Blockchain Technology for Emerging Applications: A Comprehensive Approach

By Debabrata Samanta and Siddhartha Bhattacharyya

Blockchain Technology for Emerging Applications: A Comprehensive Approach explores recent theories and applications of the execution of blockchain technology. Chapters look at a wide range of application areas, including healthcare, digital physical frameworks, web of-things, smart transportation frameworks, interruption identification frameworks, ballot-casting, architecture, smart urban communities, and digital rights administration. The book addresses the engineering, plan objectives, difficulties, constraints, and potential answers for blockchain-based frameworks.

It also looks at blockchain-based design perspectives of these intelligent architectures for evaluating and interpreting real-world trends. Chapters expand on different models which have shown considerable success in dealing with an extensive range of applications, including their ability to extract complex hidden features and learn efficient representation in unsupervised environments for blockchain security pattern analysis.

• Introduces the basic architecture and taxonomy of blockchain technology
• Surveys the most recent developments and challenges in blockchain-enabled technology for various application domains with fundamental and technical depth
• Investigates how to devise secure and reliable applications and blockchain-enabled decentralized secure solutions using blockchain technology

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: May 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9780323901949

Book preview

Preface

Blockchain technology has been the most promising alternative in recent years as far as distributed processing and storage of data are concerned. This volume presents the most recent theories and applications on the adjustment and execution of blockchain technology, progressively issue-based logical examination applications. The editors offer the fast headways in architecture, brilliant urban communities, digital physical frameworks, and web of things field. Blockchain-based information fortune in distributed computing and smart transportation frameworks are the main parts of this book. A few use cases with interruption identification frameworks, unmanned aeronautical vehicles, and online computer games are likewise fused. As blockchain for electronically casting a ballot framework and computerized right administration are moderate innovations and are utilized in numerous segments for dependable, savvy, and quick business exchanges, this book is an invited expansion on existing information. This book will address the engineering, plan objectives, difficulties, constraints, and potential answers for the blockchain-based notoriety frameworks. This book additionally joins in the examination of sanitation. It also focuses on the blockchain-based design perspectives of these intelligent architectures for evaluating and interpreting real-world trends. The chapters expand on different models that have shown considerable success in dealing with an extensive range of applications, despite their ability to extract complex hidden features and learn efficient representation in unsupervised environments for blockchain security pattern analysis.

The volume comprises 11 well-versed contributory chapters in different areas of blockchain technology.

Chapter 1 introduces the underlying technology, known as blockchain, of famous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It starts by introducing the term blockchain, its analogies and characteristics. It then contains topics like history of blockchain and benefits of blockchain over traditional technologies. It emphasizes architecture of blockchain and various consensus mechanisms. The latter part of this chapter explores types of blockchain and the blockchain technology stack. It then lists various top blockchains used in contemporary days. It also explains various challenges of using blockchain such as energy consumption, scalability, public perception, etc. This chapter also explores the different types of attacks on blockchain.

The early days of cyberspace expansion saw many people become hesitant to use the internet facility due to two dominant reasons: obscurity and skepticism. The internet soon became a one-stop solution to a diverse range of sectors; a need to resolve issues such as data confidentiality and integrity gained prime importance. In 2008, an online currency called Bitcoin was launched by an anonymous developer or developer community called Satoshi Nakamoto, which was deemed to be a viable alternative to fiat or government-issued currency. What made Bitcoin famous and easily adaptable was the ease of accessibility in the form of a device application or simply wallet that included the nodes or blocks on which transaction data would be stored and processed instantaneously, and the intention behind it was to create a trustworthy cash system that would give individuals complete ownership of their transactions, not at risk of security breaches. With the advent and success of Bitcoin, new doors opened for other cryptocurrencies and digital assets like Ethereum and Litecoin, and it was observed that unlike fiduciary money, the sustainability of a thorough and transparent record must be maintained in connection with the exchange of digitalized money between any two parties whose anonymity would be preserved. Eventually, this became a turning point and marked the beginning of blockchain technology, which functioned as a distributed ledger system, ensuring secure transactions given its strong and complex cryptographic background strengthened with the help of hashing techniques and timestamps. Chapter 2 delves into this facet of blockchain technology in regard to cyber security.

