The Blockchain is an emerging paradigm that could solve security and trust issues for Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. We recently introduced in an IETF draft (“Blockchain Transaction Protocol for Constraint Nodes”) the BIoT paradigm, whose main idea is to insert sensor data in blockchain transactions. Because objects are not logically connected to blockchain platforms, controller entities forward all information needed for transaction forgery. Never less in order to generate cryptographic signatures, object needs some trusted computing resources. In previous papers we proposed the Four-Quater Architecture integrating general purpose unit (GPU), radio SoC, sensors/actuators and secure elements including TLS/DTLS stacks. These secure microcontrollers also manage crypto libraries required for blockchain operation. The BIoT concept has four main benefits: publication/duplication of sensors data in public and distributed ledgers, time stamping by the blockchain infrastructure, data authentication, and non repudiation.
Researchers analyzed 23 blockchain implementation projects, each tracked for design decisions and architectural alignment showing benefits, detriments, or no effects from blockchain use. The results provide the basis for a framework that lets engineers, architects, investors, and project leaders evaluate blockchain technology’s suitability for a given application. This analysis also led to an understanding of why some domains are inherently problematic for blockchains. Blockchains can be used to solve some trust-based problems but aren’t always the best or optimal technology. Some problems that can be solved using them can also be solved using simpler methods that don’t necessitate as big an investment.
Anik Islam, Mohammed Belal Uddin, Md. Fazlul Kader, Soo Young Shin
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation receiver is considered as one of the most potent multiple access techniques to be adopted in future wireless communication networks. Data security in the NOMA transmission scheme is on much attention drawing issue. Blockchain is a distributed peer-to-peer network enables a way of protecting information from unauthorized access, tempering etc. By utilizing encryption techniques of blockchain, a secured data communication scheme using blockchain in NOMA is proposed in this paper. A two-phase encryption technique with key generation using different parameter is proposed. In the first-phase data is encrypted by imposing users' public key and in the second phase, a private key of the base station (BS) is engaged for encryption. Finally, the superiority of the proposed scheme over existing scheme is proven through a comparative study based on the different features.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Scalability and privacy are two challenges for today's blockchain systems. Processing transactions at every node in the system limits the system's ability to scale. Furthermore, the requirement to publish all corporate or individual information for processing at every node, essentially making the data public, is - despite of all other advantages - often considered a major obstacle to blockchain adoption. In this paper, we make two main contributions to address these two problems: (i) To increase efficiency, we propose a processing model which employs non-interactive proofs to off-chain computations, thereby reducing on-chain computational efforts to the verification of correctness of execution rather than the execution itself. Due to the verifiable computation scheme's zero-knowledge property, private information used in the off-chain computation does not have to become public to verify correctness. (ii) We introduce ZoKrates, a toolbox to specify, integrate and deploy such off-chain computations. It consists of a domain-specific language, a compiler, and generators for proofs and verification Smart Contracts. ZoKrates hides significant complexity inherent to zero-knowledge proofs, provides a more familiar and higher level of programming abstractions to developers and enables circuit integration, hence fostering adoption.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Poverty alleviation loan plays an important role in the poverty alleviation strategy of China. To improve the loan service efficiency and reduce service cost, it is necessary to build a management system for this business. However, current management systems for the loan are usually deployed in single service mode, also the transactions are not transparent and traceable to most of the roles participating in the process. Its data privacy protection mechanism is not robust enough facing various cyber attacks. To overcome these challenges, we propose loan on blockchain (LoC), a novel poverty alleviation loan management system based on smart contracts. A digital account model is designed for the transfer of assets between centralized and decentralized ledgers, and locking and unlocking algorithms are introduced for smart contracts. Digital signature and oracle are introduced to protect the data privacy.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Yan Zhu, Xiaoxu Song, Shuai Yang, Yao Qin · 5 authors
While smart contracts are praised widely, it should be noted that they have their disadvantages: lack of control over data protection and executive correctness or consistency. Aiming at this problem, we propose SMPC-based smart contract platform with three-layer structure: contract, computing, and group communication layer. In contract layer, we put forward SMPC-based smart contract framework, which gives the implementation process, language structure and grammar specification of smart contracts. In computing layer, fair SMPC algorithms based on general linear secret sharing scheme are designed to implement verifiable collaboration computing with input privacy and computation correctness. In group communication layer, the non-blocking broadcast is developed from non-blocking message passing interface (MPI)in order to ensure secure group communication in asynchronous networks with node and link failures. Finally, the results of simulation experiments with private currency transfers indicate that our platform is efficient and secure enough for common smart contracts.
