Blockchain of Finite-Lifetime Blocks for Edge-IoT Applications

Abstract

In the recent past, many studies proposed the use of blockchain technology among edge computing nodes for the decentralized management and access control of IoT devices and data. Unlike cryptocurrency transactions in bitcoin blockchain that are stored indefinitely, IoT data has finite-lifetime. This difference in the lifetime of the IoT data provides an opportunity to reduce the storage costs of blockchain for Edge-IoT systems. This chapter reviews LiTiChain—a specialized architecture published in the literature and presents μ-LiTiChain—a generalized version of the LiTiChain. Both these architectures aim at reducing the storage costs of blockchain of finite-lifetime blocks for Edge-IoT systems. μ-LiTiChain offers a degree of freedom in the design of blockchain of finite-lifetime blocks in terms of a tradeoff between storage cost, security and computational cost. To provide the same level of security as conventional blockchain, in LiTiChain, some blocks are stored longer than their lifetime, which incurs additional storage cost. With extensive simulations and analysis, it is demonstrated that the μ-LiTiChain has the potential to decrease the additional storage cost incurred by LiTiChain to zero and improve security at the expense of computational cost. Two variants of μ-LiTiChain architecture i.e. p-LiTiChain and s-LiTiChain are also discussed.KeywordsBlockchainEdge computingInternet of thingsStorage costSecurityComputational cost