Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Research Articles

Blockchain in energy systems: From centralized to decentralized

The increasingly distributed energy system poses a serious challenge to traditional centralized management schemes. Blockchain is a promising technique for enabling trusted collaboration without a trusted central authority. Still, blockchains are limited to being applied in the energy system as they are not specialized for mathematical optimization. To fill this gap, Chen et al. propose a blockchain consensus mechanism (proof of solution, PoSo) tailored to support mathematical optimization problems in energy systems, which replaces the meaningless mathematical puzzle in proof of work (PoW) with a meaningful optimization problem. The inspiration comes from the fact that both the solutions to the puzzle and to an optimization problem are hard to find but easy to verify.

Energy Efficient Consensus Approach of Blockchain for IoT Networks with Edge Computing.

Blockchain technology is gaining a lot of attention in various fields, such as intellectual property, finance, smart agriculture, etc. The security features of blockchain have been widely used, integrated with artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), software defined networks (SDN), etc. The consensus mechanism of blockchain is its core and ultimately affects the performance of the blockchain. In the past few years, many consensus algorithms, such as proof of work (PoW), ripple, proof of stake (PoS), practical byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT), etc., have been designed to improve the performance of the blockchain. However, the high energy requirement, memory utilization, and processing time do not match with our actual desires. This paper proposes the consensus approach on the basis of PoW, where a single miner is selected for mining the task. The mining task is offloaded to the edge networking. The miner is selected on the basis of the digitization of the specifications of the respective machines. The proposed model makes the consensus approach more energy efficient, utilizes less memory, and less processing time. The improvement in energy consumption is approximately 21% and memory utilization is 24%. Efficiency in the block generation rate at the fixed time intervals of 20 min, 40 min, and 60 min was observed.

A Random and Scalable Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

The central piece of blockchain technologies is the consensus algorithm. The consensus is reached via consensus algorithms in the distributed network of the blockchain. The consensus becomes stronger if nearly all the nodes in the blockchain network take part in building the blockchain. Even if some nodes misbehave or malfunction, the consensus should not break down then. Since blockchain networks are distributed, even if some regions of the network or some nodes of the network leave, the blockchain network should not malfunction and it should be consistent. Therefore, the consistency of the blockchain transactions should be assured by all the nodes or nearly all the nodes, or most of the nodes. In other words, the consensus should be the issue of all the nodes. In this work, a novel consensus algorithm is presented to diffuse the mission of building the blockchain to all the nodes. In other words, the consensus should be the issue of all the nodes. In this work, a novel consensus algorithm is presented to diffuse the mission of building the blockchain to all the nodes. The algorithm increases the randomness of nodes and enforces the blockchain network to be more decentralized. Randomness is realized by employing the power of cryptography, especially by using public keys as a characteristic for miners, which are also called signers. Moreover, since the algorithm is realized with a few operations, it contributes to the scalability of the blockchain. Furthermore, digital signatures improve the security level and consistency of the blockchain.

Trusted Blockchain-Driven IoT Security Consensus Mechanism

Single point of failure and node attack tend to cause instability in the centralized Internet of Things (IoT). Combined with blockchain technology, the deficiency of traditional IoT architecture can be effectively alleviated. However, the existing blockchain consensus mechanism still has the problems of forks and wasting of computing power. Therefore, this paper proposes a new framework based on a two-stage credit calculation to handle these problems. Notably, the nodes are selected through the model, and these nodes will compete on the chain according to the behavior of participating in the creation of the block. Then, a comparative simulation with the existing consensus mechanism proof of work (PoW) is presented. The results show that the proposed framework can quickly eliminate malicious nodes, maintain the overall security of the blockchain and reduce consensus delay.

Guest Editorial: Enhancing hosting capability for renewable energy generation in active distribution networks

Guest Editorial: Enhancing hosting capability for renewable energy generation in active distribution networks

Edge Server Deployment Scheme of Blockchain in IoVs

In the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs), vehicles generate and disseminate information, which makes the related vehicular services realized. However, the IoVs is an untrusted environment. Vehicles cannot evaluate the credibility of the received information, which makes it a challenge to implement data sharing in IoVs. Blockchain, constantly directed main attention, are considered as a feasible solution to address the challenge, due to its advantages of decentralization, unforgeability, and collective maintenance. The consensus mechanism of blockchain requires the miners in the system with strong computing power for mining, while the computing power of nodes in IoVs is limited, which restricts the application of blockchain in IoVs. In fact, the application of blockchain in IoVs can be implemented by employing edge computing. The key entity of edge computing is the edge servers(ESs). Roadside nodes (RSUs) can be deployed as ESs of edge computing in IoVs. In this article, we study the ESs deployment scheme for covering more vehicle nodes in IoVs, and propose a randomized algorithm to calculate approximation solutions. Finally, we simulated the performance of the proposed scheme and compared it with other deployment schemes.

