Block Creation Research Articles

Efficient and Secure Blockchain System for Digital Content Trading

Blockchain is attracting attention as a new solution for problems such as illegal copying, profit distribution, and forgery and falsification in the digital content trading environment, which has become an essential asset in the information age. However, one problem is that it is difficult to propagate digital content to the blockchain network because of a limited capacity to upload to the blockchain. The integrity and transparency of blockchain are also considered as weak points in terms of privacy. In this paper, we propose a new blockchain system, the secret block-based blockchain (SBBC), to address the problems with the blockchain system in the digital content trading environment. SBBC is composed of off-chain and on-chain network components. Off-chain is the part that allows trading digital content through the authentication phase. The digital content that is traded has a digital fingerprint inserted, so if an illegal leak occurs, the destination can be tracked. In addition, the content is encrypted and traded, and only the rightful user can use the digital content, thus ensuring income for the legitimate content author. Next, the on-chain network is licensed to use digital content, and a verification process using a consensus algorithm is performed. The licensed consumer creates a secret block of their transaction and records it only on their ledger. In a private part, secret block creation ensures privacy and solves the network overload that can occur when uploading digital content to the blockchain. Finally, through the verification and agreement of all blockchain participants, a public block is created and recorded in the ledger to finalize the transaction. Consequently, we propose the SBBC system suitable for digital content trading environments and a safe and reliable system through a consensus algorithm in such environments.

Research on the Optimization Model of Blockchain Hierarchical Proxy

In the decentralized blockchain, each node stores the same data copy that costs a lot of repeated storage space to store valuable information. It makes storage efficiency insufficient. Meanwhile, each node needs to exchange the huge messages to create and verify the block. With rapid increasing in the number of communication nodes and communication frequency, it has caused a large network load. In order to further improve the storage efficiency and decrease the network load, a hierarchical proxy model is proposed. Firstly, designing a hierarchical proxy model which accurately divides normal nodes and proxy node groups, and it performs directional division of tasks for different nodes. Secondly, in a small-scale management cluster composed of proxy nodes, cluster failure priority classification can effectively deal with the failure of proxy nodes. Through the hierarchical storage mode, the block header and body data are separated, and it uses global or local method to store. The hierarchical operation mode makes use of idle resources to make transaction verification and block creation run in parallel. On this basis, the proxy model adopts delay correction strategy and concentrated multiple correction strategy to further reduce the communication loss. Through malicious node blacklist, the node with malicious behavior is added to the blacklist, and it prevents the node from further making evil. Finally, the simulation experiments show that the hierarchical proxy model effectively resists malicious behaviors, reduces network load and has great advantages in terms of data storage efficiency.

Blockchain and quantum blind signature-based hybrid scheme for healthcare 5.0 applications

Insurance agencies and digitally recorded healthcare databases can help society to decrease the high-level complexity and the cost of the entire healthcare ecosystem. The general data protection regulation provides the right to its data owner’s to know how data is stored, and for which purpose his/her data is being used. However, the healthcare data flow through an open channel, i.e., the Internet, which opens the doors for intruders to perform some malicious activities, such as breach of confidential data, modification in the stored data, etc. So it is a challenging task for the traditional healthcare systems to maintain the security and privacy of the stakeholders. Blockchain is emerged as a technology that improves the efficiency of today’s healthcare system and also helps to maintain the security and privacy of all the stakeholders. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we analyse various security architectures used to secure electronic health records (EHRs) and apply Quantum Computing (QC) to the traditional encryption system. Then, we propose a blockchain-based architecture for Healthcare, which allows users to access the data from the database with their defined role. Further, to protect the traditional encryption system from the quantum attacks, the Quantum blind signature is used during the block creation using hyperledger Fabric blockchain. Results show the efficacy of the proposed scheme compared to the state-of-the-art schemes in terms of transaction throughput, resource consumption, and network traffic.

