Blockchain Papers

Nicola Elia, Francesco Barchi, Emanuele Parisi, Livio Pompianu · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Mohammad Kamrul Hasan, Ali Alkhalifah, Shayla Islam, Nissrein Babiker Mohammed Babiker · 7 authors

The smart grid idea was implemented as a modern interpretation of the traditional power grid to find out the most efficient way to combine renewable energy and storage technologies. Throughout this way, big data and the Internet always provide a revolutionary solution for ensuring that electrical energy linked intelligent grid, also known as the energy Internet. The blockchain has some significant features, making it an applicable technology for smart grid standards to solve the security issues and trust challenges. This study will present a rigorous review of blockchain implementations with the cyber security perception and energy data protections in smart grids. As a result, we describe the major security issues of smart grid scenarios that big data and blockchain can solve. Then, we identify a variety of recent blockchain‐based research works published in various literature and discuss security concerns on smart grid systems. We also discuss numerous similar practical designs, experiments, and items that have recently been developed. Finally, we go through some of the most important research problems and possible directions for using blockchain to address smart grid security concerns.

Wilson S. Melo, Lucas S. Dos Santos, Lucila M. S. Bento, Paulo R. Nascimento · 6 authors

The monitoring and protection of critical infrastructures, especially the ones involving physical assets (e.g., dams, nuclear energy facilities, governmental buildings), constitute a challenging problem. The failure and collapse of these infrastructures can cause untold consequences. Recent works have proposed blockchains as a tool to improve monitoring systems in different critical infrastructures. However, most previous works lack on presenting a more in-depth discussion about how to implement these solutions. In this paper, we develop a practical approach. We propose a comprehensive framework that describes how to implement a blockchain-based system to monitor and protect critical infrastructures. We implement our framework in two distinct blockchain platforms: Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. We compare both implementations and discuss their differences in terms of performance, easiness of development, security, privacy, complexity, and costs. We believe that our results can be valuable for professionals interested in applying blockchain-based solutions to protect critical infrastructures.

Francesco Buccafurri, Gianluca Lax, Lorenzo Musarella, Antonia Russo

The need for a flexible, dynamic, and decentralized energy market has rapidly grown in recent years. As a matter of fact, Industry 4.0 and Smart Grids are pursuing a path of automation of operations to insure all the steps among consumers and producers are getting closer. This leads towards solutions that exploit the paradigm of public blockchain, which represents the best platform to design flat and liquid markets for which providing trust and accountability to mutual interactions becomes crucial. On the other hand, one of the risks arising in this situation is that personal information is exposed to the network, with intolerable threats to privacy. In this paper, we propose a solution for energy trading, based on the blockchain Ethereum and Smart Contracts.The solution aims to be a concrete proposal to satisfy the needs of energy trading in smart grids, including the important feature that no information about the identity of the peers of the network is disclosed in advance.

Behkish Nassirzadeh, Huaiying Sun, Sebastian Bănescu, Vijay Ganesh

In recent years we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the adoption and application of smart contracts in a variety of contexts such as decentralized finance, supply chain management, and identity management. However, a critical stumbling block to the further adoption of smart contracts is their security. A particularly widespread class of security vulnerabilities that afflicts Ethereum smart contracts is the gas limit denial of service(DoS) on a contract via unbounded operations. These vulnerabilities result in a failed transaction with an out-of-gas error and are often present in contracts containing loops whose bounds are affected by end-user input. Note that such vulnerabilities differ from gas limit DoS on the network via block stuffing. Therefore, we present Gas Gauge, a tool aimed at detecting Out-of-Gas DoS vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts. Gas Gauge consists of three major components: the Detection, Identification, and Correction Phases. The Detection Phase consists of an accurate static analysis approach that finds and summarizes all the loops in a smart contract. The Identification Phase uses a white-box fuzzing approach to generate a set of inputs that causes the contract to run out of gas. The Correction Phase uses static analysis and run-time verification to predict the maximum loop bounds consistent with allowable gas usage and suggest appropriate repairs to the user of the tool. Each part of the tool can be used separately for different purposes or all together to detect, identify and help repair the contracts vulnerable to Out-of-Gas DoS vulnerabilities. Gas Gauge was tested on 1,000 real-world solidity smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum Mainnet. The results were compared to seven state-of-the-art static and symbolic tools, and it was empirically demonstrated that Gas Gauge is far more effective than competing state-of-the-art tools.

