Using Blockchains to Implement Distributed Measuring Systems
14 Mar 2019-IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (IEEE)-Vol. 68, Iss: 5, pp 1503-1514
TL;DR: This paper implements a vehicle speed measuring system using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform, demonstrating that blockchain-based measuring systems can impact the way measuring instruments are used in consumer relations while improving security and simplifying metrological regulation and control.
Abstract: In recent years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded systems and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this paper, we evaluate the use of blockchains as a resource to overcome such challenges. We start with a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also made a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchain-based measuring systems can impact the way measuring instruments are used in consumer relations while improving security and simplifying metrological regulation and control. We implement a vehicle speed measuring system using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. We evaluate the security and performance of our blockchain-based measuring system by executing tests with data from real speed meter sensors. The results are promising and validate the feasibility of our idea. Finally, we point out the main challenges related to our approach, suggesting alternatives and potential issues to be addressed by future works.
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TL;DR: Current state of the art on post-quantum cryptosystems and how they can be applied to blockchains and DLTs are studied, as well as their main challenges.
Abstract: Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) have evolved significantly in the last years and their use has been suggested for numerous applications due to their ability to provide transparency, redundancy and accountability. In the case of blockchain, such characteristics are provided through public-key cryptography and hash functions. However, the fast progress of quantum computing has opened the possibility of performing attacks based on Grover’s and Shor’s algorithms in the near future. Such algorithms threaten both public-key cryptography and hash functions, forcing to redesign blockchains to make use of cryptosystems that withstand quantum attacks, thus creating which are known as post-quantum, quantum-proof, quantum-safe or quantum-resistant cryptosystems. For such a purpose, this article first studies current state of the art on post-quantum cryptosystems and how they can be applied to blockchains and DLTs. Moreover, the most relevant post-quantum blockchain systems are studied, as well as their main challenges. Furthermore, extensive comparisons are provided on the characteristics and performance of the most promising post-quantum public-key encryption and digital signature schemes for blockchains. Thus, this article seeks to provide a broad view and useful guidelines on post-quantum blockchain security to future blockchain researchers and developers.
206 citations
Cites background from "Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..."
...suring systems [7], logistics [8], [9], e-voting [10] or smart factories [11], [12]....
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TL;DR: A universal framework for a blockchain platform that enables peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading in the retail electricity market and the authentic gas consumption and computational time to the smart contract indicate that this platform is able to achieve an efficient and effective transaction with multi-player participation.
Abstract: A blockchain-based smart contract has the potential to allow the performance of credible transactions without third parties. This paper presents a universal framework for a blockchain platform that enables peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading in the retail electricity market. Focusing attention on seeking energy-matching pairs from the supply and demand sides, and encouraging direct energy trading between producers and consumers, the P2P energy trading mechanism is proposed. The designed multidimensional blockchain platform implements a complete energy trading process. As smart contracts strictly execute the trading and payment rules without human interaction, the security and fairness of energy trading are significantly enhanced. Case studies in the Ethereum private chain demonstrate that the proposed mechanism has obvious advantages in reflecting market quotations, balancing profits of players, and facilitating the utilization of renewables. Based on such characteristics, players are incentivized to participate in the P2P energy trading. Moreover, the authentic gas consumption and computational time to the smart contract indicate that this platform is able to achieve an efficient and effective transaction with multi-player participation.
120 citations
01 Nov 2019
TL;DR: A peer-to-peer method for energy trading of MMGS, based on the idea of decentralized trading, and a Blockchain-based energy trading platform that can realize the decentralized and autonomous energy Trading of MGs within an MMGS.
Abstract: With the emerging technology for distributed generation and urge of improving quality of service of power supply for energy users, more and more Microgrids (MGs) are integrated into the distributed networks to serve the energy users. These Microgrids are gradually formulating a Multi-Microgrid System (MMGS, Multi-Microgrid System), which will play an important role for the future energy supply. Building a centralized control center not only increases the expense of investment, but also brings the issues of maintaining fairness among energy users. To address these problems, this paper proposes a peer-to-peer method for energy trading of MMGS, based on the idea of decentralized trading. An auction-based trading mechanism suitable for peer-to-peer energy trading is proposed first. For this mechanism, the MGs firstly declare their energy buying bids or selling quotations. Then, the market-clearing price is determined by using a unified weight clearing algorithm in a decentralized manner. By applying the edge technology of Blockchain, the implementation of the proposed peer-to-peer energy trading method, including the architecture, procedures, security check, etc., is also discussed. The proposed Blockchain-based energy trading platform can realize the decentralized and autonomous energy trading of MGs within an MMGS. A case study with an MMGS with 10 MG units is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
23 citations
Cites methods from "Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..."
