A Survey on Consensus Methods in Blockchain for Resource-constrained IoT Networks

Abstract

The success of blockchain as the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies has opened up possibilities for its use in other application domains as well. The main advantages of blockchain for its potential use in other domains are its inherent security mechanisms and immunity to different attacks. A blockchain relies on a consensus method for agreeing on any new data. Most of the consensus methods which are currently used for the blockchain of different cryptocurrencies require high computational power and thus are not apt for resourceconstrained systems.In this article, we discuss and survey the various blockchain based consensus methods that are applicable to resource constrained IoT devices and networks. A typical IoT network consists of several devices which have limited computational and communications capabilities. Most often, these devices cannot perform intensive computations and are starved for bandwidth. Therefore, we discuss the possible measures that can be taken to reduce the computational power and convergence time for the underlying consensus methods. We also talk about some of the alternatives to the public blockchain like private blockchain and tangle, along with their potential adoption for IoT networks. Furthermore, we review the existing consensus methods that have been implemented and explore the possibility of utilizing them to realize a blockchain based IoT network. Some of the open research challenges are also put forward.

A Prospect Theoretic Approach for Trust Management in IoT Networks under Manipulation Attacks

“…. (26) Since the parameters in gamma functions (n α + 1, n β + 1, and so on) are all non-zero positive values, we can use the property that Γ(z) = (z − 1)! to rewrite Equation (26) as: P(D(N )) = N !…”

AI-Enabled Blockchain: An Outlier-Aware Consensus Protocol for Blockchain-Based IoT Networks

“…We show the probability density function (pdf) of all the mentioned delays for our implemented IoT network with 100 [6] and adding that block to the copy of ledger would take about 5 microseconds according to Fig. 4(b).…”

“…Therefore, manipulation attacks on transmitted or stored data are not plausible through a single compromised node and majority of nodes ought to be compromised for a successful attack [5]. Different consensus protocols and their applicability towards IoT networks can be found in [1], [6].…”

“…Recently, several novel consensus approaches have been proposed to overcome these limitations. One of the projects which tries to address these challenges is the hyperledger project [6]-which is what we chose as our evaluation platform in this research.…”

“…We implement a blockchain-based IoT smart home network on hyperledger fabric which has low computational requirements and fast network response time that makes it desirable for IoT applications [6], [8]. Hyperledger fabric uses practical byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) method which can successfully reach consensus over new data if the ratio of malicious devices is less than 1/3 [9].…”