Many consensus protocols are based on the assumption that participants are either “good” or “bad” but ignore the fact that they may be affected by direct or indirect economic interests involved in the corresponding smart contracts. We analyze consensus in decentralized environments and demonstrate that the system cannot guarantee correct execution results.
Alexandre Carvalho Barbosa, Thays A. Oliveira, Vitor N. Coelho
The smart city debate will still be the scope of business, policy-making and territorial planning in the following years. Based on that, the paper aims to propose an interdisciplinary conceptualization of smart territories. The goal is to promote the contrary movement of megacities creation and also consolidate the geographical aspect of smartness. The concept was formulated based on the elements of sustainable territorial development, strategic spatial planning and smart governance. In addition, taking hand of a parallel literature review, the study explores the potential of creating complementary cryptocurrencies as a strategy of territorial planning. This term was built based on already existing complementary currency systems in distributed ledger technologies scope. The idea provided presents a great potential for poverty alleviation by bringing together financial and digital inclusion.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
As the deployments of IoT systems grow for a wide range of applications, there are new use-cases emerging where the organizations or individuals that own sensor devices are different from the individuals or organizations that have use for the data from those devices. In such settings it is helpful for the data consumer to be able to effortlessly get data streams in return for monetary payments. The advent of cryptocurrency technologies have made the establishment of bidirectional automatic data micro-payment channels (with data flowing in one direction and micro-payments in the other) feasible. We present an application layer protocol called the streaming data payment protocol (SDPP) which embodies this very idea. The protocol also makes provisions for the data provider to send automated invoices and the data consumer to provide signed receipts for data to be stored on an immutable distributed ledger for auditing and dispute resolution purposes. We present an implementation of SDPP using TCP for data transport and IOTA as both cryptocurrency and a distributed ledger.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, Paolo Mori, Laura Ricci
This paper presents a new design approach for Access Control services leveraging smart contracts provided by blockchain technology. The key idea of our proposal is to codify Access Control policies as executable smart contracts on a blockchain. This transforms the policy evaluation process into completely distributed smart contract executions. In our fully blockchain based approach also the Attribute Managers required for the evaluation of the Access Control policies are managed by the blockchain, i.e., they are implemented as smart contracts as well. To study the feasibility of our proposal we present a working reference implementation using XACML policies and Solidity written smart contracts deployed on Ethereum. Finally we evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of the proposal, making also use of experimental results of our reference implementation.
Growing consumer awareness as well as manufacturers' internal quality requirements lead to novel demands on supply chain traceability. Existing centralized solutions suffer from isolated data storage and lacking trust when multiple parties are involved. Decentralized blockchain-based approaches attempt to overcome these shortcomings by creating digital representations of physical goods to facilitate tracking across multiple entities. However, they currently do not capture the transformation of goods in manufacturing processes. Therefore, the relation between ingredients and product is lost, limiting the ability to trace a product's provenance. We propose a blockchain-based supply chain traceability system using smart contracts. In such contracts, manufacturers define the composition of products in the form of recipes. Each ingredient of the recipe is a non-fungible token that corresponds to a batch of physical goods. When the recipe is applied, its ingredients are consumed and a new token is produced. This mechanism preserves the traceability of product transformations. The system is implemented for the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is applicable to any blockchain configuration that supports it. Our evaluation reveals that the gas costs scale linearly with the number of products considered in the system. This leads to the conclusion that the solution can handle complex use cases.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Prediction markets are markets where participants trade contracts whose payoffs are tied to a future event, thereby yielding prices that can be interpreted as market aggregated forecasts. Past studies have shown that the prediction markets can provide accurate forecasts, sometimes better than sophisticated statistical tools. Due to their advantages, prediction markets have been widely used in the prediction of elections, project management, product quality, and impact of events. However, prediction markets also have some limitations, e.g., poor anonymity and limited market liquidity. In this paper, we propose to apply blockchain powered smart contracts to the prediction markets. First, we give a comprehensive overview on the prediction markets, including their theoretical basis, classification and applications. Second, we present how to design prediction markets based on smart contracts. Then, the algorithm of contracts implementation is proposed. Finally, in order to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, an intra-enterprise prediction market is built based on a private blockchain. The experimental results show that the market can make accurate prediction for a particular event. In addition, the autonomy, self-sufficiency, and decentralization characteristics of blockchain make the prediction markets more efficient and robust.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Mass penetration and market dominance of Electric Vehicles (EVs) are expected in the upcoming years. Due to their frequent charging needs, not only public and private charging stations are being built, but also V2V charging options are considered. This forms a charging network with various suppliers and EV customers which can communicate to schedule charging operations. While an app can be designed to develop matching algorithms for charging schedules, the system also needs a convenient payment method that will enable privacy-preserving transactions among the suppliers and EVs. In this paper, we adopt a Bitcoin-based payment system for the EV charging network payments. However, Bitcoin has a transaction fee which would be comparable to the price of the charging service most of the time and thus may not be attractive to users. High transaction fees can be eliminated by building a payment network in parallel to main ledger, with permission and signatures. In this paper, we design and implement such a network among charging stations and mobile EVs with flow, connectivity and fairness constraints, and demonstrate results for the feasibility of the scheme under different circumstances. More specifically, we propose a payment network optimization model for determining payment channels among charging stations. We present numerical results on the characteristics of the network model by using realistic use cases.
