Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Research Articles

Research on Distributed Data Sharing System based on Internet of Things and Blockchain

AbstractAiming at the problems of the traditional centralized data sharing platform, such as poor data privacy protection ability, insufficient scalability of the system and poor interaction ability, this paper proposes a distributed data sharing system architecture based on the Internet of Things and blockchain technology. In this system, the distributed consensus mechanism of blockchain and the distributed storage technology are employed to manage the access and storage of Internet of Things data in a secure manner. Up to the physical topology of the network, a hierarchical blockchain network architecture is proposed for local network data storage and global network data sharing, which reduces networking complexity and improves the scalability of the system. In addition, smart contract and distributed machine learning are adopted to design automatic processing functions for different types of data (public or private) and supervise the data sharing process, improving both the security and interactive ability of the system.

Research and Applied Perspective to Blockchain Technology: A Comprehensive Survey

Blockchain being a leading technology in the 21st century is revolutionizing each sector of life. Services are being provided and upgraded using its salient features and fruitful characteristics. Businesses are being enhanced by using this technology. Countries are shifting towards digital currencies i.e., an initial application of blockchain application. It omits the need of central authority by its distributed ledger functionality. This distributed ledger is achieved by using a consensus mechanism in blockchain. A consensus algorithm plays a core role in the implementation of blockchain. Any application implementing blockchain uses consensus algorithms to achieve its desired task. In this paper, we focus on provisioning of a comparative analysis of blockchain’s consensus algorithms with respect to the type of application. Furthermore, we discuss the development platforms as well as technologies of blockchain. The aim of the paper is to provide knowledge from basic to extensive from blockchain architecture to consensus methods, from applications to development platform, from challenges and issues to blockchain research gaps in various areas.

Blockchain‐based framework of power demand response in China

Demand response is recognized as an effective solution for eliminating power fluctuations and satisfying capacity constraints in power systems. A growing customer base equipped with energy storage and intelligent power meter on the demand side has resulted in the strong interest of China's power companies in demand response. However, most exiting demand response programs in China are based on a centralized framework, which is easier for management, but cannot support a large number of scattered small-scale users' participation effectively. Therefore, taking the desired features of blockchain technology, such as decentralization, trustworthiness, trackability, and immutability into consideration, the applicability of blockchain in demand response is analyzed. On this basis, a new blockchain-based framework of China's typical demand response programs is proposed, in which consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm, and smart contract of blockchain are applied to the process of invitation, bidding, and settlement in demand response. Furthermore, the development suggestions of China's demand response based on blockchain technology are put forward from the aspects of trading products, credit management, and platform construction at the end of this work.

An improved DPoS consensus mechanism in blockchain based on PLTS for the smart autonomous multi-robot system

Due to the development of robot technology, smart autonomous multi-robot systems face different security problems such as data loss and vulnerabilities. However, the robot information stored in blockchain can be more transparent and effective at ensuring the security of the robot system due to the decentralization, tamper-proof and anonymity of blockchain. In the architectural composition of blockchain, Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism is playing a critical role with more decentralization, lower energy consumption and faster confirmation speed. Similar to the board voting, the holders cast a certain number of delegates to perform verification and block generating on their behalf in DPoS. In order to improve the efficiency and flexibility of DPoS consensus mechanism, we propose an improved DPoS consensus mechanism based on the Probabilistic Linguistic Term Set (PLTS) for the smart autonomous multi-robot system. By adding voting options for nodes, the Voting Algorithm with Probabilistic Linguistic Information (VAPLI) calculates the score and deviation degree of each node after tabulating the voting results. The selection of a delegate is based on the comparison of the score and deviation degree. Finally, we explore the model implementation of the improved DPoS consensus mechanism, and verify its feasibility and effectiveness using examples.

