Blockchain Meets Cloud Computing: A Survey

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 22, NO.
3, THIRD QUARTER 2020 2009
Blockchain Meets Cloud Computing: A Survey

Keke Gai , Senior Member, IEEE, Jinnan Guo, Liehuang Zhu , Member, IEEE,
and Shui Yu , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Blockchain technology has been deemed to be an (e.g., Bitcoin) but also implemented in application-oriented
ideal choice for strengthening existing computing systems in var- scenarios [1], [2]. Smart contract is a major driven fac-
ied manners. As one of the network-enabled technologies, cloud tor in blockchain-enabled applications as it introduces the
computing has been broadly adopted in the industry through
numerous cloud service models. Fusing blockchain technology ability of the automatic control [3]. The trustful environ-
with existing cloud systems has a great potential in both function- ment conducted by blockchain is tightly tied to operations
ality/performance enhancement and security/privacy improve- or processes via implementing smart contract. Implementing
ment. The question remains on how blockchain technology inserts blockchain-enabled solutions is an expectable technical route
into current deployed cloud solutions and enables the reengi- for reinforcing cloud datacenter.
neering of cloud datacenter. This survey addresses this issue and
investigates recent efforts in the technical fusion of blockchain Based on our investigations, we find that many contempo-
and clouds. Three technical dimensions roughly are covered in rary studies are seeking methods that utilize blockchain tech-
this work. First, we concern the service model and review an niques to power up existing systems. Reengineering of cloud
emerging cloud-relevant blockchain service model, Blockchain- datacenter through blockchain-enabled approach is deemed to
as-a-Service (BaaS); second, security is considered a key technical be one of the major trends in achieving trustworthiness and
dimension in this work and both access control and search-
able encryption schemes are assessed; finally, we examine the reliability in the intercrossed networking environment [4], [5].
performance of cloud datacenter with supports/ participance of A few representative benefits of blockchain technology, as
blockchain from hardware and software perspectives. Main find- widely accepted, include tamper-resistance [6], [7], transpar-
ings of this survey will be theoretical supports for future reference ent governance [8], decentralization-powered security [9], [10]
of blockchain-enabled reengineering of cloud datacenter. and novel business models [11], [12].
Index Terms—Blockchain, cloud computing, data provenance, Despite various merits of blockchain technology, there are
blockchain-as-a-service, blockchain service model. two typical challenges commonly exist in current blockchain-
enabled cloud solutions, deriving from findings of our study.
The first type of challenge is that blockchain generally
I. I NTRODUCTION encounters technical difficulties when applying it in cloud
S AN emerging technical term, blockchain is deemed applications. Most difficulties are caused by technical charac-
A to be an adoptable alternative for establishing a trust-
ful platform, due to a few of its characteristics, e.g., data
teristics of blockchain, some of which are considered advan-
tages. For instance, a pure decentralization setting (e.g., public
traceability and tamper-resistance. It has been widely believed blockchain) offers a strong autonomous working mode; how-
that blockchain can be not only used in financial services ever, lack of control in this mode also is considered a weakness
in many practical scenes. Centralization-based governance
Manuscript received August 29, 2019; revised February 2, 2020; accepted cannot be fully abandoned due to various reasons, such as
April 2, 2020. Date of publication April 22, 2020; date of current legal issues or governmental duties. Our recent study [13]
version August 21, 2020. This work was supported in part by the
Ministry of Education—China Mobile Research Fund Project under Grant also finds that privacy leakage is threatening the consortium
MCM20180401, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China blockchain-based autonomous trading system, based on a real-
under Grant 61972034, Grant 61872041, and Grant U1836212, in part by the world case, as data stored in blocks are open to the public.
Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality under Grant 20D20116,
in part by the Pre-study Foundation of Weapons and Equipment under Considering cloud datacenter, even though consortium/private
Grant 31511020401, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong blockchain lowers down the impact of the decentralization,
Province under Grant ZR2019ZD10, in part by the Guangxi Key Laboratory of tamper-resistance is an obstacle to achieving controllable/
Cryptography and Information Security under Grant GCIS201803, in part by
the Henan Key Laboratory of Network Cryptography Technology under Grant scalable cloud systems [14], [15].
LNCT2019-A08, and in part by Australian ARC under Grant DP180102828 The other type of common challenge is formulating/ con-
and Grant DP200101374. The work of Keke Gai was supported by the ducting blockchain service models. Blockchain used to be
Beijing Institute of Technology Research Fund Program for Young Scholars.
(Corresponding author: Liehuang Zhu.) known as a synonym of “Bitcoin” when the cryptocurrency
Keke Gai and Liehuang Zhu are with the School of Computer Science and was first introduced to the public, although blockchain tech-
Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China (e-mail: nology was created as a distributed ledger-based storage
gaikeke@bit.edu.cn; liehuangz@bit.edu.cn).
Jinnan Guo is with the School of Information and Electronics, method, a few years before Bitcoin was born. The success of
Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China (e-mail: blockchain in cryptocurrency leads a tide of blockchain-based
1120162383@bit.edu.cn). digital currency or financial services, but the success has been
Shui Yu is with the School of Computer Science, University of Technology
Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia (e-mail: shui.yu@uts.edu.au). rarely copied in other industries [14], [16]. Lack of effective
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/COMST.2020.2989392 service models is a critical element that restricts blockchain
1553-877X
c 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Siksha O Anusandhan University. Downloaded on February 02,2021 at 04:54:21 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2010 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 22, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2020
implementations, albeit some attempts have been made over

years [17]–[19]. In the scenario of cloud datacenter, it also
struggles to finding out a seamless way of using blockchain
technology. Our research [15] also argues that a pure decentral-
ization computing is conflict with many existing management
models in which a centralized administration has been long-
established. The consequence of our research derives from the
investigation on both government and enterprise.
As a matter of fact, conquering two challenges above as
well as other issues in the technical fusion is more com-
plicated than it seems to be. Simply applying blockchain
Fig. 1. Technical dimensions of this survey.
technology in cloud-based solutions generally is inflexible
owing to multiple restrictions, such as the system compat-
ibility, blockchain-cloud interface, governability demand, or
infrastructure deployment. Cognizing connections between
blockchain and cloud systems is a crucial fundamental to pow- data provenance, access control, searchable encryption, data
ering up the blockchain-cloud combination. The significance deduplication, auto control and resource allocation, hardware
of accomplishing a survey in this field covers at least three enhancement, and data storage.
sides, aligning with three questions given in the following. The purpose of conducting this survey aims to indicate
1) There is an urgent demand for facilitating blockchain recent studies of blockchain that can be utilized for powering
technology in on-ground application scenarios. As a up cloud systems or those novel mechanism that uses cloud-
widely deployed technology, cloud computing is a based methods to reinforce blockchain systems. Key applica-
proper objective for carrying out blockchain tech- tion specification of blockchain is addressed at each technical
niques. However, the question remains on how to make dimensions, such as efficiency (throughput capacity), com-
blockchain and clouds compatible. For example, cloud patibility (database, network, etc.), energy cost, blockchain
computing generally highly relies on its centralization platforms, and security.
computing, which is contradictive with blockchain’s Main contributions of this work are twofold.
decentralization setting. First, this survey provides a comprehensive review that
2) Even though blockchain provides/ enables new service concentrates on reengineering of cloud computing from the
models, e.g., adding trustworthy values, which seems perspective of blockchain implementations. Comparisons in
to be consistent with cloud service models, offering the same technical dimension are given in this work, which
blockchain services is more complicated than regu- provides an explicit research/ practical guideline for scholars/
lar cloud services. There are many unsolved problems practitioners. Second, this survey offers a brief tutorial about
needed to be answered. Unlike infrastructure or software fusing blockchain technology with cloud computing. The orga-
that fits in On-demand Pay (ODP) manner, blockchain nization structure of this work depends on a series of technical
technology is struggling with data exchanging/ sharing dimensions, which assists academic/ industrial involvers to
when multiple blockchain networks are merged. Finding build up their knowledge scaffold in the field and is meaningful
out effective service model that supports both clouds and for developing on-ground blockchain-powered cloud systems
blockchain has an extreme demand. or cloud-powered blockchain systems.
