Blockchain Design Research Articles

Blockchain Design with Optimal Maintenance Planning

Rapid advancement of data management and sharing technology has urged organizations to develop effective maintenance management systems. This research, therefore, proposes and implements an Electronic Repair Records (ERR) system for the blockchain of maintenance planning and management. In ERR, this research develops two optimization models for scheduling and sequencing failure repairs from different types over multiple periods. Each failure repair is treated as a block, for which the data, current hash, and previous hash are obtained from failure repair parameters, resources availability information, and the optimal values of the start and finish times of the assigned failure repairs. The scheduling model assigns failure repairs to technicians and in maintenance shops on each scheduling period at a minimal total cost of delay, undertime, and overtime costs, while the sequencing model sequences the assigned failure repairs at minimal total overtime costs and minimum total repair start times. Once the blocks are confirmed, the blockchain is then shared through an electronic network among all maintenance departments. The developed ERR system was implemented to manage the repairs of 36 failures from different failures in six maintenance shops over a period of three days. The results showed that this system is found to be effective in managing optimal repairs and efficient in improving the utilization of available resources in maintenance shops. These advantages may result in significant savings in maintenance costs and better utilization of resources. In conclusion, the developed ERR system including the optimization models can provide in real-time assistance and de-centralized technology to planning engineers when managing maintenance activities over multiple periods in a wide range of business applications.

Detect and Mitigate Blockchain-Based DDoS Attacks Using Machine Learning and Smart Contracts

The key target of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks is to interrupt and suspend any available online services either executed for professional or personal gains. These attacks originate from the fast advancement in the number of insecure technologies. The attacks are caused due to the easy access to internet and advent of technology resulting to exponential growth of traffic volumes. DDoS attack remains most leading security risks to provisioning services. Also, the current embraced security mechanism for defense lacks flexibility and adequate resources to combat these attacks. Hence, there is need to embrace various other critical resources, where they can share the problem of mitigation. In addition, emerging technologies for instance smart contracts and blockchain offers for the sharing of these potential attacks information in an entirely automated and distributed manner. This paper recommends for a blockchain design which combines smart contracts and Machine Learning (ML) technologies, by presenting new ideal opportunities towards efficient DDoS mitigation solutions in variety of cooperative domains. Furthermore, the key advantage and benefits of this structure is deployment of still existing distributed and public infrastructure to blacklisted IP address or even advertise white, and the application of such an infrastructure with further defense mechanisms to current attacks of DDoS, deprived of considering distribution mechanisms or specialized registries, which facilitates the implementation of procedures across diverse domains. This paper further presents the demonstration and implementation features of this blockchain structure, discussion and study findings over these smart contracts and ML technologies. The study further concludes by recommending use of smart contract in collaborative block-chain design with ML for mitigating future attack of DDoS.

Layers of privacy in the blockchain: from technological solutionism to human-centred privacy-compliance technologies

AbstractDifferent organisations recently published reports identifying the challenges and potential solutions to ensure privacy in blockchain platforms. The proposed solutions frequently emphasise the role of privacy-compliance technologies to be incorporated into the blockchain design. Often, these solutions imply a techno-regulatory approach, ignoring that the level of privacy implemented in a blockchain involves legal and policy choices, disregarding the need to implement human participation and contestability in these platforms. Against this backdrop, this paper proposes to examine how privacy-compliance technologies can incorporate human participation and contestability: first, resorting to the interdisciplinary literature to examine how technological design could balance privacy with human oversight; second, discussing the challenges to ensure ex post contestability for aggrieved data subjects; third, examining the difficulties in identifying liable parties in a blockchain platform. The current disregard of the social and human element risks undermining the role of privacy-compliance technologies in the blockchain.

Design and implementation of blockchain based peer to peer energy trading platform

Blockchain is an emerging technology which is known for its popularity and reliability. First introduced in 2008, it has now expanded to many areas such as IoT, cryptocurrency and Smart contracts. A blockchain consists of blocks assembled in the form of a chain. Data from each participant in the network is stored in these blocks. It is done in a block format called a series of transactions. The Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed many traditional lifestyles. The IoT has enabled cities, housing, pollution control, energy saving and intelligent transportation systems. Blockchain technology and the Internet of Things can increase the efficiency of peer-to-peer energy trading platforms. The open-source peer to peer (P2P) energy trading system is designed on the blockchain. Peer to peer (P2P) is a decentralized communication model in which each party has the same functionality and each party can initiate a communication session. The system collects real time data, monitors and controls it using MQTT Protocol. The trading activities takes place on a web interface which uses a public test Ethereum blockchain, they are tamper-proof. IoT is used to monitor and control the energy. The energy data is acquired and processed using Wi-Fi Based microcontrollers.

