Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Research Articles

A Secure Big Data Storage Framework Based on Blockchain Consensus Mechanism With Flexible Finality

Data security and integrity are becoming increasingly important as the volume of data being created and stored grows. A controlled third party that provides most of the existing big data security systems makes them susceptible to several security risks. By resolving current technology challenges, including scalability, non-tampering, trustworthiness, data governance, and transparency, blockchain technology plays a vital role and has a significant potential to safeguard personal information. Therefore, this work focuses on addressing real-time big data storage issues based on a transdisciplinary research approach. This study introduces a brand-new approach to big data storage security that leverages blockchain technology and applies highway protocol to generate new blocks. The proposed highway protocol works based on the flexible finality condition to overcome issues of baseline models. The highway allows blocks to run the consensus mechanism to configure security thresholds more freely. The proposed protocol also allows blocks with lower thresholds to reach finality more quickly than blocks requiring greater degrees of confidence. Therefore, the proposed big data framework can dynamically control data manipulation and continuously support individuals to participate in the data-sharing process. A comparison was performed with the number of data requests in terms of hit ratio, and a highway protocol provides better results than baseline models. The proposed model provides a data processing period of 13 to 30 ms and an energy consumption of 32 to 41 mJ.

Innovating Healthcare IoT with a Secure Blockchain Consensus Algorithm based on Verifiable Random Ranking

The Internet of Things (IoT) is helping the healthcare industry innovate. Medical professionals are no longer confined to hospitals or physical locations. IoT devices are used in healthcare for remote monitoring of vital signs, transmission and reception of private data, and other similar applications. Protection from cyber threats is the most vital aspect of IoT device operation. Malicious activities result in the leakage of sensitive data and the malfunctioning of devices, which becomes a critical issue. As a result, it is now a serious endeavor to create effective solutions that can safeguard the data and record exchange networks of every IoT device. To address some critical issues with current consensus algorithms, this paper proposes the verifiable random ranking (VRR) based Secure Blockchain Consensus (SBC) mechanism. In place of conventional algorithms, we developed new techniques for managing active nodes and evaluating node reliability and robustness. Our experiments show that the VRR-SBC algorithm speeds up consensus, improves security, and reduces the price of verification. The results of the simulation demonstrate the usefulness of the blockchain era for limited devices and provide an opportunity to assess the scope of the consensus algorithm's applicability.

Advanced DAG-Based Ranking (ADR) Protocol for Blockchain Scalability

In the past decade, blockchain has evolved as a promising solution to develop secure distributed ledgers and has gained massive attention. However, current blockchain systems face the problems of limited throughput, poor scalability, and high latency. Due to the failure of consensus algorithms in managing nodes’identities, blockchain technology is considered inappropriate for many applications, e.g., in IoT environments, because of poor scalability. This paper proposes a blockchain consensus mechanism called the Advanced DAG-based Ranking (ADR) protocol to improve blockchain scalability and throughput. The ADR protocol uses the directed acyclic graph ledger, where nodes are placed according to their ranking positions in the graph. It allows honest nodes to use the Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) topology to write blocks and verify transactions instead of a chain of blocks. By using a three-step strategy, this protocol ensures that the system is secured against doublespending attacks and allows for higher throughput and scalability. The first step involves the safe entry of nodes into the system by verifying their private and public keys. The next step involves developing an advanced DAG ledger so nodes can start block production and verify transactions. In the third step, a ranking algorithm is developed to separate the nodes created by attackers. After eliminating attacker nodes, the nodes are ranked according to their performance in the system, and true nodes are arranged in blocks in topological order. As a result, the ADR protocol is suitable for applications in the Internet of Things (IoT). We evaluated ADR on EC2 clusters with more than 100 nodes and achieved better transaction throughput and liveness of the network while adding malicious nodes. Based on the simulation results, this research determined that the transaction’s performance was significantly improved over blockchains like Internet of Things Applications (IOTA) and ByteBall.

