Blockchain is a technology with unique combination of features such as decentralized structure, distributed notes and storage mechanism, consensus algorithm, smart contracting, and asymmetric encryption to ensure network security, transparency and visibility. Blockchain has immense potential to transform supply chain (SC) functions, from SC provenance, business process reengineering to security enhancement. More and more studies exploring the use of blockchain in SCs have appeared in recent years. In this paper, we consider a total of 178 articles and examine all the relevant research done in the field associated with the use of blockchain integration in SC operations. We highlight the corresponding opportunities, possible societal impacts, current state-of-the-art technologies along with major trends and challenges. We examine several industrial sectors such as shipping, manufacturing, automotive, aviation, finance, technology, energy, healthcare, agriculture and food, e-commerce, and education among others that can be successfully revamped with blockchain based technologies through enhanced visibility and business process management. A future research agenda is established which lays the solid foundation for further studies on this important emerging research area.

Blockchain technology in supply chain operations: Applications, challenges and research opportunities

The globalized production and the distribution of agriculture production bring a renewed focus on the safety, quality, and the validation of several important criteria in agriculture and food supply chains. The growing number of issues related to food safety and contamination risks has established an immense need for effective traceability solution that acts as an essential quality management tool ensuring adequate safety of products in the agricultural supply chain. Blockchain is a disruptive technology that can provide an innovative solution for product traceability in agriculture and food supply chains. Today’s agricultural supply chains are complex ecosystem involving several stakeholders making it cumbersome to validate several important criteria such as country of origin, stages in crop development, conformance to quality standards, and monitor yields. In this paper, we propose an approach that leverages the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts efficiently perform business transactions for soybean tracking and traceability across the agricultural supply chain. Our proposed solution eliminates the need for a trusted centralized authority, intermediaries and provides transactions records, enhancing efficiency and safety with high integrity, reliability, and security. The proposed solution focuses on the utilization of smart contracts to govern and control all interactions and transactions among all the participants involved within the supply chain ecosystem. All transactions are recorded and stored in the blockchain’s immutable ledger with links to a decentralized file system (IPFS) and thus providing to all a high level of transparency and traceability into the supply chain ecosystem in a secure, trusted, reliable, and efficient manner.

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Blockchain-Based Soybean Traceability in Agricultural Supply Chain

Due to the proliferation of ICT during the last few decades, there is an exponential increase in the usage of various smart applications such as smart farming, smart healthcare, supply-chain & logistics, business, tourism and hospitality, energy management etc. However, for all the aforementioned applications, security and privacy are major concerns keeping in view of the usage of the open channel, i.e., Internet for data transfer. Although many security solutions and standards have been proposed over the years to enhance the security levels of aforementioned smart applications, but the existing solutions are either based upon the centralized architecture (having single point of failure) or having high computation and communication costs. Moreover, most of the existing security solutions have focussed only on few aspects and fail to address scalability, robustness, data storage, network latency, auditability, immutability, and traceability. To handle the aforementioned issues, blockchain technology can be one of the solutions. Motivated from these facts, in this paper, we present a systematic review of various blockchain-based solutions and their applicability in various Industry 4.0-based applications. Our contributions in this paper are in four fold. Firstly, we explored the current state-of-the-art solutions in the blockchain technology for the smart applications. Then, we illustrated the reference architecture used for the blockchain applicability in various Industry 4.0 applications. Then, merits and demerits of the traditional security solutions are also discussed in comparison to their countermeasures. Finally, we provided a comparison of existing blockchain-based security solutions using various parameters to provide deep insights to the readers about its applicability in various applications.

Blockchain for Industry 4.0: A Comprehensive Review

The explosive rise of Internet of Things (IoT) systems have notably increased the potential attack surfaces for cybercriminals. Accounting for the features and constraints of IoT devices, traditional security countermeasures can be inefficient in dynamic IoT environments. In this vein, the advantages introduced by software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) have the potential to reshape the landscape of cybersecurity for IoT systems. To this aim, we provide a comprehensive analysis of security features introduced by NFV and SDN, describing the manifold strategies able to monitor, protect, and react to IoT security threats. We also present lessons learned in the adoption of SDN/NFV-based protection approaches in IoT environments, comparing them with conventional security countermeasures. Finally, we deeply discuss the open challenges related to emerging SDN- and NFV-based security mechanisms, aiming to provide promising directives to conduct future research in this fervent area.

A Survey on Emerging SDN and NFV Security Mechanisms for IoT Systems

The potential of blockchain has been extensively discussed in the literature and media mainly in finance and payment industry. One relatively recent trend is at the enterprise-level, where blockchain serves as the infrastructure for internet security and immutability. Emerging application domains include Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Therefore, in this paper, we comprehensively review existing blockchain applications in Industry 4.0 and IIoT settings. Specifically, we present the current research trends in each of the related industrial sectors, as well as successful commercial implementations of blockchain in these relevant sectors. We also discuss industry-specific challenges for the implementation of blockchain in each sector. Further, we present currently open issues in the adoption of the blockchain technology in Industry 4.0 and discuss newer application areas. We hope that our findings pave the way for empowering and facilitating research in this domain, and assist decision-makers in their blockchain adoption and investment in Industry 4.0 and IIoT space.