3) It appears to be easier for cloud computing to act Fig. 1 illustrates main technical dimensions addressed by
as a technical support for blockchain; nevertheless, this survey. As the organizational structure shown in the figure,
more explorations also are intensely required in the organization of this work follows the order below.
this aspect, such as blockchain-purpose infrastruc- In Section II, we present an emerging blockchain-oriented
ture, optimum offloading strategies, multi-participant service model, known as a Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS).
working mode, and blockchain-oriented storage mech- From the perspective of data governance, blockchain-enabled
anism. Understanding contemporary achievements data provenance and access control methods are reviewed
in blockchain-purpose cloud offerings has a great in Section III and IV, respectively. Moreover, we synthesize
requirement. work in blockchain-enabled searchable encryption methods
We notice that fusing blockchain and cloud techniques has and blockchain-based applications in data deduplication in
rarely addressed by prior survey studies, even though some Sections V and VI. Next, Section VII describes a few recent
recent studies surveyed blockchain techniques in different per- studies that focus on applying smart contract in cloud resource
spectives, e.g., digital currencies [20]–[22], security [23], [24], allocations. In addition, Section VIII reviews offloading mech-
privacy [21], [25], edge-integration [26], IoT-integration [27], anism in blockchain. Section IX shows recent achievements in
[28], and smart city-integration [29]. Therefore, this survey performance enhancement from the hardware dimension and
focuses on the technical fusion of blockchain and cloud com- Section X exhibits relevant work in the field of blockchain-
puting. Recent studies addressing the relevant field have been related storage. Furthermore, discussions and main findings
synthesized in this work. A few aspects, from the perspective are presented in Section XI. Finally, we wrap up the work
cloud offerings/ functionality, covered by this survey include with a conclusion in Section XII.
GAI et al.: BLOCKCHAIN MEETS CLOUD COMPUTING: A SURVEY 2011
II. B LOCKCHAIN - AS - A -S ERVICE customized acquisitions to host their blockchain apps

A. Concept of BaaS or partial blockchain functions (e.g., smart contract).
2) BaaS screens the complexity of the blockchain imple-
BaaS is a type of blockchain service model that borrows
mentation. An ODP manner offers adaptable and scal-
the concept from cloud computing. This service model deems
able service scope, from establishment and configuration
blockchain systems or components to be computing resource
to manipulation and maintenance. Plug-in architecture
that can be used for supporting cloud systems or other appli-
generally is available for quick adoptions.
cations [30]. The major intention of using BaaS is allowing
Moreover, applying blockchain techniques is believed to
customers to focus on core business rather than struggling with
be an approach for eliminating drawbacks or creating new
technical obstacles of blockchain.
values in clouds. For example, different CSPs are involved
In work [5], a metaphor, “Cloud over Blockchain”, is given
in the integrated cloud data management system so that
to describe a blockchain service offering in a cloud service
data sharing/transferring activities are a frequent phenomenon
model. As widely accepted, the continuous growth of cloud
[35], [36]. Lack of control on data flows has become a con-
demands has introduced numerous service models. Besides
cern when multiple parties participate in data sharing actions.
three fundamental cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS),
The issue can be solved by deploying blockchain-based data-
emerging cloud services are transmitting even partial process-
tracing system.
ing components or processes into the transferrable manner
In general, CSPs of BaaS are responsible for construct-
for service demanders, e.g., Backend-as-a-Service, Process-
ing and maintaining the blockchain platform, including
as-a-Service, and Security-as-a-Service. The work [31] further
performance enhancement (e.g., source scheduling and API
discussed the service interoperations in IoT through the imple-
design) and risk mitigation (e.g., security protection [37]).
mentation of BaaS, which argued that trusted environment
BaaS provides an opportunity for users to maintain ubiquitous
and smart contract executions could be used for enhancing
access to blockchain networks [38].
interoperability of services.
The diversity of the cloud service model implies that
either a system or a governable network can be a service B. BaaS Industrial Deployment
content. Similarly, blockchain infrastructure or backend can From the perspective of the service presentation, contempo-
be the service offering in a BaaS. To be specified, BaaS rary BaaS products were similar to BPaaS (Business Process
allows customers to leverage a cloud-based approach to obtain as a Service), both of which emphasized the interconnections
blockchain-related supports. For instance, Alibaba Cloud between logical business activities and physical deliveries.
BaaS provides a variety of services via offering customers Emerging trends of blockchain had attracted interests of CSPs.
blockchain systems, such as transaction tracking database, Many IT companies, e.g., Microsoft, IBM and Amazon, pro-
smart contract, and consortium governance. With various BaaS vide BaaS in their mature cloud environments. IBM BaaS
providers, the purpose of BaaS is distinct. Some common tar- is attempting to provide services for vehicular systems [39];
get functions include security, cost saving, system integration, Oracle BaaS is driving away at service offerings in logistic and
and control optimization. payment [40]. A comparison of BaaS services will be given
In this survey, we mainly investigate the method for in this section.
implementing blockchain techniques in the position of sup- Microsoft Azure [41] is a cloud platform that provides the
porting cloud services. The basic idea of BaaS is that the fast blockchain deployment, which supports Ethereum, Corda
blockchain network/application is treated as a service offering, and Hyperledger Fabric for the deployment and configuration
on which users are allowed to configure blockchain settings, of a blockchain network. The Azure’s user only needs con-
such as blockchain network types and smart contract rules. figure certain parameters rather than figuring out all technical
Infrastructure for establishing blockchain network is offered details. Besides, Microsoft’s solution can automatically backup
by the service provider and partial codes of blockchain are the on-chain data to the off-chain cloud storage. Current ver-
available for open source. Exploring the establishment of novel sion of Azure mainly supports the single-node configuration in
BaaS has been addressed by recent studies, e.g., FSBaaS [32], Fabric and the deployment of consortium blockchain is under
uBaaS [33], and NutBaaS [34]. We notice that unified BaaS explored.
still is under exploration and most prior attempts are at the Next, another common cloud platform, Amazon Web
stage of system design. The challenging part is that techni- Services (AWS) [42], has provided BaaS in their mature and
cal difficulties still exist in communication, consensus, and wildly-used cloud environment since 2016. AWS’s BaaS can
data synchronization. Technical restrictions cause the lack of support both Ethereum and Hyperledger such that service
real-world implementations in unified BaaS. alternatives from both blockchain systems are available to
Besides classic features of cloud computing, two spe- users.
cific characteristics of BaaS concept are highlighted in the IBM Blockchain Platform [43] provided a public cloud
following for the further explicit explanation. that users could deploy the blockchain on it. Compared with
1) Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) manage/ govern all other BaaS, the main disadvantage of the IBM Blockchain
required blockchain computing resource (e.g., infras- Platform is that it can only support the solution template imple-
tructure or operations) and provide customers with an mented by the Hyperledger Fabric, the widely-used Ethereum
agile service offering, so that customers can obtain is not supported in IBM BaaS solution. However, other BaaS
TABLE I
C OMPARISONS OF BAA S I NDUSTRIAL D EPLOYMENTS data security by offering transparent operations on the dis-
tributed ledger. Singh and Michels [38] presented four optional
solutions: (i) enhancing users’ controllability by using PaaS-
alike setting, (ii) mitigating the recentralization by establishing
CSP federations, (iii) working on an authenticated trustful
environment (e.g., ARM’s trust zone), and (iv) strengthening
access controls.
A few more views on BaaS models have been explored.
Melo et al. [46] assessed reliability and availability of BaaS
model, which presented Dynamical Reliability Block Diagrams
(DRBDs) to construct the “master” and “slave” in hyper-
providers failed to establish a life-cycle management of users’ ledger. The investigation showed that cloud backend offering
blockchain. IBM provides data life-cycle management which resulted in a higher-level availability and reliability of BaaS
can ensure a reliable outsourced data management for users. system. Similarly, Lee [47] attempted to using BaaS in iden-
Furthermore, IBM BaaS relied on secure containers. It can also tity management services. A Blockchain-based-ID as a Service
support users to configure their Blockchain on private clouds (BIDaaS) was proposed in order to eliminate the demand of
or on-premises environments. These above characteristics offer screened third party in identity management. This approach
IBM BaaS a secure and reliable cloud environment. Table I offered a virtual ID’s registration service by publishing related
illustrates a brief comparison among popular BaaS services. transactions with virtual ID and ID’s signature information.