The Current State of Blockchain Consensus Mechanism: Issues and Future Works

The Current State of Blockchain Consensus Mechanism: Issues and Future Works

Consensus mechanism for software-defined blockchain in internet of things

This article aims to discuss the consensus mechanism of software-defined blockchain in the Internet of Things, analyze the characteristics of the traditional consensus mechanism algorithms, on the basis of comparing the advantages of each model, the traditional consensus mechanism algorithm is improved. Later, a supervisable consensus scheme based on improved DPOS-PBFT (Delegated proof of stake-Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) was proposed. In the context of the development of the Internet of Things technology, the decentralized distributed computing paradigm is used to improve the blockchain smart contract technology, and the DPOS blockchain consensus mechanism is optimized based on the DPOS protocol of the credit model. In addition, through the dynamic grouping algorithm of credibility, the research ranks the credit level of the consensus nodes of the blockchain network, thus further realizing the supervision of the Internet of Things system. The results of the case analysis show that the success rate of the mechanism algorithm can still be maintained at about 97% after 3000 user requests, the maximum delay remains below 8s after 3000 user requests, the minimum delay is always around 3s, the average delay is 2.38s, the overall performance of the algorithm is superior. It can ensure the final consistency of data transmission of each node in the Internet of Things, the research on the blockchain consensus mechanism in the Internet of Things has practical reference value.

An Immutable Data Storage using Algorand Blockchain (ABC) Consensus Mechanism in the Supply CHAIN

In recent years, many frameworks and applications have been proposed to ensure tamper resistant data in supply chain using Block chain technologies. Block chain technology as a base design ensures that the content of the information is ‘tamper-resistant’. So far, no other study was presented with a low impact on the environment and minimum cost for each transaction sent by the supply chain. In order to protect the access of malicious user, we tend to propose an immutable data storage environment that is based on Algorand Blockchain. It uses the Pure Proof-of-Stake mechanism of consensus that needs less computational power, and is highly scalable and environmentally sustainable. It will make the data immutable and available in real-time for final consumers. Hence it can tolerate malicious users and achieving consensus without a central authority.

Optimized Path Planning Strategy to Enhance Security under Swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are widely deployed in military surveillance operations, especially the quadcopter UAVs which are easy to operate and considerably quieter. However, UAVs encounter problems in secure path planning during navigation and are prone to cyber security attacks. Further, due to the UAV battery capacity, the operating time for surveillance is limited. In this paper, we propose a novel Resilient UAV Path Optimization Algorithm (RUPOA) which provides an optimal path under security attacks such as denial-of-service (DoS) and Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. The performance efficiency of the proposed path planning algorithm is compared with the existing path planning algorithms based on execution time. To achieve secure path planning in UAVs and to mitigate security attacks, a blockchain-aided security solution is proposed. To prevent security attacks, smart contracts are generated where the devices are registered with gasLimit. The blockchain consensus mechanism allows for secure and tamper-free transmission of data between the Ground Control Station (GCS) and a swarm of UAVs. The performance efficiency of the blockchain model is evaluated based on network latency which is the total execution time across the blockchain network.

RVC: A reputation and voting based blockchain consensus mechanism for edge computing-enabled IoT systems

By deploying edge servers around devices, edge computing brings computing resources far away from the cloud center close to the Internet of Things (IoT), which reduces latency and promotes the rapid development of IoT. Since edge servers and devices (hereafter referred to as NODEs) are highly scattered, blockchain is becoming one of the most promising solutions to enhance security issues for IoT. In the blockchain, a consensus mechanism determines how to achieve an agreement among nodes, hence it is an essential element for the operation and efficiency of the blockchain. However, due to the exponentially increasing of nodes in IoT, the consensus efficiency of the traditional consensus mechanism will be greatly reduced, and due to the lack of detection process for malicious nodes, its security will also reduce. To solve the above problems, in this paper, a Reputation and Voting based Consensus mechanism (RVC) is proposed. To reduce the time consumption of the consensus process, RVC adopts a reputation evaluation algorithm without complex hash calculations to select block proposers, which both consider the behaviors in edge computing and blockchain consensus. To prevent malicious nodes from participating in consensus, a filtering algorithm is designed for RVC, which can detect and filter nodes with malicious behaviors. Simulation results show that, RVC outperforms some traditional work. On time consumption, compared with AirBC and hybrid blockchain, RVC improved by 73.6% and 93.7% respectively. And on consensus security, RVC improved by 14% compared with LVBS. When the network scale and the proportion of malicious nodes change exponentially, RVC shows good scalability in terms of time consumption, successful consensus rate and transaction throughput.