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a computer system that integrates real-world objects with embedded technologies to control and monitor physical processes. On the other hand, blockchain technology is a distributed, decentralized framework, which is the core concept behind Bitcoin. Blockchain technology can improve the reliability, security, and robustness of CPS-enabled critical infrastructure systems. Chapter 3 begins with a detailed overview of CPS and blockchain technology followed by a discussion on the various existing use cases of CPS applications.

Chapter 4 relates a new centralized ledger technology with a centralized validation process. It offers a single platform for all categories of real-time transactions and validations, unlike existing conventional blockchain technology. It offers three levels of hashing placed at the generator, server, and validator end for data security from data tampering and two levels of encryption for communication lines between generator-server and server-validator for packet security. This system ensures trustworthiness, authenticity, and CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) to its end users while being real time in execution. The proposed system does not follow a chain-based file architecture. Due to this, no concept of chain break arises, and the problems that arise as a result of chain break in the blockchain are avoided.

Blockchain is a decentralized core architecture, which uses cryptographic validation, also known as hashing function, to link blocks with one another, and this linking plays a major role in ensuring the security, completeness, reliability, and accuracy of the data being stored and transparency in processing. Blockchain also provides a cryptographically safe and secure technique to obtain verified and immutable records in a chain that is chronologically ordered by discrete time stamps. These days, with almost everything becoming digital, the increasing rates of cyber threats, incidents, and policy violations have become a huge concern for organizations. It is only reasonable to use the vast variety of features that are offered by blockchain to assist intrusion detection systems (IDSs). IDSs are mainly used to monitor networks for malicious activities and report such activities. In Chapter 5, the authors discuss the different IDSs, the current situation of IDSs, and how to enhance the IDSs using blockchain.

The internet of things (IoT) has expanded the reachability of pervasive applications in different domains. Smart healthcare is one such area where IoT-based approaches have been successfully demonstrated in the recent past. However, issues related to the scaling of large ad-hoc elements is still a major challenge. Medical delivery drones have come up as a new variant of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to pave holistic orientation into the smart health service paradigm. Lack of augmentation aware notions has resisted the realization of an actual intervention of IoT-based medical delivery via UAVs. Proper architectural frameworks and models are needed to efficiently integrate IoT with the medical delivery drones. However, major security drawbacks should be investigated a priori for health delivery services in coming days. One can use the blockchain-centric approaches to fill this gap in the IoT-based medical delivery drone ecosystem. In Chapter 6, the authors firstly present the details about the drone suppliers and perform a comparative analysis of such drones for medical delivery. Secondly, a state of the art on blockchain-assisted IoT-based drone-centric medical delivery is also presented. Finally, some of the key challenges associated with existing drone delivery mechanisms are highlighted.

A huge majority of digital media in today's age is consumed over the internet. Any digital content uploaded online is extremely vulnerable to leakage through piracy, illegal spread, and sharing of digital copies of files to users who have not paid for the content's consumption. Many times, authentication of content to trace back its source of spread fails due to the anonymity of the said source. The current system of centralized content distribution networks working in conjunction with digital rights management systems to provide and authenticate users consuming digital content is faulty and can be replaced with a far more robust peer-to-peer (P2P) system that operates on blockchain technology. Such a system is illustrated in Chapter 7, which would benefit consumers since content will no longer be held by a centralized server but rather be decentralized geographically, ensuring availability through physical hindrances such as natural disasters or digital blockages such as distributed denial of service attacks, etc. The system will also help digital content creators of various fields such as photography, music, etc., by providing the ability to detect exact points of content breaches as well as maintaining a chain of transactions in case needed in a future investigation.