Implementation of Blockchain Consensus Algorithm on Embedded Architecture

The adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology across many applications, such as autonomous systems, communication, and healthcare, is driving the market’s growth at a positive rate. The emergence of advanced data analytics techniques such as blockchain for connected IoT devices has the potential to reduce the cost and increase in cloud platform adoption. Blockchain is a key technology for real-time IoT applications providing trust in distributed robotic systems running on embedded hardware without the need for certification authorities. There are many challenges in blockchain IoT applications such as the power consumption and the execution time. These specific constraints have to be carefully considered besides other constraints such as number of nodes and data security. In this paper, a novel approach is discussed based on hybrid HW/SW architecture and designed for Proof of Work (PoW) consensus which is the most used consensus mechanism in blockchain. The proposed architecture is validated using the Ethereum blockchain with the Keccak 256 and the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) ZedBoard development kit. This implementation shows improvement in execution time of 338% and minimizing power consumption of 255% compared to the use of Nvidia Maxwell GPUs.

Lightweight blockchain consensus mechanism and storage optimization for resource-constrained IoT devices

Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger with features such as tamper-proof and privacy protection, which can provide reliable security solutions for the Internet of Things, smart home, and other scenarios. However, most of the devices in these scenarios only have limited computing, storage, bandwidth, and other resources, which makes it difficult to bear the burden of the blockchain consensus process and subsequent storage of the blockchain ledger. Therefore, a lightweight blockchain needs to be designed to suit for resource-constrained device scenarios. In order to achieve lightweight blockchain, an improved PBFT blockchain consensus mechanism based on reward and punishment strategy is proposed in this paper. Moreover, to reduce the storage overhead on the premise of ensuring the recoverability of blockchain, a blockchain storage optimization scheme based on RS erasure code is proposed in this paper. Experimental results show that the strategies proposed in this paper can reduce the delay of the consensus, the communication resources required by the consensus, and the cost of blockchain storage.

Study of blockchain's consensus mechanism based on score

The consensus mechanism is a key technology to achieve state consistency among distributed nodes and it determines the consensus efficiency and stability of the blockchain system. If the consensus efficiency and stability are improved, that can promote the development of the entire society. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the consensus efficiency and stability of the blockchain system. However, there are many disadvantages in the existing consensus mechanism, such as high communication complexity, low throughput, and poor scalability. For solving these disadvantages, a blockchain consensus mechanism Score‐Based Byzantine Fault Tolerance (SBBFT) is proposed. First, the score of nodes are obtained by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and SBBFT uses the score of the node to choose a node to be the primary node and acknowledgment node. Second, SBBFT selects c acknowledgment nodes to be an acknowledgment node subset. This subset can change the communication of nodes from all‐to‐all to all‐to‐c. Moreover, the view change of acknowledgment node subset can make the system resistant to attacks from more malicious nodes. According to the experiment, 900,000 transactions from Ethereum, the result demonstrates SBBFT can significantly reduce the communication complexity, improve the consensus efficiency and stability of the system.

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for Blockchain-Enabled Industrial Internet of Things With Deep Reinforcement Learning

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has emerged with the developments of various communication technologies. In order to guarantee the security and privacy of massive IIoT data, blockchain is widely considered as a promising technology and applied into IIoT. However, there are still several issues in the existing blockchain-enabled IIoT: 1) unbearable energy consumption for computation tasks; 2) poor efficiency of consensus mechanism in blockchain; and 3) serious computation overhead of network systems. To handle the above issues and challenges, in this article, we integrate mobile-edge computing (MEC) into blockchain-enabled IIoT systems to promote the computation capability of IIoT devices and improve the efficiency of the consensus process. Meanwhile, the weighted system cost, including the energy consumption and the computation overhead, are jointly considered. Moreover, we propose an optimization framework for blockchain-enabled IIoT systems to decrease consumption, and formulate the proposed problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). The master controller, offloading decision, block size, and computing server can be dynamically selected and adjusted to optimize the devices energy allocation and reduce the weighted system cost. Accordingly, due to the high-dynamic and large-dimensional characteristics, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is introduced to solve the formulated problem. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme can improve system performance significantly compared to other existing schemes.