A survey on blockchain consensus mechanism: research overview, current advances and future directions

PurposeAs the core technology of blockchain, various consensus mechanisms have emerged to satisfy the demands of different application scenarios. Since determining the security, scalability and other related performance of the blockchain, how to reach consensus efficiently of consensus mechanism is a critical issue in the blockchain.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for a research overview on the blockchain consensus mechanism, including the consensus mechanisms' consensus progress, classification and comparison, which are complemented by documentary analysis.FindingsThis survey analyzes solutions for the improvement of consensus mechanisms in blockchain that have been proposed during the last few years and suggests future research directions around consensus mechanisms. First, the authors outline the consensus processes, the advantages and disadvantages of the mainstream consensus mechanisms. Additionally, the consensus mechanisms are subdivided into four types according to their characteristics. Then, the consensus mechanisms are compared and analyzed based on four evaluation criteria. Finally, the authors summarize the representative progress of consensus mechanisms and provide some suggestions on the design of consensus mechanisms to make further advances in this field.Originality/valueThis paper summarizes the future research development of the consensus mechanisms.

Blockchain technology for enterprise credit information sharing in supply chain finance

Credit data barriers, such as incomplete credit records, false credit information, and low security of credit data, exist in the supply chain financial credit system, rendering it difficult to support the closure of the whole financing chain's credit system. Emerging blockchain technology can help improve credit-reporting ability through greater integrity, decentralization, transparency, security, and reliability. Aiming to address the problem of extensive credit investigation data and privacy protection, we propose a blockchain-based model to realize access control and management of the shared transaction information in the supply chain. Our model adopts a consensus mechanism to solve the problem of large credit investigation data and privacy protection of credit investigation data and realizes access control and management of the shared data chain. In our model, data are stored on the cloud server and shared with the proxy reencryption method. The model's data structure and workflow are designed to facilitate specific applications in supply chain finance. The embedded blockchain technology helps build the open shared reference architecture and establish the entire life cycle of a monitoring mechanism. The existing blockchain consensus mechanism has low security and a large resource consumption; as such, it is particularly important to design a new consensus mechanism to serve the credit investigation system. In this study, blockchain data sharing and traceability can be realized by improving the consensus mechanism, helping to improve the existing credit investigation service system. Our findings help optimize the existing supply chain financial credit system and enhance the efficiency of supply chain financing.

A Blockchain Consensus Protocol Based on Quantum Attack Algorithm.

The blockchain is a distributed storage system of digital assets. This decentralized, non-copyable technology stems from universal standard password algorithm and the consensus mechanism of the game theory. The development of quantum computing poses threat to traditional algorithms of blockchain encryption, including symmetric encryption and hash encryption. Focusing on the traditional blockchain consensus mechanism, this paper designs a new blockchain consensus mechanism, based on the stochasticity, irreversibility, and uncertainty of quantum measurement. In the proposed consensus mechanism, complex calculations and intractability mathematical problems are abandoned. In this way, a huge amount of computing resources is saved, less energy is consumed, the time delay is shortened, and the throughput is increased. The proposed quantum consensus mechanism can withstand 51% attacks.

