Lightweight Consensus Research Articles

Proof of Chance: A Lightweight Consensus Algorithm for the Internet of Things

This article is to propose a consensus algorithm, called Proof of Chance (PoCh), which is designed for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The PoCh protocol is designed to be scalable and extensible, with a controllable conformance delay and low hardware and computation requirements. To reach a consensus, PoCh uses chance rather than computing power: “if condition <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{1}$</tex-math></inline-formula> , I am a candidate; if condition <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> , I am the miner.” During every consensus iteration, the condition <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{1}$</tex-math></inline-formula> is updated, and a single miner is chosen using condition <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> . Those conditions are randomized without the node generating any value and without assigning any weight to such value. The fault tolerance of PoCh is <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5f/3 + 1$</tex-math></inline-formula> , meaning that PoCh can successfully achieve consensus as long as more than 40% of nodes are functioning properly, compared to 50% in the Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol.

IoT-Chain and Monitoring-Chain Using Multilevel Blockchain for IoT Security.

In general, the Internet of Things (IoT) relies on centralized servers due to limited computing power and storage capacity. These server-based architectures have vulnerabilities such as DDoS attacks, single-point errors, and data forgery, and cannot guarantee stability and reliability. Blockchain technology can guarantee reliability and stability with a P2P network-based consensus algorithm and distributed ledger technology. However, it requires the high storage capacity of the existing blockchain and the computational power of the consensus algorithm. Therefore, blockchain nodes for IoT data management are maintained through an external cloud, an edge node. As a result, the vulnerability of the existing centralized structure cannot be guaranteed, and reliability cannot be guaranteed in the process of storing IoT data on the blockchain. In this paper, we propose a multi-level blockchain structure and consensus algorithm to solve the vulnerability. A multi-level blockchain operates on IoT devices, and there is an IoT chain layer that stores sensor data to ensure reliability. In addition, there is a hyperledger fabric-based monitoring chain layer that operates the access control for the metadata and data of the IoT chain to lighten the weight. We propose an export consensus method between the two blockchains, the Schnorr signature method, and a random-based lightweight consensus algorithm within the IoT-Chain. Experiments to measure the blockchain size, propagation time, consensus delay time, and transactions per second (TPS) were conducted using IoT. The blockchain did not exceed a certain size, and the delay time was reduced by 96% to 99% on average compared to the existing consensus algorithm. In the throughput tests, the maximum was 1701 TPS and the minimum was 1024 TPS.

A secure and privacy‐preserved delegate‐based blockchain and federated learning for 6G networks

SummaryThe 6G networks are envisioned to provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) for distributed devices through deploying machine learning on base stations. However, due to the concern of data privacy, devices are not willing to transmit their raw data to base stations (BSs) for machine learning training. Federated learning (FL) is a promising paradigm that can enable distributed machine learning while protecting data privacy by collaboratively training AI models without sharing raw data. But the traditional FL requires a central node to complete global model update which makes the traditional FL facing single point attack. Further, the traditional FL cannot allow the distributed model sharing among untrusted devices which results in low training efficiency on devices. Blockchain is a promising approach to address the above issues since it can establish a secure decentralized and transaction sharing environment for untrusted devices. In this paper, we integrate blockchain into FL to build a distributed model training and sharing platform, where distributed mobile devices execute local model training and base stations maintain blockchain‐based model sharing. Moreover, in order to accelerate the establishment of blockchain, we design a lightweight consensus strategy based on a delegate committee. To select high‐quality nodes to form delegate committee, we design a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)‐based selection algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed framework can achieve a higher precision compared with the traditional FL, and the proposed DRL selection algorithm can reduce consensus latency compared with the benchmarks.

