Yang Yang, Min Lin, Yangfei Lin, Chen Zhang · 5 authors
In the area of agriculture and livestock management, the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a groundbreaking strategy to enhance operational efficiency and advance intelligent process management. However, this sector faces significant challenges, including ambiguity in product origins and limited regulatory oversight of IoT devices. This paper explores the innovative integration of blockchain technology within the agricultural and livestock IoT, highlighting how this convergence significantly enhances operational security and transparency. We provide an in-depth review of the latest applications and advancements of blockchain in these domains, offering a comprehensive analysis of the current state of technology and its implications. Furthermore, this paper discusses the potential future development trajectories in agricultural and livestock IoT, emphasizing blockchain’s role in addressing current challenges and shaping future innovations. The findings suggest that blockchain technology not only improves data security and trustworthiness but also opens new avenues for efficient and transparent management in agriculture and animal husbandry.
The growth of IoT networks necessitates robust and adaptive trust management (TM) systems to ensure secure and reliable interactions between devices. This paper introduces a novel TM framework for IoT devices, leveraging a statistical Markov chain model to calculate dynamic trust scores. Our approach integrates a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) methodology to rank devices based on trustworthiness, providing a resource-efficient alternative to machine learning (ML)-based models. In contrast to ML approaches, which often require extensive data and are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, our statistical model provides a resilient and computationally efficient solution suitable for environments with limited data availability. The system architecture combines a Trust Management Server (TMS), an Intrusion Detection System (IDS), and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to secure data integrity and enable real-time trust assessment. Performance evaluations confirm the model’s capacity to manage diverse security threats within IoT ecosystems, while future work will focus on enhancing the system’s adaptability to novel threats, such as zero-day attacks, and exploring alternative decision-making models to improve resilience under uncertainty. This TM approach advances IoT network security by offering a scalable, lightweight solution adaptable to varied IoT environments.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have witnessed significant growth in various domains, such as agriculture, disaster management, and remote health management systems. However, the use of UAVs necessitates secure and efficient solutions that uphold privacy during task distribution. To address this challenge, this article introduces a novel architecture for privacy-aware task distribution in UAV communication systems. Our approach leverages the benefits of blockchain and smart token-based identification within the proposed architecture, ensuring decentralized, transparent, and tamper-proof operations. By adopting a crowdsourced task distribution model, our approach further optimizes task assignment among UAVs while prioritizing data privacy, user access control, and scalability. The architecture is designed to enhance fault tolerance, enabling seamless operation under dynamic and unpredictable conditions. We present a comprehensive implementation details of a proof-of-concept prototype of our proposed architecture, detailing its design and functionality. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility, efficiency, and adaptability of our approach in diverse real-world scenarios, highlighting its potential for broader adoption across UAV applications.
ABSTRACT The rapid advancement of financial technology (FinTech) has led to the integration of advanced technologies like data science, blockchain, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. However, trust evaluation remains a critical challenge in dynamic landscape. Existing trust evaluation methods often neglect key aspects of timeliness, reliability, and non‐invasiveness, leading to imprecise trust assessments and insufficient detection of malicious user behavior. This paper introduces a robust four‐layer architectural framework with the blockchain layer, edge computing service layer, cloud computing service layer, and terminal user application layer leveraging blockchain technology for authentication and trust evaluation. Blockchain technology transforms FinTech data into linked data, ensuring data security and decentralization during information transfers. A novel hybrid consensus protocol combining Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) and Proof of Stake (PoS) is introduced to enhance the efficiency and security of the blockchain. Extensive simulation experiments have demonstrated significant improvements in data security, reliability, and accuracy of trust assessments compared to existing methods. This paper presents a comprehensive solution for enhancing trust evaluation in FinTech, emphasizing timeliness, reliability, and non‐invasiveness of assessments.