A Study on the Mutual Rental Model of Container Shipping Alliance Cabins based on Blockchain

As one of the main modes of capacity sharing in the shipping alliance, the essence of which is the space mutual rent transaction among members. However, under the current trading system, the sharing of capacity between shipping enterprises requires a lot of transaction costs and communication costs, cooperation efficiency is not high, and there is a certain competitive relationship between enterprises, they work for their own interests, resulting in more difficult cooperation, and blockchain consensus mechanism, intelligent contracts, distributed bookkeeping and other characteristics can solve these problems of alliance cooperation. Therefore, based on the idea of blockchain, this paper designs a model of mutual lease cooperation in shipping union cabins, gives the model and process of mutual lease transactions based on blockchain, realizes mutual trust and win-win situation among members, simulates through the combination of Hyperledger Fabric and Matlab, and verifies the applicability of blockchain to shipping alliance capacity sharing cooperation.

Proof-of-Contribution consensus mechanism for blockchain and its application in intellectual property protection

Blockchain has received a lot of attention recently for its characteristics of decentralization, immutability, traceability, etc., making it a promising technology for the development of various applications, especially the management of various digital information. However, most current blockchain systems exhibit problems such as high computational overhead and centralization of power. Reliance on cryptocurrency in many public blockchain-based applications is another factor that has hindered the application of blockchain technology in areas other than the financial sectors. This paper proposes a new blockchain consensus mechanism based on the contributions of participants. The proposed consensus mechanism, which is called proof-of-contribution (PoC), quantifies user behaviors and actions in a blockchain-based application as contribution values calculated through an algorithm. The node that has the highest contribution value in each round of consensus gets the right to generate the next new block. PoC preserves the properties of decentralization and resistance to hard fork and does not rely on cryptocurrency, making it attractive over cryptocurrency-based consensus mechanisms like proof-of-work (PoW) for a wide variety of applications that do not have to involve cryptocurrency. Contribution values can be abstracted from applications and used in the underlying blockchain consensus process to improve the security and trustworthiness of the applications. Intellectual property (IP) protection is one such application to apply the blockchain technology and the PoC consensus mechanism. However, existing blockchain-based IP protection systems are mostly developed based on public blockchain platforms such as the Ethereum while some others are developed as consortium blockchains, thus exhibiting inherent defects such as high system requirements, long consensus delay, and low user participation. In this paper, we will use IP protection as the application scenario to illustrate the development of our PoC consensus mechanism and will compare PoC to some existing consensus mechanisms. Experimental results will show that the proposed PoC consensus mechanism preserves most of the main security characteristics of blockchain and is superior to existing consensus mechanisms, making it more secure and efficient to use blockchain technology for digital information management.

Proof of Engagement: A Flexible Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

Consensus mechanism plays an important role in blockchain. At present, mainstream consensus mechanisms include proof of work (PoW), proof of stake (PoS), and delegated proof of stake (DPoS). PoW, as is widely used in virtual currency, results in significant energy consumption; PoS and DPoS are proposed to reduce energy waste caused by PoW, but their disadvantage is that they tend to create Matthew Effect (ME): “the rich get richer.” In order to balance the discourse power of new nodes and elder ones, this paper proposes a flexible consensus mechanism called proof of engagement (PoE), based on the activity and contribution of network nodes. We analyze the incentive compatibility of PoE from the perspective of mechanism design. In our simulation experiments, we tested the profit changes under PoW, PoS, and PoE. The results illustrate it is easier for new nodes to accumulate their profits under PoE than under PoW or PoS, so as to reduce the negative impacts of ME.

