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26 pages, 31491 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Blockchain for Food Tracking

by Arif Furkan Mendi

Electronics 2022, 11(16), 2491; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11162491 - 10 Aug 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2717

Abstract

A food shortage, which has increased with the climate crisis, will be one of the biggest problems of the world, together with water scarcity, in the future and will damage the sustainability of the food supply system. With the effect of the COVID-19 [...] Read more.

A food shortage, which has increased with the climate crisis, will be one of the biggest problems of the world, together with water scarcity, in the future and will damage the sustainability of the food supply system. With the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, food resources are decreasing, and food prices are rising all over the world. The decrease in food sources increases the importance of food tracking even more. The exorbitant price increases after the COVID-19 pandemic are the most concrete indicators of this. Blockchain-based food tracking systems will be of critical importance because they will prevent exorbitant price increases with their contribution to food tracking processes, such as reliability and transparency. In this study, the establishment of a blockchain-based food tracking system in Turkey, its operation, and its results will be discussed. It was concluded that 97.54% of the participants using the established system found the application useful and wanted such an application to become widespread. In addition, comparing the performance data of the established blockchain-based system with other blockchain infrastructures, a value of 0.038 s for latency is 435 times better than Ethereum, one of the most popular blockchain infrastructures. A transmission per second value of 285, reception per second value of 335, and CPU load rate value of 19.22 are obtained with the proposed system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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17 pages, 1648 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Novel Distributed Ledger Technology Structure for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on IOTA Tangle

by Hongwei Zhang, Marzia Zaman, Brian Stacey and Srinivas Sampalli

Electronics 2022, 11(15), 2403; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11152403 - 1 Aug 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2681

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of many wireless sensor nodes for collecting and sensing information. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) such as Blockchain allow organizations to store and share data in a decentralized, immutable, and secure way through a network of distributed peer-to-peer users [...] Read more.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of many wireless sensor nodes for collecting and sensing information. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) such as Blockchain allow organizations to store and share data in a decentralized, immutable, and secure way through a network of distributed peer-to-peer users or computers. The application of DLT to the Internet of Things (IoT) can improve the efficiency of information transmission and network security. IOTA Tangle is a DLT developed for IoT to process transactions. WSN is a core technology for IoT, and the two have a lot in common in terms of applications. Many solutions for IoT applications can be implemented with WSNs. However, the sensor nodes in WSNs have limited processing speed, storage capacity, communication bandwidth, and energy consumption capabilities. Therefore, a lightweight solution needs to be designed according to the characteristics of WSNs, rather than directly applying Tangle. The similarities between IoT and WSNs determine that the Tangle can be an essential reference for designing new solutions. In this paper, we propose a new DLT structure based on Tangle named Fishing Net Topology (FNT). The aim is to meet the lightweight requirements of sensor nodes in WSNs. We compared FNT with Tangle in terms of the packet network structure and algorithm and also experimentally analyzed the waste rate in the FNT network. It is concluded that FNT can be used at a reasonable Rate based on the requirement of the WSN applications, and it can significantly reduce the computation while enhancing the security of WSNs. Due to its structural stability and algorithmic simplicity, FNT outperforms Tangle in WSNs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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47 pages, 16775 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Peer-to-Peer Smart Food Delivery Platform Based on Smart Contract

by Linchao Zhang and Dohyeun Kim

Electronics 2022, 11(12), 1806; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11121806 - 7 Jun 2022

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4282 | Correction

Abstract

The era of mobile information has arrived, and people’s lifestyles have undergone tremendous changes. Ordering takeaways through takeout apps on smartphones is one of them. However, most existing takeaway platforms charge high commissions in the middle. There are many fake reviews in restaurants, [...] Read more.

The era of mobile information has arrived, and people’s lifestyles have undergone tremendous changes. Ordering takeaways through takeout apps on smartphones is one of them. However, most existing takeaway platforms charge high commissions in the middle. There are many fake reviews in restaurants, the authenticity of restaurant ratings is low, and the recommended dishes have low customer satisfaction. This paper aims to solve this problem by introducing a peer-to-peer architecture based on blockchain smart contracts. The proposed architecture leverages the automation of smart contracts to provide autonomous, commission-free food ordering and delivery services. In addition, the smart contract reward mechanism is used to collect order information and rating information, and a deep learning recommendation model is introduced to analyze the data to recommend restaurants and menus to the client accurately. To demonstrate the usability and efficiency of the proposed method, we conducted a case study using public chain-based technologies. At the same time, comprehensive evaluation experiments are carried out, and the results show the importance of the proposed food delivery system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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19 pages, 1157 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Blockchain-Based Smart Propertization of Digital Content for Intellectual Rights Protection

by Nam-Yong Lee, **hong Yang and Chul-Soo Kim

Electronics 2021, 10(12), 1387; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10121387 - 9 Jun 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2352

Abstract

Several platform companies have been successful in competing with digital piracy by producing consumer-friendly services. Nowadays, however, the digital content service market has become more monopolized than ever, which forms barriers to the entry of new platform companies. The platform monopoly would cause [...] Read more.