CICM: A Collaborative Integrity Checking Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Preserving the Originality of Data the Cloud for Forensic Investigation

The originality of data is very important for achieving correct results from forensic analysis of data for resolving the issue. Data may be analysed to resolve disputes or review issues by finding trends in the dataset that can give clues to the cause of the issue. Specially designed foolproof protection for data integrity is required for forensic purposes. Collaborative Integrity Checking Mechanism (CICM), for securing the chain-of-custody of data in a blockchain is proposed in this paper. Existing consensus mechanisms are fault-tolerant, allowing a threshold for faults. CICM avoids faults by using a transparent 100% agreement process for validating the originality of data in a blockchain. A group of agreement actors check and record the original status of data at its time of arrival. Acceptance is based on general agreement by all the participants in the consensus process. The solution was tested against practical byzantine fault tolerant (PBFT), Zyzzyva, and hybrid byzantine fault tolerant (hBFT) mechanisms for efficacy to yield correct results and operational performance costs. Binomial distribution was used to examine the CICM efficacy. CICM recorded zero probability of failure while the benchmarks recorded up to 8.44%. Throughput and latency were used to test its operational performance costs. The hBFT recorded the best performance among the benchmarks. CICM achieved 30.61% higher throughput and 21.47% lower latency than hBFT. In the robustness against faults tests, CICM performed better than hBFT with 16.5% higher throughput and 14.93% lower latency than the hBFT in the worst-case fault scenario.

Fine Grained Access Control Based on Smart Contract for Edge Computing

Traditional centralized access control faces data security and privacy problems. The core server is the main target to attack. Single point of failure risk and load bottleneck are difficult to solve effectively. And the third-party data center cannot protect data owners. Traditional distributed access control faces the problem of how to effectively solve the scalability and diversified requirements of IoT (Internet of Things) applications. SCAC (Smart Contract-based Access Control) is based on ABAC (Attributes Based Access Control) and RBAC (Role Based Access Control). It can be applied to various types of nodes in different application scenarios that attributes are used as basic decision elements and authorized by role. The research objective is to combine the efficiency of service orchestration in edge computing with the security of consensus mechanism in blockchain, making full use of smart contract programmability to explore fine grained access control mode on the basis of traditional access control paradigm. By designing SSH-based interface for edge computing and blockchain access, SCAC parameters can be found and set to adjust ACLs (Access Control List) and their policies. The blockchain-edge computing combination is powerful in causing significant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel decentralized applications. The rationality on typical process behavior of management services and data access control be verified through CPN (Color Petri Net) tools 4.0, and then data statistics on fine grained access control, decentralized scalability, and lightweight deployment can be obtained by instance running in this study. The results show that authorization takes into account both security and efficiency with the “blockchain-edge computing” combination.

Research on the Judicial Expertise of Electronic Evidence Based on Blockchain

Give full play to the advantages of blockchain technology, guarantee the consensus of public credit institutions with the help of hierarchical nodes, and form a judicial alliance chain, so that the public can participate in the data verification activities of electronic evidence in the form of organizations, promoting the socialization and development of judicial activities. By using the credible time-stamp evidence, the judicial block chain presents the extremely formidable application superiority, the node verification based on the block chain consensus mechanism, is helpful to form the block chain judicial system which has the extremely application prospect. Through the analysis of the practical application and application prospect of the judicial block chain, the author makes a complete analysis of the idea of the electronic evidence judicial appraisal based on the block chain.