Analysis of Malicious Node Identification Algorithm of Internet of Vehicles under Blockchain Technology: A Case Study of Intelligent Technology in Automotive Engineering

False messages sent by malicious or selfish vehicle nodes will reduce the operation efficiency of the Internet of Vehicles, and can even endanger drivers in serious cases. Therefore, it is very important to detect malicious vehicle nodes in the network in a timely manner. At present, the existing research on detecting malicious vehicle nodes in the Internet of Vehicles has some problems, such as difficulties with identification and a low detection efficiency. Blockchain technology cannot be tampered with or deleted and has open and transparent characteristics. Therefore, as a shared distributed ledger in decentralized networking, blockchain can promote collaboration between transactions, processing and interaction equipment, and help to establish a scalable, universal, private, secure and reliable car networking system. This paper puts forward a block-network-based malicious node detection mechanism. Using blockchain technology in a car network for malicious node identification algorithm could create a security scheme that can ensure smooth communication between network vehicles. A consensus on legal vehicle identification, message integrity verification, false message identification and malicious vehicle node identification form the four parts of the security scheme. Based on the public–private key mechanism and RSA encryption algorithm, combined with the malicious node identification algorithm in the Internet of Vehicles, the authenticity of the vehicle’s identity and message is determined to protect the vehicle’s security and privacy. First, a blockchain-based, malicious node detection architecture is constructed for the Internet of vehicles. We propose a malicious node identification algorithm based on the blockchain consensus mechanism. Combined the above detection architecture with the consensus mechanism, a comprehensive and accurate verification of vehicle identity and message authenticity is ensured, looking at the four aspects of vehicle identification, accounting node selection, verification of transmission message integrity and identification of the authenticity of transmission messages. Subsequently, the verification results will be globally broadcast in the Internet of Vehicles to suppress malicious behavior, further ensure that reliable event messages are provided for the driver, improve the VANET operation environment, and improve the operation efficiency of the Internet of Vehicles. Comparing the proposed detection mechanism using simulation software, the simulation results show that the proposed blockchain-based trust detection mechanism can effectively improve the accuracy of vehicle node authentication and identification of false messages, and improve network transmission performance in the Internet of Vehicles environment.

Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Distributed Energy Transactions

In order to reduce the cost of grid dispatching and increase the transparency of energy transactions, the distributed energy transaction model based on blockchain is constructed. At the same time, in order to improve the high communication overhead and low throughput of the traditional PBFT algorithm in the consortium blockchain, an efficient Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism (DE-BFT) for the energy blockchain is designed. The algorithm improves from two aspect: node election and main chain consensus. In the stage of node election, the model uses a health score evaluation and a verifiable random function to improve the security and randomness of node selection. In the stage of main chain consensus, the efficient data consistency interaction protocol decreases the complexity of the communications between nodes, down to a constant term level from exponential one. The result shows that, compared with other consensus algorithm, the DE-BFT algorithm performs better in terms of consensus delay, communication overhead, throughput, and consensus node reliability.

Traceability model based on improved witness mechanism

Traceability system is one of the popular applications of graphic blockchains. However, there are centralisation problems and a long time for final consistency confirmation in the graphic blockchain. In addition, the blockchain system in the traceability application scenario has the problem of insufficient supervision. Therefore, a witness-based graphic blockchain consensus mechanism is proposed. In the consensus mechanism, a verifiable random function is used to screen the publishers of the unit; an SM2 threshold signature is used to sign the unit information to improve the non-repudiation of the traceability information uploaders to the unit information under the supervision of the witness. The improved consistency algorithm cancels the process of finding a stable main chain and makes relatively many nodes to participate in the consensus process. The experimental results show that the graphic blockchain using the improved witness mechanism can reduce the degree of centralisation, shorten the time for new units to reach consensus, and greatly ensure the security and scalability of the blockchain system.

Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Based on Quantum Teleportation

The consensus mechanism is the core secret of the blockchain network. However, the consensus mechanism of the classical blockchain is based on the classical cryptosystem, which is based on the problem of computational complexity. With the improvement of computing power, the security of this cryptosystem is being threatened. In addition, the consensus mechanism of classic blockchain also has the following disadvantages: serious waste of computing resources and energy; the inability to withstand a 51% attack; low system throughput and large delay. Based on quantum teleportation technology and the randomness of quantum measurement, a consensus mechanism for a quantum blockchain system is proposed. Based on the physical properties of quantum mechanics, this scheme has the unconditional security of quantum cryptography. This new consensus mechanism does not involve a great deal of computing resources and hence has a lower energy consumption, shorter time delay and higher throughput. Furthermore, the new consensus mechanism could withstand a 51% attack.