The food and agriculture sector is a cornerstone of critical infrastructure (CI), underpinning global food security, public health, and economic stability. However, the increasing digitalization and connectivity of operational technologies (OTs) in this sector expose it to significant cybersecurity risks. Blockchain technology (BT) has emerged as a transformative solution for addressing these challenges by enhancing network security, traceability, and system resilience. This study presents a comprehensive review of BT applications in OT security for food and agriculture CI, employing bibliometric and content analysis methods. A total of 124 relevant articles were identified from six databases, including the Web of Science Core Collection and MEDLINE®. Bibliometric analysis was conducted across five dimensions: publication year, literature type, journal distribution, country contributions, and keyword trends. The findings are meticulously organized through tables, charts, and graphs. The year 2018 marked a surge in research within this domain, with the IEEE Internet of Things Journal and IEEE ACESS emerging as the most prolific journals, each boasting nine publications. The United States, China, and India are at the forefront in terms of journal citation counts. Our analysis determined that a reference count of 37 serves as an appropriate threshold. Otoum Safa stands out as the author with the highest number of published articles, totaling four. Keywords such as “blockchain”, “internet of things”, “smart contract”, “security”, and “critical infrastructure” appear with significant frequency. The statistics, trends, and insights gleaned from this bibliometric analysis can guide researchers in the OTCI field to forge a coherent and logical research trajectory. Content analysis further identified six key research areas within this domain: identity authentication and data verification, secure access control, attack detection and perception, data security and protection, data backup and recovery, and attack assessment and attribution. Based on these insights, a general framework is proposed to guide future research and practical applications of BT in securing OT within food and agriculture CI. This study systematically analyzes the current research landscape, challenges, and opportunities for BT in securing the OT critical to food and agriculture CI. By bridging the gap between blockchain innovations and the operational needs of the food and agriculture sector, this work contributes to advancing strategic implementation and improving the security of CI systems.
The integration of Social Media (SM) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is gradually transforming the activities of SM users into valuable data streams that can be analyzed using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. Federated Learning (FL) has been widely employed to predict user and anomaly behaviors from distributed systems. However, FL encounters substantial security challenges, particularly within the context of SM-integrated IoT systems, known as SM 3.0 systems. These challenges encompass issues of accountability and vulnerabilities that render them susceptible to various cyberattacks, including single-point-of-failure, free-riding, model inversion, and poisoning attacks. We propose a Blockchain-enabled FL with Smart Contracts (SC) (BFL-SC) framework. To coordinate the learning process, track participants’ contributions and reward the participants transparently, an SC-based FL is constructed as an incentive mechanism that combats free-riding attacks and enables automated and auditable rewarding of the participants. Also, to conceal the original data points and mitigate the impact of model inversion attacks, a Differentially Privacy-based Perturbation (DPP) mechanism is proposed. To address potential poisoning attacks, a thorough verification protocol is suggested. The experimental results obtained from two datasets, namely SM 3.0 and Human Activity Recognition (HAR), show that the BFL-SC framework can achieve high utility with a precision of 96.95% over the SM 3.0 dataset and 90.14% over the HAR dataset while adhering to privacy and efficiency standards, compared with compelling techniques.
T Manoj, Krishnamoorthi Makkithaya, V G Narendra, Vijaya Murari T
Agricultural insurance is one of the formal and reliable risk management instruments to cope with agrarian risks. Presently, agricultural insurance products rely heavily on centralized systems that lack transparency and traceability, leading to suboptimal risk assessment and delays in payouts. To address these concerns the fintech industry has started to embrace a popular decentralized technology called blockchain. However, blockchain operates as a deterministic and synchronized state system, which means it cannot directly access real-world data for decentralized applications. A mechanism called oracle is required for the trusted access of agricultural risk factor data to smart contracts from external sources such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, web services and databases. Hence, the present study proposes a blockchain-based AgriInsureDON framework with a privacy-preserving decentralized oracle for risk factor data access from trusted IoT devices for agricultural insurance. Initially, a method for computing the direct reputation score of IoT devices based on behavioral and data reputation is illustrated. Next, a privacy preserved decentralized oracle mechanism is designed and implemented using a masked secret sharing and secure aggregation scheme. Later, we demonstrate the working of weather-indexed insurance contracts based on decentralized oracle. Finally, a performance analysis of smart contract transactions w.r.t average latency, throughput, average CPU utilization and total memory usage is conducted on Ganache and Sepolia test networks. The evaluation results of privacy-protected decentralized oracle and an indexed insurance contract within AgriInsureDON framework confirms that transactions are efficient and scalable to meet the requirements of expedited claim settlement.
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices across multiple domains has heralded an era of unprecedented connectivity and data exchange. Fog computing enhances edge-network processing, enabling real-time data analysis and prompt responses. However, ensuring secure and trustworthy communication among these devices remains a paramount concern. In fog-enabled IoT environments, securing communication among users, IoT devices, gateways, and fog nodes is of paramount importance to prevent unauthorized access and ensure data integrity and confidentiality. Additionally, users can control and deliver instructions to IoT devices remotely. Hence, we propose a blockchain-assisted authentication protocol tailored specifically for fog-enabled IoT environments to verify the user’s identity prior to accessing the IoT devices. The proposed protocol leverages cutting-edge crypto primitives like elliptic curve cryptography, hash functions, and blockchain to establish secure communication between users and IoT devices. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed scheme through formal (Scyther) and informal analysis, demonstrating its efficacy in mitigating well-known attacks. On the other hand, the proposed protocol exhibits robustness against relevant protocols in terms of communication and computational aspects, as well as reliability for real-world fog-enabled IoT applications.
