Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things

doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2566339

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Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things

Journal Article•DOI•

Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things

Konstantinos Christidis¹, Michael Devetsikiotis¹•Institutions (1)

North Carolina State University¹

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.

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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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Citations

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Journal Article•DOI•

On Smart Contracts and Organisational Performance: A Review of Smart Contracts through the Blockchain Technology

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Zaheer Allam¹•Institutions (1)

Anglia Ruskin University¹

01 Dec 2018-Review of Economic and Business Studies

TL;DR: This paper explores the concept of Smart Contracts through the blockchain technology and its relevance to the business sector and further outlines the advantages and limitations of its applicability as of date.

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Abstract: Abstract As the Blockchain technology is gaining momentum in popular culture through Cryptocurrencies, its full implication and application to businesses, on a concrete and factual level, is still seen to be in its infancy stage. While the technology provides numerous advantages regarding stability, trust, speed and others, the robustness of the technology is not widely disseminated. This is further coupled by the common notion of resistance to change in business management processes. This paper explores the concept of Smart Contracts through the blockchain technology and its relevance to the business sector and further outlines the advantages and limitations of its applicability as of date.

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53 citations

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

...A study by Christidis and Devetsikiotis (2016) on the internet of things and the emergence of smart contracts showed that a combination of internet of things and blockchain technology, which is the core framework of smart contracts, is an efficient and powerful technique that can trigger wide-scale…...
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...As such, the authors argue that smart contracts, internet of things and the blockchain technology use can pave the way for new distributed applications and novel business models and processes (Christidis & Devetsikiotis, 2016)....
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...A smart contract can be defined as a self-executing contract that utilizes blockchain technology to digitally enforce, verify or facilitate the performance or negotiation of a contract (Christidis & Devetsikiotis, 2016)....
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...Christidis and Devetsikiotis (2016) further denote that the blockchain technologies upon which the smart contracts are built, allow for cryptographic automation of workflows and processes that are time-consuming....
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...…a client performs a transaction, since the transaction are replicated across all the machines in the blockchain network, each of the client checks whether the transaction confirms to the preprogrammed rules, before being relayed further across the network (Christidis & Devetsikiotis, 2016)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Integrated Energy Transaction Mechanisms Based on Blockchain Technology

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Shengnan Zhao, Beibei Wang, Yachao Li, Yang Li

12 Sep 2018-Energies

TL;DR: In this article, a blockchain-based integrated energy transaction mechanism is proposed, which divides the trading process into two stages: the call auction stage and the continues auction stage, and the smart contracts of the transactions are designed and deployed on the Ethereum private blockchain site to demonstrate the validity of the proposed transaction scheme.

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Abstract: With the rapid development of distributed renewable energy (DRE), demand response (DR) programs, and the proposal of the energy internet, the current centralized trading of the electricity market model is unable to meet the trading needs of distributed energy. As a decentralized and distributed accounting mode, blockchain technology fits the requirements of distributed energy to participate in the energy market. Corresponding to the transaction principle, a blockchain-based integrated energy transaction mechanism is proposed, which divides the trading process into two stages: the call auction stage and the continues auction stage. The transactions among the electricity and heat market participants were used as examples to explain the details of the trading process. Finally, the smart contracts of the transactions were designed and deployed on the Ethereum private blockchain site to demonstrate the validity of the proposed transaction scheme.

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53 citations

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

...Thereafter, blockchain has been considered as one of the emerging technologies, which can be employed for developing a platform for the decentralized energy transactions [15]....
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...A smart contract is a set of digital programs that prescribes the rights and obligations to the consumer that is automatically executed by the computer system [15]....
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Journal Article•DOI•

An integrated fuzzy-ANP and fuzzy-ISM approach using blockchain for sustainable supply chain

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Sachin Yadav, Surya Prakash Singh

08 Apr 2020-Journal of Enterprise Information Management

TL;DR: The proposed integrated (combined) approach of fuzzy-ISM, fuzzy-MICMAC and Fuzzy-ANP found that integration of BC with SCM is better prioritized than traditional supply chain management (TSCM).

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Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to justify the implementation of blockchain (BC) over the traditional method deployed in the supply chain (SC) after using the fuzzy–analytic network process (fuzzy-ANP) application. Over the past two decades, the overall product cost is affected by the SC at a global level. Organizations are working on their existing SC for improving their performance. BC technology is a newly emerging technology and magnetizes the attention of researchers and industrialists. This technology is still at the initial stage, and only little investigation is available in the literature and it has not been much investigated by researchers.,Literature and expert opinion interpretation in BC characteristics are further analyzed and modeled using fuzzy–interpretive structural modeling (fuzzy-ISM), fuzzy-MICMAC and fuzzy-ANP. The combined approach of both fuzzy-ISM and fuzzy-MICMAC is applied to identify the common drivers to integrate the BC technology in the light of efficient supply chain management (SCM).,Comparative analysis between traditional and BC-based supply chain (BCSC) using fuzzy-ANP is carried out, considering the common driving characteristics. The proposed integrated (combined) approach of fuzzy-ISM, fuzzy-MICMAC and Fuzzy-ANP found that integration of BC with SCM is better prioritized than traditional supply chain management (TSCM). The findings in the article endorse that the TSCM can be made efficient by integrating the BC technology considering five most driving characteristics, namely, data safety and decentralization, accessibility, documentation, data management and quality.,The current proposed research work identifies 12 characteristics after studying numerous literature reviews and having a discussion with SC experts with knowledge of BC. The integrated approach of fuzzy-ISM and fuzzy-MICMAC is implemented here. After that, fuzzy-ANP is used to give ranking among BCSCM and TSCM. The study carried out in this article motivates industries to implement BC in their SC system. It will reduce the transaction cost, documentation work, save time and eliminate human error at the national and international levels. The common characteristics identified in this proposed work would help in managerial decisions for the adoption of BC to ensure that the system becomes more transparent, easily traceable and finally improve the performance.