Kolbeinn Karlsson, Weitao Jiang -, Stephen B. Wicker, Danny Adams · 7 authors
While the intersection of blockchains and the Internet of Things (IoT) have received considerable research interest lately, Nakamoto-style blockchains possess a number of qualities that make them poorly suited for many IoT scenarios. Specifically, they require high network connectivity and are power-intensive. This is a drawback in IoT environments where battery-constrained nodes form an unreliable ad hoc network such as in digital agriculture. In this paper we present Vegvisir, a partition-tolerant blockchain for use in power-constrained IoT environments with limited network connectivity. It is a permissioned, directed acyclic graph (DAG)-structured blockchain that can be used to create a shared, tamperproof data repository that keeps track of data provenance. We discuss the use cases, architecture, and challenges of such a blockchain.
This Article, which takes into account developments up until summer 2017, evaluates the early days of regulatory engagement with blockchain technology. My analysis unfolds in three parts. First, I provide a cursory overview of the technology itself to highlight considerable uncertainties concerning its future. Regulators asked to engage with distributed ledgers are thus compelled to regulate the unknown. Second, I will introduce a typology of regulatory strategies adopted to date and highlight their respective advantages and shortcomings. Third, I will outline a number of guiding principles regulators should follow in respect of blockchain technology. I will make the argument that despite the technology's uncertain future, early regulatory engagement is warranted as a young technology is a malleable technology. As technology develops, law has to adapt. As a consequence, I put forward a number of regulatory techniques, including a process of polycentric co-regulation that relies on the regulatory potential of (blockchain) software and the adoption of a so-called “28 th regime” at the EU level which may help navigate the uncertainties of blockchain development and regulation.
Mobile peer to peer (P2P) networks offer a huge potential for distributed mobile P2P crowd services (MPCS), which enable data and computational tasks to be offloaded and executed directly between mobile devices. Similar to centralised mobile crowd services, such as mobile crowdsensing, incentivisation mechanisms are core to encouraging mobile users to participate in MPCS systems. However, due to the impact of task execution failures and unreliable behaviours of mobile users (particularly task requesters), it is a daunting task to design and implement an incentivisation mechanism to cater for the needs of MPCS systems. In this paper, we propose a fault-tolerant incentivisation mechanism (FTIM) for MPCS systems. With conditional payment strategies, FTIM is proven to accommodate the requirements of two important application scenarios by achieving mechanism properties such as incentive compatibility, economic efficiency, individual rationality, and weak budget balance. Moreover, to tackle the practical challenges in implementing FTIM in the real world, we design a MPCSTo-ken smart contract to facilitate its service auction, task execution and payment settlement process. We implement the MPCSToken contract on Ethereum blockchain. Both real-world experiment and simulation results show that the system is cost effective for deployments and improves the overall mobile users' utility by exploring the opportunities offered by MPCS.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Drug traceability system is essentially important for public drug security and business of pharmaceutical companies, which aims to track or trace where the drug has been and where it has gone along the drug supply chain. Traditional centralized server-client technical solutions have been far from satisfying for their bad performances in data authenticity, privacy, system resilience and flexibility. In this paper, we propose a scenario-oriented blockchain system for drug traceability and regulation called Drugledger, which reconstructs the whole service architecture by separating service provider into three independent service components and ensures the authenticity and privacy of traceability data. Drugledger is more resilient than traditional solutions with its p2p architecture. Furthermore, Drugledger could efficiently prune its storage, achieving a finally stable and acceptable blockchain storage. Besides, algorithms reflecting the real drug supply chain logic (e.g, package, repackage, unpackage, etc.) are designed based on the expanded UTXO workflow in Drugledger. To our knowledge, it is the first systematic work from both a technical and practical perspective on how blockchain system could be designed for drug traceability and regulation.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Spam and Phishing Detection
Innovative Microfluidic and Catalytic Techniques Innovation