Despite many merits of BaaS, most existing BaaS is When the user was accessing the BIDaaS service, a mutual
attached to single cloud ecosystem due to the restriction of the authentication attaching to BaaS ledger was applied for ver-
blockchain system. Multi-chain technique still is under explo- ifying identities. Xu et al. [48] investigated the feasibility of
ration yet, such that multi-cloud setting needs more research data auditing by applying BaaS.
for deployment. Improvements based on existing BaaS models also had
been made. For example, Chen and Zhang [49] proposed
C. BaaS Under Exploration a Functional BaaS (FBaaS) model such that the BaaS was
An efficient and secure blockchain service is a common expanded to the server-less architecture. The expansion derived
goal for BaaS products. Obtaining a flexible host service from the Big Data Open Architecture (BDOA) and the model
from clouds becomes an alternative option. Samaniego and consisted of four layers, including infrastructure, component,
Deters [30], [44] discussed and analyzed the performance service, and business logic layers. Considering the software
difference of BaaS system running in both cloud and fog envi- development aids, Lu et al. [50] proposed a BaaS-based devel-
ronments. The results showed that, in the cloud context, a opment assist toolkits to support blockchain design pattern
BaaS system could have higher-level computation capability services, which covered both data management and smart
and storage resource than that of fog computing, while latency contract designs.
time was longer. Samaniego and Deters work [44] also eval- In addition, smart contract-oriented service also is a research
uated communication costs between the BaaS server and IoT direction in the field of BaaS. Zhang et al. [51] attempted
devices with varying amounts of clients and network condi- a smart contract-based secure billing approach in ride hail-
tions and demonstrated that a fog-based BaaS system had a ing services. Even though the study did not provide a route
better performance than a cloud-based setting. of X-as-a-service, it still showed a potential blue map of
In most current blockchain systems, an assumption was smart contract-as-a-service as the rule defined by smart con-
made that the demand of the trustful third-party was reduced tract could be embedded into other systems. Smart contract
due to the decentralization setting. Interactions between stake- could play a role of enabler for other service offerings. For
holders were assumed to be secure no matter whether the example, it [52] has been proved that Mobility-as-a-Service
stakeholder was trustful. This assumption could be challenged (MaaS) could be achieved by the smart contract-enabled
when the implementation of BaaS was implemented, accord- trusted transactions.
ing to recent investigations. Singh and Michels [38] discussed Finally, consensus was a vital part of blockchain for eglitar-
trust management issues in BaaS and pointed out that insert- ianism. Marandi et al. [53] discussed a potential mechanism of
ing service providers into the blockchain system could cause consensus-as-a-service on a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
recentralizations. One of the reasons was that the service The method combined the agreement with the consensus in
provider could be or had connections with stakeholder(s) so order to meet the target throughput and degree of fault-
that the blockchain offering might lack of trust. There was tolerance. In the cloud/fog context, a PoW consensus approach
a great chance that the majority of voters were threatening could be an option to achieving optimizations of computing
as blockchain system was outsourced to the third party. A resources. Kumar et al. [54] investigated the feasibility of
potential solution was signing a service agreement to restrict using maximization-factorization statistics with a PoW con-
activities of CSP(s). sensus to reduce time and energy costs, as the proposed
From the perspective of the service provider, trust concerns statistical method could realize precise probability in minimal
also restricted the improvement of BaaS service [38], [45]. time. Zhou et al. [55] paid attention to the Vehicle-to-Grid
Typically, service providers needed to prove the capability of (V2G) scenario and utilized consortium blockchain trading
mechanism to enable a low-cost demand-supply matching

method. The information asymmetry issue was addressed by
this work, which was solved by a contract-based control
method as well as a consensus.
Summary: In this section, we had discussed BaaS in
both industry and research. With the support of BaaS offer-
ings, users can concentrate on the functionality and usabil-
ity of their blockchain-based apps rather than exploring
blockchain network establishment. From the perspective of
cost-saving, BaaS is efficient due to the easy-configuration and
outsourcing-maintenance. A few tech giants had been devel-
Fig. 2. High level architecture of blockchain-enabled data provenance for
oping various BaaS service models as the branch of their cloud datacenter.
cloud services. Our investigations depicted that the indus-
try had ambitious attempts on exploring BaaS, while limited
research achievements were revealed. A wider implementation
of BaaS needed to take over challenges in trust management, that provenance could be used as a recovery tool in case of
data security, and recentralizations. mis-detection.
Benefits of provenance as discussed above are based on
the assumption of metadata that were secure and reliable.
However, provenance records still had a chance to be tem-
III. B LOCKCHAIN -E NABLED DATA P ROVENANCE pered by the threat agent, which could disable/ misused the
IN C LOUDS provenance system [72]. As mentioned in [58], provenance
A. Data Provenance Issues services were subjected to accidentally shut-down and mali-
IDC (International Data Corporation) [56] forecasted that cious attacks. It suggested that storage and analysis process
global data sphere would reach 175 Zettabyte by 2025, of be required to realize reliable provenance collections.
which half of the cloud data would be stored in public clouds.
Data provenance is an essential of traceable data usage in
assisting the management of such high volume data, consid- B. Blockchain-Enabled Cloud Data Provenance
ering both efficiency and reliability. Provenance refers to a As a temper-resistant distributed ledger, blockchain could
type of metadata that records and describes operation data. In ensure the security of provenance data. The basic idea of
the scenario of cloud computing, a functional provenance tells blockchain-based data provenance is using blockchain’s char-
when, where and how data are stored, accessed, modified and acteristic in traceability to record each activities happened to
deleted in cloud datacenter, which means CSPs are expected data on blocks. Fig. 2 shows the high level architecture of
to provide reliable cloud-data management when a competent the blockchain-enabled data provenance for cloud datacenter.
provenance is implemented. Ali et al. [73] emphasized that blockchain techniques con-
The application of provenance in cloud benefits both CSPs tribute to data provenance by its immutable, deterministic and
and users. To address providers’ demands, provenance meta- public nature. Smart contract plays a vital role in balancing
data could be utilized to debug [66] for discovering potential data provenance, functionality, and trusted environment, no
security vulnerabilities. Titian [67] provided a data prove- matter whether the data are stored on-chain or off-chain.
nance to support Data-Intensive Scalable Computing (DISC) ProvChain [58] was a private chain in order to collect, store
systems in order to simplify the debug process. Provenance and verify provenance data in the cloud. In this blockchain-
system can also assist CSPs to identify abnormal process based provenance architecture, programs named hooks were
in clouds, e.g., unexpected running applications, which con- responsible for monitoring changes in cloud environment to
tinually consuming resources without notice when prove- record these operation events. Besides, provenance data were
nance was not applied [68]. The automatous data life-cycle sensitive and vulnerable to data misusing [74]. In ProvChain
management is the major subject offered by provenance. structure, user’s identities appeared in the hashed form in order
Westerkamp et al. [57] proposed a blockchain-based approach to protect users’ privacy. Only service provider could map the
for tracing manufacturing processes that covered both products hashed value to user’s identity. However, some sensitive data
deliveries and components during manufacturing. The concept were still stored as a plaintext in the blockchain.
of the token was used for linking blocks with products or SmartProvenance [59] system, introduced automatic ver-
product components. ification in data provenance process. Differ from verifica-
On the other hand, from the perspective of users, provenance tions in ProvChain that relied on auditors for verification,
can protect users data from the threat of malicious insid- SmartProvenance utilized a voting mechanism to design a
ers [69], e.g., adversarial data mining. Provenance provides peer-to-peer decentralized verification scheme; hence, the
a platform with a function of recording both administrative trusted auditor was no longer needed in SmartProvenance.
and malicious operations. A long-run of fulfillment of Service Both provenance collections and verifications were imple-
Level Agreement (SLA) can be monitored under the restriction mented by smart contract to make the whole system fully
of provenance information [70]. Recent study [71] also proved automatic. SmartProvenance stored all sensitive data off-chain
TABLE II
B LOCKCHAIN -BASED P ROVENANCE M ECHANISMS IN C LOUDS
but remained hash values on-chain for privacy-preserving pur- From the perspective of security, blockchain-based prove-
pose. GridMonitoring [61] also used blockchain technology nance method was deemed to be an approach for secur-
to generate temper-resistant provenance data record of power ing data operations in multiple manufacturing processes.
usage data that stored in cloud. Thus, inconsistency in actual Maw et al. [65] proposed a secure data operation architecture
power usage between users and power providers could be that addressed both immutability and redundancy dimen-
tackled with the aid of smart contract, which provided a sions. Blockchain system was used to construct a checking
transparency and non-reputable data record. mechanism for achieving integrity and a traceable replica-
Layered nature of cloud indicated that involvement of tion mechanism for data recovery. This solution could be
federated service providers in service delivery process was considered a storage service combining with blockchain sup-
inevitable [5]. Resource and task offloading occurred fre- ports. Distributed network architecture also contributed to
quently between different CSPs. In federated cloud, ProvChain strengthening self-defensive capability of data protection [77].
and SmartProvenance were not appropriate because they were Considering data integration, blockchain also was a techni-
designed for a single provider situation. Applying [58], [59], cal alternative. Chen et al. [78] demonstrated that blockchain
[61] in federated cloud environment was challenging due to technique could protect data integrity that was superior to tra-
the lack of interoperability. ditional schemes. The approach was a stochastic blockchain
To address this challenge, Xia et al.’s [60] team launched mechanism, by which the volume of cooperative nodes was
MeDShare to achieve data provenance and auditing in the limited and IoT edge devices were used to work offloading.
