruption of making a critical edition of archival documents using highly participatory research powered by blockchain and distributed ledger technology.
Several unique characteristics of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as distributed deployment and limited storage, make it challenging for standard centralized access control systems to enable access control in todayâs large-scale IoT ecosystem. To solve these challenges, this study presents an IoT access control system called Ether-IoT based on the Ethereum Blockchain (BC) infrastructure with Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). Access Contract (AC), Cache Contract (CC), Device Contract (DC), and Policy Contract (PC) are the four central smart contracts (SCs) that are included in the proposed system. CC offers a way to save user characteristics in a local cache system to avoid delays during transactions between BC and IoT devices. AC is the fundamental program users typically need to run to build an access control technique. DC offers a means for storing the resource data created by devices and a method for querying that data. PC offers administrative settings to handle ABAC policies on usersâ behalf. Ether-IoT, combined with ABAC and the BC, enables IoT access control management that is decentralized, fine-grained and dynamically scalable. This research gives a real-world case study to illustrate the suggested frameworkâs implementation. In the end, a simulation experiment is performed to evaluate the systemâs performance. To ensure data integrity in dispersed systems, the results show that Ether-IoT can sustain high throughput in contexts with a large number of requests.
Different from âreadâ based Web1 and âread-writeâ based Web2, âread-write-ownâ based Web3 is proposed as a typical user-centric internet to open the new generation of World Wide Web, which is expected to not allow the power to rest with a few big internet companies. Generally, Web3 is decentralized and semantic depending on user behavior, and thus the zero-trust architecture should be created initially. To hasten its arrival, a comprehensive discussion on its architecture and enabling technologies is inspired. Specifically, to access Web3, it is essential to study how to establish an identity management system. Meanwhile, for resource description and data verification, it is necessary to set up decentralized identifiers (DID), and link the data to identifiers in the form of DID document. In particular, a decentralized network operating system is an indispensable underlying technology for Web3, incorporating concepts such as decentralization and user-driven philosophy. Therefore, the corresponding technologies for the operating system such as blockchain and distributed ledger technology should be further studied and developed. Moreover, in order to reduce the consensus cost, a large-scale incentive mechanism is also the basis of long-term sustainability, which can attract and motivate distributed players to participate in the maintenance of Web3. Last but not the least, Web3 is built on a physical infrastructure relying on communication, networking, storage and computing, which is crucial to establishing an effective and secure Web3. This encourages us to study communication, networking, storage and computing in Web3, as well as the specific requirements of running Web3.
Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution to secure and decentralized platforms. However, blockchain technology has high computational requirements, latency, and low throughput, particularly for single or multi-query processing. Lightweight blockchain has emerged as a solution to overcome these problems. It addresses performance and efficiency issues and can provide convenience in the query process. This paper proposed a novel high-performance data structure for multi-query processing based on a lightweight blockchain, namely Multi-State Merkle Patricia Trie (MSMPT). MSMPT combines Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) based indexing and linked-list storage to achieve high performance. MPT has been used on the Ethereum network with a Key-Value database approach. The key field in this proposal is used as crucial user data. The value field is changed to the head of the linked list, and the following data elements will store a summary of the data based on the specified category. In this paper, a blockchain simulator was built to discover the performance of the proposed systems. This simulator will simulate creating blocks in a blockchain network using existing and modified blockchain data structures. The blocks created will be compared using the query process from the conventional and proposed systems. The experimental findings demonstrate that MSMPT outperforms existing blockchain-based data structures by requiring only about one millisecond in query processing performance and less than 500 bytes of additional storage. The MSMPT provides a promising solution for efficient and scalable data management in lightweight blockchain, particularly for multi-query processing.