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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
01 Oct 2017
TL;DR: A new reputation system for data credibility assessment based on the blockchain techniques that is reliable in collecting, validating, and storing reputation information in vehicular networks is proposed.
Abstract: The security of vehicular networks has been paid increasing attention to with the rapid development of automobile industry and Internet of Things (IoT). However, existing approaches mainly focus on ensuring data authentication and integrity, which are not sufficient to assess the credibility of received messages. Recently, reputation systems are proved to be effective approaches to solve the above problem. This paper proposes a new reputation system for data credibility assessment based on the blockchain techniques. In this system, vehicles rate the received messages based on observations of traffic environments and pack these ratings into a “block”. Each block is “chained” to the previous one by storing the hash value of the previous block. Then, a temporary center node is elected from vehicles and it is responsible for broadcasting its rating block to others. Based on ratings stored in the blockchain, vehicles are able to calculate the reputation value of the message sender and then evaluate the credibility of the message. Simulation results reveal that the proposed system is reliable in collecting, validating, and storing reputation information in vehicular networks.

142 citations


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

  • ...It is believed that blockchain has the potential to cope with the above problems in vehicular networks and eventually revolutionize the Internet of Things (IoT) [8]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The prevention of food loss throughout the supply chain, including manufacturers, has become a major challenge for a number of organizations as discussed by the authors, and consumers are also increasingly interested in food loss prevention.
Abstract: The prevention of food loss throughout the supply chain, including manufacturers, has become a major challenge for a number of organisations. In addition, consumers are also increasingly interested...

142 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Jul 2018
TL;DR: This study considers the recent surge in blockchain interest as an alternative to traditional centralized systems, and considers the emerging applications thereof, including Internet of Things, Big Data, and Cloud and Edge computing paradigms, along with many other emerging applications.
Abstract: Blockchain, as a mechanism to decentralize services, security, and verifiability, offers a peer-to-peer system in which distributed nodes collaboratively affirm transaction provenance. In particular, blockchain enforces continuous storage of transaction history, secured via digital signature, and affirmed through consensus. In this study, we consider the recent surge in blockchain interest as an alternative to traditional centralized systems, and consider the emerging applications thereof. In particular, we assess the key techniques required for blockchain implementation, offering a primer to guide research practitioners. We first outline the blockchain framework in general, and then provide a detailed review of the component data and network structures. Additionally, we consider the breadth of applications to which blockchain has been applied, broadly implicating Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Cloud and Edge computing paradigms, along with many other emerging applications. Finally, we assess the various challenges to blockchain implementation for widespread practical use, considering the security vulnerabilities to majority attacks, selfish mining, and privacy leakage, as well as performance limitations of blockchain platforms in terms of scalability and availability.

138 citations


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

  • ...In the case of a currency, the receiver is the only one who can issue the next transaction in that transaction chain [15]....

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Proceedings ArticleDOI
20 May 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, an auction-based edge computing resource allocation mechanism for the edge computing service provider is proposed to maximize the social welfare while guaranteeing the truthfulness, individual rationality and computational efficiency.
Abstract: Blockchain, an emerging decentralized security system, has been applied in many applications, such as bitcoin, smart grid, and Internet-of-Things. However, running the mining process may cost too much energy consumption and computing resource usage on handheld devices, which restricts the use of blockchain in mobile environments. In this paper, we consider deploying edge computing service to support the mobile blockchain. We propose an auction-based edge computing resource allocation mechanism for the edge computing service provider. Since there is competition among miners, the allocative externalities are taken into account in the model. In our auction mechanism, we maximize the social welfare while guaranteeing the truthfulness, individual rationality and computational efficiency. Through extensive simulations, we evaluate the performance of our auction mechanism which shows that the proposed mechanism can efficiently solve the social welfare maximization problem for the edge computing service provider.

136 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 Mar 2018
TL;DR: This work implemented the IoT and Blockchain integrated system with Eris Blockchain and equivalent computing devices to emulate IoT devices and proposes an out-of-band two-factor authentication scheme for IoT devices based on Blockchain infrastructure.
Abstract: While the rapid development of IoT devices is changing our daily lives, some particular issues hinder the massive deployment of IoT devices. For example, current network ID management system cannot handle so many new terminals; there is no agreed security standards for IoT manufacturers to follow when designing their products. The whole IoT industry is expecting the breakthrough in network infrastructure and the development of novel security mechanisms that can enable the flexible, secure and reliable access and management of IoT devices. Bitcoin, first released in 2009, breeds the decentralized Blockchain technology. The decentralization, anonymity and proof of security characteristics of Blockchain can prevent collusion and single point failure of a centralized server. We believe that the application of Blockchain into the IoT system can clear the obstacles facing the development of IoT architecture and security. To this end, we propose an out-of-band two-factor authentication scheme for IoT devices based on Blockchain infrastructure. We implemented the IoT and Blockchain integrated system with Eris Blockchain and equivalent computing devices to emulate IoT devices. The overheads to run Blockchain and smart contract services on the emulator devices are measured. The BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi 3 nodes have an average memory usage of 29.5M, and the CPU usage of 29.55% and 13.35%, respectively.

136 citations


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

  • ...The combination of Internet-of-things and Blockchain has been studied in another recent work [30]....

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References
More filters
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]....

    [...]

  • ...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]....

    [...]

  • ...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]....

    [...]