Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things
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.
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TL;DR: The authors describe the basic steps of potential idea evaluation with regards to blockchain main aspects, which helps understand the necessity for development of a detailed blockchain feasibility model.
Abstract: Abstract The goal of the paper is to provide a vague summary of currently existing blockchain use cases in the information technology industry. Respective use cases have been examined in already existing scientific papers, Master Theses, industry white papers and blogs of industry experts. The paper also contains a description of blockchain main technological aspects and working principles, which allows making the assessment of the presented use cases. For each use case respective companies or organisations are added that are applying or testing the given solution. Due to research limitations the paper should not be considered an exhaustive blockchain use case description. The paper also provides short introduction into a feasibility analysis of specific blockchain use case. The authors describe the basic steps of potential idea evaluation with regards to blockchain main aspects. It helps understand the necessity for development of a detailed blockchain feasibility model.
78 citations
Cites background or methods from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."
...Some authors consider that the main goal of blockchain technology is to create a decentralised environment where no third party is in control of the transactions and data [4]; some argue that it should facilitate cloud computing and immutable database usage [11], and others would like to use it mainly as a global software execution platform for smart contracts [12], [13]....
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...Table I below presents a summary of some known software applications and use cases, where blockchain has been used as one of the main components (Table I, edited and compiled from the following sources: [2], [3], [8], [12], [13], [18], [42]–[51])....
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02 Jul 2018
TL;DR: Vegvisir is a partition-tolerant blockchain for use in power-constrained IoT environments with limited network connectivity that can be used to create a shared, tamperproof data repository that keeps track of data provenance.
Abstract: While the intersection of blockchains and the Internet of Things (IoT) have received considerable research interest lately, Nakamoto-style blockchains possess a number of qualities that make them poorly suited for many IoT scenarios. Specifically, they require high network connectivity and are power-intensive. This is a drawback in IoT environments where battery-constrained nodes form an unreliable ad hoc network such as in digital agriculture. In this paper we present Vegvisir, a partition-tolerant blockchain for use in power-constrained IoT environments with limited network connectivity. It is a permissioned, directed acyclic graph (DAG)-structured blockchain that can be used to create a shared, tamperproof data repository that keeps track of data provenance. We discuss the use cases, architecture, and challenges of such a blockchain.
78 citations
Cites methods from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."
...Blockchains could have important uses in IoT and Edge Cloud environments as well [3]....
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14 Sep 2018
TL;DR: The solution incorporating the advanced features of blockchain allows education providers to issue official certificates that supply proof of completion or achievement and could also provide the corresponding functions for the after-college education and many other further usages.
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel blockchain-based technique for creating an environment where individuals can be the custodians of their official education records and can easily share those records with others. A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, open record of all cryptographic data exchanges. One key characteristic of the blockchain is its decentralized nature. Unlike records or accounts maintained by department, college, university, government agencies and other institutions, the blockchain does not require an intermediary to complete education records or alter records. Our solution incorporating the advanced features of blockchain allows education providers to issue official certificates that supply proof of completion or achievement. The proposed framework could also provide the corresponding functions for the after-college education and many other further usages.
77 citations
Cites background from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."
...The heavy use of cryptography is the key characteristic of blockchain networks which carries authoritativeness behind all the interactions in the network [6]....
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TL;DR: The Snap4City solution addresses the full stack security, ranging from IoT Devices, IoT Edge on premises, IoT Applications on the cloud and on premise, Data Analytics, and Dashboarding, presenting a number of integrated security solutions that go beyond the state of the art, as shown in the platform comparison.
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm enables computation and communication among tools that everyone uses daily. The vastness and heterogeneity of devices and their composition offer innovative services and scenarios that require a new challenging vision in interoperability, security and data management. Many IoT frameworks and platforms claimed to have solved these issues, aggregating different sources of information, combining their data flows in new innovative services, providing security robustness with respect to vulnerability and respecting the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of the European Commission. Due to the potentially very sensible nature of some of these data, privacy and security aspects have to be taken into account by design and by default. In addition, an end-to-end secure solution has to guarantee a secure environment at the final users for their personal data, in transit and storage, which have to remain under their full control. In this paper, the Snap4City architecture and its security solutions that also respect the GDPR are presented. The Snap4City solution addresses the full stack security, ranging from IoT Devices, IoT Edge on premises, IoT Applications on the cloud and on premises, Data Analytics, and Dashboarding, presenting a number of integrated security solutions that go beyond the state of the art, as shown in the platform comparison. The stress test also included the adoption of penetrations tests verifying the robustness of the solution with respect to a large number of potential vulnerability aspects. The stress security assessments have been performed in a piloting period with more than 1200 registered users, thousands of processes per day, and more than 1.8 million of complex data ingested per day, in large cities such as Antwerp, Helsinki and the entire Tuscany region. Snap4City is a solution produced in response to a research challenge launched by the Select4Cities H2020 research and development project of the European Commission. Select4Cities identified a large number of requirements for modern Smart Cities that support IoT/IoE (Internet of Things/Everything) in the hands of public administrations and Living Labs, and selected a number of solutions. Consequently, at the end of the process after 3 years of work, Snap4City has been identified as the winning solution.
77 citations
Cites methods from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."
...For example, the usage of Blockchain for the management of authentication and authorization via Smart Contracts [29] is such an application....
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TL;DR: A convenient, integrated automatic log-in platform with powerful security has been constructed using a smartphone-based fingerprint recognition function using the blockchain theory to prepare against tampering/forging/leaking of a user’s fingerprint information by hackers.
Abstract: Door locks and user authentication are the major issues in the current banking industry. There are a number of user future computing techniques, and security is especially essential to these methods. Existing digital door locks have the problem of opening easily with a stolen PIN number or by electrical shock. Thus, this study proposed and implemented an integrated automatic log-in platform based on mobile fingerprint recognition by applying the blockchain theory. As a result of this research, a convenient, integrated automatic log-in platform with powerful security has been constructed using a smartphone-based fingerprint recognition function. There are three major functions of the platform.
First, it is possible to authenticate the user in PC, mobile device, and IoT environments through fingerprint recognition. Second, the platform includes SDK to develop application software for user authentication and IoT services. Last is its strengthened security using the blockchain theory to prepare against tampering/forging/leaking of a user’s fingerprint information by hackers.
77 citations
References
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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
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
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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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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 2014TL;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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