A public blockchain consensus mechanism for fault-tolerant distributed computing in LEO satellite communications

In LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite communication systems, the satellite network is made up of a large number of satellites, the dynamically changing network environment affects the results of distributed computing. In order to improve the fault tolerance rate, a novel public blockchain consensus mechanism that applies a distributed computing architecture in a public network is proposed. Redundant calculation of blockchain ensures the credibility of the results; and the transactions with calculation results of a task are stored distributed in sequence in Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG). The transactions issued by nodes are connected to form a net. The net can quickly provide node reputation evaluation that does not rely on third parties. Simulations show that our proposed blockchain has the following advantages: 1. The task processing speed of the blockchain can be close to that of the fastest node in the entire blockchain; 2. When the tasks' arrival time intervals and demanded working nodes(WNs) meet certain conditions, the network can tolerate more than 50% of malicious devices; 3. No matter the number of nodes in the blockchain is increased or reduced, the network can keep robustness by adjusting the task's arrival time interval and demanded WNs.

Proof of Learning: Towards a Practical Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Using Directed Guiding Gradients (Student Abstract)

Since Bitcoin, blockchain has attracted the attention of researchers. The consensus mechanism at the center of blockchain is often criticized for wasting a large amount of computing power for meaningless hashing. At the same time, state-of-the-art models in deep learning require increasing computing power to be trained. Proof of Learning (PoL) is dedicated to using the originally wasted computing power to train neural networks. Most of the previous PoL consensus mechanisms are based on two methods, recomputation or performance metrics. However, in practical scenarios, these methods both do not satisfy all properties necessary to build a large-scale blockchain, such as certainty, constant verification, therefore are still far away from being practical. In this paper, we observe that the opacity of deep learning models is similar to the pre-image resistance of hash functions and can naturally be used to build PoL. Based on our observation, we propose a method called Directed Guiding Gradient. Using this method, our proposed PoL consensus mechanism has a similar structure to the widely used Proof of Work (PoW), allowing us to build practical blockchain on it and train neutral networks simultaneously. In experiments, we build a blockchain on top of our proposed PoL consensus mechanism and results show that our PoL works well.

PROACT: Parallel multi-miner proof of accumulated trust protocol for Internet of Drones

Several types of networks that comprise unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drone) are being utilized in important applications such as emergency response, environment and infrastructure monitoring, defense and security, and commerce. In such networks, swarms of UAVs cooperate in executing one or more missions to achieve the application's objectives. The UAVs communicate with terrestrial networks by connecting to fixed or mobile ground control stations (GCS). The ability of drones to connect to online applications and offer services to Internet users has led to the proliferation of the Internet of Drones (IoD). However, IoD applications are highly vulnerable to many types of cyberattacks. Hence, mechanisms must be deployed to secure the IoD operations and data. Recently, the blockchain has been proposed as a solution to detect and prevent malicious attacks on the UAV network (UAVN). Due to the UAV's limited resources, it becomes a challenge to integrate the blockchain into the IoD. In this paper, we propose a model that enables a drone to store the important data that it requires during its flight within a lightweight blockchain system. In addition, we propose a new blockchain consensus mechanism in which several miners produce their blocks in parallel, which decreases the time needed to add transactions securely to the blockchain and meets the requirements of delay-sensitive applications. Our simulations prove the advantages of the proposed model in decreasing the transaction-to-blockchain delay, the average drone energy consumption, and the blockchain block size as compared to other IoD blockchain systems.

A blockchain consensus mechanism that uses Proof of Solution to optimize energy dispatch and trading

A blockchain consensus mechanism that uses Proof of Solution to optimize energy dispatch and trading

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.