The utility of high-risk human papillomavirus E6/E7 mRNA in situ hybridization in assessing HPV status on cell block

Assessment of human papillomavirus (HPV) status is critical to the treatment and prognosis of patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. Patients often present with enlarged cervical lymph nodes which are amenable to fine needle aspiration (FNA) and cell block creation. The most widely used method for assessing HPV status is the surrogate marker p16. Other HPV specific methods such as high-risk HPV E6/E7 mRNA in situ hybridization (ISH) have been shown to perform as well as p16 and are easier to interpret. Our study evaluates the utility of high-risk HPV mRNA ISH in cell block specimens. Thirty-six cases of metastatic squamous cell carcinoma in cervical neck lymph node FNAs were identified over a 3-year period. All cases had p16 immunohistochemistry (IHC) performed on cell block. HR HPV mRNA ISH was performed on the cell block and compared to the p16 results. Additionally, p16 and HR HPV mRNA ISH status was assessed in those cases with corresponding surgical resections. HR HPV mRNA ISH confirmed the p16 IHC (either positive or negative) in 24 of the 36 cases (66.7%). Six false negative cases were p16 negative/HR HPV mRNA ISH positive. HR HPV mRNA ISH was positive in 75% of the four p16 equivocal cases. Two cases were p16 positive/HR HPV mRNA ISH negative. HR HPV mRNA ISH is no more difficult to perform in the IHC lab and is easier to interpret than p16 IHC. HR HPV mRNA ISH is a useful alternative to p16 in cell block specimens.

Blockchain-Enabled Certificate-Based Authentication for Vehicle Accident Detection and Notification in Intelligent Transportation Systems

As the communications among the vehicles, the Road-Side Units ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RSU</i> ) and the Edge Servers ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ES</i> ) take place via wireless communication and the Internet, an adversary may take the opportunity to tamper with the data communicated among various entities in an Internet of Vehicles (IoV) environment. Therefore, it demands secure communication among the involved entities in an IoV-based Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) deployment. In this work, we design a new blockchain-enabled certificate-based authentication scheme for vehicle accident detection and notification in ITS, called BCAS-VADN. In BCAS-VADN, through the authentication process, each vehicle can securely notify accident related transactions to its nearby Cluster Head ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CH</i> ), if an accident is detected on roads either by its own or neighbor vehicle(s). The <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CH</i> then securely sends the transactions received from the vehicles to its <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RSU</i> and subsequently, these transactions are also received securely by the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ES</i> s. The <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ES</i> is responsible for preparing partial block containing transactions and Merkle tree root, and a digital signature on those information, and then forwarding to its associated Cloud Server ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CS</i> ) in the Blockchain Center ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BC</i> ) for complete block creation, verification and addition of the block using the designed consensus process. Due to blockchain technology usage, it is shown that BCAS-VADN is not only secure against various potential attacks, but also maintains transparency, immutability and decentralization of the information. Furthermore, a comprehensive comparative analysis reveals that BCAS-VADN achieves better security and more functionality attributes, and has low communication and computational overheads as compared to other competitive authentication schemes in IoV. In addition, the practical demonstration using the blockchain technology has been also provided.

A Task-Aware Fine-Grained Storage Selection Mechanism for In-Memory Big Data Computing Frameworks

In-memory big data computing, widely used in hot areas such as deep learning and artificial intelligence, can meet the demands of ultra-low latency service and real-time data analysis. However, existing in-memory computing frameworks usually use memory in an aggressive way. Memory space is quickly exhausted and leads to great performance degradation or even task failure. On the other hand, the increasing volumes of raw data and intermediate data introduce huge memory demands, which further deteriorate the short of memory. To release the pressure on memory, those in-memory frameworks provide various storage schemes options for caching data, which determines where and how data is cached. But their storage scheme selection mechanisms are simple and insufficient, always manually set by users. Besides, those coarse-grained data storage mechanisms cannot satisfy memory access patterns of each computing unit which works on only part of the data. In this paper, we proposed a novel task-aware fine-grained storage scheme auto-selection mechanism. It automatically determines the storage scheme for caching each data block, which is the smallest unit during computing. The caching decision is made by considering the future tasks, real-time resource utilization, and storage costs, including block creation costs, I/O costs, and serialization costs under each storage scenario. The experiments show that our proposed mechanism, compared with the default storage setting, can offer great performance improvement, especially in memory-constrained circumstances it can be as much as 78%.

