Blockchain Leveraged Node Incentivization in Cooperation-Based Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract

Performance of cooperation-based networks, like delay tolerant networks (DTNs), are severely affected by selfish nodes that are not willing to participate in message forwarding due to resource constraints. Thus, nodes must receive satisfactory incentives to compensate their resource depletion for cooperation. The available incentive schemes for DTNs either rely on hypothetical central trusted authorities or do not use explicit digital currency that is provably secure. Blockchain, a decentralized and secure digital ledger of immutable transactions, is an attractive approach for addressing the incentive challenges in DTNs that lack central trusted authorities. Ethereum, the blockchain-based cryptocurrency, makes it possible to devise practical credit-based incentive schemes for such networks. However, the usage of blockchain is restricted by the availability of end-to-end Internet connectivity, which restricts the use of blockchain in intermittently connected networks like DTNs and has prompted exploration of new mechanisms for using blockchain in such networks. This chapter first proposes a mechanism, based on the Ethereum platform using smart contracts in Solidity, for integrating blockchain technology with DTNs, towards exploiting the immutability and availability of blockchains in DTNs. It then develops BlockCent, a blockchain-based node incentivizing scheme for DTNs that runs on the blockchain-DTN integrated environment. The scheme uses a novel reward strategy to bring rationality to the incentivizing process. To add logic to the incentivizing method, the scheme uses a novel incentive strategy. The proposed incentivizing scheme is applied to the disaster management use case for fast transmission of relief shelter needs to the emergency operation center, thus leading to efficient disaster relief. Extensive security analysis justifies security of the proposed scheme. Exhaustive experiments conducted on the ONE simulator and the Ethereum platform substantiate the efficiency of the scheme in terms of design parameters like selfishness reduction and reward fairness, and network parameters like delivery ratio, average delay, and overhead ratio, while not compromising blockchain performance parameters like processing time and gas consumption.