federated cloud environment. In this work, provenance func- Some cloud services aimed to offer High Performance
tion was designed to support secure data sharing among Computation (HPC) instead of high volume of storage under
trust-less service providers and prevent malicious attacks that pay-as-you-go pattern. Thus, these cloud data centers were
damaged in both financial and reputation aspects. Data own- diskless and shared the remote storage. Above blockchain
ers hosted a complete control of data provenance [75] due provenance designs cannot perform well in HPC system due
to an access control-oriented smart contract as well as a to the high I/O overhead. Al-Mamun et al. [63] proposed
tamper-resistant provenance mechanism were designed and an in-memory blockchain to realize trustworthy and effi-
implemented. When violations or misbehaviors were detected cient provenance in HPC system. In this novel architecture,
by CSPs at the provenance phase, an automatic access control distributed ledgers were stored in volatile memory, which com-
was to be performed to revoke access to malicious or abnor- municated by high-speed and persistence protocols to reduce
mal entities. Patient’s sensitive data were well-protected during I/O overhead. In addition, a neoteric consensus protocol,
the data sharing process among medical institutes under the Proof-of-Reproducibility (PoR), combined the idea of PoW
condition given in the work. and PoS, to realize trustworthy provenance data validation
Another work completed by Nessie et al. [62] constructed and reproduction in volatile environment. Experiment results
a blockchain-based data provenance tracking system to fit in indicated that the proposed method outperformed traditional
the protection requirement of European Union (EU) citizen’s database and files provenance system in latency overhead.
personal data. Alike MedShare [60], smart contract in [62] Similarly, BlockCloud [64] also focused on the consen-
was utilized to record provenance information and store access sus protocols in blockchain-based cloud provenance system.
policy. In this system, three types of smart contract were coop- In this approach, authors discussed 5 PoW provenance
erated together to support comprehensive provenance records system security challenges, which were de-anonymization,
from the perspective of both controller and specific group of 51% attack, blockchain fork, consensus delay and selfish min-
data. Such that comprehensive metadata records were from two ing. To tackle the problems above, BlockCloud was designed
aspects (e.g., controller and data perspective), which ensured under PoS to offer reliable data provenance. The prove-
the data sharing manipulations among CSPs. The work [76] nance process in BlockCloud was similar to ProveChain [58].
considered the data stored in blocks and used differential pri- Challenges of PoS based cloud provenance system also were
vacy techniques to screen original data. The implementation discussed in this paper.
of differential privacy in blocks was examined as an efficient Summary: Data provenance technology provided opera-
approach to against data mining-based attacks. tion record and management throughout data’s lifecycle.
Traditional approaches in data provenance were centralized, consensus into the operation of access control, such that,
complex and lack of protection and validation. In this sec- logically speaking, all stakeholders can be involved during
tion, we listed existing works that tackle the current challenges the process. Establishing a consensus generally needs an
with the support of blockchain. Further, privacy and inter- agreement-level consent made by participant voters or
operability of provenance data were discussed. In future, deciders, which strengthens the security from the perspective
the blockchain solution of cloud data provenance should be of the decentralization. Second, traceability supported by
focused on smart contract based system that provides incentive blockchain provides a traceable and immutable governance
to honest behavior and punishment for malicious. capability for access control. This feature raises the difficulty
of adversaries. In this section, we review representative recent
IV. B LOCKCHAIN -BASED ACCESS C ONTROL IN C LOUDS work in BAC.
A. Access Control in Cloud Computing Due to the layered nature of cloud architecture, access con-
trol mainly played two roles in clouds. The first was the
Access control was an essential method to provide cloud cloud service role who controlled the access of cloud users
data security and privacy, which kept cloud data from intrusive in accessing the cloud data and services. A recent study,
by unauthorized users. An unreliable access control method BlockSLaaS [81] proposed a blockchain-assisted approach for
also affected other functions, such as authentication, autho- offering Logging-as-a-Service (LaaS). The proposed mecha-
rization and data auditing. In this section, we discussed about nism addressed cloud forensics, which provided a represen-
challenges of traditional access control methods in clouds. tative reference for merging blockchain and access control
Traditional access control methodologies in clouds mainly techniques. On the other hand, it played a visual role such that
were based on well-established access control policies. Virtual Machine’s (VM’s) access to physical machines needed
Existing traditional policies were categorized into four aspects: governance in case of threats from side channel analysis [82].
namely, Discretionary Access Control (DAC), Mandatory A decentralized access control technology powered by
Access Control (MAC), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) blockchain could avoid the risk of single point failure and
and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). In DAC, the data misusing caused by third-parties. By applying blockchain
legitimate user (e.g., service provider) was responsible for technology, data owners could flexibly and completely control
determining how other users access to objects (e.g., cloud the access of their own data [83]. Recent study [84] demon-
users) [79]. By this method, a flexible access control for cloud strated that BAC could enable data sharing in an untrusted
users was achieved due to the fact that no rigid rule was environment. Decentralization could avoid hazards caused by
needed in DAC. Contradicted to DAC, MAC was implemented dishonest third party or participants [85]. Nugyen et al. [86]
by a predefined trusting policy that could not be dynamically addressed the scenario of medical records sharing and exam-
changed. System administrator was responsible for access con- ined the performance of BAC. The evaluation suggested that
trols instead of objects, such that the approach focused on the BAC could offer trustworthy access controls for multiple
confidently rather than integrity [24]. medical providers.
In RBAC model, access rights were assigned to subjects Thanks to the tamper-resistant and transparent nature of
based on their roles and responsibilities in the system rather blockchain transactions, some approaches utilized blockchain
than their identities [24]. The nature of RBAC caused the transactions to instruct the access control process in cloud
drawback because of the lack of the consideration in other environment. Zyskind and Nathan [87] developed a decentral-
aspects of subjects. ABAC was proposed to further tackle ized personal data managing system for mobile data’s off-chain
these issues. It configured the access rule based on the attribute storage. Two different transactions exist in this blockchain
analysis of objects and subjects [80]. Major benefit of ABAC network. Taccess, the first type of transaction, was designed
was relevant with its comprehensive consideration during for access control management. The other type of transaction,
authentication. Even though authentication of ABAC was a Tdata, was responsible for data storage. Data owners were
time-consuming process, the computation resource it cost was allowed to modify the access authentications by configuring
negligible in the cloud environment. different policy set in Taccess transaction. In addition, Tdata
As discussed above, each access control method has pros cooperates with check policy protocol to govern the read/
and cons. A common weakness of traditional access con- write operations. In such way, users fully controlled their data
trol mechanisms is that they highly rely on a centraliza- by implementing digitally-signed transactions, such that mali-
tion setting, which generally lacks transparency, traceability, cious intrusions (from unauthorized users) could be prevented
tamper-resistance, and multi-party governance. Considering in this blockchain-enhancement DAC model. To be specific,
the specific application environment, the trade-off between the protocol-based transaction implemented a dynamic and
security and efficiency exists and can be hardly solved in fine-grained access control protocol was implemented, which
nature. consisted of four protocols, including compound key genera-
tion, permission check, access control and data on/off chain
B. Blockchain-Based Cloud Access Control protocols.
Differing from traditional access control methods, Moreover, authors in [87] also discussed extensions of
Blockchain-based Access Control (BAC) has a few benefits blockchain in their work. At the first phase, the extension
deriving from characteristics of blockchain. Our investiga- could be realized by efficient off-chain data processing, so
tion suggests two key advantages. First, BAC introduces that the security of off-chain data needed to be secured during
data processing. To tackle this issue, an analysis method was tokens from transactions. Smart contract inside the transac-
proposed, which divided data into shares by using a secure tion provided fine-grained and context-aware access control
multi-party computation model [87]. The second phase of policies. To proof-of-concept, this system was constructed on
the extension was a measurement of trust in the blockchain a Raspberry PI device. Similarly, Novo [93] created a single
network. The new trust evaluation proposed as the sigmoid smart contract system to manage access policies. In this work,
function of the difference between the number of “good” and a wide range of edge devices could access the blockchain
“bad” actions. Through this trust measurement, the evaluation network via management hubs. Besides, the management hub
results showed that it could support the blockchain system provided a real-time access policy update for all edge devices.
against sybil attacks. In Zhang et al.’s work [82], three smart contracts, namely,
Another study, Engima [88], proposed a privacy-preserving access control contract, judge contract and register contract,
decentralized computation system. It was constructed as an cooperated together to achieve both access management and
optimized secure multi-party computation system. Different punishment for misbehaviors.
parties were designed for distinct computation tasks as well Combining with the concept of ABAC, Wang et al. [94]
as preserving privacy jobs. With the implementation of this proposed a blockchain framework for attributed-based fine-
design, computations and storage redundancy was eliminated grained access control in the distributed storage system.
to address the scalability challenge. ProvChain [58] col- Traditional attribute-based encryption relied on trusted Public
lected temper-resistant on-chain provenance data to perform Key Generator (PKG). Compromising the PKG would lead
Provenance Based Access Control (PBAC), which was defined to system failure and sensitive information leakage. In
by Nguyen et al. [89] in 2012. Wang et al.’s [94] design, blockchain was responsible for key
We also observed that scalability was a challenge when management rather than trusted PKG. Thanks to the involve-
transaction-based access control was deployed. BBDS [90] ment of blockchain, users fully controlled data through a
was proposed in order to tackle this issue, which relied on tamper-resistant and traceable key management, so that the
a lightweight block structure to improve the system’s effi- method was free from the leakage and misusing caused by
ciency and scalability. This model was applied to protect semi-honest providers and single point failure.
