In this work, we propose a stateless blockchain called CompactChain, which compacts the entire state of the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) based blockchain systems into two RSA accumulators. The first accumulator is called Transaction Output (TXO) commitment which represents the TXO set. The second one is called Spent Transaction Output (STXO) commitment which represents the STXO set. In this work, we discuss three algorithms - (i) To update the TXO and STXO commitments by the miner. The miner also provides the proofs for the correctness of the updated commitments; (ii) To prove the transaction's validity by providing a membership witness in TXO commitment and non-membership witness against STXO commitment for a coin being spent by a user; (iii) To update the witness for the coin that is not yet spent; The experimental results evaluate the performance of the CompactChain in terms of time taken by a miner to update the commitments and time taken by a validator to verify the commitments and validate the transactions. We compare the performance of CompactChain with the existing state-of-art works on stateless blockchains. CompactChain shows a reduction in commitments update complexity and transaction witness size which inturn reduces the mempool size and propagation latency without compromising the system throughput (Transactions per second (TPS)).
Exploring the integration of blockchain technology into land registry systems is the primary focus of this research, concentrating on augmenting efficiency, transparency, and security within the domain.Employing an extensive research framework, we rigorously investigate the functionality of blockchain in the context of land registries.Our analysis reveals substantial reductions in transaction times, bolstered data integrity, and increased resilience against fraudulent activities.These findings accentuate the pivotal role that blockchain can play in restructuring conventional land registry practices, instilling trust, and mitigating discrepancies.Beyond the immediate benefits, the study extrapolates into a forward-looking perspective, contemplating the widespread adoption and potential consequences of implementing blockchain technology in the field of land registration.Key aspects encompassed in this exploration include blockchain, land registry, efficiency enhancements, transparent data management, heightened security protocols, and reduced transaction times.It is important to note that while the study acknowledges the transformative potential of blockchain, it does not underestimate the challenges and considerations associated with its implementation.By shedding light on both the positive and potential pitfalls, this research seeks to contribute to a nuanced understanding of how blockchain technology can be leveraged effectively in the context of land registries.The outlined key terms encapsulate the essence of this investigation, providing a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted impact that blockchain integration can have on land registration systems.
Sukrutha L. T. Vangipuram, Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos, Chittaranjan Ray
Groundwater overuse in different domains will eventually lead to global freshwater scarcity. To meet the anticipated demands, many governments worldwide are employing innovative and traditional techniques for forecasting groundwater availability by conducting research and studies. One challenging step for this type of study is collecting groundwater data from different sites and securely sending it to the nearby edges without exposure to hacking and data tampering. In the current paper, we send raw data formats from the Internet of Things to the Distributed Data Storage (DDS) and Blockchain (BC) edges. We use a distributed and decentralized architecture to store the statistics, perform double hashing, and implement access control through smart contracts. This work demonstrates a modern and innovative approach combining DDS and BC technologies to overcome traditional data sharing, and centralized storage, while addressing blockchain limitations. We have shown performance improvements with increased data quality and integrity.
Blockchain technology (BCT) has emerged as a game-changer for many industries since its inception in 2008. Its application in the energy industry as blockchain enabled interconnected smart microgrids (BSMG) is on the rise as it can execute energy trading, automate the market operations, manage the grid, and facilitate real-time payments. With the increase in usage of BSMGs, different types of BCT will emerge, making the system heterogeneous in nature. BCT is also limited currently due to its scalability and low transaction rate. Interoperability between heterogeneous BSMGs can counteract the drawbacks and improve the functionality and, thereby, adoption of BCT in energy. This paper recognises the need for interoperability and thoroughly reviews the different methods of interoperability that currently exist (i.e., notary mechanism, relay or side chains, hashed time-locked contracts, and blockchain routers). Two relay mechanisms - Polkadot and Cosmos with Inter Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) are reviewed further to determine the usability of the protocols. Finally, a conceptual architecture of interconnection of heterogeneous BSMGs is proposed. Conceptual solution to connecting Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric to the Cosmos Hub through IBC is explored. While interoperability between heterogeneous users is addressed in Decentralized Finance (DeFi), it has not yet been addressed in energy. A conceptual solution is provided for this research gap for the first time in energy domain.