The past decade has envisaged a paradigmatic shift in the digitalization of executing and recording financial transactions by developing intelligent algorithms secured through cryptography. The architecture of blockchain technology holds tremendous potential for metamorphosing various industrial sectors like healthcare, life sciences, and clinical and medical data management. In recent years, there has been a continuous surge for adoption in the biomanufacturing sector by enhancing supply chain management and customer relationship through blockchain technology. It confers substantial impact on bioprocess design, operational efficiency, reduced maintenance downtime, management of spare part inventory, and continuous online monitoring that has paved the way for inevitable transformation in the biomanufacturing sector. In Chapter 8, the authors highlight the role of blockchain technology in the biomanufacturing sector by highlighting its implementation on various unit operations of the biomanufacturing sector. The technology is still in its nascent stage, but it can be wooed at a global scale for wider applicability to make the biomanufacturing sector more sustainable.

The concept of voting has been in use for many purposes in the past decades. The conventional ballot-based voting (paper and ballot box) approach has many inherent use cases that could lead to severe malpractices and manipulations during and after the voting process. In addition, it would also lead to many debatable situations where the physical voting-related practices could be questionable. To overcome the issues raised in the conventional voting system, an electronic voting (e-voting) system came into being. Although the e-voting approaches are efficient and address the drawbacks of conventional e-voting systems, they raise new challenges to researchers, such as voter identity verification, voter privacy protection, vote verifiability and integrity, and so on. Since blockchain guarantees data security, it can protect the system from coercion attacks so can provide better solutions for transparent and trusted e-voting systems. In Chapter 9, the authors explore various e-voting protocols and present a comparative study of performance, security features, and limitations. Further, they focus on the blockchain-based e-voting protocols to discuss the major achievements and challenges in the blockchain-based e-voting systems.

Blockchain technology is a decentralized distributed ledger that maintains a list of transactions in a P2P network in which the security is provided using cryptographic techniques. The history is recorded in every block, and these are cryptographically connected and secured over time. Moreover, this technology has been used for maintaining cryptocurrencies, digital contracts, land ownership, public records, etc., so far. Future applications are likely to include education, intellectual property, supply chain management, medicine, and science. Also, capital expenditures in blockchain technology are expected to hit USD 13.96 billion by 2022. A blockchain-based approach is presented in Chapter 10 to serve as a perfect solution in which the data security and privacy protection are the major concerns in developing a secure drug supply chain. The performance measures such as central dependency, security, smart contract management, encryption, error rate, user privacy, and traceability are considered for the comparison of the proposed technique with the existing approaches.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, these two technologies have recently been the trendiest and most revolutionary progressive technologies. Blockchain technology can automate payments in cryptocurrency and provide admittance in a decentralized, safe, and trustworthy way to shared records, transactions, and log ledgers. Also, with smart contracts, blockchain can handle interactions between participants without an interceder. Furthermore, AI provides intelligence and smart decision-making for human-like machines. Chapter 11 presents a thorough analysis of AI and blockchain integration ability, possibilities, and applications. The incorporation of AI was evaluated, and blockchain will influence industry 4.0. We also recognize and address the open issues of AI and blockchain fusion.

This volume will attract researchers, practitioners, academics, and industry professionals related to design, impact, challenges, solutions, and emerging applications of the blockchain in various domains, thereby serving as an excellent resource for the following areas: smart cities, CPSs, cloud computing, intelligent transportation systems, network security, video gaming, IoT, supply chain, reputation, and financial technology.

September 2021

SK Hafizul Islam

Kalyani, India

Arup Kumar Pal

Dhanbad, India

Debabrata Samanta

Bangalore, India

Siddhartha Bhattacharyya

Birbhum, India

Chapter 1: Blockchain architecture, taxonomy, challenges, and applications

Nisanth Reddy Kasi ¹ , Ramani S ¹ , and Marimuthu Karuppiah ²       ¹ School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India      ² Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Delhi-NCR Campus, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

This chapter introduces the underlying technology, known as blockchain, of famous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It starts by introducing the term blockchain, its analogies and characteristics. Topics like the history and benefits of blockchain over traditional technologies are discussed. It emphasizes the architecture of blockchain and various consensus mechanisms. The later part of this chapter explores types of blockchain and the blockchain technology stack. Various top blockchains used today are listed. It also explains various challenges of using blockchain such as energy consumption, scalability, and public perception, and it explores the different types of attacks upon blockchain. Various applications of blockchain followed by a number of use cases such as loans and cross-border payments using blockchain are explained. Finally, the importance of blockchain in the real world besides cryptocurrencies is detailed as well as future scope.