Secure Device-to-Device Caching With Blockchain

Caching and distributing of network packets among devices has been accepted by the research community as a cost-effective method of transferring especially audio-video data among mobile users. Another newly established technology, blockchain, has been successfully applied to decentralized financial systems like Bitcoin. The research on caching and distributing methods has not focused on the security aspect so far. In this article, we present an effective scheme to provide security and integrity of network packets in caching and distribution systems by employing the blockchain technology. Unlike the existing blockchain applications, the proposed protocol requires a lightweight consensus algorithm. Our scheme also allows peers in the network to make correctly addressed inquiries as the packets’ locations are kept in the blocks which are available to any peer in the network. Considering that cryptographic primitives alone are not adequate to prevent malicious network packets among the peers, the proposed blockchain application presents an invaluable tool to prevent malicious packets from leaking into the system and to address which peers own the desired packets. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method by implementing it for Android OS devices and conduct real-time testing on different settings.

A Trust-Centric Privacy-Preserving Blockchain for Dynamic Spectrum Management in IoT Networks

Blockchain is a promising technology for future dynamic spectrum access (DSA) management due to its decentralization, immutability, and traceability. However, many challenges need to be addressed to integrate the blockchain to DSA, such as the trustworthiness of participating nodes’ spectrum sensing results, privacy protection of sensing nodes’ identities, and affordable lightweight consensus algorithms for IoT devices. In this article, we propose a trust-centric privacy-preserving blockchain for DSA in IoT networks. To be specific, we propose a trust evaluation mechanism to evaluate the trustworthiness of sensing nodes and design a Proof-of-Trust (PoT) consensus mechanism to build a scalable blockchain with high transaction-per-second (TPS). Moreover, a privacy protection scheme is proposed to protect sensors’ real-time geolocation information when they upload sensing data to the blockchain. Two smart contracts are designed to make the whole procedure (spectrum sensing, spectrum auction, and spectrum allocation) run automatically. Simulation results demonstrate the expected computation cost of the PoT consensus algorithm for reliable nodes is low, and the cooperative sensing performance is improved with the help of the trust evaluation mechanism. In addition, incentivization and security are also analyzed, which show that our system can not only encourage nodes’ participation, but also resist many kinds of attacks which are frequently arise in the trust management mechanism and blockchain-based IoT systems.

Autoencoder based Consensus Mechanism for Blockchain-enabled Industrial Internet of Things

Conventional blockchain technologies developed for cryptocurrency applications involve complex consensus algorithms which are not suitable for resource constrained Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Therefore, several lightweight consensus mechanisms that are suitable for IoT devices have been proposed in recent studies. However, these lightweight consensus mechanisms do not verify the originality of the data generated by the IoT devices, so false and anomalous data may pass through and be stored in the ledger for further analysis. In this work to address the data originality verification problem, we propose an autoencoder (AE)-integrated Chaincode (CC)-based consensus mechanism in which the AE differentiates normal data from anomalous data. The AE is invoked through the CC once a transaction is initiated; the result returned from the AE to the CC is stored in the ledger. We have conducted a case study to train and test the AE model on the IoTID20 dataset. Also, Minifabric (MF) is used to implement the CC and illustrate the CC operation that stores only original IoT data. Moreover, the performance has been shown for the CC in terms of latency and throughput.

Proof of Position: A Lightweight Consensus Mechanism for IoT Oriented Blockchain

Proof of Position: A Lightweight Consensus Mechanism for IoT Oriented Blockchain

Derived blockchain architecture for security-conscious data dissemination in edge-envisioned Internet of Drones ecosystem