sensitive medical data stored in clouds. The unique design of Despite plentiful access control methods we had mentioned
block structure provided high scalability in this private chain above, these researches (exclude MedShare, which only per-
network. In addition, the identity-based authentication, cryp- form revoke operation) were designed for single CSP scenario,
tography algorithms and transaction verification cooperated e.g., cloud federation was not take into account. Thus, these
together to implement access control. However, BBDS was designs can only provide confidentiality of single cloud data
not based on any open-sourced blockchain platform, which rather than whole cloud federation. In 2016, Federation-as-
made the BBDS immature and lack of extensive experimental a-Service (FaaS) [97] proposed an access control system for
verification. federated cloud environment. In this work, authors presented
As we stepped into the blockchain 2.0 era, smart contract an attributed based access control mechanism with both Policy
was another widely applied alternative that could be used to Enforcement Point (PEP) and Policy Decision Point (PDP).
strengthen access control. Some works constructed the smart PEP collected user’s request while PDP conducted access
contract based access management system for sensitive health permission.
and medical data under telemedicine scenario. A few more attempts ware made deriving from FaaS frame-
Rahman et al. [91] designed a blockchain-based therapy work. For example, DRAMS [95] was constructed on the
management framework. While user’s medical data were top of the FaaS framework. Smart contract was used to
stored in off-chain clouds, access policy of off-chain data collect, compare and check user’s logs for verification and
was embedded into smart contract. Major drawback of this intrusion detection in this system. DRAMS was immune to
approach was the dependency of trust third parties, such as access control decisions/ responses modifications and policy
physio-therapy center, caregiver and therapist. MedShare [60] alterations. Challenges in this approach included vulnerable
system used different kinds of smart contract cooperated with off-chain system component and the latency issues. Similar
cloud provenance data to achieve access control. While some to the intention of DRAMS, Alansari et al. proposed [96]
contracts were responsible for judging potential misbehaviors an attribute based fine-grained access control method. The
and threats based on provenance data, others execute potential system was spreaded out though the distributed federation,
misbehaviors and threats based on these provenance data. In so that it preserved user’s privacy by implementing Oblivious
addition, punishment was executed by revoking access rights Commitment-Based Envelope (OCBE) protocol. Blockchain
of malicious cloud users. However, MedShare could only maintained the attribute and policy integrity in this work. We
revoke the access authentication; other essential operations in provide a comparison table for showing differences between
access control were neglected. various blockchain-based access management mechanism in
Furthermore, the decentralized cloud environment also was Table III.
an application scenario of smart contract-based access con- Summary: Access control was an essential method to
trols. FairAccess [92] implemented a smart contract-based prevent user’s data from intruding by unauthorized attackers.
access control mechanism under Organization Based Access Traditional access control methods face challenges in signal
Control (OrBAC) model. This system could grant, read, point failure, unreliable trusted third parity and lack of user’s
delegate and revoke the access rights by different access control. By implementing blockchain technology, users could
TABLE III
C OMPARISONS OF B LOCKCHAIN -BASED ACCESS All work summarized above were constructed under
M ANAGEMENT M ECHANISM the assumption that CSPs followed honest-but-curious
model [102]. Nonetheless, this assumption was weak in a
practical scenario due to various insider threats. Dishonest
servers might return false results under the consideration of
energy saving and fault covering. It implied that verifica-
tion process was desired in searchable encryption scheme.
Although some attempts [103]–[105] tried to verify integrity
of returned values, no punishment could be made to incentive
honest behaviors without a trusted party. Besides, verifica-
tions, from server side to against malicious users, were not
well-researched.
B. Blockchain-Enabled Searchable Encryption

fully control their data without threat of single point failure. Some recent work focused on solving existing blockchain-
In addition, smart contract provided automatic access manage- based mechanism. Chen et al. [106] accomplished a study on
ment as well as detection and punishment of misbehaviors. strengthening encrypted keyword search through blockchain.
Moreover, these access control methods were all applied for The work found the issue that malicious nodes could ruin
secure cloud storage. search results when using a distributed hash table protocol to
However, cloud VMs also needed access control mecha- integrate the encryption with keyword search. The proposed
nism to avoid side-channel attacks. In our best knowledge, solution could detect and remove malicious nodes as majority
blockchain application in VM access management was short of nodes run a self-determining strategy. In order to against
of study. In future, cloud VM security powered by blockchain Keyword Guessing Attacks (KGAs), Zhang et al. [107]
would be the next research trend. In Table II we compared proposed a blockchain-assisted PKE, named as a SEPSE.
and discussed different works. A few methods were proposed by this work in order to
reduce the success chance of KGA, such as screening
key encryption, periodically key renewal, and key request
V. B LOCKCHAIN -E NABLED S EARCHABLE
monitoring. Addressing the key leakage issue, the work [108]
E NCRYPTION IN C LOUDS
developed a key aggregation searchable encryption scheme
A. Current Issues in Searchable Encryption that against CPA.
Due to the concern of lack of control in personal outsourced Some approaches verified the search result with the support
data, users could choose encrypting data before uploading to of broadcasted transactions. For instance, Searchchain [109]
the cloud to avoid exposing plain-texts. By this effort, the was one of the methods using this technical route, which
honest-but-curious service provider could not exquisite and deployed on the top of Obvious Key word Search with
analysis personal sensitive data. With the trade-off between Authentication (OKSA) mechanism to provide a privacy-
security and availability, this type of protection methods might preserving public key encryption. Limitation of traditional
reduce the service availability. Difficulty in searching the Oblivious Keyword Search (OKS) was addressed by novel
encrypted outsourced data was one of the common challenges. OKSA mechanism by providing key word search autho-
To address this challenge, searchable encryption was proposed rization. Searchchain was proposed to reinforce privacy-
to ensure that users could acquire the search result without preserving when CSPs validated users’ access authentica-
downloading all encrypted data stored in cloud. tion via a specific keyword. Data retrieval information was
Existing approaches of searchable encryption could be recorded on the block and was broadcasted to all nodes for
divided into two categories, which were Searchable Symmetric verifications through a consensus without acknowledging any
Encryption (SSE) and searchable Public Key Encryption keyword information.
(PKE). Song et al. [98] proposed a searchable encryption Zhang et al. [110] proposed a blockchain-based time com-
scheme on the basis of the symmetric encryption as a two- mitment scheme that used different kinds of transactions. In
layered form, which was known as a representative approach this model, dishonest party would be punished by bitcoin com-
of the first generation search encryption. On the fundamental pensation without any Trusted-Third Party (TTP). In a follow
of Song et al.’s work, Boneh et al. [99] put forward the public up study, TKSE [111] firstly came up with two-sided verifica-
key based asymmetric searchable encryption. The work [100] tion in searchable encryption system. Both malicious service
proposed conjunctive keyword search method to achieve multi- provider and malicious data owner could be punished. In order
keyword search. However, all mechanisms discussed above to verify the search result, authors constructed a merkle tree
were based on the exact matching, so that the availability with ciphertext leafs, then check the results by its root. Similar
performance could be lowered down. To further tackle this to Bpay, the payment fairness [116] was also based on the idea
issue, Li et al. [101] replaced exact matching by the fuzzy of time commitment.
keyword search, which returned the result with the highest In [112], returned keyword value and corresponding
similarity. search tokens were recorded on search transactions for
TABLE IV
S EARCHABLE E NCRYPTION
further verification. Multi-set hashing, an incremental hash- blockchain, as deployed in a private cloud, was designed to
ing scheme, was used to process data integrity verifications. store the PHI data while the consortium chain stored the
There were two types of participants in this model. First, indexes of PHI for encrypted search. The time controlled
Clint Peers were data owners where storage peers acted revocation in this work preserved user’s data security from
as service providers. The other participant, Client Peers, honest-but-curious phyician. After the key word search opera-
requested verifiable cipher-text search from storage peers. tion was finished, the trapdoor was disabled such that phyician
Besides, this scheme provided an optimized storage overhead could not use the trapdoor to access patient’s future data.
and dynamic updates. Unlike [110], [111], fairness mechanism Combining with other technical methods was alternative in
in this work was provided by accountable metadata instead of this domain as well. A recent work [94] developed a func-
time-commitment. tional blockchain framework, which cooperated attribute based
Although verification mechanisms could provide soundness encryption and SSE to achieve both fine-grained access con-
search results, miners still had a chance to deliberately skip trol and searchable encrypted keyword. Smart contract carried
verifying complex transactions in order to focus on highly- out fair payment mechanism by depositing user’s search fee in
rewarded mining activities. The phenomenon was called the advance. However, fair pay algorithm in [94] failed in compen-
Verifier’s Dilemma [117]. In the work [113], authors explored sating users when CSPs were dishonest, e.g., no punishment
smart contract to provide soundness keyword search with- to CSP. Thus, fair payment mechanism in [94] was not effec-
out complicated verification process on the data owner side. tive as [110], [111], [113] under the circumstance of malicious
In other words, result soundness could be ensured as long service provider.