The Effects of Collaborative Block Creation on the Sense of Rolefulness

This study investigated the effects of collaborative LEGO® block creation on the sense of rolefulness; that is, the continuous sense of role satisfaction in an individual’s daily life. For this purpose, 59 Japanese female university students were divided into groups of three or four members and asked to collaboratively express themselves by using LEGO® blocks, figures, and base plates. Then, their scores on the rolefulness scale were compared before and after the collaborative block activity. The results showed that both social and internal rolefulness significantly increased through the activity. The implication of the findings is that collaborative block creation can facilitate the role-taking of participants and improve their sense of rolefulness.

DNS Security - Prevent DNS Cache Poisoning Attack using Blockchain

The block chain is attaining popularity day to day as it is acting as distributed ledger for Cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and ripple. This research paper has focused on the Blockchain and its working pattern with technical implementation of block creation. This technical paper is considering the prevention of DNS Cache poisoning attack in Blockchain which is known as larger class of name-based attacks. DNS Packet interceptions may be made using various attacks like Cache poisoning attack, man-in-the-middle attacks etc. As there are numerous security mechanisms to secure the Blockchain but in order to make Blockchain immune from cache poisoning attack, there is need to update the block creation module. Therefore, this research work is proposed to make reduction in probability of data corruption that can be created from different attacks. It resolves the issue of cache poisoning attacks using user defined port instead of predefined port. However, the initialization of transmission is performed here using predefined port number. In second step, the encrypted port number is decrypted to initiate communication using user defined port number. The use of port with IP address would restrict attacks during data transmission. The paper has presented the comparative analysis of existing DNS attacking prevention mechanism to proposed work.

Weighted voting on the blockchain: Improving consensus in proof of stake protocols

SummaryProof of stake (PoS) protocols rely on voting mechanisms to reach consensus on the current state. If an enhanced majority of staking nodes, also called validators, agree on a proposed block, then this block is appended to the blockchain. Yet these protocols remain vulnerable to faults caused by validators who abstain either accidentally or maliciously. To protect against such faults while retaining the PoS selection and reward allocation schemes, we study weighted voting in validator committees. We formalize the block creation process and introduce validators' voting profiles which we update by a multiplicative weights algorithm relative to validators' voting behavior and aggregate blockchain rewards. Using this framework, we leverage weighted majority voting rules that optimize collective decision making to show, both numerically and analytically, that the consensus mechanism is more robust if validators' votes are appropriately scaled. We raise potential issues and limitations of weighted voting in trustless, decentralized networks and relate our results to the design of current PoS protocols.

Party and Management in the Irish House of Lords, 1713–15

AbstractThe ‘constitutional revolution’ which occurred in Ireland after 1691 meant that parliamentary management became one of the prime functions of the viceroyalty. Interest focused on the Commons, where supply legislation was drafted. But the upper House, though smaller, less busy, and on the whole more easily managed, could not be ignored, since it could still cause major problems for government. The situation for the incoming ministers in 1714 was problematic, since the Lords had been a tory stronghold, and the ‘Church party’, buttressed by the bishops, remained powerful. The situation was a mirror image of Westminster in 1710, when Robert Harley's tory ministry had to cope with a whig‐dominated house of lords. This essay analyses the means by which Lord Lieutenant Sunderland (1714–15), and his successors, Lords Justices Grafton and Galway, brought the Irish upper House under control, constructing a court party with some of the elements which Clyve Jones has identified as having been crucial to Harley's strategy in 1710–14: moderate or non‐party men, pensioners and placemen depending on government largess, new episcopal appointments and a block creation of peerages. In Ireland it was the new peers who played the most important part. The whigs were able to make some inroads into the episcopal bench, previously a stronghold of toryism, until the issue of relief for dissenters rekindled anxiety over the maintenance of the ecclesiastical establishment, prefiguring future problems.