ABSTRACT Healthcare systems are highly sensitive to cyberattacks as these systems possess most of the sensitive information compared to other systems relying on internet facilities. Due to the stronger security merits and efficiency of blockchain, it is integrated with the healthcare sector to ensure reliable data transfer. However, to improve the reliability and efficiency of the integrated system, a permissioned blockchain‐based security framework combining several techniques is proposed. To enable storing and validating blocks containing medical data on the blockchain, the miner is administered using the delegated proof of stake (DPoS) consensus protocol. This protocol is efficient in choosing the miner from the list of participants. Then, the blocks are created using recursive indexing with an Even–Rodeh (RI‐ER) coding hashing scheme. This algorithm is an indexing scheme that is much more efficient than the normal hashing algorithms. The validation process is carried out by the miner using the hash values provided to the users. By using the kidney disease dataset from Kaggle, the performance of the proposed method is evaluated. The performance analysis proved the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to other schemes.
Blockchain that is a decentralized data management platform is attracting much attention recently. Recent advancement of blockchain technology increases the demand and supply of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that enable management of ownership concepts for various digital contents. Especially in the metaverse, NFT contents such as images and videos are actively used to facilitate communication within the virtual space. However, systems and technologies that link NFT content in the metaverse with metaverse platforms and generate metadata (e.g., popularity of each content) from data created through user's activities in the metaverse (e.g., user attention, conversation audio) are not realized. Therefore, our research aims to provide highly reliable data regarding the popularity and evaluation function of NFT content. To achieve the objective, we focus on extending existing oracle mechanisms and developing a system that integrates NFT content and various data generated on the metaverse platforms. The oracle technology to handle data provision and verification processes allows users within the metaverse to mutually verify reliability of the data generated through interactions with NFT content. Additionally, the proposed platform enables the use of common devices (e.g., smartphones) as wallets for the blockchain. These common devices can be used to sign transactions through short-range wireless communication when sending data to the blockchain through devices constituting the metaverse platform. This approach ensures user's involvement in data transmission procedure while simultaneously enabling mutual verification of the transmitted data through the blockchain to achieve both wallet security and data reliability.
An embedded software development kit (SDK) is an essential component in an IoT ecosystem. The existing embedded SDKs, while facilitating developers to build centralized, cloud-native IoT applications, are not able to meet the increasing requirements of connecting smart devices to Web3, in particular decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs). To close this gap, we present a universal, open-source embedded SDK called ioConnect in this paper. Built upon the emerging technologies such as the platform security architecture (PSA) and self-sovereign identity (SSI), ioConnect is the first embedded SD K that allows developers to connect smart devices to a decentralized network and create rich and trustworthy device-to-device and device-to-person relationships. ioConnect is designed with a layered architecture coupled with a flexible configuration utility and is able to support a wide range of smart devices with different processing capabilities and memory footprints. Our extensive performance evaluations on two resource-constrained smart devices demonstrate viability and effectiveness of ioConnect when used in practice.
Internal auditing demands innovative and secure solutions in today's business environment, with increasing competitive pressure and frequent occurrences of risky and illegal behaviours. Blockchain along with secure databases like encryption improves internal audit security through immutability and transparency. Hence integrating blockchain with homomorphic encryption and multi-factor authentication improves privacy and mitigates computational overhead. Recently, blockchain applications for internal audits in the enterprise sector are still emerging. Thus, blockchain technology in auditing provides the benefits of enhanced transparency and immutability in data processing, which can establish new solutions for internal auditing but still lacks encryption techniques. The research proposed a framework called "BlockCryptoAudit" to enhance internal audit processes through cryptographic encryption methods and blockchain technology, ensuring secure and transparent audit operations. The proposed approach integrates an additive homomorphic Paillier encryption scheme with blockchain to create a safe and tamper-resident audit trail. Utilizing homomorphic Paillier encryption, BlockCryptoAudit ensures that computations may be performed on encrypted audit data while safeguarding data privacy. The applied blockchain hyperledger component guarantees the immutability and transparency of encrypted audit records, resulting in a decentralized and tamper-resistant record. By limiting data accessibility to authorized individuals based on specified responsibilities, role-based access restrictions handled using smart contracts further strengthen security. The study protects audit data's security and confidentiality by encrypting it and putting it on a blockchain. The study compares the proposed BlockCryptoAudit with models like B-OAP, BSE-DF, and EG-FLB regarding risk mitigation, audit quality, security overhead, and audit trail effectiveness. With little security overhead, BlockCryptoAudit beats out B-OAP, BSE-DF, and EG-FLB in terms of risk mitigation (98%) and audit quality (99%). It is an effective way to improve internal audit processes and guarantee data integrity due to its high performance.
