Blockchain Papers

Aparna Kumari, Sudeep Tanwar

No abstract is available for this record.

Kota Chin, Kazumasa Omote

No abstract is available for this record.

Magda Foti, Manolis Vavalis

The aim of this work is to provide an up-to-date comprehensive review of the peer-reviewed articles, the research projects and the entrepreneurial efforts that consider the utilization of blockchain technology in the energy sector in general and the power grid in particular. Through our review study we systematically classify existing applications of blockchain technology in the energy sector according to their field of activity. The comprehensive and holistic picture provided aims to contribute to the body of knowledge of the applicability of blockchain technology within the energy sector and pave the way for further research in this field.

Chencheng Zhou, Liudong Xing, Qisi Liu, Honggang Wang

The block chain technology has immense potential in many different applications, including but not limited to cryptocurrencies, financial services, smart contracts, supply chains, healthcare services, and energy trading. Due to the critical nature of these applications, it is pivotal to model and evaluate dependability of the block chain-based systems, contributing to their reliable and robust operation. This paper models and analyzes the dependability of Bitcoin nodes subject to Eclipse attacks and state-dependent mitigation activities. Built upon the block chain technology, the Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency system enabling an individual user to trade freely without the involvement of banks or any other types of intermediate agents. However, a node in the Bitcoin is vulnerable to the Eclipse attack, which aims to monopolize the information flow of the victim node. A semi-Markov process (SMP) based approach is proposed to model the Eclipse attack behavior and possible mitigation activities that may prevent the attack from being successful during the attack process. The SMP model is then evaluated to determine the steady-state dependability of the Bitcoin node. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the influence of the time to restart the Bitcoin software and time to detect and delete the malicious message on the Bitcoin node dependability.

Arezoo Hasankhani, Seyed Mehdi Hakimi, Mojtaba Bisheh-Niasar, Miadreza Shafie‐khah · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Aldo Bischi, Mariano Basile, Davide Poli, Carlo Vallati · 9 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Yiqian Wu, Xuan Zhang, Hongbin Sun

No abstract is available for this record.

Gang Huang, Chao Wu, Yifan Hu, Chuangxin Guo

The digitization, informatization, and intelligentization of physical systems require strong support from big data analysis. However, due to restrictions on data security and privacy and concerns about the cost of big data collection, transmission, and storage, it is difficult to do data aggregation in real-world power systems, which directly retards the effective implementation of smart grid analytics. Federated learning, an advanced distributed learning method proposed by Google, seems a promising solution to the above issues. Nevertheless, it relies on a server node to complete model aggregation and the framework is limited to scenarios where data are independent and identically distributed. Thus, we here propose a serverless distributed learning platform based on blockchain to solve the above two issues. In the proposed platform, the task of machine learning is performed according to smart contracts, and encrypted models are aggregated via a mechanism of knowledge distillation. Through this proposed method, a server node is no longer required and the learning ability is no longer limited to independent and identically distributed scenarios. Experiments on a public electrical grid dataset will verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Randhir Kumar, Rakesh Tripathi

Abstract By providing ubiquitous connectivity, effective data analytics tools, and better decision support systems for improved market competitiveness, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) promises creative business models in different industrial domains. However, the conventional IIoT architecture can no longer provide adequate support for such an enormous device as the number of nodes, and network size increases. Therefore, several challenges, such as security, privacy, centralization, trust, and integrity prevents faster adaptation of IIoT applications. To address aforementioned challenges, we present a deep blockchain‐based trustworthy privacy‐preserving secured framework (DBTP2SF) for IIoT environment. This framework comprises of three modules, namely, trust management module, a two‐level privacy‐preservation module, and an anomaly detection module. In trustworthiness module, blockchain (BC)‐based address reputation system is proposed. In the two‐level privacy module a BC‐based enhanced proof of work technique is simultaneously applied with AutoEncoder, to transform cyber‐physical system data into a new reduced form that prevents inference and poisoning attacks. In the anomaly detection module, deep neural network is deployed. Finally, due to various limitations of current Cloud‐Fog infrastructure, we present a BC‐interplanetary file systems integrated Cloud‐Fog architecture, namely, BlockCloud and BlockFog to deploy proposed DBTP2SF framework in IIoT environment. The experiment is conducted using IIoT‐based realistic dataset, namely, ToN‐IoT. The performance analysis shows that the proposed approach outperforms using transformed dataset over peer privacy‐preserving intrusion detection strategies, and has obtained accuracy of 98.97%, and detection rate of 93.87%. Finally, we have shown the superiority of DBTP2SF framework over some of the recent state‐of‐art techniques in both non‐BC and BC‐based IIoT system.

