SmartStore: A blockchain and clustering based intelligent edge storage system with fairness and resilience

Abstract

With the development of edge computing, edge storage solutions are attracting widespread attention. When facing the requirements of lower latency and faster access speed from end devices, edge storage solutions are considered to be an alternative to the cloud. However, edges are usually owned by small organizations which have limited operations and maintenance capabilities. This makes these edge devices can be easily disabled by external attacks or internal hardware failures. Besides, the heterogeneity of the edge devices will also make it difficult to price the edge resources uniformly. To tackle these problems, we propose SmartStore: an auction mechanism based on blockchain to allocate edge resources. Considering centralized solutions have access bottlenecks and trust issues, we built SmartStore on the smart contract. With Bayesian game theory, SmartStore can analyze how data owners (DO) and edges price the resources can maximize their benefits. From an economic perspective, both DO and edges can make full use of edge heterogeneous resources with SmartStore. Besides, a two-stage submission strategy is proposed to complete the sealed auction. Furthermore, considering the reliability of edge storage, we propose a cluster-based block distribution algorithm for SmartStore's intelligent edge recommendation process. SmartStore ensures the reliability of edge storage while maximizing the benefits and resource utilization of both parties. Finally, we conduct specific experiments on the proposed auction smart contract through “Ethereum” and the experimental results of implementation show the effectiveness and efficiency of our SmartStore.