A Dynamic Reputation–based Consensus Mechanism for Blockchain

In recent years, Blockchain is gaining prominence as a hot topic in academic research. However, the consensus mechanism of blockchain has been criticized in terms of energy consumption and performance. Although Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism, as a lightweight consensus mechanism, is more efficient than traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS), it suffers from the problem of centralization. To this end, on account of analyzing the shortcomings of existing consensus mechanisms, this paper proposes a dynamic reputation-based consensus mechanism for blockchain. This scheme allows nodes with reputation value higher than a threshold apply to become a monitoring node, which can monitor the behavior of validators in case that validators with excessive power cause harm to the blockchain network. At the same time, the reputation evaluation algorithm is also introduced to select nodes with high reputation to become validators in the network, thus increasing the cost of malicious behavior. In each consensus cycle, validators and monitoring nodes are dynamically updated according to the reputation value. Through security analysis, it is demonstrated that the scheme can resist the attacks of malicious nodes in the blockchain network. By simulation experiments and analysis of the scheme, the result verifies that the mechanism can effectively improve the fault tolerance of the consensus mechanism, reduce the time of consensus to guarantee the security of the system.

Consensus Mechanism of Blockchain Based on PoR with Data Deduplication

As the basis of cloud computing, distributed storage technology mainly studies how data centers store, organize and manage data. Blockchain has become the most secure solution for cloud storage due to its decentralization and immutability. Consensus mechanism is one of the core technologies of blockchain, which affects the transaction processing capability, security and scalability of blockchain. The current mainstream consensus algorithms such as Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, and Delegated Proof of Stake all have the problem of wasting resources. And with the explosive growth of data, cloud storage nodes store a large amount of redundant data, which inevitably increases storage overhead and computing cost. To this end, we propose to use the Proof of Retrievability with deduplication algorithm as the consensus mechanism of the blockchain system and design a blockchain consensus protocol suitable for distributed storage. First, the data integrity verification protocol in the scheme guarantees that storage nodes correctly store the data they promise to store. Second, the deduplication algorithm in the protocol can optimize data auditing, greatly reduce the need for data storage space, and improve the scalability of data transmission. In addition, the scheme uses ring signatures in the audit process to ensure user anonymity and data unlinkability, while providing highly reliable data storage, and ensuring data storage security through blockchain. Finally, we demonstrate the security of the proposed scheme and evaluate its performance. The evaluation results show that our scheme is efficient and scalable.

Introduction of Formal Methods in Blockchain Consensus Mechanism and Its Associated Protocols

As the size of data is increasing exponentially, its security is a major concern, emerging technology like blockchain is used to provide security. Since the inception of blockchain, it has been adopted by researchers and industry, however, it gained enormous attention after cryptocurrency. It can be defined as a means of storing information in such a way that modification and hacking the system is difficult or impossible. A blockchain is a decentralized ledger that is digital and public, consisting of records of transactions called blocks. A consensus technology assures that all nodes agree on a unique sequence for appending blocks. A comprehensive examination of these algorithms will aid in understanding how and why each blockchain operates in the manner that it does. In this study, we addressed extensively used consensus techniques in the blockchain and the importance of consensus protocol in blockchain technology. The underlying consensus algorithm is a critical component of every blockchain system which determine the performance and security of the system. Ensuring the correctness of consensus protocols is uttermost important to create trust in the blockchain-based systems and formal methods are the way to create that trust and develop correct and verified systems. Formal modeling is a method of writing a system mathematically and examining the correctness and verifying the developed system. This study analyzed the importance of consensus mechanisms and how formal methods are helping to develop a correct blockchain-based system. This paper is a rigorous study on the current scenario of the application of formal methods in the consensus mechanism of blockchain for their verification.

Rvc: An Reputation and Voting Based Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Edge Computing-Enabled Iot Systems

Rvc: An Reputation and Voting Based Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Edge Computing-Enabled Iot Systems

Draft: A Double Layer for Raft-Based Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

Draft: A Double Layer for Raft-Based Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

Blockchain consensus mechanism based on quantum zero-knowledge proof

Referring to the consensus mechanisms of traditional blockchain, a new consensus mechanism of quantum blockchain is designed based on the randomness and the irreversibility of quantum measurement and quantum zero-knowledge proof. This new consensus mechanism does not involve a great deal of computing resources and hence has fewer energy consumption, shorter time delay and higher throughput. Furthermore, the new consensus mechanism could withstand 51% attack.

Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Based on Improved Distributed Consistency and Hash Entropy

To improve the performance for distributed blockchain system, a novel and effective consensus algorithm is designed in this paper. It firstly constructs a more random additive constant through the generation matrix of the error correction code and uses the value of the hash entropy to prove that the constructed hash function can meet the requirements of high throughput and fast consensus in performance. In addition, a distributed consensus coordination service system is used in the blockchain system to realize the synchronization of metadata and ensure the consistency of block data, configuration information, and transaction information. The experiment results show that our proposed strategy can reduce the waste of computing resources, increase the block generation speed, and ensure the fairness of nodes participating in the competition, which is an effective solution to ensure the stable operation of the blockchain system.