This paper recognizes the need for interoperability between heterogeneous blockchain-enabled smart microgrids and heterogeneous prosumers involved in peer-to-peer transactions. It discusses methods of interoperability between different blockchain platforms like Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, and Tendermint. It is a work-in-progress draft.
Alexander Kudzin, Kentaroh Toyoda, Satoshi Takayama, Atsushi Ishigame
(1) Background: To solve the blockchain scaling issue, sharding has been proposed; however, this approach has its own scaling issue: the cross-shard communication method. To resolve the cross-shard communication scaling issue, rollups have been proposed and are being investigated. However, they also have their own scaling limitations, in particular, the degree of compression they can apply to transactions (TXs) affecting how many TXs can be included in one block. (2) Methods: In this paper, we propose a series of novel data structures for the compiling of cross-shard TXs sent using rollups for both public and private Ethereum. Our proposal removes redundant fields, consolidates repeated fields, and compresses any remaining fields in the rollup, modifying its data structure to compress the address, gas, and value fields. (3) Results: We have shown that our proposals can accommodate more cross-shard TXs in a block by reducing the TX size by up to 65% and 97.6% compared to the state-of-the-art in public and private Ethereum, respectively. This compression in TX size results in an over 2× increase in transactions per block (TPB) for our proposals targeting both types of Ethereum. (4) Conclusions: Our proposals will mitigate the scaling issue in a sharded blockchain that utilizes rollups for cross-shard communication. In particular, it will enable such sharded Ethereum networks to be deployed for large-scale decentralized systems.
Blockchain technology has gained popularity owing to the success of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Nonetheless, the scalability challenge largely limits its applications in many real-world scenarios. Off-chain payment channel networks (PCNs) have recently emerged as a promising solution by conducting payments through off-chain channels. However, the throughput of current PCNs does not yet meet the growing demands of large-scale systems because: 1) most PCN systems only focus on maximizing the instantaneous throughput while failing to consider network dynamics in a long-term perspective; 2) transactions are re-actively routed in PCNs, in which intermediate nodes only passively forward every incoming transaction. These limitations of existing PCNs inevitably lead to channel imbalance and the failure of routing subsequent transactions. To address these challenges, we propose a novel proactive look-ahead algorithm (PLAC) that controls transaction flows from a long-term perspective and proactively prevents channel imbalance. In particular, we first conduct a measurement study on two real-world PCNs to explore their characteristics in terms of transaction distribution and topology. On that basis, we propose PLAC based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL), which directly learns the system dynamics from historical interactions of PCNs and aims at maximizing the long-term throughput. Furthermore, we develop a novel graph convolutional network-based model for PLAC, which extracts the inter-dependency between PCN nodes to consequently boost the performance. Extensive evaluations on real-world datasets show that PLAC improves state-of-the-art PCN routing schemes w.r.t the long-term throughput from 6.6% to 34.9%.
Major blockchain projects, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, enable secure global transfers of tokens between untrusted parties. The resulting global financial infrastructure however incurs latency and costs that are prohibitive for many economics applications that are local to a region or a community. Local economics relies on trust and reputation through repeated interactions within a community of participants that know each other, which has not previously been leveraged for the design of crypto-tokens. In this paper, we formulate the design of new local crypto-tokens as a research problem: we present concrete application examples, we identify double-spending detection as a weaker and sufficient alternative to double-spending prevention in local applications, and we formulate desired properties of new local crypto-tokens designs. Based on our analysis, we envision local crypto-tokens to complement existing blockchain projects by facilitating intra-community economics at much lower latency and costs, while evolutions of current blockchain projects will provide global inter-community exchanges of high-value transactions.