Salma Samy, Mohamed Azab, Mohamed R. M. Rizk

The widespread utilization of smart grids is due to their flexibility to support the two-way flow of electricity and data. The critical nature of smart grids evokes traditional network attacks. Due to the advantages of blockchains in terms of ensuring trustworthiness and security, a significant body of literature has been recently developed to secure smart grid operations. We categorize the blockchain applications in smart grid into three categories: energy trading, infrastructure management, and smart-grid operations management. This paper provides an extensive survey of these works and the different ways to utilize blockchains in smart grid in general. We propose an abstract system to overcome a critical cyberattack; namely, the fake data injection, as previous works did not consider such an attack.

Jan Kalbantner, Konstantinos Markantonakis, Darren Hurley-Smith, Raja Naeem Akram · 5 authors

Current Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy market models raise serious concerns regarding the confidentiality and integrity of energy consumption, trading and billing data. While Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) systems (e.g., blockchain) have been proposed to enhance security, an attacker could damage other parts of the model, such as its infrastructure: an adversarial attacker could target the communication between entities by, e.g., eavesdropping or modifying data. The main goal of this paper is to propose a model for a decentralised P2P marketplace for trading energy, which addresses the problem of developing security and privacy-aware environments. Additionally, a Multi-Agent System (MAS) architecture is presented with a focus on security and sustainability. In order to propose a solution to DLT’s scalability issues (i.e., through transaction confirmation delays), off-chain state channels are considered for the energy negotiation and resolution processes. Additionally, a STRIDE (spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege) security analysis is conducted within the context of the proposed model to identify potential vulnerabilities.

Yong Wang, June Li, Yunsong Yan, Xiong Chen · 8 authors

Wide Area Protection System (WAPS) undertakes the important task of maintaining system reliability and stability when the power system is subject to abnormal or predetermined unstable conditions. The existing WAPS adopts a centralized mechanism to record and audit communication messages, which faces the risk of excessive authority and tampering with communication records and audit logs, thus making it impossible to achieve true transparency and fairness. Due to the involvement of multiple parties and equipment maintained by different manufacturers in the communication of WAPS, there are difficulties in tracing the cause of the accident and determining the at-fault party following misoperations and miss trips. To address this issue, we propose a semi-centralized blockchain system with multi-chain for auditing communications of WAPS. We first propose a semi-centralized system architecture according to the system architecture and management requirements of WAPS. Then, we utilize the blockchain network as a self-recording channel to achieve tamper-proof and non-repudiation verification interaction. We also design a multi-chain structure and classification node mechanism to meet the communication auditing requirements of multiple WAPS. We have designed a new block structure that conforms to the communication protocol of WAPS. To reduce the storage burden caused by the ever-expanding blockchain ledger, we propose a deletable blockchain scheme while maintaining the integrity and security of blockchain. Analysis and experiments show that the proposed blockchain system can support the secure, transparent, tamper-proof and traceable communication recording and auditing of WAPS along with high performance.

Uzair Javaid, Biplab Sikdar

Recent advancements in smart grids (SGs) have introduced Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) networks as an emerging technology for electric power distribution networks. V2G provides more sophisticated energy trading by enabling bi-directional flow of electricity as well as communication channels between SGs and the electric vehicles (EVs). However, due to the huge daily volumes of trading data, the underlying V2G infrastructure suffers from scalability and security challenges. Therefore, new design principles are favorable to realize next generation of V2G networks. As distributed energy information networks are amongst the key desiderata of future power grids, the blockchain technology shows promising potential to facilitate decentralized power generation and local energy trading. Thus, we propose a framework that uses the distributed ledger and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of a blockchain with a dynamic Proof-of-Work (dPoW) consensus for secure V2G energy trading. The ledger functions to execute transactions and thereafter, log them in the blockchain. With PKI, an authentication mechanism for EVs is established, whereas dPoW supports varying mining difficulty levels for a high throughput rate. To demonstrate the feasibility of our framework, security and performance analyses are presented, where the designed framework has been realized to preserve the privacy of EVs, support minimal computational overhead, and facilitate scalability in V2G networks.

Bello Musa Yakubu, Majid Iqbal Khan, Nadeem Javaid, Abid Khan

No abstract is available for this record.

