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Journal ArticleDOI

Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things

10 May 2016-IEEE Access (IEEE)-Vol. 4, pp 2292-2303
TL;DR: The conclusion is that the blockchain-IoT combination is powerful and can cause significant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel, distributed applications.
Abstract: Motivated by the recent explosion of interest around blockchains, we examine whether they make a good fit for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. Blockchains allow us to have a distributed peer-to-peer network where non-trusting members can interact with each other without a trusted intermediary, in a verifiable manner. We review how this mechanism works and also look into smart contracts—scripts that reside on the blockchain that allow for the automation of multi-step processes. We then move into the IoT domain, and describe how a blockchain-IoT combination: 1) facilitates the sharing of services and resources leading to the creation of a marketplace of services between devices and 2) allows us to automate in a cryptographically verifiable manner several existing, time-consuming workflows. We also point out certain issues that should be considered before the deployment of a blockchain network in an IoT setting: from transactional privacy to the expected value of the digitized assets traded on the network. Wherever applicable, we identify solutions and workarounds. Our conclusion is that the blockchain-IoT combination is powerful and can cause significant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel, distributed applications.
Citations
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
20 May 2019
TL;DR: The proposed blockchain based framework provides an extra layer of security for LoRaWAN join procedure and build trust among LoRa WAN network components and demonstrates that the proposed framework provides efficient system performance in terms of throughput and latency.
Abstract: Recently, there has been increasing interest in employing blockchain in different applications, other than crypto-currencies. Blockchains allow a peer to peer distributed network where different nodes communicate with each other, in a trustless manner. Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is an Internet of Things (IoT) technology, which enables long range communication. Although LoRaWAN networks are secure, the LoRaWAN join procedure is susceptible to replay and jamming attacks. Moreover, trust between network server and LoRa end device is the basic foundation of LoRaWAN network however, the centralized nature of network servers raise trust issues between network operators and customers. To solve this problem, we propose a lightweight two factor authentication mechanism for LoRaWAN join procedure, based on blockchain technology. The proposed blockchain based framework provides an extra layer of security for LoRaWAN join procedure and build trust among LoRaWAN network components. The proposed framework is validated using the Ethereum blockchain. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides efficient system performance in terms of throughput and latency. The proposed blockchain architecture is a cost effective solution, which can be utilized in the LoRaWAN network with few network servers and LoRa end device, having no strict requirement of throughput and latency.

35 citations


Cites background from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."

  • ...Smart contract is a piece of code which is executed automatically when a node trigger it by sending transaction [1]....

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  • ...Blockchain technology has attracted significant attention from a wide range of industries: utilities, finance, medical services and the real estate [1]....

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Proceedings ArticleDOI
20 Aug 2018
TL;DR: The potential benefits of applying DLT to IoT, and major challenges posed to DLT by IoT are discussed, and a survey of existing DLT consensus mechanisms is made to summarize major principles and discuss their pros and cons when applied in IoT.
Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) has been experiencing exponential growth in recent years, but still faces many serious challenges. The distributed ledger technology (DLT), e.g., Blockchain, not only appears to be promising to address these technical challenges, but also brings tremendous opportunities for new application and business models. However, the convergence of IoT and DLT is yet a goal far beyond our reach today. Among many problems that have not been sufficiently understood, a fundamental one is how to design appropriate consensus mechanisms for DLT applied to IoT, which is the theme of this paper. We first discuss the potential benefits of applying DLT to IoT, and identify major challenges posed to DLT by IoT. Then we make a survey of existing DLT consensus mechanisms, to summarize major principles and discuss their pros and cons when applied in IoT.

35 citations


Cites background from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."

  • ...maintenance cost for firmware update in IoT [8]....

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  • ...cryptocurrency exchanged provides a convenient billing layer and paves the way for a marketplace of services between devices [8]....

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  • ...Both academia and industry [3], [8]–[12] have started to look at the application of...

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper reviews the most recent research advances in this direction during the past four years, and divides the research works into four groups according to the roles that the blockchain plays in IoT systems, i.e., access control platform, data security platform, trusted third party, and automatic payment platform.