Web3 is progressively decentralising Internet services with the introduction of the blockchain, from social networks to online trading. Filecoin is a Web3 storage marketplace implemented on top of the Interplanetary File System that aims at decentralising storage by rewarding users who pledge storage to the system. Clients form deals with storage miners, who store deals on the Filecoin blockchain for transparency and auditability. Storage miners can also obtain extra rewards when they mine a block. In this paper, we show that although Filecoin aims at complete decentralisation, the rewarding system acts as the opposite. We download a dataset composed of 47.5M messages and expose that most of the blocks are created by the same storage miners, who are also the ones that pledge more storage. An analysis of their identity shows that they belong to cloud companies, that have a lot of extra storage resources. The effect observed is due to the fact that storage miners are able to commit all extra storage to the system, even when there are no deals in them. Additionally, this effect is further intensified by recent updates to Filecoin, which let storage miners update committed storage to deal-containing storage effortlessly.
While electric vehicles are proliferating rapidly, the number of charging piles is only 1/16 of the number of electric vehicles, showing big tension between small supply of public charging piles and intense charging demand of electric vehicles. To alleviate the tension, it is highly desired to incorporate existing idle private charging piles into a shared charging service. However, existing solutions do not well implement the system due to some non-negligible issues, like poor consensus performance or lack of verification for outputs from blockchain networks. In the article, we propose an efficient and secure trading framework built atop multiple consortium blockchains. It devises a novel node voting mechanism so as to improve consensus efficiency. Meanwhile, it employs a publicly verifiable design based on the$(t,n)$Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) threshold signature technique, so as to enable entities outside the blockchain to verify the consistency between the output results with the valid consensus. Besides these novel system-level designs, it also introduces a fair and robust trading strategy running by smart contracts on the platform. Furthermore, we implemented a proof-of-concept system and conducted extensive experiments. The results show that the overall latency across chains is reduced by about 26% with the node voting mechanism and the transactions fees are comparable to recent popular cross-chain applications.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) content delivery is up-and-coming to provide benefits comprising cost-saving and scalable peak-demand handling compared with centralized content delivery networks (CDNs), and also complementary to the popular decentralized storage networks such as Filecoin. However, reliable P2P delivery demands proper enforcement of delivery fairness, i.e., the deliverers should be rewarded in line with their in-time delivery. Unfortunately, most existing studies on delivery fairness are on the basis of non-cooperative game-theoretic assumptions that are arguably unrealistic in the ad-hoc P2P setting. We propose an expressive yet still minimalist security requirement for desired fair P2P content delivery, and give two efficient blockchain-enabled and monetary-incentivized solutions${\mathsf {FairDownload}}$and${\mathsf {FairStream}}$for P2P downloading and P2P streaming scenarios, respectively. Our designs not only ensure delivery fairness where deliverers are paid (nearly) proportional to their in-time delivery, but also guarantee exchange fairness where content consumers and content providers are also fairly treated. The fairness of each party can be assured even when other two parties collude to arbitrarily misbehave. Our protocols provide a general design of fetching content chunk from any specific position so the delivery can be resumed in the presence of unexpected interruption. Further, our systems are efficient in the sense of achieving asymptotically optimal on-chain costs and optimal delivery communication. We implement the prototype and deploy on the Ethereum Ropsten network. Extensive experiments in both LAN and WAN settings are conducted to evaluate the on-chain costs as well as the efficiency of downloading and streaming. Experimental results show the practicality and efficiency of our protocols.