as the Ethereum blockchain was safe. By embedding the Summary: Searchable encryptions enable cloud users to
search algorithm in smart contract, correct results could be search their own outsourced data. Since CSP(s) might be
ensured only when the contract was successfully executed on honest-but-curious or malicious, encrypted search results could
blockchain. The time consuming verification process of the be incorrect and misleading. With the support of blockchain,
searched data was no longer needed. Besides, author stored the transaction verification and smart contract were used to
encrypted indexes in dictionary in order to reduce the compu- make search result authentic. In addition, fair payment was
tation overhead. Packing method also was used to reduce gas also important. Malicious users could refuse to pay money
cost. after they got correct data. Users could still pay for the
In addition, fair payment also implemented by smart con- invalid search results when the payment system was not
tract in this approach. Introduce fairness into the paying correctly designed. Fair payment was implemented by the
process could incentive the honest and punish the malicious. time commitment that embedded into either transactions or
Time commitment was used to ensure fairness in both single smart contract. Until now, majority of the blockchain-based
user and multi-user setting. For example, Zhang et al. [110], searchable encryption tackled the above challenges of SSE.
[111] introduced a fair payment to encourage honest behavior Blockchain in PEKS needed more research. We provide a
in SSE process. few comparison results of searchable encryption solutions in
Index of user’s file was stored on blockchain while the stor- Table IV.
age of file was outsourced to public clouds. Fairness [116]
also was provided by smart contract in the form of time com-
VI. B LOCKCHAIN IN C LOUD DATA D EDUPLICATION
mitment. Both single user setting and multi-user setting were
considered in performing fairness. Subsequent research com- A. Data Deduplication in Clouds
pleted by Chen et al. [106] extended Hu et al.’s work [113] According to IDC’s report [56], cloud will store nearly 88
into electronic health record sharing scenario, which executed Zettabyte of data by 2025, where 75% of it is in the form of
with queries from different health agents. Different from Hu’s duplicated data [118]. To maximize cloud storage efficiency,
work, index for EHRs was generated by complex logic expres- majority of CSPs utilized data deduplication technology in
sions and stored in blockchain. By this effort, data owner could their Storage-as-a-Service (StaaS) product, e.g., DropBox and
fully control the access to their own data. GoogleDrive. This technology could be beneficial both CSPs
Also addressed medical data, Zhang and Lin [114] came and users in saving bandwidth, increasing storage efficiency
forward with a searchable public keyword encryption scheme and reducing cost of power and infrastructure, as well as result-
under personal health information sharing scenario. Private ing in a low price of services for customers. Nonetheless,
deduplication approaches still encountered critical security technology. It seemed that blockchain served as a subsystem
challenges. for ensuring cloud storage security. Existing work stored file
Data stored on cloud server could be cypher-texts in order tags on-chain while files remained off-chain. Considering this
to ensure the outsourced data confidentiality. However, CSPs setting, only small storage space was consumed while system
generally denied users to encrypt their outsourced by conven- security and data integrity could be enhanced.
tional encryption method (e.g., AES) [119], which influenced
the efficiency of the deduplication. Instead, convergent key
VII. B LOCKCHAIN -E NABLED C LOUD R ESOURCE
encryption [120] was utilized to achieve cyphertext dedupli-
A LLOCATION
cation. Message-lock encryption (MLP) [121] later suggested
that convergent encryption was a kind of form of it. The A. Cloud Resource Allocation
authors also proved that the MLP was not semantic secure. Typically, cloud resource allocation addresses two goals,
A subsequent research [122] introduced a TTP to deliver tags which are maximizing energy utilization and optimizing com-
that assisted with duplicate check. Potential challenges of this putation efficiency [129], [130]. As widely accepted, cloud
approach, based on our observations, main derived from its datacenter is storing a huge volume of data and the volume is
centralization design. This deduplication system would be dis- growing along with the enlargement of the service scope and
abled by a TPP single point failure. By intruding the TTP, the increment of the network. Heavy cloud workload means
attackers could obtain file tags for further side-channel attacks the huge amount of electricity consumption at cloud datacen-
in source-based deduplication system [123]. ter. Constructing an energy-aware task scheduling mechanism
Moreover, data integrity also was threatened within dedupli- is a primary goal for cloud datacenter to reduce service cost,
cation process. After deduplication, only one copy remained such that blockchain-empowered allocation method is an alter-
that could be a primary target for attackers. It meant that native [131], [132]. For example, Zhang et al. [133] attempted
both service outage and malicious administrator could easily an approach of using blockchain to enhance computation capa-
erase storage content in an irreversible way. Data auditing was bility of mobile edge computing. This study tried to solve the
essential in protecting users’ data in cloud, in which the dedu- joint computation offloading as well as coin loaning problem
plication was implemented. One solution to achieving reliable by aiming the minimum value of the total computing cost.
auditing was to deploy a trust authority that relied on the treat Xu et al. [134] developed a Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT)
of single point failure [124]. networking approach in order to cover both data security and
system efficiency. Two cases were considered by this work,
which included a single Byzantine fault and with multiple
B. Blockchain-Enabled Cloud Data Deduplication faults.
Existing blockchain-enabled approaches mainly focused on One of the methods of categorizing cloud resource allo-
multi-cloud decentralized deduplication scheme. Blockchain cation problems is on the basis of the “distance” from
technology was used to govern multi-cloud deduplication oper- scheduling tasks to users [135]. That is to say, problems can
ations due to the incentive of high deduplication rate and fault be categorized by different layers. At the cloud infrastruc-
tolerance performance. For example, CloudShare [125] intro- ture layer, task-scheduling focus on optimizations in datagram
duced blockchain in multi-cloud deduplication management. exchanging and cloud federations. In addition, task scheduling
In this work, user side encryption was against attacks from col- generally deals with the mapping issue from VMs to physi-
luding malicious servers. User data’s integrity and ownership cal machines, as well as optimum migration problems at the
were protected by the temper-resistant blockchain transactions. platform layer. Finally, issues at the application layer mostly
Blockchain assisted multiple CSPs quickly synchronize file consider specific optimization goals, such as satisfying Quality
informations for dynamically instructing deduplication system. of Service (QoS) or energy-saving requirements.
Liu et al. [126] and Li et al. [127] presented a smart The challenging part is that most cloud resource schedul-
contract-based cloud deduplication system. Business Smart ing problems are NP-hard problems while multiple elements
Contract (BSC) performed periodically Proof-of-Retrievability are considered. A trade-off between the time complexity and
(PoR) through a challenge-and-response protocol to verify file energy cost is representative example in scheduling problems.
integrity, retrievability and resist side channel attacks. BSC In exhaustive methods, such as liner programming [136], time
dealt with file pointer management and the publication of cost will be exponentially increased along with the incre-
Transaction Smart Contract (TSC), which was generated after ment of the amount of variables. To tackle this problem,
the server passed PoR challenge and automatically transaction evolutionary approaches [137] (e.g., genetic algorithm, ant
and payment management are processed. Reference [128] out- colony optimization and particle swarm optimization) have
performed [126] by its automatically file reconstruction, which been proposed to achieve the high-efficiency scheduling.
was benefited from distributed storage. However, as scheduling methods typically were based on
Summary: Despite enormous significance of blockchain- a central control hub, most existing methods failed in per-
based cloud deduplication, there were insufficient work done forming a real-time scheduling, which appeared inflexible in
in this field until now. The conflict between high-redundancy responding varying requirements from users. Blockchain tech-
blockchain data and the aim of deduplication was a critical nology provides a potential for solving the drawback caused
obstacle. There was no such solution that blockchain could by the control center, by constructing a decentralized resource
fully reconstruct cloud storage system with deduplication scheduling system.
TABLE V
B. Blockchain-Enabled Cloud Resource Allocation C OMPARISONS OF B LOCKCHAIN -E NABLED R ESOURCE A LLOCATIONS IN
We observe that blockchain technology generally is C LOUD C OMPUTING
merged into cloud resource allocations by utilizing some of
blockchain’s technical features, including trustworthy platform
establishment (transparent and traceable token transactions)
and smart contract applications.
Distributed incentive scheme of resource allocation could
be achieved by implementing financial incentive tokens.