...Blockchain technology uses an asymmetric encryption algorithm to encrypt data, and the powerful computing power formed by the consensus algorithm such as the workload consensus of each node in the multi-microgrid system is used to defend against external attacks and ensure that the blockchain data cannot be falsified and forgeable [11]....
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TL;DR: Hybridchain this paper is a system that combines blockchain with Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to minimize the computational burden and latency of on-chain execution by performing most of the heavy-weight computation off-chain.
Abstract: Blockchain is making headlines due to it promises to provide a decentralized, transparent, tamper-resistant, traceable and verifiable historical transaction records that can resist faults of any single node. According to the latest data from State of the Dapps, developers have currently released 3,717 Decentralized Applications (DApps), only three have an average of more than 10,000 daily active users. Most of the real-world DApps exercise little of their potential power. The key reason is that the current permissioned blockchain systems suffer from poor performance and lack of confidentiality. To address this issue, we present Hybridchain, a system that combines blockchain with Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Hybridchain decouples computation from consensus and adopts hierarchical network to minimize the computational burden and latency of on-chain execution by performing most of the heavy-weight computation off-chain. Hybridchain leverages secure communication protocols to enable each participant to share transaction data in a secure way. To mitigate the small enclave memory restriction of TEE, Hybridchain extends the enclave memory that allows blockchain applications running in TEE to securely store transaction records to the whole key-value storage codes placed outside of TEE. Analysis and experiments of sealed-bid auction show that Hybridchain can support confidentiality-preserving along with high performance.
17 citations
Cites background from "Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..."
...Intel SGX is a set of instruction set extensions for CPUs released in Fall 2015 [38]....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors used Linear Elliptical Curve Digital Signature (LECDS) with Hyperledger blockchain to prevent private data loss and classified the user information into two classes namely sensitive and non-sensitive.
Abstract: Cloud computing is a continuously evolving technology that can enhance agility, availability, collaboration and scalability of data. Blockchain has a secure, immutable ledger which maintains all the transactions along with the timestamp. The blockchain framework and cloud computing technology jointly provides different ways of computational cost reduction. The existing methods help to identify the anonymous documents which are given in the form of requests from the cloud server. If the anonymized document requests are from the authorized users, then cloud provides better security and hence documents are not available for unauthorized users. But the main issue is access rights available for authorized users on sensitive data of the owner. To maintain the privacy the sensitive data are hidden using cryptographic techniques even for authorized users. The method adopted is Linear Elliptical Curve Digital Signature (LECDS) with Hyperledger blockchain, to prevent private data loss. The Linear regression method is used to classify the user information into two classes namely sensitive and non-sensitive. The non-sensitive data is encrypted using RSA and sensitive data is encrypted using LECC method. Modified Spider optimization search Algorithm (MSOA) is used to verify the integrity of outsourced data and search user query information in a cloud server. The hyper ledger blockchain verifies the user policy to create a private network through which the user communicates the cloud. In the analysis of the proposed method, the results are evaluated using various performance metrics such as security, throughput, classification accuracy and error rate.
15 citations
References
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15 Jan 2020
4,407 citations
"Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..." refers background in this paper
...Initially associated with crypto-currency markets due to Bitcoin popularity [7], blockchain-based architectures have been proposed for a wide set of application areas, including sensor networks, Internet of Things, smart cities, among others [8]....
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..., Bitcoin and Ethereum), inspiring its use in different applications and knowledge areas [7], [8]....
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...Such idea finds many aspects in common with a new trendy technology: blockchains [7]....
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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.
3,129 citations
"Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..." refers background in this paper
...A blockchain can be described as a distributed data structure which assures information integrity and authenticity while providing a platform for executing self-enforced software procedures, called smart contracts [8]....
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...Initially associated with crypto-currency markets due to Bitcoin popularity [7], blockchain-based architectures have been proposed for a wide set of application areas, including sensor networks, Internet of Things, smart cities, among others [8]....