S. Muthurajkumar, A. Vignesh, S. Kugan, R. Arunsha
On the Internet, web applications are served from a centralized location i.e., server, for higher maintainability. However, in the centralized architecture, if there is an occurrence of server failure or crash, the web applications cannot be serve to the end-users until the server goes live again. In addition, in the existing centralized architecture for web hosting services, integrity of the hosted websites entirely relies on the third-party applications which checks for any possible threats in the system. In order to provide data integrity within the system and to overcome the above-mentioned single point of failure, we proposed the decentralized solution for hosting web applications, which provides more data availability to the end-users and maintains the integrity of the data. The proposed model makes use of the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for storing and retrieving web applications, which provides high availability and reliability. In addition, the proposed model uses the Blockchain Technology for authenticity and confidentiality. The smart contracts are deploy on the Ethereum Block chain, which aids the service provider to manage the hosting service system. The proposed model also comparatively decreases the time taken to transfer the file over the IPFS using optimal path-finding algorithm. The proposed algorithm has a lesser time complexity when compared to the Bitswap protocol used in IPFS. The use of blockchain with IPFS cumulatively provides better authenticity via Ethereum Smart Contracts, which reduces risk and failure.
Supply chain traceability has become a prime requirement for industries to ensure product quality. Existing solutions often rely on trusted third parties to track the provenance and journey of products in a centralized manner. Blockchain provides a decentralized solution that can achieve immutability and auditability for digital records of supply chain transactions without the need of third parties. However, existing blockchain-based methods do not carefully consider the tracing process, which often needs to retrieve transaction logs related to the target product from a large number of irrelevant logs, resulting in unsatisfactory space overhead and slow query time. Moreover, current smart contracts often ignore the time spent on Ethereum calls, which consume a lot of time when fetching logs. In this paper, we propose a space-saving blockchain-based mechanism to efficiently explore the transaction logs for supply chain traceability. The mechanism introduces a new filter to identify relevant logs fast while using little space, and we propose a new token that extends the data structure in existing smart contracts, reducing the number of Ethereum calls. The experimental results show that our scheme achieves 49% improvement on space consumption and 400ms speed-up in time consumption compared with the state-of-art methods.
Guanjun Zhao, Lizhong Jia, Jie Xu, Chang Liu · 6 authors
With the advent of the era of power trading, how to balance the interests of all parties has become the key to the development of electric power information. The Multi-Microgrid model has gradually become an important part of power trading due to its reliability and efficiency, but how to balance the profit game among the Multi-Microgrid has gradually become a difficult problem for market development. In view of the distributed transaction environment of multi-micro network, we propose to use blockchain technology for multi-party transaction, use Stackelberg game model to achieve the best balance of interests of all participants, and zero-knowledge proof combined with secret sharing scheme is used to achieve effective access control in transactions. We simulate and test the performance indexes of the scheme, and the results show that our scheme is feasible.
K. Vanitha, Subhashish Goswami, TNVRSwamy, K. Chitra Chellam · 6 authors
Blockchain Technology has acquired notoriety in both scholar and industry due to its decentralized, versatile, security and irrefutable characteristics. The blockchain is a disseminated data set that holds record of exchanges that are conveyed among members in its most essential structure. Manufactured exchanges can't pass aggregate certification since every exchange requires the understanding of various individuals. A record can never be changed or erased after it has been made and recognized by the blockchain. After the Internet, blockchain innovation is presently viewed as the main development. The previous could tackle the trust issue utilizing shared systems administration and public-key cryptography assuming the last option interfaces individuals to all the more likely comprehend online business processes. The objective of this paper is to take a gander at the critical instances of blockchain innovation's comprehensive effect and see it as an inseparable part of our daily existences.
With their transparency and smart contract features, blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) can pave the way toward a decentralized marketplace for multi-administrative domains. An open and decentralized marketplace can aid 6G use cases such as inter-provider agreements, where multi-administrative domains can lease or buy resources to meet the needs of consumers. These agreements between multi-administrative domains can be performed using blockchain, increasing trust and transparency for Service Level Agreement (SLA) management, penalty, or billing. In this demonstration, we present the use of the Ethereum smart contract for a use case where the consumer can buy resources from a provider. However, Ethereum suffers from high transaction costs and latency; therefore, we aim to leverage IOTA Tangle to reduce the cost of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and minimize the latency. In particular, we show the process of domains registered on an Ethereum blockchain network, consumers selecting a service from the list of available services to buy, and finally, transferring the agreed amount after the services are delivered.