Liu et al. [126] proposed a novel Vehicular Ad hoc Networks
(VANETs) scheme, where each Electrical Vehicle (EV) could
be regarded to be a mobile cloudlet as well as a moving
power plant. The idling electrical resources of EVs were Summary: Due to the economical nature of the blockchain,
aggregated into source pool for flexible resource reallocation, some blockchain-based systems allocated resource via
which was directly influenced by encrypted coins. Data con- incentively issuing tokens. The tokenized incentive based
tributions between moving vehicles were rewarded by data cloud resource allocation could increase the resource sharing
coins followed Proof of Data Contribution (PoDC) consen- rate that reduce the energy cost. Some approaches embedded
sus. Similarly, electricity contributions were rewarded by the reinforcement learning algorithm into the blockchain system.
“energy coin” to incentive resource contribution. Source allo- Thus resource could be optimally allocated among the peer-
cation was performed based on the amount of tokens possessed to-peer cloud data center network. Blockchain-based cloud
in each EV, according to this blockchain-based system. A resource scheduling was short of research. Combination of
high-amount coins owner means it contributed frequently in incentive and optimum allocation methods could be next
collaborative management. To incentive high frequency con- research trend. We have listed a few representative work in
tribution, owners with high coins could get a higher priority Table V in order to exhibit major differences among distinct
in accessing the resource pool with a lower price. This type approaches.
of resource allocation could be seen as token-based resource
allocation. However, the performance of this approach had not
fully examined due to lack of evaluations. VIII. C LOUD O FFLOADING FOR B LOCKCHAIN
Infrastructure service provisioning was one of the core Despite benefits of blockchain system in security, trans-
application scenarios, in which a central broker was respon- parency and fault-tolerance, blockchain-based applications fre-
sible for resource allocation in most existing cloud solutions. quently needed a powerful backend service supports. First,
Ghosh et al. [138] proposed an approach that freed up the most blockchain systems utilized PoW consensus. Portable
restriction of the single broker, so that a transparent alloca- communication devices, such as mobile smart phone, could not
tion operation was created. Thus, blockchain-enabled resource be deployed by PoW blockchain due to its constrained com-
allocation was deemed to be a suitable option for making a putation ability [26], [142]. Outsourcing this cryptographic
transparent and trustworthy cloud federation [139]. Another puzzle game can be a solution in this scenario. Second,
work [140] achieved high-efficiency computation offloading blockchain system has low throughput and high redundancy so
between mobile devices and cloud servers with the assist of that storing all data on-chain could result in tremendous cost of
the “FlopCoin”. FlopCoin was designed to create an incen- local hardware storage space. Applying a scalable outsourced
tive scheme to encourage users executing the offloadable task. storage service was an option in addressing this issue.
Members’ mobility and reputation were also considered in Since the invention of Bitcoin [143], PoW had been a major
resource scheduling. Interactions between resource providers consensus mechanism in blockchain system. In PoW mecha-
and users were addressed as pricing strategy, such that both nism, miners scramble the right of packaging block by solving
fixed pricing and auction mechanisms were considered in a cryptographic puzzle. Although PoW provides high fault
resource price. tolerance and security, it is computational exhausted to each
Due to the explosion of the machine learning technology, node in the blockchain network. Thus, resource contained edge
reinforcement learning is widely used in the field of resource devices cannot afford such high computation cost. similarly,
allocation. Liu et al. [128] proposed a joint framework, uti- executing complex smart contracts was also a huge burden to
lizing both deep reinforcement learning and smart contract to resource limited devices [5]. The work [144] proposed a novel
achieve efficient cloud data collection and secure data shar- approach that used smart contract to optimize task allocation in
ing. In a follow up study, Xu et al. [141] firstly embedded smart grid. The energy supply was dynamically and automati-
the reinforcement learning algorithm into the smart contract cally managed by implementing a smart contract. The method
to perform optimum request migration in peer-to-peer cloud used a reinforcement learning approach that could fit in a con-
data center network. They tackle the problem by propos- tinuously changing environment. Another work [145] utilized
ing off-policy temporal-difference learning (Q-leaning), which smart contract to realize contractual routing protocol in IoT,
was both in high efficiency and close to the real migra- which also emphasized the auto control feature of smart con-
tion problem where rewards and transfer probability were tract. Some researches offloaded computational tasks between
unknown. devices and cloud servers to tackle this challenge.
nodes (edge devices), such that the real-world performance

might be impacted by the number of participant nodes.
In Liu et al.’s [149] follow-up investigations, blockchain
offloading strategy was utilized in the video streaming
systems, which enables individual participations. However,
video transcoding is a computation intensive task that needed
to be offloaded to nearby servers. The aim of the offload-
ing was to maximize the average transcoder’s transcoding
profit, which was issued by tokens. Both small cell base sta-
tions and Device-to-Device (D2D) users could be offloaded.
Then they used an ADMM-based algorithm to solve the non-
Fig. 3. Offloading type classifications for blockchain.
convex problem in a distributed manner. The blocksize in this
blockchain network dynamically was adapted to achieve the
optimization of proposed task.
A. User’s Profit-Based Offloading Furthermore, investigations [150], [151] focused on the total
In some approaches, offloading strategy was designed to reward from the perspective of Mobile Terminals (MT) while
maximize the profit in the PoW cryptographic game from the MTs offloaded computational intensive PoW tasks to the Edge
one perspective, e.g., miner and service user perspective. These Servers (ES). Fairness between MTs was taken into the con-
works assumes that the unit price of energy was fixed and pre- sideration. We mainly analyzed the work [150] because it is
defined by an authority. Thus, the profit optimization problem the extended version of [151]. Two distributed optimized algo-
was converted into a problem that minimized the total cost rithms were proposed to fit both single ES and multiple ESs
and maximized the computation efficiency. scenarios. The solution vertically divided the non-convex Total
The work [146] proposed a mobile edge computing based Reward Optimization (TRO) problem into two subtasks: TRO-
computation offloading and content caching joint system to sub and TRO-top tasks. TRO-sub was a convex optimization
maximize the total net revenue, which was evaluated under problem such that it was optimized by bisection-search or
the metric that considered task delay and energy consump- diminish step size in single or multiple ES, respectively. To
tion. It was because the unity energy price was constant optimize the TRO-top, they used a linear-search with small
and the optimization problem addressed minimizations. Two step to find the best viable interval, which could maximize the
offloading mechanisms were designed for computation insen- sub-problem in single ES, and randomized search in multiple
sitive mining task. In the first solution, the full mining task ES scenario. Experiment results showed the proposed method
Am,n was offloaded to nearby access point that connected performed better than equal allocation in regarded of the total
to cloud server. The second strategy divided the whole mining reward.
task into subtasks, then distributed them to device to device
users. The optimal offloading decision was constructed under
Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) [147] B. Social Welfare-Oriented Offloading
algorithm to solve this distributed optimization problem. In this section, we focused on auction-based offloading
Relationship between users and time efficiency was considered method to optimize the revenue or social welfare from the
under real-world radio wireless communications, which paid CSP perspective. Auction was a pricing method to dynamically
attention to Rayleigh fading, noise, channel attenuation and adjust the price of the resource based on the demand of min-
CPU cycling. Meanwhile, power consumption of both active ers. Thus, cloud surplus resources could be effectively used.
component, e.g., CPU, and passive component, e.g., static Jiao et al.’s [152] work applied auction mechanism in edge
circuit. servers resource allocation and pricing strategy to maximize
Extension of the work [146] was made and the findings were the cloud/edge service provider’s social welfare. From the user
presented in [148]. Similar to [146], two offloading strate- perspective, miner experienced two stage valuation in the auc-
gies cooperated with ADMM algorithm had been proposed to tion process. In the first round, miner’s could not know the
achieve optimal total net revenue. Stochastic geometry meth- total resource amount and the number of winners. The bid
ods also were used in offloading and caching metrics. Differ also was called an ex-ante valuation, accorded to the expected
from the work [146], deadline constrain in [148] derived from reward. In the next round, miners took auction result into
the probability of orphaning block instead of the expecta- consideration and derived ex-post valuation. The ex-post valu-
tion of total delay. The difference between probabilistic and ation was defined as the multiplication of expected reward and
deterministic constrains was revealed by the experiments in network effect. The network effect in this work was defined
this work. It showed that with probabilistic constrains in out- empirically by S-curve function that described the trade-offs
performed deterministic constrains in the net revenue. Token between number of miners, stability of blockchain network and
cost in decision making was considered in the optimization. amount of resource allocated to each miner under the constant
This work presented a detailed discussion of the model demand model.