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...Conceptually, a blockchain can be regarded as a distributed append-only data structure (designated as ledger), which is replicated and shared among a set of network peers [8]....
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...This makes blockchains not only a data storage solution but also a complete distributed platform for proper and distributed automated workflow [8]....
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..., Bitcoin and Ethereum), inspiring its use in different applications and knowledge areas [7], [8]....
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23 Apr 2018
TL;DR: This paper describes Fabric, its architecture, the rationale behind various design decisions, its most prominent implementation aspects, as well as its distributed application programming model, and shows that Fabric achieves end-to-end throughput of more than 3500 transactions per second in certain popular deployment configurations.
Abstract: Fabric is a modular and extensible open-source system for deploying and operating permissioned blockchains and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by the Linux Foundation (www.hyperledger.org). Fabric is the first truly extensible blockchain system for running distributed applications. It supports modular consensus protocols, which allows the system to be tailored to particular use cases and trust models. Fabric is also the first blockchain system that runs distributed applications written in standard, general-purpose programming languages, without systemic dependency on a native cryptocurrency. This stands in sharp contrast to existing block-chain platforms that require "smart-contracts" to be written in domain-specific languages or rely on a cryptocurrency. Fabric realizes the permissioned model using a portable notion of membership, which may be integrated with industry-standard identity management. To support such flexibility, Fabric introduces an entirely novel blockchain design and revamps the way blockchains cope with non-determinism, resource exhaustion, and performance attacks. This paper describes Fabric, its architecture, the rationale behind various design decisions, its most prominent implementation aspects, as well as its distributed application programming model. We further evaluate Fabric by implementing and benchmarking a Bitcoin-inspired digital currency. We show that Fabric achieves end-to-end throughput of more than 3500 transactions per second in certain popular deployment configurations, with sub-second latency, scaling well to over 100 peers.
2,813 citations
"Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..." refers background or methods in this paper
...Our prototype uses Hyperledger Fabric [11] as a permissioned blockchain, where the peers cooperate to store measurements and execute LR software....
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...[11] points out a performance more than of 2000 tps in their benchmark....
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...4) We develop a practical case study using the Hyperledger Fabric [11] platform....
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...[11] benchmarked Fabric performance in something between 2000 and 3000 tps....
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TL;DR: The blockchain taxonomy is given, the typical blockchain consensus algorithms are introduced, typical blockchain applications are reviewed, and the future directions in the blockchain technology are pointed out.
Abstract: Blockchain has numerous benefits such as decentralisation, persistency, anonymity and auditability. There is a wide spectrum of blockchain applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services, risk management, internet of things (IoT) to public and social services. Although a number of studies focus on using the blockchain technology in various application aspects, there is no comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology in both technological and application perspectives. To fill this gap, we conduct a comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology. In particular, this paper gives the blockchain taxonomy, introduces typical blockchain consensus algorithms, reviews blockchain applications and discusses technical challenges as well as recent advances in tackling the challenges. Moreover, this paper also points out the future directions in the blockchain technology.
1,928 citations
Additional excerpts
...preserved by the blockchain inherent properties [18]....
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IBM1
TL;DR: In the early days of Bitcoin, the performance of its probabilistic proof-of-work (PoW) based consensus fabric, also known as blockchain, was not a major issue, and Bitcoin became a success story, despite its consensus latencies on the order of an hour and the theoretical peak throughput of only up to 7 transactions per second.
Abstract: Bitcoin cryptocurrency demonstrated the utility of global consensus across thousands of nodes, changing the world of digital transactions forever. In the early days of Bitcoin, the performance of its probabilistic proof-of-work (PoW) based consensus fabric, also known as blockchain, was not a major issue. Bitcoin became a success story, despite its consensus latencies on the order of an hour and the theoretical peak throughput of only up to 7 transactions per second.
956 citations
"Using Blockchains to Implement Dist..." refers background in this paper
...Blockchain platforms can be classified as permissionless, in which anybody can join and participate in the network consensus, or permissioned, in which consensus is achieved by a set of known and identifiable peers [16]....
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...Permissioned blockchains constitute a suitable alternative once they contemplate an access control layer built into blockchain nodes [16]....
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...In turn, integrity and availability are ensured by consensus among the peers, preventing the whole chain from being modified and requiring an agreement about any block to be appended to the ledger [15], [16]....
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...The exact value of this fraction depends on the blockchain implementation [16]....
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