A Blockchain-Driven IIoT Traffic Classification Service for Edge Computing

Nowadays, more and more sensors, devices and applications are connected in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), producing massive real-time flows which need to be scheduled for Quality-of-Service provision. To realize application-aware and adaptive flow scheduling, the problem of traffic classification must be addressed at first. When edge computing paradigm is introduced into IIoT, the traffic classification service can be deployed on edge node in the near-end. Recently, deep-learning-based IIoT traffic classification methods show better performance, but the computational cost of deep learning model is too high to be deployed on edge node. Moreover, increasingly unknown flows generated by new devices and emerging industrial APPs lead to frequent training of traffic classifiers. It is difficult to migrate the complex process of classifier training from cloud server to edge nodes with limited resources. To address these issues, we take the benefits of hash mechanism and consensus mechanism in blockchain to design a lightweight IIoT traffic classification service, which is more applicable for edge computing paradigm. First, inspired by the hash mechanism in blockchain and the learning to hash for big data, we propose a new learning-to-hash method named extension hashing. By this method, we can build the set of binary coding tress (BCT set), then generating hash table for more efficient k-nearest neighbor-based classification without complex classifier training. Then, we design a new voting-based consensus algorithm to synchronize the BCT sets and the hash tables across edge nodes, thereby providing the traffic classification service. Finally, we conduct data-driven simulations to evaluate the proposed service. By comparing traffic classification results on public data set, we can see that the proposed service achieves the highest classification accuracy with the minimal time cost and memory usage.

Traceability of animal products based on a blockchain consensus mechanism

Block chain technology has the characteristics of decentralization, distributed storage, open and transparent, consensus mechanism, security, information encryption, anonymity and so on. It provides an important way to realize the value added of modern animal supply chain. This paper studies the blockchain related technology, an optimization scheme of sBFT consensus algorithm is proposed, and then the optimization scheme is applied to traceability of animal product quality and safety, which solves the problem of decentralization of traceability system and improves the efficiency of consensus in the case of large data input of traceability system. Then, based on Fabric framework, this paper proposes the design and implementation scheme of traceability system for aquaculture industry chain, which can ensure that the participants of traceability system can not tamper with and modify the aquaculture records, and realize the security, reliability and unforgeability of traceability information. Finally, this paper builds a 12-Node block-chain network test environment based on four cloud servers. Under the same test conditions, the sBFT algorithm, PBFT algorithm and dBFT algorithm are tested and compared, and the function and performance of the traceability platform are tested, which shows that the system is feasibility and efficiency of the schemes designed in this paper.

Hash-Chain-Based Cross-Regional Safety Authentication for Space-Air-Ground Integrated VANETs

With the increasing demand for intelligent traffic management and road network intelligent information services, the vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) combined with information of air, space and ground have outstanding advantages in coverage, reliable transmission, and resource richness. Due to the characteristics of heterogeneous, numerous nodes, and frequent cross-network flow, the space–air–ground integrated network (SAGIN) puts forward higher requirements for security. This paper proposes a cross-regional node identity management architecture based on the hash chain, combined with radio frequency (RF) fingerprint theory, to guarantee node identity security with a non-duplicated physical information identity authentication mechanism. At the same time, the blockchain consensus mechanism is simplified to achieve block recording and verification. OMNet ++, SUMO, and Veins co-simulation platforms are used to generate transactions for cross-regional traffic flow. Based on the Hyperledger–Fabric architecture, Kafka and PBFT consensus algorithms are simulated. The simulation results show that the average delay of a single transaction generated block is about 0.9 ms, which achieves efficient and low-latency authentication.

Blockchained On-Device Federated Learning

By leveraging blockchain, this letter proposes a blockchained federated learning (BlockFL) architecture where local learning model updates are exchanged and verified. This enables on-device machine learning without any centralized training data or coordination by utilizing a consensus mechanism in blockchain. Moreover, we analyze an end-to-end latency model of BlockFL and characterize the optimal block generation rate by considering communication, computation, and consensus delays.

Research on secure transmission and storage of energy IoT information based on Blockchain