Keywords

Blockchain; CIDS; Firewall; HIDS; Hyperledger; NIDS; SNORT

1. Introduction to blockchain

Blockchain is a digitized, distributed ledger for records. It is simply a distributed database recording transactions in chronological order. To tamper with a blockchain is almost impossible. As the name blockchain indicates, a blockchain is nothing but a chain of blocks that stores data. A blockchain stores information in a different way than a typical database. Whenever data should be added, a block is newly created; new data is stored in the block, and then the newly created block will be chained to the previous block. The block creation is done chronologically and in a linear fashion.

There is no particular type of information that should be stored in a blockchain, but the most common application so far for blockchain has been as a record for transactions. The working steps of a blockchain are shown in Fig. 1.1. In blockchain, there is not a central server or third party that has complete control over the network. Blockchain uses a peer-to-peer network to group its computers. This means all the information that is stored in a blockchain is accessible to all the computers present in the network. So, if one person tries to tamper with the data in the blockchain, all others present in the blockchain can cross-reference one other, and that one copy of the blockchain will stand out as the culprit (Wüst and Gervais, 2018).

It is not necessarily impossible to change data in a blockchain. If the majority (i.e., 51%) of the network claims the change of data, then the data can be modified. As the network grows, it is practically impossible to tamper with the data. Even if someone wants to venture on this near impossible mission, the cost of resources required to tamper with data in a blockchain is much more than the outcome. This property where the control is with no one member of the network is called decentralization. It is also possible to create a blockchain that has a centralized architecture.

Figure 1.1  The working of blockchain.

Blockchain has several applications other than storing transaction data like in cryptocurrencies. Wherever there is a requirement for security, decentralization, or privacy, we can incorporate blockchain technology into that application. Some blockchain applications are in supply chain management, the energy sector, and the business sector. And in the government sector, voting and identity management are two of the applications. In Section 7 a detailed explanation of various blockchain applications are given.

1.1. Motivation

We live in a world where the technology advances every day. Every once in a while, there emerges a technology that completely changes the way that we perceive the world. Generally, a technology is born if there is a need to solve a problem that is not being solved using existing technologies. One such technology that is very much popular today is blockchain. Blockchain is simply a database in which the information is stored as blocks of data. Trust is the basis of any financial transaction. Now, to do any type of financial transaction, we rely on intermediaries such as banks. The trust gap is achieved with the help of intermediaries, and the intermediary demands a fee for their services. But by using blockchain for financial transactions, one can achieve a far greater level of trust and achieve this trust with a fraction of what one pay for intermediaries.

1.2. Blockchain analogy

Let us visualize a huge treasury in a bank. The treasury vault is filled with rows of deposit boxes. Each deposit box is made of glass, allowing everyone to visualize the contents of the deposit boxes, but people only have access to their own box. When a person opens a new deposit box, he or she receives a key that is unique to that box. This is the fundamental concept of cryptocurrencies based on blockchain. Anyone can see the contents of all other addresses.

1.3. Characteristics of blockchain

Each block is built on top of the previous block and uses the block's hash to form a chain. Validating and confirming blocks over the chain is handled by miners. Blocks created are cryptographically sealed over the blockchain, which means that it is nearly impossible to delete and modify data over the blockchain (Xu et al., 2019). Consensus algorithms make sure that all transactions are validated and only added once over the blockchain. The miner receives a reward for running the consensus algorithms; the current reward is 12.5 BTC in the Bitcoin blockchain and 2 ETH in the Ethereum blockchain. All the blocks added are in chronological order and time stamped.