Internet of Drones (IoD) facilitates the autonomous operations of drones into every application (warfare, surveillance, photography, etc) across the world. The transmission of data (to and fro) related to these applications occur between the drones and the other infrastructure over wireless channels that must abide to the stringent latency restrictions. However, relaying this data to the core cloud infrastructure may lead to a higher round trip delay. Thus, we utilize the cloud close to the ground, i.e., edge computing to realize an edge-envisioned IoD ecosystem. However, as this data is relayed over an open communication channel, it is often prone to different types of attacks due to it wider attack surface. Thus, we need to find a robust solution that can maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of the data while providing desired services. Blockchain technology is capable to handle these challenges owing to the distributed ledger that store the data immutably. However, the conventional block architecture pose several challenges because of limited computational capabilities of drones. As the size of blockchain increases, the data flow also increases and so does the associated challenges. Hence, to overcome these challenges, in this work, we have proposed a derived blockchain architecture that decouples the data part (or block ledger) from the block header and shifts it to off-chain storage. In our approach, the registration of a new drone is performed to enable legitimate access control thus ensuring identity management and traceability. Further, the interactions happen in the form of transactions of the blockchain. We propose a lightweight consensus mechanism based on the stochastic selection followed by a transaction signing process to ensure that each drone is in control of its block. The proposed scheme also handles the expanding storage requirements with the help of data compression using a shrinking block mechanism. Lastly, the problem of additional delay anticipated due to drone mobility is handled using a multi-level caching mechanism. The proposed work has been validated in a simulated Gazebo environment and the results are promising in terms of different metrics. We have also provided numerical validations in context of complexity, communication overheads and computation costs.

A security analysis of lightweight consensus algorithm for wearable kidney

A security analysis of lightweight consensus algorithm for wearable kidney

A security analysis of lightweight consensus algorithm for wearable kidney

A security analysis of lightweight consensus algorithm for wearable kidney

Cooperative Communication Method Based on Block Chain for a Large Number of Distributed Terminals

The cooperative communication of distributed terminals has many performance advantages and wide application prospects. However, it lacks effective trust foundation between distributed terminals and lacks data security guarantee. Block chain naturally has the properties of transparency, tamper-proof, and full traceability. It can effectively solve the trust problem between untrusted terminals and ensure data security. Thus, we introduce block chain into the cooperative communication of large number terminals, propose a cooperative communication method based on block chain, design a multi-chain structure to reduce resource consumption, and give the detailed working procedure of the cooperative communication method. In the working procedure, we propose a source-relay pairing and pricing scheme based on Kuhn-Munkres algorithm (SRPP-KM) to solve the optimal source relay pairing and transaction price, and design a lightweight consensus mechanism based on intra-region dynamic delegated Byzantine fault tolerant (DDBFT) and interactive updates between regional chain and main chain to reduce resource waste and achieve fast consensus. Analyses show that the proposed method can establish trust foundation between terminals and promote cooperation between terminals. Simulation results show that the proposed method can obtain higher sum revenue of sources while satisfying relays’ expected revenue and achieve faster consensus when compared with other methods.

Lightweight Direct Acyclic Graph Blockchain for Enhancing Resource-Constrained IoT Environment

Blockchain technology is regarded as the emergent security solution for many applications related to the Internet of Things (<i>IoT</i>). In concept, blockchain has a linear structure that grows with the number of transactions entered. This growth in size is the main obstacle to the blockchain, which makes it unsuitable for resource-constrained IoT environments. Moreover, conventional consensus algorithms such as PoW, PoS are very computationally heavy. This paper solves these problems by introducing a new lightweight blockchain structure and lightweight consensus algorithm. The Multi-Zone Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) Blockchain (<i>Multizone-DAG-Blockchain</i>) framework is proposed for the fog-based IoT environment. In this context, fog computing technology is integrated with the IoT to offload IoT tasks to the fog nodes, thus preserving the energy consumption of the IoT devices. Both IoT and fog nodes are initially authenticated using a non-cloneable physical function- based validation mechanism (<i>DPUF-VM</i>) in which multiple authentication certificates are verified in the blockchain. Each transaction is stored in a hash function in the blockchain using the lightweight CubeHash algorithm and signed by the Four-Q- Curve algorithm. In the cloud, sensitive data is stored as ciphertext. Fog nodes provide data security to avoid the energy consumption and complexity of IoT nodes. The fog node first performs a redundancy analysis using the Jaccard Similarity (JS) measure and sensitivity analysis using the Neutrosophic Neural Intelligent Network (<i>N2IN</i>) algorithm. A lightweight proof-of-authentication (<i>PoAh</i>) algorithm is presented and executed by the optimal consensus node selected by the bi- objective spiral optimization (<i>BoSo</i>) algorithm for transaction validation. The proposed work is modeled in Network Simulator 3.26 (ns-3.26), and the performance is evaluated in terms of energy consumption, storage cost, response time, and throughput.