An Evaluation of Uncle Block Mechanism Effect on Ethereum Selfish and Stubborn Mining Combined With an Eclipse Attack

Ethereum accelerates the transaction process through a quicker block creation design. Since the time interval between the generation of blocks is very short (about 15s), block propagation time in an inefficient network is not negligible compared with the block time interval. This lead to the production of a large number of orphan blocks. In order to solve the security problems that may be caused by the orphan block and improve the transaction processing efficiency, Ethereum introduces the uncle block mechanism, i.e., an orphan block may get part of minted reward if it gets a reference by a regular block. In this paper, we show the weakness of the uncle block mechanism. Firstly, we describe the specific differences of Ethereum selfish and stubborn mining in every state from the ones in Bitcoin. Secondly, we simulate possible attacks, and the results show that the Ethereum selfish and stubborn mining strategies not only increase the reward of an attacker but also decrease the security threshold. The security threshold refers to the proportion of the attacker's computational power that needs to be achieved in order to obtain a higher reward than he should. In a practical network congestion rate, the security threshold are weakened to 0.129 and 0.216 against the Lead stubborn mining strategy and the original selfish mining strategy, respectively. When the congestion rate is rising, the reward is increasing and the threshold is decreasing. Thirdly, possible strategies are evaluated to find out the optimal one in different settings. Fourthly, we also extend the evaluation by combining three eclipse attack strategies with selfish or stubborn mining. Most of combinations bring more advantages to an attacker than a single strategy.

Blockchain-Based Energy Trading and Load Balancing Using Contract Theory and Reputation in a Smart Community

The rapid deployment of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the integration of renewable energy sources have ameliorated the existing power systems and contributed to the development of greener smart communities. However, load balancing problems, security threats, privacy leakage issues, etc., remain unresolved. Many blockchain-based approaches have been used in literature to solve the aforementioned challenges. However, they are not sufficient to obtain satisfactory results because of the inefficient energy management methods and time-intensiveness of the primitive cryptographic executions on the network devices. In this paper, an efficient and secure blockchain-based Energy Trading (ET) model is proposed. It leverages the contract theory, incentive mechanism, and a reputation system for information asymmetry scenario. In order to motivate the ET entities to trade energy locally and EVs to participate in smart energy management, the proposed incentive provisioning mechanism plays a vital role. Besides, a reputation system improves the reliability and efficiency of the system and discourages the blockchain nodes from acting maliciously. A novel consensus algorithm, i.e., Proof of Work based on Reputation (PoWR), is proposed to reduce transaction confirmation latency and block creation time. Moreover, a shortest route algorithm, i.e., the Dijkstra algorithm, is implemented in order to reduce the traveling distance and energy consumption of the EVs during ET. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated using peak to average ratio, social welfare, utility of local aggregator, etc., as performance metrics. Moreover, privacy and security analyses of the system are also presented.

Blockchain of Finite-Lifetime Blocks With Applications to Edge-Based IoT

Edge computing is a promising approach for provisioning distributed cloud services to Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Many recent studies propose that edge nodes use blockchain for the decentralized management and access control of IoT data. However, due to the massive volume of data and related transactions, edge servers will eventually run out of space to store the full chain. We introduce scalable and lightweight architecture called LiTiChain, a blockchain of blocks with finite lifetime. In LiTiChain, outdated transactions and blocks, that is, the blocks whose lifetimes are expired, can be safely removed from the chain. Two graphs are merged into the structure of LiTiChain: 1) a tree representing the order of expiry of lifetimes and 2) a linear graph representing the order of block creation. We show that this construction not only ensures the connectivity of the chain after block deletions but also helps to maintain the block height of shortened chain. LiTiChain also supports transactions whose lifetime is unknown at the time of creation. It is possible that some expired blocks need to be retained in the chain, in case they are needed to validate remaining blocks, which incurs additional storage costs. A detailed analysis of such overhead in storage costs is presented for stochastic and worst case scenarios. Extensive simulation is performed on actual and synthetic IoT data so as to gain insights on the storage costs under various lifetime distributions. It is demonstrated that LiTiChain provides a simple yet effective solution to scalability problems in storing blockchains for the IoT ecosystems.