Hierarchical Blockchain Design for Distributed Control and Energy Trading Within Microgrids

Blockchain technology is recognized as a suitable tool to secure the energy trading because it could perfectly match the distributed structure of peer-to-peer (P2P) energy market. But its usage is stuck on the transaction level. Control systems are significant to the microgrid as they ensure a stable power delivery system and regulate the performance of parameters such as active power and frequency. This paper proves that the blockchain technology is also effective in securing the distributed control systems against the false data injection attack. A six-prosumer microgrid is tested with the implementation of the hierarchical blockchain system. The security of both the control system and energy trading system of the microgrid is ensured. Smart contracts are created to calculate the feedback measurements for the control system and execute the energy transactions. According to the hierarchical structure, the private blockchain with static nodes is implemented for the distributed control to match the sampling rate. A Proof-of-Authority based blockchain is utilized to support the energy trading. In addition, a double auction based simple iteration (DA-SI) pricing scheme is designed to improve the social welfare of the microgrid. Finally, case studies are presented to verify the proposed hierarchical blockchain system as an effective method to safeguard the control system and maximize the benefits of prosumers. Numerical results show the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach.

EBDF: The enterprise blockchain design framework and its application to an e-Procurement ecosystem

Blockchain technologies have seen a steady growth in interest from industries as the technology is gaining maturity. It is offering a novel way to establish trust amongst multiple stakeholders without relying or trusting centralised authorities. While its use as a decentralised store of value has been validated through the emergence of cryptocurrencies, its use case in industrial applications with multiple stakeholder ecosystems such as industrial supply chain management, is still at an early stage of design and experimentation where private blockchains are used as opposed to public blockchains. Many enterprise blockchain projects failed to gain traction after initial launches, due to inefficient design, lack of incentives to all stakeholders or simply because the use of blockchain was not really necessary in the first place. There has been a need for a framework that allows blockchain designers and researchers to evaluate scenarios when a blockchain solution is useful and design the key configurations for an enterprise blockchain solution. Literature on blockchain architectures are sparse and only applicable to specific use cases or functionalities. This paper proposes a comprehensive Enterprise Blockchain Design Framework (EBDF), that not only identifies the relevant use cases when a blockchain must be utilised, but also details all the characteristics and configurations for designing an enterprise blockchain ecosystem, applicable to multiple industries. To validate the EBDF, we apply the same to the Vortal e-Procurement ecosystem allowing for multiple platforms to interoperate with greater transparency and accountability over the proposed blockchain framework. In this use case, many vendors bid for procurement procedures, often for publicly managed funds where it is extremely vital that full transparency and accountability is ensured in the entire process. Ensuring that certain digital certification functions, such as timestamps are independent from e-Procurement platform owners has been a challenge. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution for not only ensuring transparency and immutability of records, but also providing for interoperability across different platforms by acting as a trusted third-party. The applied framework is used to design a Hyperledger based blockchain solution with some of the key architectural elements that could fulfil these needs while presenting the advantages of such a solution.

The optimisation research of Blockchain application in the financial institution-dominated supply chain finance system

As an information technology that could significantly improve supply chain visibility and process automation, blockchain has been extensively applied in the field of supply chain finance (SCF). However, tradeoffs among the security, the operation cost, and the efficiency of the blockchain system may cause the SCF system dominated by a financial institution to inevitably fall into the dilemmas of risky or un-economic if the blockchain technology is applied inappropriately. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to optimise the blockchain application in the financial institution-based SCF system. We first analyse the application of blockchain security in SCF, and then the performance tradeoffs of blockchain and its impact on the performance of the supported SCF system. Based on the analysis above, an optimisation approach has been proposed and a corresponding non-linear integer programming (NIP) model has been constructed to select the best blockchain design schemes for the SCF system to achieve overall optimal in terms of security, cost, and efficiency. A designed ant colony algorithm is used to solve the optimisation problem. An application case analysis is used to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the optimisation model.

Scalable On-Chain and Off-Chain Blockchain for Sharing Economy in Large-Scale Wireless Networks

In the future sharing economy, billions of underutilized IoT devices will be deployed to enable a powerful and large-scale sharing market that produces economic, environmental, and social benefits. Given the fact that communications in numerous IoT devices through wireless links are unreliable, blockchain technology, as a promising solution, has emerged to achieve reliable and secure sharing services in a decentralized manner. However, applying blockchain in large-scale wireless networks confronts scalability challenges. This motivates us to propose a real-time, trusted data interactive, and fine-grained transaction supportable sharing framework, the core of which is a novel two-layer scaling blockchain design. In the on-chain layer, sharing-oriented sharding is employed to enable secure and efficient processing of macro-transactions on the chain. In the off-chain layer, cross-zone off-chain channels are set up to provide real-time sharing transactions with high-frequency micro-trading scenarios. Finally, a proof-of-concept case study of electric vehicle sharing data is implemented with experimental results to demonstrate the feasibility of our framework.

