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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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Challenges that are required to be overcome for the successful integration of resource-constrained IoT end nodes with existing public blockchains are examined and the proposed solutions and their feasibility are looked at.
Abstract: Although blockchain offers a lot of benefits for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) network in terms of security, there are a number of barriers to its widespread adoption. Since many IoT networks consist of battery-powered devices with limited computing capabilities, one of those adoption barriers is the IoT end node itself. Several articles provided a general survey of the blockchain integration with IoT applications. However, a detailed analysis of this integration is missing, possible challenges are omitted, and no solutions that would enable the integration are presented. Furthermore, none of the surveys focused on reviewing public blockchains for IoT devices with low computational capabilities and limited energy resources. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide the results of an in-depth study that covers challenges faced by existing public blockchains with IoT device integration. This article looks into resource-constrained IoT device classification and the wireless communication protocols used by them. It examines challenges that are required to be overcome for the successful integration of resource-constrained IoT end nodes with existing public blockchains. It then looks at the proposed solutions and their feasibility. A detailed review of possible security attacks on an IoT blockchain network is provided. As a result, a list of important characteristics that a public blockchain should possess in order to be integrated with a resource-constrained IoT network is proposed. Finally, the requirements for the IoT end nodes themselves are specified.

33 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: How three digital data technologies, namely the blockchain, data mining, and artificial intelligence could impact commercial fisheries including producers, wholesalers, retailers, consumers, management authorities, and scientist are sketches.
Abstract: The ubiquitous spread of digital networks has created techniques which can organize, store, and analyse large data volumes in an automizedand self-administered manner in real time. These technologies will have profound impacts on policy, administration, economy, trade, society,and science. This article sketches how three digital data technologies, namely the blockchain, data mining, and artificial intelligence could impact commercial fisheries including producers, wholesalers, retailers, consumers, management authorities, and scientist. Each of these three technologies is currently experiencing an enormous boost in technological development and real-world implementation and is predicted to increasingly affect many aspects of fisheries and seafood trade. As any economic sector acting on global scales, fishing and seafood production are often challenged with a lack of trust along various steps of the production process and supply chain. Consumers are often not well informed on the origin and production methods of their product, management authorities can only partly control fishing and trading activities and producers can be challenged by low market prices and competition with peers. The emerging data technologies can improve the trust among agents within the fisheries sector by increasing transparency and availability of information from net to plate.

33 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a systematic literature review (SLR) showing the benefits, challenges and future research of blockchain technology (BT) for the supply chain (SC), also suggesting how the features of BT can change the organizational aspects of the SC.
Abstract: The paper aims to present a systematic literature review (SLR) showing the benefits, challenges and future research of blockchain technology (BT) for the supply chain (SC), also suggesting how the features of BT can change the organizational aspects of the SC.,An SLR has been conducted to detect papers that contained the word “Blockchain” in their titles, keywords or abstracts. Consequently, a second filter to analyze BT papers for the SC was applied.,This paper shows through 31 variables classified into positive, negative and future directions of technology for the SC. For instance, BT will reduce time consuming of operations management and payments using smart contracts. In addition, integrating BT with other technologies will allow product tracking and sustainable production management.,The selection of papers is limited to Scopus database and specifically to the Management Journal.,BT creates collaborative peer-to-peer and business-to-business markets. The technology automates several tasks such as order management, payment for goods, waste reduction and process control. Therefore, its use within the SCs will improve the productivity and profits of the participants.,This paper is focused on BT for the SC area with 60 articles analyzed. In addition, 13 variables on benefits, eight variables on challenges and 12 points on future research directions were analyzed. This work will help researchers and entrepreneurs to deepen about the changes that BT offers in SC.

33 citations

Patent
22 Mar 2017
TL;DR: In this article, a private block chain operation support system that supports a logical multi-chain and a working method thereof is presented, which includes a monitoring unit for monitoring the operating condition; an access unit for providing an external access channel; an operation unit for controlling the operation, coordinating the cooperative work among each storage unit node in a storage unit, and supporting automatic growth, data transaction, and data synchronization of each chain block.
Abstract: The invention discloses a private block chain operation support system that supports a logical multi-chain, and a working method thereof. The system comprises: a monitoring unit for monitoring the operating condition; an access unit for providing an external access channel; an operation unit for controlling the operation, coordinating the cooperative work among each storage unit node in a storage unit, and supporting automatic growth, data transaction, and data synchronization of each chain block; and the storage unit, which comprises a plurality of storage unit nodes, and is used for storage management of the block chain data on multiple storage unit nodes and for real-time synchronization of the block chain data among each storage unit node. Based on the existing common block chain system, the system constructs a private block chain operation support system that supports the logical multi-chain, the innovative transformation of the private block chain from the single-chain to the multi-chain is realized, the business key data management system of the tree structure is supported, monitoring and management on the block chain operation in a multi-chain mode are realized, and ease of use and the applicability of the private block chain are improved.

33 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper categorizes the current literature of services computing based on blockchain into five types: services creation, services discovery, services recommendation, services composition, and services arbitration, and generalizes Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) architecture and summarizes the representative BaaS platforms.

32 citations


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

  • ...to update the firmware so as to mitigate the security vulnerabilities [22]....

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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...

    [...]

  • ...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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