Towards random-honest miners selection and multi-blocks creation: Proof-of-negotiation consensus mechanism in blockchain networks

As one of the fundamental characteristics of blockchain networks, consensus mechanism has attracted tremendous interests from both the academics and industries. Recently, more attention has been paid to the consensus mechanism with fair multi-miners participation. However, most of them are fixed-miners based and one-by-one block creation, and thus offering opportunities for attackers to launch DoS attack against the fixed miners or manipulate the blocks creation by bribing the fixed miners. Additionally, one-by-one block creation may result in vast transactions waiting to be confirmed, especially in a large scale of blockchain network. In this paper, we propose a novel consensus mechanism called proof-of-negotiation (PoN). With negotiation rules, trust management is introduced to evaluate the trustworthiness of miners, and thus achieving the random-honest miners selection for a round of block creation. To further improve the efficiency of PoN in creating blocks, parallel multi-blocks creation can be implemented synchronously or asynchronously by dividing the miner team as k groups. Meanwhile, a distributed blocks storage scheme is designed with a map function to alleviate the storage volume caused by massive blocks creation. Simulation results show that PoN is more effective than traditional consensus mechanism in one-by-one block creation and more efficient in creating blocks.

Low powered blockchain consensus protocols based on consistent hash

Current blockchain consensus protocols have a triangle of contradictions in aspects of decentralization, security, and energy consumption, and cannot be synchronously optimized. We describe a design of two new blockchain consensus protocols, called “CHB-consensus” and “CHBD-consensus,” based on a consistent hash algorithm. Honest miners can fairly gain the opportunity to create blocks. They do not consume any extra computational power resources when creating new blocks, and such blocks can obtain the whole blockchain network to confirm consensus with fairness. However, malicious miners have to pay massive computational power resources for attacking the new block creation privilege or double-spending. Blockchain networks formed by CHB-consensus and CHBD-consensus are based on the same security assumption as that in Bitcoin systems, so they save a huge amount of power without sacrificing decentralization or security. We analyze possible attacks and give a rigorous but adjustable validation strategy. CHB-consensus and CHBD-consensus introduce a certification authority (CA) system, which does not have special management or control rights over blockchain networks or data structures, but carries the risk of privacy breaches depending on credibility and reliability of the CA system. Here, we analyze the robustness and energy consumption of CHB-consensus and CHBD-consensus, and demonstrate their advantages through theoretical derivation.

Secure and Efficient Vehicle-to-Grid Energy Trading in Cyber Physical Systems: Integration of Blockchain and Edge Computing

Smart grid has emerged as a successful application of cyber-physical systems in the energy sector. Among numerous key technologies of the smart grid, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) provides a promising solution to reduce the level of demand-supply mismatch by leveraging the bidirectional energy-trading capabilities of electric vehicles. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient V2G energy trading framework by exploring blockchain, contract theory, and edge computing. First, we develop a consortium blockchain-based secure energy trading mechanism for V2G. Then, we consider the information asymmetry scenario, and propose an efficient incentive mechanism based on contract theory. The social welfare optimization problem falls into the category of difference of convex programming and is solved by using the iterative convex-concave procedure algorithm. Next, edge computing has been incorporated to improve the successful probability of block creation. The computational resource allocation problem is modeled as a two-stage: 1) Stackelberg leader-follower game and 2) the optimal strategies are obtained by using the backward induction approach. Finally, the performance of the proposed framework is validated via numerical results and theoretical analysis.