Several platform companies have been successful in competing with digital piracy by producing consumer-friendly services. Nowadays, however, the digital content service market has become more monopolized than ever, which forms barriers to the entry of new platform companies. The platform monopoly would cause considerable problems both to content providers and consumers as it limits the choice of consumers. To remove the platform monopoly in digital content markets, we propose a public blockchain-based digital content service method. The proposed method encrypts the digital content to a self-decryptable form, which we call Smart Propertized Digital Content (SPDC), and utilizes the decentralization and traceability of the public blockchain to provide a non-monopolistic ecosystem for the management and distribution of the SPDC license. The proposed method can be more beneficial both to content creators and users than the current winner-takes-all platform model. For instance, users can download SPDC once and play many times without requesting the decryption key, and SPDC owners can make SPDC licenses to be time-limited, device-limited, resellable, or terminated without resorting to help from other intermediaries. We conducted the threat analysis on the proposed method by examining possible attacks in various scenarios. Based on threat analysis, we conclude that the proposed method can provide a new type of digital content service ecosystem that can be operated in a completely decentralized way and neutrally beneficial to all participants. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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24 pages, 2189 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Security Aspects of Blockchain Technology Intended for Industrial Applications

by Sheikh Mohammad Idrees, Mariusz Nowostawski, Roshan Jameel and Ashish Kumar Mourya

Electronics 2021, 10(8), 951; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10080951 - 16 Apr 2021

Cited by 77 | Viewed by 8697

Abstract

Blockchain technology plays a significant role in the industrial development. Many industries can potentially benefit from the innovations blockchain decentralization technology and privacy protocols offer with regard to securing, data access, auditing and managing transactions within digital platforms. Blockchain is based on distributed [...] Read more.

Blockchain technology plays a significant role in the industrial development. Many industries can potentially benefit from the innovations blockchain decentralization technology and privacy protocols offer with regard to securing, data access, auditing and managing transactions within digital platforms. Blockchain is based on distributed and secure decentralized protocols in which there is no single authority, and no single point of control; the data blocks are generated, added, and validated by the nodes of the network themselves. This article provides insights into the current developments within blockchain technology and explores its ability to revolutionize the multiple industrial application areas such as supply chain industry, Internet of Things (IoT), healthcare, governance, finance and manufacturing. It investigates and provides insights into the security issues and threats related to the blockchain implementations by assessing the research through a systematic literature review. This article proposes possible solutions in detail for enhancing the security of the blockchain for industrial applications along with significant directions for future explorations. The study further suggests how in recent years the adoption of blockchain technology by multiple industrial sectors has gained momentum while in the finance sector it is touching new heights day by day. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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20 pages, 4587 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An IOTA-Based Service Discovery Framework for Fog Computing

by Tsung-Yi Tang, Li-Yuan Hou and Tyng-Yeu Liang

Electronics 2021, 10(7), 844; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10070844 - 1 Apr 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3223

Abstract

With the rise in fog computing, users are no longer restricted to only accessing resources located in central and distant clouds and can request services from neighboring fog nodes distributed over networks. This can effectively reduce the network latency of service responses and [...] Read more.

With the rise in fog computing, users are no longer restricted to only accessing resources located in central and distant clouds and can request services from neighboring fog nodes distributed over networks. This can effectively reduce the network latency of service responses and the load of data centers. Furthermore, it can prevent the Internet’s bandwidth from being used up due to massive data flows from end users to clouds. However, fog-computing resources are distributed over multiple levels of networks and are managed by different owners. Consequently, the problem of service discovery becomes quite complicated. For resolving this problem, a decentralized service discovery method is required. Accordingly, this research proposes a service discovery framework based on the distributed ledger technology of IOTA. The proposed framework enables clients to directly search for service nodes through any node in the IOTA Mainnet to achieve the goals of public access and high availability and avoid network attacks to distributed hash tables that are popularly used for service discovery. Moreover, clients can obtain more comprehensive information by visiting known nodes and select a fog node able to provide services with the shortest latency. Our experimental results have shown that the proposed framework is cost-effective for distributed service discovery due to the advantages of IOTA. On the other hand, it can indeed enable clients to obtain higher service quality by automatic node selection. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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17 pages, 1480 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Keyword Search in Decentralized Storage Systems

by Liyan Zhu, Chuqiao **ao and Xueqing Gong

Electronics 2020, 9(12), 2041; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9122041 - 2 Dec 2020

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2234

Abstract

The emerging decentralized storage systems (DSSs), such as InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Storj, and Sia, provide people with a new storage model. Instead of being centrally managed, the data are sliced up and distributed across the nodes of the network. Furthermore, each data [...] Read more.

The emerging decentralized storage systems (DSSs), such as InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Storj, and Sia, provide people with a new storage model. Instead of being centrally managed, the data are sliced up and distributed across the nodes of the network. Furthermore, each data object is uniquely identified by a cryptographic hash (ObjectId) and can only be retrieved by ObjectId. Compared with the search functions provided by the existing centralized storage systems, the application scenarios of the DSSs are subject to certain restrictions. In this paper, we first apply decentralized B+Tree and HashMap to the DSSs to provide keyword search. Both indexes are kept in blocks. Since these blocks may be scattered on multiple nodes, we ensure that all operations involve as few blocks as possible to reduce network cost and response time. In addition, the version control and version merging algorithms are designed to effectively organize the indexes and facilitate data integration. The experimental results prove that our indexes have excellent availability and scalability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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Jump to: Research

1 pages, 154 KiB

Open AccessCorrection

Correction: Zhang, L.; Kim, D. A Peer-to-Peer Smart Food Delivery Platform Based on Smart Contract. Electronics 2022, 11, 1806

by Linchao Zhang and Dohyeun Kim

Electronics 2022, 11(17), 2673; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11172673 - 26 Aug 2022

Viewed by 719

Abstract

In the original publication [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain Technology and Its Applications)

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