1.4. Summarizing blockchain

A blockchain is a digitized, distributed, consensus-based secure storage of information protected from revision and tampering over the peer-to-peer network. Blockchain is a digitized store for information in the form of transactions. It is distributed. Thus, nobody controls it. Consensus algorithms ensure security and immutability. When new data arrive, they are stored in a block and chained to the blockchain after validation using a consensus mechanism. Data gets recorded in chronological order. Everyone presents over the network can view the transactions. The main elements of blockchain are privacy, security, and efficiency (Fig. 1.2).

1.5. Bitcoin and blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed database of records. Every smart contract or transaction in the public blockchain is confirmed by any one of the consensus mechanisms. Transactions are encrypted and cannot be replicated or altered. Currently, the most famous blockchain application is Bitcoin. Blockchain is able to transfer anything from stocks to property rights and cryptocurrency with ease and without the need to go through a third party.

Figure 1.2  Key elements of blockchain.

Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency, created and withheld digitally on your computer or in a wallet that is virtual. It is distributed, i.e., not centralized, so there are no single entities like persons, organizations, or banks that control the currency. It was started in 2009 to get rid of third-party payment processing intermediaries. The blockchain is the supporting technology that upholds the Bitcoin transaction ledger.

1.6. Wallets, digital signatures, and protocols

A blockchain wallet is similar to a digital wallet in that it allows participants to manage their cryptocurrency. A wallet lets users generate a private key and public address. The private key is used to send the transaction, and a public address is used to receive the transaction. No observable archives of identity about who did what deal or contract with whom are present; only the address of a wallet is visible in the transactions. Different types of blockchain wallets include paper wallets, web wallets, mobile wallets, desktop wallets, etc. Digital signatures are similar to real-world paper signatures as a means to verify a person's identity. Digital signatures use cryptography, which is more secure than handwritten signatures (Xu et al., 2017).

A private key is used to sign messages digitally. The recipient can verify it with the sender's public key. Every transaction that is executed on the blockchain is digitally signed by the sender using their private key. SSL is an example of a digital signature.

1.7. Main contributions of this chapter

The main contributions of this chapter are the following:

(1) The real-life applications of blockchain technology are explained in detail in the latter part of the chapter. Ten applications are listed.

(2) This chapter explains the challenges of blockchain technology like industry challenges and types of blockchain attacks.

1.8. Organization of the chapter

The first section of this chapter gave a basic understanding of blockchain. Section 2 contains the brief history of blockchain. Section 3 describes the advantages of using blockchain over traditional technologies. This section also explores the key benefits of using blockchain such as decentralized control and confidentiality. Section 4 explores the architecture underlying blockchain and various consensus mechanisms like proof of work. This section also discusses the types of blockchain and blockchain ecosystem. Later in this section, various popular blockchains are listed. Section 5 gives the overview of blockchain evolution in fields other than cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Section 6 explains the various challenges of blockchain technology, mainly industrial challenges, and attacks against blockchain. Section 7 explores the applications of blockchain in detail. In this section, 10 real-world applications of blockchain are discussed in detail. Section 8 concludes with an assessment of future work.

2. History of blockchain

In early 1990s, the blockchain technology was described with the intent to avoid tampering and time stamp digital data. Almost 20years later, this technology was adapted by Satoshi Nakamoto for the creation of a cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin. The first practical use case of blockchain technology was Bitcoin.

2.1. Use of blockchain in Bitcoin

Satoshi Nakamoto published a research paper in 2008 entitled Bitcoin: A peer to peer electronic cash system that stated that the transactions of this cryptocurrency Bitcoin could take place without the involvement of a third party. With the arrival of Bitcoin in 2008 the blockchain technology came to light even though it had been discovered in the early 1990s. A new protocol was released after a few months that began the concept of a genesis block with 50 coins. This new protocol was an open-source program that gradually became a part of Bitcoin