An Intelligent Distributed Ledger Construction Algorithm for IoT

Charles C Rawlins,S Jagannathan

doi:10.1109/access.2022.3146343

Abstract

Blockchain is the next generation of secure data management that creates near-immutable decentralized storage. Secure cryptography created a niche for blockchain to provide alternatives to well-known security compromises. However, design bottlenecks with traditional blockchain data structures scale poorly with increased network usage and are extremely computation-intensive. This made the technology difficult to combine with limited devices, like those in Internet of Things networks. In protocols like IOTA, replacement of blockchain’s linked-list queue processing with a lightweight dynamic ledger showed remarkable throughput performance increase. However, current stochastic algorithms for ledger construction suffer distinct trade-offs between efficiency and security. This work proposed a machine-learning approach with a multi-arm bandit that resolved these issues and was designed for auditing on limited devices. This algorithm was tested in a reinforcement-learning environment simulating the IOTA ledger’s construction with a decision tree. This study showed through regret analysis and experimentation that this approach was secure against impulse manipulation attacks while remaining energy-efficient. Although the IOTA protocol was a pioneer for lightweight distributed ledgers, it is expected that future blockchain protocols will adopt techniques similar to those presented in this work.

Highlights

Blockchain is one of the most revolutionary methods for securing network data with adoption that has exploded into a variety of data management communities, like government documents [1] and financial products [2]
This paper proposes a ledger construction algorithm with a robust multi-arm bandit approach to resolve the issue of unconfirmed transactions while remaining secure
A reinforcement learning (RL) environment for the Tangle was created in OpenAI gym in Python [54]

Summary

Introduction

Blockchain is one of the most revolutionary methods for securing network data with adoption that has exploded into a variety of data management communities, like government documents [1] and financial products [2]. Internet of Things (IoT) devices have received attention for data security in industries like supply-chain [3] and consumer households [4]. Data gathered from these devices efficiently tracks inventory and products at distant third-party servers [5]. Trivial schemes of collecting IoT data include traditional database systems with network-distant servers [18]. In these schemes, a user must accept consequences of not controlling their own data [19]. The core idea behind blockchain is creating a secure ledger, where transactions recorded describe network activity. Each node in a basic blockchain network contains the entire history of the ledger, though offloading can be introduced with reliance on full blockchain nodes for limited devices [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion