3,618 research outputs found
Blockchain-based Smart Contracts - Applications and Challenges
A blockchain-based smart contract or a "smart contract" for short, is a
computer program intended to digitally facilitate the negotiation or
contractual terms directly between users when certain conditions are met. With
the advance in blockchain technology, smart contracts are being used to serve a
wide range of purposes ranging from self-managed identities on public
blockchains to automating business collaboration on permissioned blockchains.
In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of smart contracts with a
focus on existing applications and challenges they face
On the Convergence of Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) Technologies
The Internet of Things (IoT) technology will soon become an integral part of
our daily lives to facilitate the control and monitoring of processes and
objects and revolutionize the ways that human interacts with the physical
world. For all features of IoT to become fully functional in practice, there
are several obstacles on the way to be surmounted and critical challenges to be
addressed. These include, but are not limited to cybersecurity, data privacy,
energy consumption, and scalability. The Blockchain decentralized nature and
its multi-faceted procedures offer a useful mechanism to tackle several of
these IoT challenges. However, applying the Blockchain protocols to IoT without
considering their tremendous computational loads, delays, and bandwidth
overhead can let to a new set of problems. This review evaluates some of the
main challenges we face in the integration of Blockchain and IoT technologies
and provides insights and high-level solutions that can potentially handle the
shortcomings and constraints of both IoT and Blockchain technologies.Comment: Includes 11 Pages, 3 Figures, To publish in Journal of Strategic
Innovation and Sustainability for issue JSIS 14(1
A Reference Architecture for Blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer IoT Applications
The advent of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies enable IoT and
smart city application developers to conceive new types of applications and
solutions for identity management, trust, and data monetization. However,
architecting blockchain-based IoT applications remain challenging due to the
heterogeneous nature of blockchain platforms and lack of guidelines on how to
interface existing components in the IoT ecosystem with the emerging Blockchain
technology. This article explains the characteristics of blockchain and IoT
technologies and presents a general reference architecture that can be used to
develop many blockchain-based peer-to-peer IoT applications
Blockchain: Emerging Applications and Use Cases
Blockchain also known as a distributed ledger technology stores different
transactions/operations in a chain of blocks in a distributed manner without
needing a trusted third-party. Blockchain is proven to be immutable which helps
for integrity and accountability, and, to some extent, confidentiality through
a pair of public and private keys. Blockchain has been in the spotlight after
successful boom of the Bitcoin. There have been efforts to leverage salient
features of Blockchain for different applications and use cases. This paper
present a comprehensive survey of applications and use cases of Blockchain
technology. Specifically, readers of this paper can have thorough understanding
of applications and user cases of Blockchain technology
Blockchain And The Future of the Internet: A Comprehensive Review
Blockchain is challenging the status quo of the central trust infrastructure
currently prevalent in the Internet towards a design principle that is
underscored by decentralization, transparency, and trusted auditability. In
ideal terms, blockchain advocates a decentralized, transparent, and more
democratic version of the Internet. Essentially being a trusted and
decentralized database, blockchain finds its applications in fields as varied
as the energy sector, forestry, fisheries, mining, material recycling, air
pollution monitoring, supply chain management, and their associated operations.
In this paper, we present a survey of blockchain-based network applications.
Our goal is to cover the evolution of blockchain-based systems that are trying
to bring in a renaissance in the existing, mostly centralized, space of network
applications. While re-imagining the space with blockchain, we highlight
various common challenges, pitfalls, and shortcomings that can occur. Our aim
is to make this work as a guiding reference manual for someone interested in
shifting towards a blockchain-based solution for one's existing use case or
automating one from the ground up.Comment: Under Review in IEEE COMS
BlendMAS: A BLockchain-ENabled Decentralized Microservices Architecture for Smart Public Safety
Thanks to rapid technological advances in the Internet of Things (IoT), a
smart public safety (SPS) system has become feasible by integrating
heterogeneous computing devices to collaboratively provide public protection
services. While a service oriented architecture (SOA) has been adopted by IoT
and cyber-physical systems (CPS), it is difficult for a monolithic architecture
to provide scalable and extensible services for a distributed IoT based SPS
system. Furthermore, traditional security solutions rely on a centralized
authority, which can be a performance bottleneck or single point failure.