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.

A Digital Record for Privacy and Security in Internet of Things

For privacy and security, a digital transactional record method plays a major role for its excellent nature of work. This digital method used to solve the check the problems like privacy and protection of data. It also had some unfit things like high bandwidth, computation complexity, latency and restricted scalability which are inadequate for internet of things. This research paper focuses on Efficient Lightweight Integrated Block chain model which is expanded to show the development of internet of things. Especially, this paper presents a model of a digital home which is attempted to prove the various applications used by internet of things. The benefits of this smart home are information transmission, activity of outgoing and incoming in every action. Efficient Lightweight Integrated Block chain model connected with digital transactional method with powerful provided sources to prove privacy and security. Algorithm, Certificate less Cryptography, Distributed Throughput Management schemes and Lightweight Consensus are used to present the Efficient Lightweight Integrated Block Chain model. Various methods are used to prove this model by using time processing, usage of energy and so on. This model saves 60% of time processing while consuming the energy of 0.08 Jm. Many parameters are used to show outcome done by this method.

Cryptocurrency Solutions to Enable Micropayments in Consumer IoT

The successful amalgamation of cryptocurrency and consumer Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices can pave the way for novel applications in machine-to-machine economy. However, the lack of scalability and heavy resource requirements of initial blockchain designs hinder the integration, and it is unclear how consumer devices will be adopting cryptocurrency. Therefore, in this article, we critically review the existing integration approaches and cryptocurrency designs that strive to enable micropayments among consumer devices. We identify and discuss solutions under three main categories; direct integration, payment channel network, and new cryptocurrency design. The first approach utilizes a full node to interact with the payment system. Offline channel payment is suggested as a second-layer solution to solve the scalability issue and enable instant payment with low fee. New designs converge to semicentralized scheme and focus on lightweight consensus protocol that does not require high computation power. We evaluate the pros and cons of each of these approaches and then point out future research challenges. Our goal is to help researchers and practitioners to better focus their efforts to facilitate micropayment adoptions.

Social-Chain

Pervasive Social Networking (PSN) supports online and instant social activities with the support of heterogeneous networks. Since reciprocal activities among both familiar/unfamiliar strangers and acquaintances are quite common in PSN, it is essential to offer trust information to PSN users. Past work normally evaluates trust based on a centralized party, which is not feasible due to the dynamic changes of PSN topology and its specific characteristics. The literature still lacks a decentralized trust evaluation scheme in PSN. In this article, we propose a novel blockchain-based decentralized system for trust evaluation in PSN, called Social-Chain. Considering mobile devices normally lack computing resources to process cryptographic puzzle calculation, we design a lightweight consensus mechanism based on Proof-of-Trust (PoT), which remarkably improves system effectivity compared with other blockchain systems. Serious security analysis and experimental results further illustrate the security and efficiency of Social-Chain for being feasibly applied into PSN.