Yohannes T. Aklilu, Jianguo Ding

Power generation, distribution, transmission, and consumption face ongoing challenges such as smart grid management, control, and operation, resulting from high energy demand, the diversity of energy sources, and environmental or regulatory issues. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain-based solutions for smart grid management, control, and operations. We systematically summarize existing work on the use and implementation of blockchain technology in various smart grid domains. The paper compares related reviews and highlights the challenges in the management, control, and operation for a blockchain-based smart grid as well as future research directions in the five categories: collaboration among stakeholders; data analysis and data management; control of grid imbalances; decentralization of grid management and operations; and security and privacy. All these aspects have not been covered in previous reviews.

Jin Wang, Jiahao Chen, Yongjun Ren, Pradip Kumar Sharma · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Davide Strepparava, Lorenzo Nespoli, Evgenia Kapassa, Marios Touloupou · 6 authors

The adoption of blockchain technology is emerging as a promising approach in managing decentralized local energy markets (LEM). In this study we analyze the issues related to the deployment of a blockchain-based LEM on devices as much as possible similar to modern smart meters. The presented LEM is based on an automated market-making mechanism. Buying and selling prices are dynamically determined by the amount of energy consumed and produced within a local energy community. We implemented the market in a blockchain application based on the Cosmos framework, which was deployed on embedded devices in a test pilot consisting of 18 residential buildings in Southern Switzerland. The sustainability of the application was investigated by analyzing the resources required by the blockchain to operate. The obtained results show how the developed application uses a small part of the resources of the embedded devices, approximately 100 MB for the memory usage and about 4% as regards the CPU. Thus, while the application deployment on smart meters is still troublesome, especially for memory requirements, the deployment at the data concentrator level is reasonable and feasible. Finally, we propose possible improvements and extensions that can be implemented in future versions of the presented solution.

Pythagoras Petratos, Alessio Faccia

The energy sector is facing increasing risks, mainly concerning fraudulent activities and cyberattacks. This paradigm shift in risks would require innovative solutions. This paper proposes an innovative architecture based on Distributed Ledger Technologies (Blockchain) and Triple Entry Accounting (X-Accounting). The proposed architecture focusing on new applications of payment and billing would improve accountability and compliance as well as security and reliability. Future research can extend this architecture to other energy technologies and systems like EMS/SCADA and associated applications.

Nafise Bayrami Fard, Mehdi Salay Naderi, Gevork B. Gharehpetian

Blockchain is an emerging technology that due to its unique features, such as decentralization, elimination of intermediaries, immutability and increased security, accuracy and transparency has been highly regarded in various industries, including the smart grid. Creating an electricity market for energy exchanges between producers and consumers in a microgrid is important because of the increasing tendency to use renewable energy such as solar cells. This paper presents two pricing mechanisms based on the Mid-Market Rate and the auction to find the optimal price of energy exchanges, which increases the profit from sales for producers and reduces the cost of purchase for consumers. This paper also proposes three smart contracts for peer-to-peer energy trading which are responsible for executing energy exchanges and enabling the recording of transaction information on the Ethereum network in an encrypted manner with great precision and transparency.

Kathy Nguyen, Shantanu Pal, Zahra Jadidi, Ali Dorri · 5 authors

In recent years Industrial Control Systems (ICS) have been targeted increasingly by sophisticated cyberattacks. Improving ICS security has drawn significant attention in the literature that emphasises the importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) sharing in accelerating detection, mitigation, and prevention of cyberattacks. However, organisations are reluctant to exchange CTI due to fear of exposure, reputational damage, and lack of incentives. Furthermore, there has been limited discussion about the factors influencing participation in sharing CTI about ICS. The existing CTI-sharing platforms rely on centralised trusted architectures that suffer from a single point of failure and risk companies' privacy as the central node maintains CTI details. In this paper, we address the needs of organisations involved in the management and protection of ICS and present a novel framework that facilitates secure, private, and incentivised exchange of CTI related to ICS using blockchain. We propose a new blockchain-enabled framework that facilitates the secure dissemination of CTI data among multiple stakeholders in ICS. We provide the framework design, technical development and evaluate the framework's feasibility in a real-world application environment using practical use-case scenarios. Our proposed design shows a more practical and efficient framework for a CTI sharing network for ICS, including the bestowal and acknowledgment of data privacy, trust barriers, and security issues ingrained in this domain.