In recent years, the scale of the energy Internet of Things has been rapidly increased, and the number of IoT device connections has grown exponentially. Massive device access makes the network more open and complex, and brings huge information security risks. Privacy and transmission storage issues have become one of the important factors restricting the development of the energy Internet of Things. In view of the security status of the Internet of Things, how to solve the problem of trust, security and privacy in the energy Internet of Things through the decentralization, transparency and credibility of the blockchain. Firstly, the blockchain technology is analyzed, and the blockchain consensus mechanism and smart contract technology are combined with the mechanisms of identity verification and access authorization to solve the security problem in the Internet of Things application. Secondly, the blockchain is used as the underlying universality of the energy Internet of Things. Technology, providing a trusted infrastructure, building a blockchain-based end-to-end IoT security framework in conjunction with network and trusted hardware; finally implementing distributed storage and tamper resistance of data in the data blockchain, and improving the utility Byzantine fault-tolerant (PBFT) mechanism consensus algorithm, improve data registration efficiency; realize resource and data transactions in the transaction blockchain, and improve transaction efficiency and privacy protection through improved algorithm based on partial blind signature algorithm. The results show that the framework is safe, effective and feasible, and can cope with most scenarios in the energy Internet of Things.

On the detection of selfish mining and stalker attacks in blockchain networks

The blockchain technology emerged in 2008 as a distributed peer to peer network structure, capable of ensuring security for transactions made using the Bitcoin digital currency, without the need for third party intermediaries to validate them. Although its beginning was linked to cryptocurrencies, its use has diversified over the recent years. There are various projects using the blockchain technology to perform document validation, electronic voting, tokenization of non-perishable goods, and many others. With its increasing use, concern arises with possible attacks that could threaten the integrity of the consensus of the chain. One of the well-known attacks to the blockchain consensus mechanism is the selfish mining attack, in which malicious nodes can deflect their behavior from the standard pattern by not immediately disclosing their newly mined blocks. This malicious behavior can result in a disproportionate share of rewards for those nodes, especially if they have a significant processing power. The goal of this paper is to present a simple heuristic to detect the presence of selfish mining attack (and variants) in blockchain networks that use the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. The proposal is to signal when the blockchain fork height deviates from the standard, indicating when the network is under the influence of such attacks.

Proof of Work as a Three-Sided Market

Blockchain technology is the distributed, decentralised ledger technology underlying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We apply Oliver Williamson’s transactions cost analysis to the blockchain consensus mechanism. Blockchains reduce the costs of opportunism but are not ‘trustless’. We show that blockchains are trust machines. Blockchains are platforms for three-sided bargaining that convert energy-intensive computation into economically-valuable trust.

Blockchain leveraged decentralized IoT eHealth framework

Blockchain technologies recently emerging for eHealth, can facilitate a secure, decentralized and patient-driven, record management system. However, Blockchain technologies cannot accommodate the storage of data generated from IoT devices in remote patient management (RPM) settings as this application requires a fast consensus mechanism, careful management of keys and enhanced protocols for privacy. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain leveraged decentralized eHealth architecture which comprises three layers: (1) The Sensing layer – Body Area Sensor Networks include medical sensors typically on or in a patient body transmitting data to a smartphone. (2) The NEAR processing layer – Edge Networks consist of devices at one hop from data sensing IoT devices. (3) The FAR processing layer – Core Networks comprise Cloud or other high computing servers). A Patient Agent (PA) software replicated on the three layers processes medical data to ensure reliable, secure and private communication. The PA executes a lightweight Blockchain consensus mechanism and utilizes a Blockchain leveraged task-offloading algorithm to ensure patient’s privacy while outsourcing tasks. Performance analysis of the decentralized eHealth architecture has been conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the system in the processing and storage of RPM data.

An Improved Blockchain Consensus Mechanism Based on Open Business Environment

With the rise of the blockchain, the underlying technology has also received more and more attention. The blockchain is a point-to-point distributed system, and the consensus algorithm is a mechanism to resolve the consensus of each node. Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is a fault-tolerant technology in the field of distributed computing. The blockchain network environment conforms to the Byzantine general problem model. In order to make it suitable for open business environment, we propose an improved blockchain consensus mechanism based on Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance Algorithm (PBFT) that consider different business. The consensus algorithm proposed in this paper (OBE-PBFT) introduces the historical behavior credit rating of nodes to optimize the view change protocol in PBFT, so as to solve the problem of low consensus success rate and large traffic when encountering Byzantine nodes. The historical credit rating of the node can make the consensus process more robust, in order to solve the problem of different business in the alliance chain consensus mechanism in the open business environment.