An Efficient Blockchain Consensus Algorithm Based on Post-Quantum Threshold Signature

Blockchain is a distributed and append-only data management system maintained by many nodes from Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, where one of the most important and successful applications is Bitcoin. In blockchain P 2 P networks, consensus algorithms are playing a key role and take a lot of time. For example, Bitcoin uses Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm, which takes 60 minutes to acknowledge a new transaction. Compared with the traditional data management technology, blockchain systems are very inefficient. Thus, it is very crucial to improve the blockchain consensus. We present threshold digital signature techniques to exploit the blockchain consensus mechanism. First, we propose a threshold signature scheme based on NP-hard problem, i.e., solving quadratic equations in a finite field, which is considered to be secure against quantum computer attacks and traditional attacks. Second, we further propose an efficient blockchain consensus algorithm based on the new threshold signature scheme. Third, we build a new blockchain system based on the consensus algorithm. The analysis of the blockchain system shows that the efficiency and security is must better than current blockchain systems.

Blockchain-Based Authentication with Optional Privacy Preservation for Internet of Vehicles

With the rapid development of the mobile internet and intelligent technology of in-vehicle equipment, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), centered on intelligent connected cars, has gradually entered people’s lives. However, these technologies also bring serious privacy risks and security issues in terms of data transmission and storage. In this article, we propose a blockchain-based authentication system to provide vehicle safety management. The privacy and security attributes of various vehicle authentication transactions are based on high-level cryptographic primitives, realizing temporary and formal authentication methods. At the same time, a fair blockchain consensus mechanism Auction of block generation Rights (AoR) is proposed. To demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of the proposed scheme, security and performance analyses are presented. The relevant experimental results show that the scheme can provide superior decentralized management for IoV.

A Novel Trade Transaction Agreement Algorithm Using Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

Blockchain, the underlying technology of Bitcoin, has been deeply studied in various fields after its development in recent years. As a typical decentralized distributed data storage system, consensus reached among all participants in a blockchain system requires a consensus mechanism to be realized. In order to make blockchain applicable to different application scenarios, different consensus mechanisms have been proposed. With the further development of blockchain applications, more and more studies have been conducted on the consensus mechanism. However, some existing consensus mechanisms still have some problems in various aspects. Therefore, this paper proposes a trade deal algorithm based on the blockchain mechanism of consensus. First of all, according to PBFT, the lack of a dynamic problem in the VPBFT voting mechanism was introduced. The node system is divided into four types with different responsibilities and gives the number of relations between nodes. When the number of nodes is changed, it can be calculated according to the quantity relation, ensuring dynamic. Second, a data anonymous transaction and authentication protocol is designed. In the protocol, when the seller sells data, the mapping relationship between the real identity and the false identity of the data owner is blinded and sent to the buyer. When the buyer wants to verify their identity, the seller’s identity can only be verified with the authentication of the blockchain. The proposed algorithm is superior to the current consensus in terms of time and energy consumption, throughput, and fault tolerance methods, which is proven through experimental tests and simulation analysis.

Democratic learning: hardware/software co-design for lightweight blockchain-secured on-device machine learning

Recently, the trending 5G technology encourages extensive applications of on-device machine learning, which collects user data for model training. This requires cost-effective techniques to preserve the privacy and the security of model training within the resource-constrained environment. Traditional learning methods rely on the trust among the system for privacy and security. However, with the increase of the learning scale, maintaining every edge device’s trustworthiness could be expensive. To cost-effectively establish trust in a trustless environment, this paper proposes democratic learning (DemL), which makes the first step to explore hardware/software co-design for blockchain-secured decentralized on-device learning. By utilizing blockchain’s decentralization and tamper-proofing, our design secures AI learning in a trustless environment. To tackle the extra overhead introduced by blockchain, we propose PoMC (an algorithm and architecture co-design) as a novel blockchain consensus mechanism, which first exploits cross-domain reuse (AI learning and blockchain consensus) in AI learning architecture. Evaluation results show our DemL can protect AI learning from privacy leakage and model pollution, and demonstrated that privacy and security come with trivial hardware overhead and power consumption (2%). We believe that our work will open the door of synergizing blockchain and on-device learning for security and privacy.