Safa Otoum, Hussein T. Mouftah

Network trustworthiness is a critical component of network security, as it builds on positive inter-actions, guarantees, transparency, and accountability. And with the growth of smart city services and applications, trustworthiness is becoming more important. Most current network trustworthiness solutions are insufficient, particularly for critical infrastructures where end devices are vulnerable and easily hacked. In terms of the energy sector, blockchain technology transforms all currencies into digital modes, thereby allowing one person to manage and exchange energy with others. This has drawn the attention of experts in many fields as a safe, low-cost platform to track billions of transactions in a distributed energy economy. Security and trust issues are still relatively new in the current centralized energy management scheme. With blockchain technology, a decentralized energy infrastructure enables parties to establish micro- grid trading energy transactions and apply artificial intelligence (AI). Using AI in energy systems enables machines to learn various parameters, such as predicted required amounts, excess amounts, and trusted partners. In this article, we envision a cooperative and distributed framework based on cutting-edge computing, communication, and intelligence capabilities such as AI and blockchain in the energy sector to enable secure energy trading, remote monitoring, and trustworthiness. The proposed framework can also enable secure energy trading at the edge devices and among multiple devices. There are also discussions on difficulties, issues, and design principles, as well as spotlights on some of the more popular solutions.

Manuel Casquiço, Bruno Mataloto, João C. Ferreira, Vítor Monteiro · 6 authors

The decentralization in the electrical power grids has gained increasing importance, especially in the last two decades, since transmission system operators (TSO), distribution system operators (DSO) and consumers are more aware of energy efficiency and energy sustainability issues. Therefore, globally, due to the introduction of energy production technologies near the consumers, in residential and industrial sectors, new scenarios of distributed energy resources (DER) are emerging. In order to guarantee an adequate power management in the electrical power grids, incorporating producers, consumers and producers-consumers (prosumers) together, it is important to adopt intelligent systems and platforms that allow the provision of information on energy consumption and production in real time, as well as for obtaining a fair price for the sale and purchase of energy. In this paper, we analyze the literature to identify the appropriate solutions to implement a decentralized electrical power grid based on sensors, blockchain and smart contracts, evaluating the current state of the art and pilot projects already in place. We also discuss a proposal for a power grid model, with renewable energy production, combining Internet of Things, blockchain and smart contracts.

Yifan Cao, Xiaoxu Ren, Chao Qiu, Xiaofei Wang · 6 authors

In microgrid, peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading has quickly ascended to the spotlight and gained enormous popularity. However, there are inevitable credit problems and system security problems. Besides, the current model in the electricity trading system cannot balance the utilities of multiple trading entities. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based distributed P2P electricity trading system. We define elecoins as currency in circulation within our trading system. In order to jointly optimize the utilities of both parties in the elecoins trading, we formulate the elecoins purchasing problem as a hierarchical Stackelberg game. Then, we design a distributed multi-agent utility-balanced reinforcement learning (DMA-UBRL) algorithm to search the Nash equilibrium. Finally, we factually build a blockchain system with a blockchain explorer and deploy an electricity trading smart contract (ETSC) on Ethereum, with a website interface for operating. The numerical results and the implemented realistic system show the advantages of our work.