A Lightweight Blockchain for IoT in Smart City (IoT-SmartChain)

The smart city is a technological framework that connects the city’s different components to create new opportunities. This connection is possible with the help of the Internet of Things (IoT), which provides a digital personality to physical objects. Some studies have proposed integrating Blockchain technology with IoT in different use cases as access, orchestration, or replicated storage layer. The majority of connected objects’ capacity limitation makes the use of Blockchain inadequate due to its redundancy and its conventional processing-intensive consensus like PoW. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing a NOVEL model of a lightweight Blockchain framework (IoT-SmartChain), with a lightweight consensus and a lightweight structure. The framework architecture presents a role hierarchy of connected objects according to their computational and storage capacity. This organization allows all things to be linked even indirectly via different interfaces and to benefit from the power of high-capacity objects such as Fog and Edge computing nodes. Data is validated and added to the blockchain ledger by running a lightweight consensus called Proof of Random Participation (PoRP), which reduces the blockchain nodes’ high computing power requirement. The TOPIC subscription-based data storage strategy called Assisted Selected Relevant Data in Local Ledger (ASRDLL) reduces the data size of a node’s local ledger and the entire network’s data size. This strategy is assisted by a centralized algorithm that optimizes the overall network size by adjusting the choice of TOPICS. The storage capacity, computational power, and energy consumption have been evaluated by a proof of concept implementation under NodeJS.

Proof of Random Trust Consensus Mechanism for Power Resource Sharing System

With the development of society, traditional centralized management can’t satisfy reliability and safety of power resource sharing network. Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, traceability, and openness. It can provide a safe and reliable environment for untrusted parties without a third party. Thus, blockchain technology can realize a safe and reliable distributed power resource sharing network. However, a major challenge is to find a consensus mechanism that is suitable for power resource sharing network. Therefore, in order to solve the challenge, we propose a lightweight consensus mechanism, Proof of Random Trust(PoRT). Compared with Proof of Work(PoW), PoRT overcomes the shortcomings of large-scale of calculation and concentration of power. Different from traditional BFT algorithm, PoRT has better scalability. At the same time, PoRT realizes the separation of transaction verification and block verification and improves the efficiency of block generation. Moreover, PoRT uses random trust value to increase the degree of decentralization,so fault tolerance, attack resistance,and collusion resistance are improved.

Availability analysis of a permissioned blockchain with a lightweight consensus protocol

This paper offers a novel approach to the evaluation of provenance blockchain security and reliability using analytical methods for assessing system availability against malicious miner DoS attacks. In particular, we present the reliability and availability analysis of the LightWeight Mining (LWM) protocol for securing data provenance. Our analysis shows the reliability of the protocol and its ability to protect against malicious miner DoS attacks. We use digital signatures to prove integrity and non-repudiation of messages passing the system. We describe system behaviors using communicating sequential processes (CSP) to check for synchronization within a number of concurrent processes. Queuing theory is used to determine the average waiting time for client blockchain transactions when malicious miners work to slow the system. CSP and queuing theory jointly test the blockchain’s ability to make progress despite the presence of malicious miners. Further, the methodology described can be extended to other blockchain applications. Additional threats, beyond the malicious miner DoS attack, are reserved for future work.

PoEWAL: A lightweight consensus mechanism for blockchain in IoT

Blockchain in IoT applications obviates the need for dependence on a single trusted authority, enhancing the potential for scalability and reliability. Existing consensus methods used in blockchain require high energy consumption, massive computational power with trusted authorities, or proof for mining a block. Resource constrained IoT devices need a lightweight and low latency consensus mechanism. Trust-free probabilistic consensus methods allow every node to participate in the consensus, enhancing the robustness and reliability of transactions as compared to absolute consensus methods. We propose a lightweight probabilistic proof of elapsed work and luck (PoEWAL) consensus method for non-cooperative blockchain in IoT environments. PoEWAL consumes less energy, requires less computational power and has low latency. We analyzed suitability of PoEWAL for resource constrained devices, using Contiki Cooja simulator. Experimental results show that energy consumption is low at various difficulty levels, demonstrating the feasibility of PoEWAL. Furthermore, PoEWAL is compared with such existing probabilistic consensus methods as proof of work, proof of stake, proof of activity, algorand, and proof of authority, in terms of energy, consensus time, and network latency, to confirm that PoEWAL is a suitable consensus method for blockchain in IoT.