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 resource configuration framework proved to be a valuable theoretical approach for analyzing and developing also the BC-enabled novel use cases and business models and further development of the framework is proposed with an introduced novel decentralized resource configuration prototype that can replace predominant platform-based business models.
Abstract: Before the implementation of a solution, it is cost-efficient and practical to be able to evaluate and analyze the expected value of use cases. Especially, this is emphasized in blockchain (BC) use cases, which typically have a wide business ecosystem and possibly disruptive business models. This paper presents two BC use case value evaluations and results. The IoT use cases were selected from two different industry segments: telecommunications-oriented 5G network slice brokering and the energy industry-related internal electricity allocation in a housing society. The use case value was assessed by applying a resource configuration framework and 4C – commerce, context, content, and connection – business model typology against BC and smart contracts characteristics and capabilities. The results derived from the data collected from the expert workshops proved the expected value of the use cases, and in general, the feasibility of BC technology for facilitating various value-creating resource configuration processes was shown. Furthermore, the resource configuration framework proved to be a valuable theoretical approach for analyzing and developing also the BC-enabled novel use cases and business models. According to the findings, further development of the framework is proposed with an introduced novel decentralized resource configuration prototype that can replace predominant platform-based business models.
58 citations
Cites background from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."
...Furthermore, in BCs, utilization of cryptography enables authoritativeness behind all interactions [33]....
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...Smart contracts (SC) are self-executing scripts residing on a BC and enabling general-purpose computations to occur on the chain [33]....
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...These include throughput, scalability and latency in large public BCs, legal enforceability, transactional confidentiality particularly in the public BCs, consensus mechanism determination and complexity, and integration with legacy systems and workflows [33]....
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...Thereafter, every node in the network independently processes the code [33]....
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...SCs enable automation of complex multi-step processes and proper, distributed, heavily automated workflows [33]....
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17 Jun 2019
TL;DR: It is argued that blockchain technology has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of processes within the construction industry and eliminate issues surrounding trust, transparency and verification currently experienced in the sector.
Abstract: Due to the increasingly complex nature of large-scale structural engineering projects, there is an increasing focus on the adoption and integration of technology. However, the construction sector tends to be further behind than most when it comes to the adoption of process-based innovative technologies. On the other hand, the decentralised, peer-to-peer principles of blockchain technology has recently attracted interest from a range of industries around the globe who are attempting to improve their business practices. This paper provides insights into the performance capabilities of blockchain technology in the construction industry and the feasibility of its potential adoption through use cases. It explores smart contract applications and the feasibility of integrating the technology with building information modelling and information management. Furthermore, the paper argues that blockchain technology has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of processes within the construction industry and eliminate issues surrounding trust, transparency and verification currently experienced in the sector.
58 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined changes in auditing practices expected by German auditing professionals within the next five to ten years and found that no far-reaching changes are expected within the given time horizon.
57 citations
25 Aug 2020
TL;DR: The concept of DAO is introduced and the main software platforms that offer DAO creation as a service are reviewed, which simplifies the use of DAOs to non-blockchain experts; namely: Aragon, DAOstack, DAohaus and Colony.
Abstract: Blockchain technology has emerged as a new paradigm to build decentralized systems which do not require a central authority. It is most popular for enabling Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. However, blockchain applications span beyond Finance, and recently it has been applied to decentralized governance. Blockchain-enabled "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" (DAOs) have emerged as a new form of collective governance, in which communities may organize themselves relying on decentralized infrastructure. In this article, we introduce the concept of DAO and review the main software platforms that offer DAO creation as a service, which simplifies the use of DAOs to non-blockchain experts; namely: Aragon, DAOstack, DAOhaus and Colony. These platforms will be compared by showing their key features. Finally, we will review the available visualisation tools for DAOs, and we will introduce our open-source tool to plot DAOs activity, DAO-Analyzer. We will illustrate its potential with the case of the DAO Genesis Alpha, which is the main DAO of the DAOstack project.
57 citations
Cites background from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."
...Other fields, like IoT, are using blockchain as a common communication layer [5]....
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TL;DR: A systematic literature review is conducted, international standard organizations that have been developing standards for IoT are studied, and any remaining challenges related to interoperability and security for IoT standards are discussed.
Abstract: Recently, there has been an increase in studies relating to the Internet of Things (IoT) in various fields, such as smart cities, smart homes, smart factories, and healthcare. In an IoT environment, several entities, including users, devices, and information resources, are interconnected and interworked with services. Therefore, interoperability between different entities is essential to accomplish the goals of IoT systems. Further, security is another important aspect to achieve in an IoT environment to protect information resources and privacy when networking between different entities. Therefore, security and interoperability may be significant barriers in the implementation of IoT in the real world. Several studies have been conducted to investigate methods for accomplishing interoperability and security in IoT, but they address only specific problems. Hence, compatibility and generality must be considered to accomplish the goals of IoT systems. International standards provide general methods by listing protocols, rules, guidelines, and characteristics that are defined and approved by authorized organizations, helping develop and manage systems efficiently by applying these standards; interoperability and security are supported by adopting standards in development and management. Therefore, the adoption of international standards is required to overcome the barriers in IoT. Furthermore, international standard organizations are developing IoT-related standards that may provide a solution to interoperability and security. However, a study focusing on interoperability- and security-related standards has not yet been conducted. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on international standards related to interoperability and security for IoT environments. Moreover, we studied international standard organizations that have been developing standards for IoT. In this study, a systematic literature review is conducted, and international standards are analyzed. In addition, any remaining challenges related to interoperability and security for IoT standards are discussed.
56 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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