Alen Hrga, Tomislav Capuder, Ivana Podnar Žarko

The power system is undergoing a fundamental transformation to become low-carbon and sustainable, and to reduce its adverse impact on the climate. To meet this challenge, power generation is shifting towards intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, leading to an increasing demand for additional flexibility on the side of end consumers who are becoming active participants in electricity markets. These goals imply that traditional electricity suppliers will have to upgrade their services and models or be replaced by a new type of supplier - aggregator. An aggregator will allow end consumers to be active and adaptive through a variety of price signals, such as dynamic pricing, consumption adjustment, reward fees, etc. In this paper, we present an architecture for a platform envisioned as a decentralized market for flexibility service providers in the power system, based on Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed ledger technologies. The platform will enable controllable and verifiable interaction of aggregators with end consumer devices in a trustless environment, as well as functionalities such as secure data exchange, search, history analysis, flexibility, and reputation management. The technical feasibility of implementing such a platform is demonstrated using the IOTA network.

Ayusee Swain, K. P. Swain, S. R. Samal, Snigdha Pattnaik · 8 authors

With growing energy demand and advancement in technologies, it is essential to ensure security to the energy usage data and transparency in the transactions while optimizing costs and improving the efficiency of the processes. For this purpose, we have presented one of the emerging technologies called Blockchain technology, which is a highly immutable and cryptographically secured distributed ledger system, using which important transaction data, energy records and contracts are digitally maintained in real-time across a peer-to-peer network. In the current work, a blockchain-based prototype is proposed by integrating AMI and Ethereum smart contract to come up with a peer-to-peer monitoring system that will ensure transparency in energy usage and automation of the billing process. By this work, we aim to provide solutions to the major issues associated with the existing infrastructure of energy monitoring and billing systems like the manual intervention of billing process, overdue bill payment, illegal tapping of power lines and unethical selling of units by the electricity board.

Danping Zou, Xuesong Shao, Xiao Chen

Household intelligent power service (HIPS) is an interaction service between power grid companies and household users. Power grid companies release interactive electricity demand and response subsidy price through HIPS platform to attract users to participate in orderly electricity consumption, so as to reduce the peak debt ratio of power consumption in stations or improve the consumption rate of new energy. This paper proposes an architecture of HIPS platform based on the Consortium blockchain, and then designs smart contracts for three types of participants: power grid companies, load aggregators and users. Finally, the proposed smart contract is implemented.

Matthew Gough, Sérgio F. Santos, Artur Almeida, Mohamed Lotfi · 9 authors

Emerging technologies are helping to accelerate the ongoing energy transition. At the forefront of these new technologies is blockchain, which has the potential to disrupt energy trading markets. This article explores this potential by presenting an innovative multilevel transactive energy (TE) optimization model for the scheduling of distributed energy resources (DERs) within connected virtual power plants (VPPs). The model allows for energy transactions within a given VPP as well as between connected VPPs. A blockchain-based smart contract layer is applied on top of the TE optimization model to automate and record energy transactions. The model is formulated to adhere to the new regulations for the self-generation and self-consumption of energy in Portugal. This new set of regulations can ease barriers to entry for consumers and increase their active participation in energy markets. Results show a decrease in energy costs for consumers and increased generation of locally produced electricity. This model shows that blockchain-based smart contracts can be successfully integrated into a hierarchical energy trading model, which respects the novel energy regulation. This combination of technologies can be used to increase consumer participation, lower energy bills, and increase the penetration of locally generated electricity from renewable energy sources.

Mahendra Swain, Dilip Lilaramani, G. Mahesh, A K Srivastva

Increasing demand of renewable energy is driving the energy producers towards secured and decentralized network for energy trading. A decentralized framework could mitigate security threats in smart grid. Blockchain based smart contracts could improve the need of interaction producer and consumer by implementing reliable distributed transactions. This help to reduce interaction of third parties which causes security vulnerability. A decentralized infrastructure using Ethereum is proposed in this study. Ethereum keeps the track of transactions taken place from the consumers to the supply industries using crypto algorithms. Creating private node using Ethereum framework facilities the decentralization, anonymity, transparency and secure in the network. A private node using RISC-V platform is demonstrated in this paper. Smart contracts for the energy trading is written on solidity remix simulator and further validated on U540 RISC-V platform. End to end energy trading in smart grid using private Ethereum blockchain is demonstrated. Performance of the transaction, encryption and reliability of the application is validated over the platform.