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53 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Blockchain-based shared manufacturing in support of cyber physical systems: concept, framework, and operation

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Chunyang Yu¹, Xuanlin Jiang¹, Shiqiang Yu², Cheng Yang¹•Institutions (2)

Zhejiang University City College¹, Dalian University of Technology²

01 Aug 2020-Robotics and Computer-integrated Manufacturing

TL;DR: BSM framework complementarily combines the blockchain and SharedMfg, beneficial to promote both modes.

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Abstract: Shared Manufacturing (SharedMfg), a Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based resource sharing paradigm boosted by the wide-spread of sharing economy, servitization and Internet of things, tends to massively extend the scope of resource sharing in both vertical and horizontal directions, and as a consequence, it amplifies a credibility gap in the manufacturing area. To respond to this problem, and meanwhile, promoting the SharedMfg, blockchain is attempted to integrate into the SharedMfg. Hence, this paper proposes the Blockchain-based SharedMfg (BSM) framework in support of the application of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). At the same time, Resource Operation Blockchain (ROB) is constructed for the core operation of BSM framework, which carries out on the basis of a consensus mechanism (i.e., Proof-of-Participation) and a Smart Contract Network (SCN), to facilitate the P2P-based resource sharing paradigm. A prototype system is implemented by the Ethereum framework together with discussions to validate the feasibility of ROB. In brief, BSM framework complementarily combines the blockchain and SharedMfg, beneficial to promote both modes.

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53 citations

Proceedings Article•

Unchaining Social Businesses – Blockchain as the Basic Technology of a Crowdlending Platform

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André Schweizer¹, Vincent Schlatt¹, Nils Urbach¹, Gilbert Fridgen²•Institutions (2)

University of Bayreuth¹, University of Luxembourg²

01 Dec 2017

TL;DR: The research shows that blockchain enables otherwise unsustainable social business models, mainly by replacing intermediaries and requires changes in software engineering practices, and illustrates that blockchain raises challenges and uncertainties and opens promising avenues for further.

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Abstract: Social businesses are increasingly gaining relevance as alternatives to traditional businesses. Nonetheless, such organizations face specific problems. The emerging blockchain technology may represent an opportunity to solve several problems of social businesses and an alternative to established technologies. However, evidence about the potential of blockchain in social businesses is missing. We bridge this gap by designing, developing, and evaluating a blockchain-based crowdlending platform of a social business, following the design science research approach. The evaluation and comparison to a non-blockchain solution allows us to generate generalizable knowledge and derive implications for both research and practice. Our research shows that blockchain enables otherwise unsustainable social business models, mainly by replacing intermediaries and requires changes in software engineering practices. Further, our findings illustrate that blockchain raises challenges and uncertainties and opens promising avenues for further

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53 citations

Cites background or methods or result from "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for..."

...Thus, changes that have not been foreseen and considered during programming cannot be handled (Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016)....
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...Multiple such algorithms exist, providing slightly varying levels of security, latency, and energy consumption (Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016; Zheng et al. 2016)....
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...Second, our examination affirms the theoretical research of several authors who have been analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of smart contracts (Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016; Luu et al. 2016; Wright and Filippi 2015)....
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...For instance, the legal status of smart contracts remains unclear (Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016)....
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...First, the decentralized structure of blockchains enabled us to store all relevant data via smart contracts on the blockchain network’s nodes (Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016) and therefore allowed us to eliminate the need for a centralized IT infrastructure and data storage and to avoid the…...
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References

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Open Access

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Journal Article•DOI•

The Byzantine Generals Problem

[...]

Leslie Lamport¹, Robert E. Shostak¹, Marshall C. Pease¹•Institutions (1)

SRI International¹

01 Jul 1982-ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems

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.

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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.

...read moreread less

5,208 citations

Book Chapter•DOI•

The Byzantine generals problem

[...]

Leslie Lamport¹, Robert E. Shostak¹, Marshall C. Pease¹•Institutions (1)

SRI International¹

04 Oct 2019-Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience

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.

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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.

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4,901 citations

Book Chapter•DOI•

The Sybil Attack

[...]

John R. Douceur¹•Institutions (1)

Microsoft¹

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.

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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.

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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....
[...]

Proceedings Article•DOI•

Practical Byzantine fault tolerance

[...]

Miguel Castro¹, Barbara Liskov¹•Institutions (1)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology¹

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.

...read moreread less

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.

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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....
[...]

Proceedings Article•

In search of an understandable consensus algorithm

[...]

Diego Ongaro¹, John Ousterhout¹•Institutions (1)

Stanford University¹

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.

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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.

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1,811 citations