35 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A minimal vocabulary to describe and link distributed ledgers is proposed to unlock the web's true potential and generate trustable, secure, and accountable updates among autonomous participants without a central server.
Abstract: The web was originally conceived as decentralized and universal, but during its popularization, its big value was built on centralized servers and nonuniversal access. A key element to redecentralize the web is to be able to generate trustable, secure, and accountable updates among autonomous participants without a central server. The authors believe that the marriage between distributed ledgers and linked data can provide this functionality and unlock the web's true potential. As a first step toward it, the authors propose a minimal vocabulary to describe and link distributed ledgers.

34 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
20 Jun 2018
TL;DR: This paper introduces an approach for reducing ledger size in blockchain systems, based on arbitrary pruning predicate functions, allowing each network participant to independently select and remove any already applied transactions.
Abstract: Distributed ledger technologies, such as blockchain systems, have in recent years emerged as promising platforms for machine-to-machine commerce and other forms of multi-stakeholder applications. However, despite the potential demonstrated by projects such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger Fabric, the disk space typically required to host a copy of a ledger may be prohibitively large for many categories of devices. In this paper, we introduce an approach for reducing ledger size in blockchain systems, based on arbitrary pruning predicate functions, allowing each network participant to independently select and remove any already applied transactions. We also show that if only pruning certain ledger transactions, the ability to derive an unmodified state data structure from the remaining transactions is maintained. The approach is validated through a supply chain use case utilizing a modified version of Hyperledger Fabric, in which ledger size is reduced by about 84.49% via selective transaction pruning.

34 citations


Cites background from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."

  • ...The transactions of its blockchain describe invocations of chaincode functions, where a chaincode is a form of containerized application serving as a smart contract [25]....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Albanian Generals Problem as mentioned in this paper is a generalization of Dijkstra's dining philosophers problem, where two generals have to come to a common agreement on whether to attack or retreat, but can communicate only by sending messengers who might never arrive.
Abstract: I have long felt that, because it was posed as a cute problem about philosophers seated around a table, Dijkstra’s dining philosopher’s problem received much more attention than it deserves. (For example, it has probably received more attention in the theory community than the readers/writers problem, which illustrates the same principles and has much more practical importance.) I believed that the problem introduced in [41] was very important and deserved the attention of computer scientists. The popularity of the dining philosophers problem taught me that the best way to attract attention to a problem is to present it in terms of a story. There is a problem in distributed computing that is sometimes called the Chinese Generals Problem, in which two generals have to come to a common agreement on whether to attack or retreat, but can communicate only by sending messengers who might never arrive. I stole the idea of the generals and posed the problem in terms of a group of generals, some of whom may be traitors, who have to reach a common decision. I wanted to assign the generals a nationality that would not offend any readers. At the time, Albania was a completely closed society, and I felt it unlikely that there would be any Albanians around to object, so the original title of this paper was The Albanian Generals Problem. Jack Goldberg was smart enough to realize that there were Albanians in the world outside Albania, and Albania might not always be a black hole, so he suggested that I find another name. The obviously more appropriate Byzantine generals then occurred to me. The main reason for writing this paper was to assign the new name to the problem. But a new paper needed new results as well. I came up with a simpler way to describe the general 3n+1-processor algorithm. (Shostak’s 4-processor algorithm was subtle but easy to understand; Pease’s generalization was a remarkable tour de force.) We also added a generalization to networks that were not completely connected. (I don’t remember whose work that was.) I also added some discussion of practical implementation details.

5,208 citations

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a group of generals of the Byzantine army camped with their troops around an enemy city are shown to agree upon a common battle plan using only oral messages, if and only if more than two-thirds of the generals are loyal; so a single traitor can confound two loyal generals.
Abstract: Reliable computer systems must handle malfunctioning components that give conflicting information to different parts of the system. This situation can be expressed abstractly in terms of a group of generals of the Byzantine army camped with their troops around an enemy city. Communicating only by messenger, the generals must agree upon a common battle plan. However, one or more of them may be traitors who will try to confuse the others. The problem is to find an algorithm to ensure that the loyal generals will reach agreement. It is shown that, using only oral messages, this problem is solvable if and only if more than two-thirds of the generals are loyal; so a single traitor can confound two loyal generals. With unforgeable written messages, the problem is solvable for any number of generals and possible traitors. Applications of the solutions to reliable computer systems are then discussed.