Dual‐blockchain‐based P2P energy trading system with an improved optimistic rollup mechanism

Blockchain technology has been recognised as a promising technology for supporting Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading—an emerging paradigm in which energy trading is performed directly between end energy customers. The state-of-the-art blockchain designs for P2P energy trading can only support less compute-intensive energy trading tasks and/or rely on the set up of a long challenge time to ensure correctness of transactions, which restricts the systems' scalability and applicability in the diverse P2P energy trading applications. This paper proposes a new dual-blockchain system for P2P energy trading. The system consists of a primary blockchain and a secondary blockchain. The primary blockchain is mainly responsible for storing the data of P2P energy trading transactions while the compute-intensive tasks (e.g. pricing and transaction verification) are executed in the secondary blockchain. An Improved Optimistic Rollup (IOR) mechanism is proposed to facilitate the co-operation of the dual blockchains. Through a specific ‘executor-validator’ mechanism and a group of specific smart contracts with different functions, the IOR mechanism can effectively accommodate the dual blockchains to execute the P2P energy trading transactions in a computational efficient manner while ensuring the correctness and security of the transactions. A prototype of the proposed system is implemented on Fisco Bcos and Alibaba Cloud and comprehensive simulations are conducted to validate the proposed system.

Block Chain and Edge Computing Base Design Secured Framework for Tender Allocation

Online technology has improved a lot and it plays a major part in this generation. The government and private sectors are actively moving through this technology to make their work faster, more efficient, and grow cost optimization. One such technology that has grown in this past year is blockchain. It has been established in all the parts of the domain because it is more secured and available at a low cost provides more security and improved traceability. Normally government will post the tender details to some of the other companies as outsourcing. We are going to create a secured website for government tender using blockchain technology. Blockchain is a system of recording information. It is difficult to cheat or hack the system. With the help of blockchain, the government data will be stored securely. Cryptography technique is used for security and it is difficult for hackers to hack. The goal of our work is to provide industry innovation and infrastructure.

User Control of Personal mHealth Data Using a Mobile Blockchain App: Design Science Perspective.

BackgroundIntegrating pervasive computing with blockchain’s ability to store privacy-protected mobile health (mHealth) data while providing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance is a challenge. Patients use a multitude of devices, apps, and services to collect and store mHealth data. We present the design of an internet of things (IoT)–based configurable blockchain with different mHealth apps on iOS and Android, which collect the same user’s data. We discuss the advantages of using such a blockchain architecture and demonstrate 2 things: the ease with which users can retain full control of their pervasive mHealth data and the ease with which HIPAA compliance can be accomplished by providers who choose to access user data.ObjectiveThe purpose of this paper is to design, evaluate, and test IoT-based mHealth data using wearable devices and an efficient, configurable blockchain, which has been designed and implemented from the first principles to store such data. The purpose of this paper is also to demonstrate the privacy-preserving and HIPAA-compliant nature of pervasive computing-based personalized health care systems that provide users with total control of their own data.MethodsThis paper followed the methodical design science approach adapted in information systems, wherein we evaluated prior designs, proposed enhancements with a blockchain design pattern published by the same authors, and used the design to support IoT transactions. We prototyped both the blockchain and IoT-based mHealth apps in different devices and tested all use cases that formed the design goals for such a system. Specifically, we validated the design goals for our system using the HIPAA checklist for businesses and proved the compliance of our architecture for mHealth data on pervasive computing devices.ResultsBlockchain-based personalized health care systems provide several advantages over traditional systems. They provide and support extreme privacy protection, provide the ability to share personalized data and delete data upon request, and support the ability to analyze such data.ConclusionsWe conclude that blockchains, specifically the consensus, hasher, storer, miner architecture presented in this paper, with configurable modules and software as a service model, provide many advantages for patients using pervasive devices that store mHealth data on the blockchain. Among them is the ability to store, retrieve, and modify ones generated health care data with a single private key across devices. These data are transparent, stored perennially, and provide patients with privacy and pseudoanonymity, in addition to very strong encryption for data access. Firms and device manufacturers would benefit from such an approach wherein they relinquish user data control while giving users the ability to select and offer their own mHealth data on data marketplaces. We show that such an architecture complies with the stringent requirements of HIPAA for patient data access.