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Blockchain Applications for Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT: A Review

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning techniques, fake digital contents have proliferated in recent years. Fake footage, images, audios, and videos (known as deepfakes) can be a scary and dangerous phenomenon and can have the potential of altering the truth and eroding trust by giving false reality. Proof of authenticity (PoA) of digital media is critical to help eradicate the epidemic of forged content. Current solutions lack the ability to provide history tracking and provenance of digital media. In this paper, we provide a solution and a general framework using Ethereum smart contracts to trace and track the provenance and history of digital content to its original source even if the digital content is copied multiple times. The smart contract utilizes the hashes of the interplanetary file system (IPFS) used to store digital content and its metadata. Our solution focuses on video content, but the solution framework provided in this paper is generic enough and can be applied to any other form of digital content. Our solution relies on the principle that if the content can be credibly traced to a trusted or reputable source, the content can then be real and authentic. The full code of the smart contract has been made publicly available at Github.

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Combating Deepfake Videos Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts

There is an immense need of a proof of delivery (PoD) of today’s digital media and content, especially those that are subject to payment. Current PoD systems are mostly centralized and heavily dependent on a trusted third party (TTP) especially for payment. Such existing PoD systems often lack security, transparency, and visibility, and are not highly credible, as the TTP can be subject to failure, manipulation, corruption, compromise, and hacking. In this paper, we propose a decentralized PoD solution for PoD of digital assets. Our solution leverages key features of blockchain and Ethereum smart contracts to provide immutable and tamper-proof logs, accountability, and traceability. Ethereum smart contracts are used to orchestrate and govern all interactions and transactions including automatic payments in Ether cryptocurrency between customers, digital-content provider, and the file server hosting the digital content. All entities are incentivized to act honestly, and our solution has a mechanism to handle dispute if arisen among participants. The solution has an off-chain secure download phase involving the file server and customers. Moreover, our solution leverages the benefits of interplanetary file system to store the agreed upon terms and conditions between the smart contract actors. A security analysis of our proposed system has been provided. The full code of the smart contract has been publicly made available on Github.

Proof of Delivery of Digital Assets Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Smart contract-based approach for efficient shipment management

The rapid advancements in computing, storage, communications, and networking technologies have enabled the creation of Digital Twins (DTs). A DT is a digital representation of a real-world physical component, product, or equipment. A DT can be used for 3-D design, testing, simulation, and prototyping prior to the manufacturing of the physical component. Once a physical component is in operation, a DT can be used for configuration, monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics. It is expected that DTs will gain significant attention in the foreseeable future, and will play a key role in Industry 4.0. However, today’s approaches, systems, and technologies leveraged for the creation of DTs are mostly centralized and fall short of providing trusted data provenance, audit, and traceability. Also, data related to transactions, logs, and history are not secure or tamper-proof. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based creation process of DTs to guarantee secure and trusted traceability, accessibility, and immutability of transactions, logs, and data provenance. Our proposed approach uses smart contracts to govern and track transactions initiated by participants involved in the creation of DTs. Our approach also employs decentralized storage of interplanetary file systems to store and share DTs data. Moreover, we present details on our system design and architecture, implementation, and algorithms. Furthermore, we provide security and cost analysis, and show how our approach fulfills the requirements of DTs process creation. We make the smart contract code for creating DTs publicly available on Github.

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A Blockchain-Based Approach for the Creation of Digital Twins

With the widespread of E-commerce, the need of a trusted system to ensure the delivery of traded items is crucial. Current proof of delivery (PoD) systems lacks transparency, traceability, and credibility. These systems are mostly centralized and rely on trusted third parties (TTPs) to complete the delivery between sellers and buyers. TTPs can be costly, a single point of failure, and subject to hacking, privacy evasion, and compromise. The blockchain is an immutable, trusted, and decentralized ledger with logs and events that can be used for transparency, traceability, and tracking. In this paper, we present a solution and a general framework using the popular permissionless Ethereum blockchain to create a trusted, decentralized PoD system that ensures accountability, auditability, and integrity. The solution uses Ethereum smart contracts to prove the delivery of a shipped item between a seller and a buyer irrespective of the number of intermediate transporters needed. In our proposed solution, all participating entities are incentivized to act honestly by using a double deposit collateral. Automated payment in ether is an integral part of a solution to ensure that every entity gets its intended share of ether upon successful delivery. An arbitration mechanism is also incorporated if a dispute arises during the shipping process. In this paper, we show how we implemented, verified, and tested the proper functionality of our PoD solution. We also provide security analysis and give estimates of the cost consumption in ether gas. We made the full code of the Ethereum smart contracts publicly available at Github.

Haya R. Hasan

Papers

Combating Deepfake Videos Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Proof of Delivery of Digital Assets Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Smart contract-based approach for efficient shipment management

A Blockchain-Based Approach for the Creation of Digital Twins

Blockchain-Based Proof of Delivery of Physical Assets With Single and Multiple Transporters