Chaïmaa Benabbou, Önder Gürcan

Smart contracts are programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. However, designing and implementing a smart contract is not trivial since upon deployment on a blockchain, it is no longer possible to modify it (neither for improving nor for bug fixing). It is only possible by deploying a new version of the smart contract which is costly (deployment cost for the new contract and destruction cost for the old contract). To this end, there are many solutions for testing the smart contracts before their deployment. Since realizing bug-free smart contracts increase the reliability, as well as reduce the cost, testing is an essential activity. In this paper, we group the existing solutions that attempt to tackle smart contract testing into following categories: public test networks, security analysis tools, blockchain emulators and blockchain simulators. Then, we analyze these solutions, categorize them and show what their pros and cons are.

Zhongzong Yan, He Wen

Electricity theft has been a growing concern for the smart grid. It can be defined as follows: illegal customers use energy from electric utilities without a contract or manipulate their meter readings to pay less or not pay the electricity bill. Over the past decade, significant studies have been done to prevent and combat theft. This article aims to provide a general overview of the progress of electricity theft detection, including threat models, datasets and input features adopted, methodologies and techniques, and evaluation metrics. We also make a performance comparison for each detection method. Finally, the challenges and future research directions are presented in this article.

Xiong Yang, Yuling Chen, Xiaobin Qian, Tao Li · 5 authors

The distributed deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) makes the network more convenient, but it also causes more hidden security hazards that are difficult to be solved. For example, the unprotected deployment of sensors makes distributed anomaly detection systems for WSNs more vulnerable to internal attacks, and the limited computing resources of WSNs hinder the construction of a trusted environment. In recent years, the widely observed blockchain technology has shown the potential to strengthen the security of the Internet of Things. Therefore, we propose a blockchain-based ensemble anomaly detection (BCEAD), which stores the model of a typical anomaly detection algorithm (isolated forest) in the blockchain for distributed anomaly detection in WSNs. By constructing a suitable block structure and consensus mechanism, the global model for detection can iteratively update to enhance detection performance. Moreover, the blockchain guarantees the trust environment of the network, making the detection algorithm resistant to internal attacks. Finally, compared with similar schemes, in terms of performance, cost, etc., the results prove that BCEAD performs better.

Ao Xiong, Hongkang Tian, Wenchen He, Jie Zhang · 9 authors

This paper proposes a smart grid distributed security architecture based on blockchain technology and SDN cluster structure, referred to as ClusterBlock model, which combines the advantages of two emerging technologies, blockchain and SDN. The blockchain technology allows for distributed peer-to-peer networks, where the network can ensure the trusted interaction of untrusted nodes in the network. At the same time, this article adopts the design of an SDN controller distributed cluster to avoid single point of failure and balance the load between equipment and the controller. A cluster head was selected in each SDN cluster, and it was used as a blockchain node to construct an SDN cluster head blockchain. By combining blockchain technology, the security and privacy of the SDN communication network can be enhanced. At the same time, this paper designs a distributed control strategy and network attack detection algorithm based on blockchain consensus and introduces the Jaccard similarity coefficient to detect the network attacks. Finally, this paper evaluates the ClusterBlock model and the existing model based on the OpenFlow protocol through simulation experiments and compares the security performance. The evaluation results show that the ClusterBlock model has more stable bandwidth and stronger security performance in the face of DDoS attacks of the same scale.

Rasel Mahmud, Gab‐Su Seo

This paper proposes a distributed control method based on a consensus algorithm for distributed energy resources (DERs) using blockchain as a secure communication medium for cyber resilience. Each DER communicates with a local blockchain server that is maintained by the distributed ledger technology to allow for securely sharing local measurements among neighbouring assets to achieve the global control objectives, i.e., voltage and frequency regulation as well as accurate power sharing among the DERs, including collective grid-forming capability. To prove that the distributed control can retain system stability under a blockchain-induced variable communication delay, Lyapunov function-based stability analysis is carried out. This paper demonstrates the concept on an 11-bus test case developed in MATLAB Simulink, which has been modified from the IEEE 9-bus test case, to study dynamic operations of the five inverter-based DERs working with a blockchain-induced variable delay. The results validate the superior performance of the proposed control method, compared to heavily compromised operations of the other test cases without the security measure, affected by heavy communication delays and communication interruptions.