As blockchain technologies mature and ecosystems over blockchain evolve, peers on blockchain networks often face situations in which they need to conduct voting for decision-making; as happened in the case of the DAO hard fork event on Ethereum. However, a natively built-in voting mechanism is not available on any of the existing blockchain platforms. Thus, the decision making either is delegated to a few network members who make such decisions offline or is dependent on third party online voting services. In both cases, peers directly or indirectly rely on trusted parties or centralized systems. This is against the basic decentralization principle of blockchain and exposes the election to frauds. To facilitate decision-making in a decentralized and secure manner, we propose a native blockchain voting protocol for peers to vote over their existing blockchain network without the need of any trusted or third party. Our protocol preserves end-to-end privacy and possesses desirable properties such as detectability and correctability against cheating. A reference implementation of our protocol on Hyperledger Fabric that demonstrates the validity and practical applicability of our protocol is also provided.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Hoang Tam Vo, Ziyuan Wang, Dileban Karunamoorthy, John Wagner · 6 authors
Recently, we have witnessed a trend that many industries are forming consortiums and attempting to accelerate efficiency and reduce cost by using blockchain technology. Nevertheless, there is a clear missing capability of cross-industry and cross-blockchain interoperability. Currently, most blockchain business networks operate in isolation without external data transfer or multi-blockchain interactions. For blockchain technology to ultimately deliver on its promise, blockchain networks must be able to scale from networks addressing individual business processes to very large scale networks of interconnected decentralized autonomous organizations addressing much larger business problems at the level of entire industries and across industries. In this paper, we envision the inception of Internet of Blockchains (IoB), where homogeneous and heterogeneous decentralized networks communicate to facilitate cross-chain transactions of value, data and state transition. In addition, we also discuss interledger techniques that are essential for enabling industry-scale blockchain networks as well as achieving scalable interconnectivity between disparate, distributed ledgers.
C. Kouzinopoulos, Konstantinos M. Giannoutakis, Konstantinos Votis, Dimitrios Tzovaras · 10 authors
The H2020 European research project Safe-Guarding Home IoT Environments with Personalised Real-time Risk Control (GHOST) aims to develop a cyber-security layer on IoT smart home installations. The proposed system analyses packet-level data flows for building patterns of communications between IoT devices and external entities. To ensure non-repudiation, integrity and authentication of the data captured, they are stored in a Blockchain, a distributed ledger network, as digitally-signed transactions. Since the data can potentially include sensitive user information, it is imperative to promote trust by informing users about the operating principles of the network as well as to request the acceptance of a consent form by them. This paper presents the design and implementation of a Forms of Consent application, a Distributed Application that interacts with a set of Smart Contracts deployed on a private Ethereum network. The application is being developed as part of the GHOST project.
Currently, Cryptocurrency is one of the trending areas of research among researchers. Many researchers may analyze the cryptocurrency features in several ways such as market price prediction, the impact of cryptocurrency in real life and so on. In this paper, we focus on market price prediction of the number of cryptocurrencies based on their historical trend. For our study, we tried to understand and identify the daily trends in the cryptocurrency market which analyzing the features related to the price of cryptocurrency. Our dataset consists of over nine features relating to the cryptocurrency price recorded daily over the period of 6 months. We applied some machine-learning algorithms to predict the daily price change of cryptocurrencies.
Next-generation blockchain ecosystem will be fuelled by a large variety of blockchain systems. These systems increasingly demand proper cross-chain cooperation to provide richer functionalities and enhanced capabilities in the future landscape. How to enable such `interoperability' - effective communication and efficient data transfer across multiple blockchain systems is thus critical and facing many unprecedented theoretical and practical challenges. In this paper, we first clarify the definition of interoperability based on the cross disciplinary nature. Second, a roadmap of challenges needed to be addressed for interoperability has been laid out. Third, we articulate novel architectural approaches to fill in the gap by enforcing the interoperability from different blockchain layers.