Fardin Ahmed Niloy, Md. Abu Nayeem, Md. Majedur Rahman, Md. Nozib Ud Dowla

The adaptation of renewable energy and forsaking the conventional fuels for energy generation would not be feasible solely by the government body; thus, the participation of the consumers is crucial. This paper proposes a blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer power trading system, which provides the opportunity for the consumers to contribute to the grid through renewable energy sources. With the integration of a smart microgrid, the system is intended to remain functional during the isolation from the national grid, while making the system self-sufficient. The contributors will be able to make a profit by sharing the produced energy through a smart contract. Furthermore, all the transitions take place only when the preset conditions are satisfied, besides due to the characteristics of blockchain, no participant can alter the data, making the system more reliable. The smart contract was composed in solidity language and multiple trading was performed in the Binance blockchain platform.

Zilong Song, Xiaohong Zhang, Miaomiao Liang

A growing number of prosumers have entered the local power market in response to an increase in the number of residential users who can afford to install distributed energy resources. The traditional microgrid trading platform has many problems, such as low transaction efficiency, the high cost of market maintenance, opaque transactions, and the difficulty of ensuring user privacy, which are not conducive to encouraging users to participate in local electricity trading. A blockchain‐based mechanism of microgrid transactions can solve these problems, but the common single‐blockchain framework cannot manage user identity. This study thus proposes a mechanism for secure microgrid transactions based on the hybrid blockchain. A hybrid framework consisting of private blockchain and consortium blockchain is first proposed to complete market transactions. The private blockchain stores the identifying information of users and a review of their transactions, while the consortium blockchain is responsible for storing transaction information. The block digest of the private blockchain is stored in the consortium blockchain to prevent information on the private blockchain from being tampered with by the central node. A reputation evaluation algorithm based on user behavior is then developed to evaluate user reputation, which affects the results of the access audit on the private blockchain. The higher a user’s reputation score is, the more benefits he/she can obtain in the transaction process. Finally, an identity‐based proxy signcryption algorithm is proposed to help the intelligent management device with limited computing power obtain signcryption information in the transaction process to protect the transaction information. A system analysis showed that the secure transaction mechanism of the microgrid based on the hybrid blockchain boasts many security features, such as privacy, transparency, and imtamperability. The proposed reputation evaluation algorithm can objectively reflect all users’ behaviors through their reputation scores, and the identity‐based proxy signcryption algorithm is practical.

Adamu Sani Yahaya, Nadeem Javaid, Ahmad Almogren, Abrar Ahmed · 6 authors

Local energy trading has attracted the attention of many researchers as a result of its promising benefits. These benefits include minimizing gas emission, reducing power shortage, and establishing a competitive energy market. However, the energy trading between several prosumers causes trust, security, and privacy challenges in energy systems. On the other hand, a single point of failure and an increase in overall system cost occur when the energy system is managed using a centralized model. Therefore, to tackle the mentioned issues, this work proposes a two-layered secure Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading model based on blockchain. The proposed model has two layers: authentication, and secure energy trading. In the authentication layer, in order to protect the proposed model from impersonation attacks, a mutual authentication process is implemented. In the energy trading layer, a new consensus mechanism is proposed to minimize the number of malicious validators. Afterwards, an incentive-punishment algorithm is introduced to motivate energy prosumers to contribute more energy in the model. Next, a dynamic contract theory based on supply-demand ratio pricing scheme is proposed. The purpose of the proposed pricing scheme is to solve the issues associated with the existing pricing schemes. It also preserves the privacy of the actual energy consumption behavior of the trading participants. Furthermore, a consensus mechanism validators’ selection model is proposed. The aim of the proposed work is to have an efficient and secure P2P energy trading platform. Simulations are executed to show the performance of the proposed model in terms of communication and computational costs, reputation, energy contributed, reward, and prices. The results for the authentication process show 7.45 ms computational cost and 1152 bits communication cost, which are better than the existing works. In the consensus process, 66.67% of the validators are selected to conduct the consensus for every transaction. This selection efficiently improves the consensus process and minimizes the number of malicious validators. In the proposed model, the increase in reward is observed for increased energy contribution, decreased non-malicious transactions and adjustment of energy consumption. The proposed model shows a satisfactory performance in terms of trust, security, and privacy.