Design and implementation of NDN-based Ethereum blockchain

Blockchain technology allows public parties to agree on a common state without relying on a central authority. Despite it brings many innovative use cases, the technology is still in its early stage that needs improving on many aspects. One of the issues is to deliver blockchain data more efficiently. Named Data Networking (NDN), a new network paradigm, is designed to make content distribution with ease by enabling in-network caching and built-in multicasting, which blockchain technologies can take advantage. Moreover, blockchain may contribute to extending NDN application ecosystems including decentralized applications. Therefore, it is instrumental to have a working blockchain system that runs on NDN platform to supports its research and development.In this work, we design and implement an NDN-based Ethereum blockchain platform. We propose new protocols for propagating blockchain data making full use of NDN features for the delivery of transactions and blocks. Our experiments show that the distribution of blockchain data in NDN is more efficient than that of IP network. The latency of block delivery is also reduced, which in turn supports tuning blockchain parameter for better security. Our developed blockchain client is freely distributed as an open-source project. We hope that it can provide a platform to foster blockchain research on NDN in the future.

Design of Blockchain enabled intrusion detection model for detecting security attacks using deep learning

• Lockchain applications are seeing a tremendous growth in all the fields. • Yet it is prone to a lot of attacks that is of serious concern. • Designed an efficient intrusion detection system to detect the attacks. • Deep learning technique (LSTM and RNN CNN) are used to detect the attacks. • We can also predict the likelihood of attack in near future using our model. Cyber-attacks are getting more sophisticated and nuanced. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are commonly used in a variety of networks to assist in the timely detection of intrusions. In recent years, blockchain technology has got a lot of attention as a way to share data without the need for a trusted third party. In particular, data recorded in a single block cannot be modified without impacting all subsequent blocks. For an effective update, an attacker will need to monitor the majority of network nodes, which is not feasible given the current network size. This work aims to create a deep learning-based IDS model with the potential of integrating blockchain technology with intrusion detection, inspired by the ability to apply blockchain in all fields. The proposed model outperforms the conventional systems with respect to accuracy in detecting the security attacks.

Proof of Delivery Smart Contract for Performance Measurements

The growth of the enterprise blockchain research supporting supply chain management calls for investigations of their impact and mindfulness of their design, use cases, and pilots. With a blockchain design for the Proof of Delivery (PoD) process management, this paper contributes to learning about performance measurement and the transaction costs implications during the development and application of smart contracts. An experimental design science approach is applied to develop an open-source blockchain to explore ways to make the delivery processes more efficient, the proof of delivery more reliable, and the performance measurements more accurate. The theory of Transaction Costs is applied to evaluate the cost implications of the adoption of smart contracts in the management of the PoD. The findings show that smart contracts make the delivery processes more efficient and proof of delivery more reliable. Yet, the methods and metrics are too complex and qualitative, limiting the smart contract’s capability to measure performance. Our findings indicate potential transaction costs reduction by implementing a blockchain-based performance measurement. The complexities of the delivery process and proof of delivery call for pre-contractual steps to identify the processes and performance metrics to design blockchains. Smart contracts need further development and digital aids to handle qualitative inspections and proof of delivery generation during the delivery process. The blockchain requires the system’s capacity to record off-chain transactions, such as in case of disputes resolutions. The authors extended blockchain research beyond the theoretical level, designing an open-source blockchain for supply chain management within the use case, pilot design, and case study.

Design of blockchain based smart agriculture framework to ensure safety and security

The country's entire population depends on agriculture, so it is absolutely essential to the economy. Its links and interactions with all of the country's relevant enterprises enable it to benefit from every part of the country. When gauging the social and economic well-being of a country, an agricultural base must be substantial. Agriculture is by far the main source of employment in most countries. It has many components, including supply chain management, crop insurance, and shipping of goods, which requires numerous unverified parties, such as farmers, retailers, customers, and wholesalers (assessor, surveyors). A case could be made that due to the presence of a middle man (i.e. human beings or human-operated agencies) crucial issues such as accessibility, expediency, security, and immutability have been raised. As a result, financial loss, crop contamination, and waste have occurred. Blockchain, the technology behind the digital currency bitcoin, is a decentralized shareholding ledger that collects data from multiple parties involved in the Bitcoin network transactions. For this reason, the Bitcoin network relies on the Blockchain to keep track of transaction history and other transaction-related information, such as the transaction's completion, the addresses of the sender(s) and the recipient(s), and information about whether the transaction was successful. Donors can be confident that the money will be given to only one organization. To keep information private, every piece of data is encrypted on the Blockchain. This article describes a blockchain-based agriculture infrastructure in which data regarding farmers and farming is safely and securely recorded.