In the past, the term “Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)” was used to refer to a loosely organized network of autonomous entities, such as a corporation, a cooperative, or a non-profit party. Since Ethereum pioneered smart contracts in the blockchain, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) can connect public nodes scattered throughout the network into a virtual machine to execute Turing-complete programs. The EVM can also run other applications such as decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which is a new type of blcokchain-based organization that uses smart contracts to perform tasks on a distributed scale. The smart contracts have organizational rules and operational logic embedded and automatically execute organizational decisions and proposals making it highly decentralized and more democratic. The DAOs are organizations that are not subject to legal, physical, or economic constraints, as well as the ability to operate outside the control of a single central authority or a single governing body. Because DAO is formed by many smart contract that operate together, which makes it highly decentralized and has a strong democratic system. This paper discusses the pros and cons of DAO, and the potential of DAO in community development, especially in non-profit organizations. It is hope to provide an overall picture of DAO, and the roadmap for future development of DAO on the right track.
In general, the Internet of Things (IoT) relies on centralized servers due to limited computing power and storage capacity. These server-based architectures have vulnerabilities such as DDoS attacks, single-point errors, and data forgery, and cannot guarantee stability and reliability. Blockchain technology can guarantee reliability and stability with a P2P network-based consensus algorithm and distributed ledger technology. However, it requires the high storage capacity of the existing blockchain and the computational power of the consensus algorithm. Therefore, blockchain nodes for IoT data management are maintained through an external cloud, an edge node. As a result, the vulnerability of the existing centralized structure cannot be guaranteed, and reliability cannot be guaranteed in the process of storing IoT data on the blockchain. In this paper, we propose a multi-level blockchain structure and consensus algorithm to solve the vulnerability. A multi-level blockchain operates on IoT devices, and there is an IoT chain layer that stores sensor data to ensure reliability. In addition, there is a hyperledger fabric-based monitoring chain layer that operates the access control for the metadata and data of the IoT chain to lighten the weight. We propose an export consensus method between the two blockchains, the Schnorr signature method, and a random-based lightweight consensus algorithm within the IoT-Chain. Experiments to measure the blockchain size, propagation time, consensus delay time, and transactions per second (TPS) were conducted using IoT. The blockchain did not exceed a certain size, and the delay time was reduced by 96% to 99% on average compared to the existing consensus algorithm. In the throughput tests, the maximum was 1701 TPS and the minimum was 1024 TPS.
IOTA Tangle offers a promising approach for distributed ledger technology with the capability to compete with the traditional blockchain. To enable microtransactions the Internet of things (IoT) environment, IOTA employs a direct acrylic graph that ensures the integrity and immutability of the transactions. However, IoT data exhibit time sensitivity, wherein the value is lost after a period. Storing these temporary data for immutable storage would not be affordable in the distributed ledger. This study proposes a novel approach—referred to as D-Tangle—that enables data deletions in the Tangle architecture. To achieve this goal, D-Tangle divides transactions into three categories based on their expiration features and employs the climb-up writing technique. Extensive evaluations prove that D-Tangle enables instant deletions in finite lifetime data. Moreover, immutability and deletion upon request are guaranteed for unknown lifetime data.