Fei Tang, Junjie Pang, Kefei Cheng, Qianhong Gong

As the next‐generation power grid system, the smart grid can realize the balance of supply and demand and help in communication security and privacy protection. However, real‐time power consumption data collection might expose the users’ privacy information, such as their living habits and economic conditions. In addition, during the process of data transmission, it may lead to data inconsistency between the user side and the storage side. Blockchain provides tamper‐resistant and traceable characteristics for solving these problems, and ring signature schemes provide an anonymous authentication mechanism. Therefore, in this work, we consider the applications of ring signature scheme in smart grid based on blockchain. We introduce the notion of multi‐authority traceable ring signature (MA‐TRS) scheme for distributed setting. In our scheme, there is an auditing node that can distinguish the identity of the real signer from the ring without any secret information. Last but not least, we prove that the proposed scheme is unforgeable, anonymous, and traceable.

Vahid Hosseinnezhad, Barry Hayes, Brian O’Regan, Pierluigi Siano

Today, the development of decentralized energy management systems has accelerated due to the daily growth of renewable energy technologies and communications infrastructure. At the distribution system level, this approach has manifested itself with the emergence of the local energy market. In fact, the local energy market is becoming a new operating model to control local generation units. This paper describes the general architecture and elements used to implement a blockchain-based local energy market within a transactive management platform. After an overview of internet of things (IoT) communication technologies and the existing central-authority-based applications, the general structure and elements of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are reviewed. Next, the concepts of blockchain-based technologies and the required specifications for different building layers are outlined based on the limited relevant literature available. The concepts and requirements are investigated to provide practical insights to design trading platforms.

Stavros Lazarou, Evangelos Kotsakis

No abstract is available for this record.

Diogo M. F. Mattos, Dianne S. V. Medeiros, Diego Passos, Natália C. Fernandes · 7 authors

The electric power grid is the world's largest engineering system, and its secure and reliable operation is vital to human activities. The introduction of intelligence in the electrical power grid through smart grids imposes challenges that require new techniques and approaches to provide cyber-physical security. In this article, we discuss the use of blockchain to provide security and reliability to smart grids. Blockchain allows untrusted nodes to correctly and verifiably interact with each other in a distributed peer-to-peer network, without any reliable intermediary. We explore smart contracts, codes resident in blockchain that automate multi-step processes, as a way to automatically trade electric energy. We also discuss initiatives, challenges, and research opportunities of blockchain technologies in the electrical sector.

Rabiya Khalid, Omaji Samuel, Nadeem Javaid, Abdulaziz Aldegheishem · 6 authors

This paper proposes a blockchain based trust management method for agents in a multi-agent system (MAS). In this work, three objectives are achieved: trust, cooperation and privacy. The trust of agents depends on the credibility of trust evaluators, which is verified using the proposed methods of trust distortion, consistency and reliability. To enhance the cooperation between agents, a tit-3-for-tat (T3FT) repeated game strategy is developed. The strategy is more forgiving than the existing tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy. It encourages cheating agents to re-establish their trust by cooperating for three consecutive rounds of play. Also, a proof-of-cooperation consensus protocol is proposed to improve agents' cooperation while creating and validating blocks. The privacy of agents is preserved in this work using the publicly verifiable secret sharing mechanism. The proposed methods are implemented using MATLAB R2018a while the MAS is simulated using Java Agent DEvelopment framework (JADE). Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed work. From the simulation results, the proposed trust method outperforms an existing fuzzy logic trust method in terms of detecting the cheating behavior of agents in the system. Besides, the proposed T3FT strategy is effective as compared to the existing tit-for-2-tat and TFT strategies in the literature. Moreover, the security analysis of the proposed method is performed. The analysis shows that the proposed work is safe from bad-mouthing and on-off trust related attacks.

Ikram Saber, El Bachtiri Rachid, Wadie BENDALI, Mohammed Boussetta · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Abdelouahid Derhab, Mohamed Guerroumi, Mohamed Belaoued, Omar Cheikhrouhou

Multicontroller software‐defined networks have been widely adopted to enable management of large‐scale networks. However, they are vulnerable to several attacks including false data injection, which creates topology inconsistency among controllers. To deal with this issue, we propose BMC‐SDN, a security architecture that integrates blockchain and multicontroller SDN and divides the network into several domains. Each SDN domain is managed by one master controller that communicates through blockchain with the masters of the other domains. The master controller creates blocks of network flow updates, and its redundant controllers validate the new block based on a proposed reputation mechanism. The reputation mechanism rates the controllers, i.e., block creator and voters, after each voting operation using constant and combined adaptive fading reputation strategies. The evaluation results demonstrate a fast and optimal detection of fraudulent flow rule injection.