A Blockchain Simulator for Evaluating Consensus Algorithms in Diverse Networking Environments

The massive scale, heterogeneity and distributed nature of Internet-of-Things (IoT) presents challenges in realizing a practical and effective security solution. Blockchain empowered platforms and technologies have been proposed to address aspects of this challenge. In order to realize a practical Blockchain deployment for IoT, there is a need for a testing and evaluation platform to evaluate performance and security of Blockchain applications and systems. In this paper, we present a Blockchain simulator that evaluates the consensus algorithms in a realistic and configurable network environment. Though, there are several Blockchain evaluation platforms, they are either wedded to a specific consensus protocol and do not allow evaluation in a configurable and realistic network environment. In our proposed simulator, we provide the ability to evaluate the impact of the consensus and network layer that will inform practitioners on the appropriate choice of consensus algorithms and the impact of network layer events in congested or contested scenarios in IoT. To accomplish this a generalized representation for consensus methods is proposed. The Blockchain simulator uses a discrete event simulation engine for fidelity and increased scalability. We evaluate the performance of the simulator by varying the number of peer nodes and number of messages required to find consensus

The use of data-driven technologies for customer-centric marketing

The latest technologies are shifting how businesses capture, analyse and distribute data from the individual users’ online activity. Therefore, this contribution critically reviews the latest developments on big data analytics and programmatic advertising. Moreover, it sheds light on the use of blockchain; as this distributed ledger technology provides secure, verified transactions among marketplace stakeholders. The findings suggest that the service providers are increasingly utilising data-driven technologies including programmatic advertising tools to target and re-target individuals online or on their mobile. However, individuals and organisations are becoming increasingly aware on data protection issues, as they often block marketers from tracking them and serving them ads. In conclusion, this contribution puts forward a theoretical framework that explains how, why, where and when practitioners are capturing, analysing and distributing data. In sum, it implies that the data-driven technologies are facilitating the businesses’ customer-centric marketing.peer-reviewe