The basic properties of blockchain, such as decentralization, security, and immutability, show promising potential for IoT applications. The main feature-decentralization of blockchain technology-depends on the consensus. However, consensus algorithms are mostly designed to work in extensive computational and communication environments for network security and immutability, which is not desirable for resource-restricted IoT applications. Many solutions are proposed to address this issue with modified consensus algorithms based on the legacy consensus, such as the PoW, PoS, and BFT, and new non-linear data structures, such as DAG. A systematic classification and analysis of various techniques in the field will be beneficial for both researchers and industrial practitioners. Most existing relevant surveys provide classifications intuitively based on the domain knowledge, which are infeasible to reveal the intrinsic and complicated relationships among the relevant basic concepts and techniques. In this paper, a powerful tool of systematic knowledge classification and explanation is introduced to structure the survey on blockchain consensus algorithms for resource-constrained IoT systems. More specifically, an ontology was developed for a consensus algorithm apropos of IoT adaptability. The developed ontology is subdivided into two parts-CONB and CONIoT-representing the classification of generic consensus algorithms and the ones that are particularly proposed for IoT, respectively. Guided by this ontology, an in depth discussion and analysis are provided on the major consensus algorithms and their IoT compliance based on design and implementation targets. Open research challenges and future research directions are provided.
Weiyi Wang, Jin Chen, Yutao Jiao, Jiawen Kang · 6 authors
Blockchain is considered the critical backbone technology for secure and trusted Internet of Things (IoT) in the future 6G network. However, deploying a blockchain system in a complex wireless IoT network is challenging due to the limited resources, complex wireless environment, and the property of self-interested IoT devices. The existing incentive mechanism of blockchain is not compatible with the wireless IoT network. In this article, to incentivize IoT devices to join the construction of the wireless blockchain network, we propose a multidimensional contract to optimize the blockchain utility while addressing the issues of adverse selection and moral hazard. Specifically, the proposed contract considers the IoT device’s hash power and communication cost and especially explores the connectivity of devices from the perspective of complex network theory. We investigate the energy consumption and the block confirmation probability of the wireless blockchain network via simulations under varied network sizes and average link probability. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed contract mechanism is feasible, achieves 35% more utility than existing approaches, and increases utility by four times compared with the original PoW-based incentive mechanism.
Sergio Demian Lerner, Federico Jinich, Diego Masini, Shreemoy Mishra
Uncontrolled growth of blockchain state can adversely affect client performance, decentralization and security. Previous attempts to introduce duration-based state storage pricing or 'storage rent' in Ethereum have stalled, partly because of complexity. We present a new approach with finer granularity to "spread" rent payments across peers. Our proposal shifts the burden of state rent from accounts to transaction senders in a quasi-random manner. This proposal offers a simple path for initial adoption on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible chains, and serve as a foundation to address remaining challenges.
Many people donate money to fund organizations, but very rarely do those donors have information about where those donations go. Donation platforms are both non-transparent and also leave a large portion of potential donors unnoticed: gamers [1]. This paper explores the concept of utilizing blockchain technology and its existence as a web3 token-based platform in order to provide transparency for donation routes, showing donors and other companies exactly where donations are coming from and where that money is going. Our application utilizes HTTP requests in order to greatly increase compatibility, and also uses multiple private key encryptions in order to ensure that any user data or information and monetary transactions are kept secure and private [2].
DNS has often been criticized for inherent design flaws, which make the system vulnerable to attack. Further, domain names are not fully controlled by users, meaning that they can easily be taken down by authorities and registrars. Due to this, there have been efforts to build a decentralized name service that gives greater control to domain owners. The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a major example. Yet, no existing work has systematically studied this emerging system, particularly regarding security and misbehavior. To address this gap, we present the first large-scale measurement study of ENS. Our findings suggest that ENS has shown growth during its four years' evolution. We identify several security issues, including traditional name system problems, as well as new issues introduced by the unique properties of ENS. We find that attackers are abusing the system with thousands of squatting ENS names, a number of scam blockchain addresses and indexing of malicious websites. We further develop a new record persistence attack, to find that 22,716 .eth names (3.7% of all names) are vulnerable to name hijacking. Our exploration suggests that our community should invest more effort into the detection and mitigation of issues in decentralized name services.