BlockSim

Both in the design and deployment of blockchains many configuration choices need to be made. Investigating different implementation and design choices is not feasible or practical on real systems. Therefore, we propose BlockSim as a framework to build discrete-event dynamic system models for blockchain systems. BlockSim is organized in three layers: incentive layer, connector layer and system layer and is implemented in Python. This paper introduces BlockSim, with a particular emphasis on the modeling and simulation of block creation through the Proof of Work consensus algorithm.

Trustworthy Electronic Voting Using Adjusted Blockchain Technology

The electronic voting has emerged over time as a replacement to the paper-based voting to reduce the redundancies and inconsistencies. The historical perspective presented in the last two decades suggests that it has not been so successful due to the security and privacy flaws observed over time. This paper suggests a framework by using effective hashing techniques to ensure the security of the data. The concept of block creation and block sealing is introduced in this paper. The introduction of a block sealing concept helps in making the blockchain adjustable to meet the need of the polling process. The use of consortium blockchain is suggested, which ensures that the blockchain is owned by a governing body (e.g., election commission), and no unauthorized access can be made from outside. The framework proposed in this paper discusses the effectiveness of the polling process, hashing algorithms’ utility, block creation and sealing, data accumulation, and result declaration by using the adjustable blockchain method. This paper claims to apprehend the security and data management challenges in blockchain and provides an improved manifestation of the electronic voting process.

Massively Parallel Stencil Code Solver with Autonomous Adaptive Block Distribution

In the last decades, simulations have been established in several fields of science and industry to study various phenomena by solving, inter alia, partial differential equations. For an efficient use of current and future high performance computing systems, with many thousands of computation ranks, high node-level performance, scalable communication, and the omission of unnecessary calculations are of high priority in the development of new solvers. The challenge of contemporary simulation applications is to bridge the gap between the scales of the various physical processes. We introduce the NAStJA framework, a block-based MPI parallel solver for arbitrary algorithms, based on stencil code or other regular grid methods. NAStJA decomposes the domain of spatially complex structures into small cuboid blocks. A special feature of NAStJA is the dynamic block adaption which modifies the calculation domain around the region where the computation currently takes place, and hence avoids unnecessary calculations. This often occurs, inter alia, in phase-field simulations. Block creation and deletion is managed autonomously within local neighborhoods. A basic load balancing mechanism allows a re-distribution of newly created blocks to the involved computing ranks. The use of a multi-hop network, to distribute information to the entire domain, avoids collective all-gather communications. Thus, we can demonstrate excellent scaling. The present scaling tests substantiate the enormous advantage of this adaptive method. For certain simulation scenarios, we can show that the calculation effort and memory consumption can be reduced to only 3.5 percent, compared to the classical full-domain reference simulation. The overhead of 70–100 percent for the dynamic adapting block creation is significantly lower than the gain. The approach is not restricted to phase-field simulations, and can be employed in other domains of computational science to exploit sparsity of computing regions.

Secure DRM Scheme Based on Blockchain with High Credibility

Upon the fairness, security and flexibility problems of traditional digital rights management, we proposed a blockchain infrastructure service based DRM platform with high-level credit and security, in which we first proposed a Blockchain as a service (BaaS) architecture to decrease the complexity and difficulty of building up a blockchain-based business model, the BaaS infrastructure transparently provides easily-developed user interface to implement all core functions such as genesis block creation, consensus mechanism definition, node initialization and running, wallet management, address management, blockchain explorer et al. Then based on the BaaS infrastructure we proposed a blockchain-based DRM platform with high-level credit and security for Content provider (CP), Service provider (SP) and customers. We designed the blockchain as infrastructure service for DRM business model and provided core content rights information storage in blockchain for tamper-resistant copyrights protection from being misused, and the content consumers can use blockchain-based digital assets for content consumption payment, and the platform can help the content demandside and supply-side trading and the blockchain recorded the trade data as tamper-resistant evidence. Evaluation experiments manifests the proposed scheme is reliable and secure, and provided an efficient methodology for blockchain application business model implementation.