4,901 citations

Book ChapterDOI
John R. Douceur1
07 Mar 2002
TL;DR: It is shown that, without a logically centralized authority, Sybil attacks are always possible except under extreme and unrealistic assumptions of resource parity and coordination among entities.
Abstract: Large-scale peer-to-peer systems face security threats from faulty or hostile remote computing elements. To resist these threats, many such systems employ redundancy. However, if a single faulty entity can present multiple identities, it can control a substantial fraction of the system, thereby undermining this redundancy. One approach to preventing these "Sybil attacks" is to have a trusted agency certify identities. This paper shows that, without a logically centralized authority, Sybil attacks are always possible except under extreme and unrealistic assumptions of resource parity and coordination among entities.

4,816 citations


"Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Because of the Sybil attack [15], consensus in public networks is costly...

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  • ...anyone can join though, this would be catastrophic because of the Sybil attack [15]: a single entity could join with multiple identities, get multiple votes, and thus influence the network to favor this entity’s interests....

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Proceedings ArticleDOI
22 Feb 1999
TL;DR: A new replication algorithm that is able to tolerate Byzantine faults that works in asynchronous environments like the Internet and incorporates several important optimizations that improve the response time of previous algorithms by more than an order of magnitude.
Abstract: This paper describes a new replication algorithm that is able to tolerate Byzantine faults. We believe that Byzantinefault-tolerant algorithms will be increasingly important in the future because malicious attacks and software errors are increasingly common and can cause faulty nodes to exhibit arbitrary behavior. Whereas previous algorithms assumed a synchronous system or were too slow to be used in practice, the algorithm described in this paper is practical: it works in asynchronous environments like the Internet and incorporates several important optimizations that improve the response time of previous algorithms by more than an order of magnitude. We implemented a Byzantine-fault-tolerant NFS service using our algorithm and measured its performance. The results show that our service is only 3% slower than a standard unreplicated NFS.

3,562 citations


"Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...5If more than 3f + 1 nodes are used, then the quorum thresholds listed in [26] may lead to forks....

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  • ...Tendermint vs PBFT—Tendermint....

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  • ...Sieve [38], a mechanism used in the HyperLedger Fabric project, augments the PBFT algorithm [26] by adding speculative execution and verification phases, inspired by the execute-verify architecture presented in [39]....

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  • ...Tendermint [32] provides BFT tolerance and is similar to the PBFT algorithm; however it provides a tighter guarantee with regards to the results returned to the client when more than one third of the nodes are faulty, and allows for a dynamically changing set of set of validators, and leaders that can be rotated in a round-robin manner, among other optimizations [33]....

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  • ...PBFT works on the assumption that less than one third of the nodes are faulty (f ), which is why say that it requires at least5 3f + 1 nodes....

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Proceedings Article
19 Jun 2014
TL;DR: Raft is a consensus algorithm for managing a replicated log that separates the key elements of consensus, such as leader election, log replication, and safety, and it enforces a stronger degree of coherency to reduce the number of states that must be considered.
Abstract: Raft is a consensus algorithm for managing a replicated log. It produces a result equivalent to (multi-)Paxos, and it is as efficient as Paxos, but its structure is different from Paxos; this makes Raft more understandable than Paxos and also provides a better foundation for building practical systems. In order to enhance understandability, Raft separates the key elements of consensus, such as leader election, log replication, and safety, and it enforces a stronger degree of coherency to reduce the number of states that must be considered. Results from a user study demonstrate that Raft is easier for students to learn than Paxos. Raft also includes a new mechanism for changing the cluster membership, which uses overlapping majorities to guarantee safety.

1,811 citations


"Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...popular Raft algorithm [30], is used as a consensus mechanism in Juno [31]....

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