Inspired by microservices architecture and blockchain technology, this paper
proposes a BLockchain-ENabled Decentralized Microservices Architecture for
Smart public safety (BlendMAS). Within a permissioned blockchain network, a
microservices based security mechanism is introduced to secure data access
control in an SPS system. The functionality of security services are decoupled
into separate containerized microservices that are built using a smart
contract, and deployed on edge and fog computing nodes. An extensive
experimental study verified that the proposed BlendMAS is able to offer a
decentralized, scalable and secured data sharing and access control to
distributed IoT based SPS system.Comment: Submitted to the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain
(Blockchain-2019
An Exploration of Blockchain Enabled Decentralized Capability based Access Control Strategy for Space Situation Awareness
Space situation awareness (SSA) includes tracking of active and inactive
resident space objects (RSOs) and assessing the space environment through
sensor data collection and processing. To enhance SSA, the dynamic data-driven
applications systems (DDDAS) framework couples on-line data with off-line
models to enhance system performance. Using feedback control, sensor
management, and communications reliability. For information management, there
is a need for identity authentication and access control to ensure the
integrity of exchanged data as well as to grant authorized entities access
right to data and services. Due to decentralization and heterogeneity of SSA
systems, it is challenging to build an efficient centralized access control
system, which could either be a performance bottleneck or the single point of
failure. Inspired by the blockchain and smart contract technology, this paper
introduces BlendCAC, a decentralized authentication and capability-based access
control mechanism to enable effective protection for devices, services and
information in SSA networks. To achieve secure identity authentication, the
BlendCAC leverages the blockchain to create virtual trust zones and a robust
identity-based capability token management strategy is proposed. A
proof-of-concept prototype has been implemented on both resources-constrained
devices and more powerful computing devices, and is tested on a private
Ethereum blockchain network. The experimental results demonstrate the
feasibility of the BlendCAC scheme to offer a decentralized, scalable,
lightweight and fine-grained access control solution for space system towards
SSA.Comment: Submitted to SPIE Optical Engineering, Special Section on Sensors and
Systems for Space Applications. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap
with arXiv:1804.0926
A Review on the Application of Blockchain for the Next Generation of Cybersecure Industry 4.0 Smart Factories
Industry 4.0 is a concept devised for improving the way modern factories
operate through the use of some of the latest technologies, like the ones used
for creating Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), robotics or Big Data
applications. One of such technologies is blockchain, which is able to add
trust, security and decentralization to different industrial fields. This
article focuses on analyzing the benefits and challenges that arise when using
blockchain and smart contracts to develop Industry 4.0 applications. In
addition, this paper presents a thorough review on the most relevant
blockchain-based applications for Industry 4.0 technologies. Thus, its aim is
to provide a detailed guide for future Industry 4.0 developers that allows for
determining how blockchain can enhance the next generation of cybersecure
industrial applications
Blockchain for the IoT: Opportunities and Challenges
Blockchain technology has been transforming the financial industry and has
created a new crypto-economy in the last decade. The foundational concepts such
as decentralized trust and distributed ledger are promising for distributed,
and large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, the
applications of Blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies in this domain are few and
far between because of the lack of understanding and inherent architectural
challenges. In this paper, we describe the opportunities for applications of
blockchain for the IoT and examine the challenges involved in architecting
Blockchain-based IoT applications
Blockchain for the Internet of Things: Present and Future
One of the key challenges to the IoT's success is how to secure and anonymize
billions of IoT transactions and devices per day, an issue that still lingers
despite significant research efforts over the last few years. On the other
hand, technologies based on blockchain algorithms are disrupting today's
cryptocurrency markets and showing tremendous potential, since they provide a
distributed transaction ledger that cannot be tampered with or controlled by a
single entity. Although the blockchain may present itself as a cure-all for the
IoT's security and privacy challenges, significant research efforts still need
to be put forth to adapt the computation-intensive blockchain algorithms to the
stringent energy and processing constraints of today's IoT devices. In this
paper, we provide an overview of existing literature on the topic of blockchain
for IoT, and present a roadmap of research challenges that will need to be
addressed to enable the usage of blockchain technologies in the IoT
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