As 6G networks introduce increasingly diverse and complex applications, network slicing is a key enabling technology for partitioning network resources to meet these dynamic demands. However, efficiently managing and allocating these finite resources has become vital. This necessity drives the adoption of an open marketplace model. To address the business and technical complexities associated with such open marketplaces, this paper presents the demonstration of a non-fungible token (NFT)-enabled resource trading marketplace tailored for 6G network slicing. The proposed solution is implemented on an Ethereum-based blockchain system to assess its viability.
Mohammad A. Altahat, Tariq Daradkeh, Anjali Agarwal
Abstract Efficiently managing virtual resources in the cloud is crucial for successful recourse utilization. Scheduling is a vital technique used to manage Virtual Machines (VMs), enabling placement and migration between hosts located in the same or different data centers. Effective scheduling not only ensures better server consolidation but also enhances hardware utilization and reduces power consumption in data centers. However, scheduling VMs across a Wide Area Network (WAN) poses considerable challenges due to connectivity issues, slower communication speeds, and concerns around data integrity and confidentiality. To enable informed scheduling decisions, it is critical to facilitate the exchange of real-time and accurate status information between cloud data centers, ensuring optimal resource allocation and minimizing latency. To address this, we propose a novel distributed cloud management solution that utilizes blockchain technology to facilitate efficient sharing of VM characteristics across multiple data centers. BigchainDB platform has been used as a blockchain-based ledger database to effectively share information required for VM scheduling and migration across different data centers. The proposed framework has been validated and compared with a Virtual Private Network (VPN)-based centralized management solution. The proposed model utilizing blockchain-based solution achieves 41.79% to 49.85% reduction in number of communication messages and 2% to 12% decrease in total communication delay comparing to the centralized model.
Abstract In 2021, 12 fraudulent cases were identified in the Chinese carbon market. As a critical component of this emerging market, China’s carbon-credit scheme in the automotive sector faces several shortcomings, including informational opacity and operational inefficiency, which affect market functionality and fairness. This study develops an information system that integrates blockchain technology and the Internet of Things to manage a carbon-credit scheme. Specifically, we attached carbon credits to each vehicle with radio frequency identification electronic tags and a chained data structure to ensure the traceability and reliability of information flow. We use the distributed ledger technology and establish five distinct types of smart contracts for decentralized operations to ensure that all procedures of the Chinese carbon-credit scheme are standardized and under public scrutiny. The proposed infrastructure has the potential to significantly enhance the transparency and efficiency of China’s carbon-credit schemes.
Yidan Lai, Yang Liu, Haoxiang Luo, Gang Sun · 8 authors
Blockchain, a groundbreaking technology known for its distributed ledger system, records digital transactions and information in a decentralized manner. Broadcast protocols, fundamental components of computer networks, play a crucial role in disseminating information effectively. Blockchain networks often exhibit lower throughput rates compared to centralized payment systems due to the intricate node verification process during data propagation. Improving blockchain performance requires mitigating transaction and block propagation delays within network dissemination processes. This study delves into the development and significance of blockchain broadcast protocols, exploring their applications within blockchain networks. We introduce various broadcast protocols designed to optimize performance metrics such as energy efficiency, fault tolerance, and consistency. A comprehensive analysis, including detailed comparisons through tables, sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of these protocols. Lastly, we address potential future challenges and directions for the evolution of broadcast protocols in the blockchain ecosystem.