Secure Blockchain Platform for Industrial IoT with Trusted Computing Hardware

As a disruptive technology that originates from cryptocurrency, blockchain provides a trusted platform to facilitate Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications. However, implementing a blockchain platform in IIoT scenarios faces various security challenges due to the rigorous deployment conditions. To this end, we present a novel design of secure blockchain based on trusted computing hardware for IIoT applications. Specifically, we employ a trusted execution environment (TEE) module and a customized security chip to safeguard the blockchain against different attack vectors. Furthermore, we implement the proposed secure IIoT blockchain on an ARM-based embedded device and build a small-scale IIoT network to evaluate its performance. Our experimental results show that the secure blockchain platform achieves high throughput (150 TPS) with low transaction confirmation delay (below 66 ms), demonstrating its feasibility in practical IIoT scenarios. Finally, we outline the open challenges and future research directions.

Design and Research of Intelligent Screening System for Graduate Recruitment Based on Big Data Assisted Ontology-based Blockchain Design

Design and Research of Intelligent Screening System for Graduate Recruitment Based on Big Data Assisted Ontology-based Blockchain Design

Blockchain-enabled cyber-physical smart modular integrated construction

Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) has been one of the most innovative solutions to address the ever-growing housing demands in megacities such as Hong Kong. MiC offers a range of benefits including cost-effectiveness, high productivity, and high sustainability for construction industry. Multiple stakeholders in MiC project, such as project client, module manufacturer, logistics company, and building contractor, normally use their own proprietary and centralized Enterprise Information System (EIS). However, stakeholders are facing challenges to share information throughout MiC projects. “Islands of Information” issue is commonly existing and creates information fragmentation and discontinuity. As an emerging Information and Communication Technology (ICT), blockchain provides unified standards and protocols for information sharing based on decentralized P2P framework with enhanced transparency and security. Aiming to address the information fragmentation and discontinuity in MiC project, this paper proposes a blockchain-enabled cyber-physical smart MiC platform to facilitate cross-enterprise information sharing among multiple stakeholders based on User-Centered Design (UCD) method. A practical roadmap is presented for the design, development, deployment, and application of MiC blockchain with new opportunities and guidelines. Initial investigations based on an industrial collaborated company are analyzed and the blockchain-enabled cyber-physical MiC workflow is designed. The user-centered blockchain explorers with high-fidelity digital twins are illustrated. Some preliminary results are found that MiC blockchain not only facilitates cyber-physical construction progress traceability, and real-time KPI visualization & evaluation, but also improves the information reliability, immutability, and transparency in MiC projects.

Design of Blockchain Based Smart Contract for Tendering

Information technology is the backbone for all 21st century organizations that are looking forward to offer better customer service and gain competitive advantage. Today, blockchain technology is being adopted by a number of organizations such as financial services, healthcare, agriculture and even government. . However, the tendering sector have not been able to take advantage of the new blockchain technology, owing to the absence of blockchain based frameworks and a model for secure tendering. This study focuses on block-chain with its BYOE (Bring Your Own Encryption) concept in the procurement sector. The research comes up with a design of a blockchain based smart contract model for organizations in Kenya following ASD approach. In addition a discussion of challenges and opportunities of Blockchain based tendering is also presented.

Blockchain-based smart tracking and tracing platform for drug supply chain

The arising awareness of drug safety has brought tremendous demands on improving traceability and transparency in the supply chain. Conventionally, centralized/distributed database-based traceability platforms are adopted by many drug companies to control drug quality and improve transparency levels. However, it is still challenging to link drug stakeholders into an information-sharing chain due to the potential data manipulations and interest conflicts. In this context, this paper proposes a unified five-layer Blockchain and Internet of Things-based smart tracking and tracing (BIoT3, in short) platform to provide a decentralized traceability solution in the drug supply chain. Following the five-layer blockchain platform architecture, a practical roadmap is provided for the drug industry to achieve blockchain design, development, application, and evaluation. Moreover, three core enabling components are presented: IoT-based drug identity management, on-chain & off-chain mechanism, smart contract-enabled drug services. According to the real data from collaborating companies, the feasibility and efficiency of the BIoT3 platform have been verified using Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. The case study demonstrates that it not only gains useful insights into transaction sizes configuration for optimal blockchain performance, but also provides a feasible blockchain-based solution for drug traceability and visibility.