Nikos Kostopoulos, Yannis C. Stamatiou, Constantinos Halkiopoulos, Hera Antonopoulou
Background: Blockchain technology can transform military operations, increasing security and transparency and gaining efficiency. It addresses many problems related to data security, privacy, communication, and supply chain management. The most researched aspects are its integration with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the IoT, application in uncrewed aerial vehicles, and secure communications. Methods: A systematic review of 43 peer-reviewed articles was performed to discover the applications of blockchain in defense. Key areas analyzed include the role of blockchain in securing communications, fostering transparency, promoting real-time data sharing, and using smart contracts for maintenance management. Challenges were assessed, including scalability, interoperability, and integration with the legacy system, alongside possible solutions, such as sharding and optimized consensus mechanisms. Results: In the case of blockchain, great potential benefits were shown in enhancing military operations, including secure communication, immutable record keeping, and real-time integration of data with the IoT and AI. Smart contracts optimized resource allocation and reduced maintenance procedures. However, challenges remain, such as scalability, interoperability, and high energy requirements. Proposed solutions, like sharding and hybrid architecture, show promise to address these issues. Conclusions: Blockchain is set to revolutionize the efficiency and security of the military. Its potential is enormous, but it must overcome scalability, interoperability, and integration issues. Further research and strategic adoption will thus allow blockchain to become one of the cornerstones of future military operations.
B Tejaswini, R Induja, M Navyashree, Amreen Kowsar
This paper explores the convergence of block chain technology with distributed NoSQL databases to address the growing demand for secure and scalable decentralized systems. Block chain ensures tamper- resistant and auditable data records, while NoSQL databases offer high- speed data operation for large- scale operations. By integrating these technologies, the proposed system leverages block chain’s agreement- driven synchronization and NoSQL’s effective storage capabilities to produce a flexible frame. The architecture addresses common challenges analogous as data redundancy, quiescence, and performance backups through innovative optimizations. Practical use cases in disciplines analogous as healthcare, finance, and IoT emphasize the eventuality of this approach. also, the paper outlines a crossbred model featuring cryptographic safeguards and off- chain data operation strategies, paving the way for future advancements in decentralized data systems.
The rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its widespread applications in fog computing environments have underscored the urgent need for secure, scalable, and energy-efficient data exchange mechanisms. This study introduces a hybrid consensus architecture designed to address these challenges by combining Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) and Whale Optimization Techniques (WOT). The primary objective of this model is to optimize resource allocation, enhance security, and minimize energy consumption while ensuring scalable and efficient data sharing within fog-based IoT networks. The proposed methodology utilizes DPoS to limit node validation to a select group of trusted delegates, reducing computational overhead and improving scalability by streamlining the consensus process. Meanwhile, WOT enhances decision-making by mimicking the bubble-net feeding behavior of humpback whales, allowing for dynamic and efficient optimization of resource allocation. The integration of these two techniques significantly boosts system performance. Empirical results demonstrate that the hybrid model achieves a 95% increase in security and a 94% improvement in energy efficiency compared to conventional IoT consensus methods. Additionally, the model optimizes processing times, increases data throughput, and minimizes latency, facilitating real-time, low-latency communication that is essential for IoT applications. This combination of DPoS and WOT balances resource utilization and effectively addresses the trade-offs between security, energy efficiency, and scalability. Consequently, the hybrid DPoS-WOT consensus model emerges as a robust and practical solution for secure, efficient, and scalable IoT data sharing in fog computing environments.
A digital twin is a virtual software system that simulates the workings of an actual object or process. The majority of digital twin information is centralized and does not adequately support data management security, integrity maintenance, or trustworthiness and precision of timeconsuming processes. It is imperative that blockchain be integrated with digital twins to address these restrictions. With blockchains, digital twin data can be shared across secured connection systems with confidence in terms of both accuracy and transmission speed. Blocks of data that track network transactions make up blockchains. These blockchains are maintained on distributed ledgers and are incorporated into the chain as new blocks. Several open-source frameworks of Blockchain such as Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, Corda, Quorum, Solidity, Geth, Remix, Mist, Solium, Truffle, Parity, DApp Board, Embark, MyEtherWallet, etc., were explored. Digital Twin open-source tools such as Ansys Digital Twin 92 Builder, Ditto, Kafka, AWS Digital Twin, AWS IoT TwinMaker, Twinbase, etc., were discussed. Also, various open-source platforms such as Dovetail, EtherTwin, SmartTwin, Remix, Solidity, TIBCO Cloud™ Live Apps, Watson IoT Platform, etc., for building Blockchain-based Digital Twin frameworks were discussed. The chapter discusses the conceptual framework of blockchain-based digital twin and its significance in the industry sector. It explores the various open-source platforms for implementing blockchain-based digital twins. This chapter will be useful for researchers, academicians, and industry practitioners to understand the amalgamation of blockchain-based digital twins.