performance and the miner’s preference under different deter- From the resource provider’s aspect, optimal algorithm
ministic backhaul constraints (γm BH ). The limitation of this in [152] was proposed based on received bids to maximize the
work is that the approach highly depended on nearby network social welfare, which defined the difference of sum of ex-post
TABLE VI
O FFLOADING FOR P OW P UZZLE
valuations and total cost of CSPs. Winner selection process C. CSP Profit-Based Offloading
used a greedy mechanism in this work to achieve the max- A few aspects need to be considered from the perspective of
imum social welfare. After the winner set was determined, CSP, such as energy and cost saving. Qiu et al. [160] empha-
Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) [157] mechanism assisted the sized that blockchain could not be directly applied in IoT or
calculation of payment. Five propositions suggested that the other networking environments due to most network nodes
auction algorithm was truthful, individually rational, compu- were heavily resource-limited. The work suggested that com-
tationally efficient and optimal in maximizing social welfare. bining agent mining with cloud mining was a feasible method
Similarly, ETRA [158] was a three-stage auction model for to diminish the limitation. Chen et al. [132] pointed out that
maximizing social welfare. The auction process was divided computation offloading and blockchain mining needed to con-
into potential winner matching, cloudlet - AP matching and sidered in a unified manner. The complexity of the issue was
resource allocation steps. high when both computation and mining were considered, as
However, the work [152] only considered the constant more participants were involved. The work [132] developed a
demand situation. In the extended work [153], both constant- distributed algorithm (exchanging messages) between network
demand and multi-demand were considered in designing nodes to reduce the computational complexity.
miner’s auction scheme. Network effect in [153] was derived Moreover, some explorations tried game theory to model
by the curve fitting of the real-world experiment data instead the interaction between selfish service provider and users.
of empirical assumption to make the function accurate. In Xiong et al. [161], [162] used a two-stage Stackelberg game
multi-demand bidding, maximizing social welfare was a non- to model the pricing process. Service provider in this game
monotonic submodule maximization problem under knap- acted as the leader, where miners were followers in this game.
sack constraint. An approximate algorithm was constructed As a result, provider’s profit was maximized when reached
to obtain sub-optimal welfare for tackling this NP-hard the equilibrium. In a follow-up study [156], trading between
problem. Two efficient auction schemes named FLRS and cloud/fog providers (CFPs) and rational miners also was mod-
MDB were designed to achieve sub-optimal of social welfare eled by two-stage Stackelberg game. During the sub-game in
in multi-demand bidding. Although two achievements [152], stage II, miners, e.g., followers, determine their demands to
[153] above considered the resource constrain of server maximize the resource utility under the price set by providers.
and blockchain network, real communications had not been Cloud/fog providers, e.g., leaders, decided their pricing strat-
assessed (e.g., Rayleigh fading, noise, channel attenuation). egy to maximize provider’s profit. These two subgame formed
We also noticed that the work [152], [153], [158] dis- the two-stage Stackelberg game. Backward induction was
cussed above only considered one service provider social applied to achieve nash equilibrium, which represented the
welfare maximization model. In the real market scenario, joint optimization of both CFP’s profit and miner’s resource
there were multiple service providers to offer PoW offloading. utility. In addition, this work took both uniform and discrimi-
Therefore, the resource allocation and pricing strategy should natory into the account. Experiment results revealed that profit
be developed based on double auction mechanism [159], of CFPs and resource demand from miners were higher under
which took competitions between CSPs into the account. discriminatory than uniform pricing.
Li et al. [154] applied an iterative double-sided auction in Luong et al. [155] utilized a deep neural network to do
the multi-CSP situation, which attained both social efficiency the monotone transformation, allocation and pricing, in order
maximization and privacy preservation were attained. A smart- to achieve maximum revenue for service provider; however,
contract designed broker was responsible for trading manage- this machine learning-based method only considered single
ment between competitive CSPs and miners. The broker first resource unit.
collected demands from miners. In each double auction inte- Summary: In this section, we discussed the task offload-
gration, it extracted the hidden information while preserving ing and resource allocation to assist mobile users solve PoW
CSPs/users’ privacy, and update bidding, pricing and allocation puzzle. We concluded that three objects were concerned to be
strategy to the optimum utility. The broker executed the social optimized during the offloading. Table VI presents a compar-
welfare maximization algorithm for achieving high-efficiency ison result about the offloading for PoW puzzle, based on our
market adoptability. investigations.
TABLE VII
C LOUD M INER H ARDWARE (D E .: D ECENTRALIZATION ; F LEX .: CPU miners, Litecoin et al. [170] used SCRYPT [171], which
F LEXIBILITY; E.E.: E NERGY E FFICIENCY; H.P.: H ASHPOWER ; U.R.: consumed both computational and storage capacity in min-
U SER ’ S R EVENUE ; H: H IGH ; M: M ODERATE ; L: L OW ) ing process. Similarly, Ethereum’s PoW mechanism based on
Ethash. In Ethash’s mining process, memory bandwidth was
a major element that effected the mining rate.
B. GPU/FPGA-Based Cloud Mining

CPU was designed as the general processing unit.
Components other than arithmetic logic unit such as regis-
From miner’s perspective, mining and PoW task offloading ters and branch prediction units, were redundant in mining.
strategy were dynamically optimized to achieve miner’s total Therefore, repetitive mining work for CPU was waste of time
revenue. From service provider’s point of view, game theory and energy. Although SHA256 computation rounds cannot be
was utilized to find the optimal equilibrium point to ensure paralleled compute, different nonces could be tested simulta-
maximum provider’s profit. Social welfare, which represented neously with each other by parallel computation [165]. In GPU
the total utility in the system, could be maximized by auction cloud mining center, two elements should be considered.
mechanism. Future works in this field includes the evaluation First, hardware overhead could be minimized. In [169],
of trade-offs between social welfare optimization and provider an economically GPU based miner was introduced. This
profit maximization, deep learning technologies in pricing and miner used AMD’s 7970 GPU rather than NVidia’s to pro-
auction under multiple service providers. vide higher SHA256 computation speed. Besides, to reduce
the GPU overhead, they used 1x PICe slot instead of 8x
IX. C LOUD H ARDWARE IN B LOCKCHAIN M INING and 16x in commercial motherboard. Additionally, low-cost
Increasing difficulties during the blockchain mining pro- PCIe converter connected 16x AMD GPU connector and 1x
cess made on-premises deployment of miners expensive and slot. Therefore, overhead per each GPU was greatly reduced.
space-consuming. Due to the development of visualization Ekbote et al. [172] designed a NVIDIA GPU mining accel-
technology and parallel computing, cloud could be a flexible, erator. Authors in this work developed the framework by
pay-as-you-go manner with high computation performance. In CUDA to perform general purpose computing for mining task.
this section, we focused on two technical dimensions, latency Experiments in this work revealed the prior performance of
or energy costs. Differing from traditional blockchain min- GPU compared to CPU in mining task.
ing, cloud-based mining had an observable advantage. The Second, powering and cooling system should be carefully
merit was caused by the centralization setting of clouds, and efficiently designed. Skach [173] designed a thermal time
such that both energy saving and efficiency performance cooling data center by phase charging materials. Thermal peak
could be improved due to the hardware resource optimization. was reduced and natural involvement in cooling can be max-
Cloud data center’s processing unit’s computation ability fun- imized in night. Kampl [174] discussed some recent 2-phase
damentally determined its PoW executing efficiency [163]. cooling system for blockchain miners.
Therefore, some researches and products aimed to increase Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) was flexible and
the mining success rate by optimizing the hardware design could be used to accelerate a specific kind of computation
and fabrication [164]. The hardware level computational problem, such as mining. Xilinx’s FPGA cannot suffer min-
optimization in cloud data center had gone through four stages: ing task due to the lack of cooling and computation capability.
CPU, GPU, FPGA and ASIC [165], [166]. For example, Some hackers [175] developed an open source customized
Liu et al. [167] proposed a hardware-assisted mechanism for FPGA miner with reduced I/O and RAM component, which
secret sharing, which scaled up the number of nodes in BFT were redundant for mining process.
protocols. Table VII exhibits a comparison between distinct
hardware aspects. C. ASIC-Based Mining
Application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology
A. CPU-Based Cloud Mining was developed for producing customized integrated circuit
Bitcoin’s cartographic mining puzzle was implemented by for specific application scenario. Therefore, developing the
SHA256 [143]. In [168], bitcoin mining process was defined ASIC miner could be rewarded due to its optimized design
as a constrained input small output problem (CISO). In this for finding the hashed value. A relatively low resource cost
CISO problem, miners aimed to find the available nonce, could achieve a high hash rate performance. Butterfly Labs
Merkle root and time stamp to make H 2 < target. However, (BFL) [176] launched a ASIC miner based on their FPGA
CPU was computational constrained. Mid-state buffer [169] miner in 2012. This miner was fabricated under 65nm process
hashed the initiating information before the nonce creates a with maximum speed 1,500GH/s. In 2013, Avalon et al. [177]
constant hash value, in order to improve the mining efficiency. proposed a miner with 110-nm TSMC fabrication. This prod-
Furthermore, nine improvements to speed up the CPU mining uct could reach 66Gh/s with 60W power. Thanks to the
were discussed in [168]. development of transistor fabrication technology, performance
However, recent development of GPU and ASIC miner vio- of the ASIC miner promoted exponentially followed the
lated the Nakamoto’s 1 CPU 1 vote provision. To encourage Moore’s law. Avalon’s latest product AvalonMiner 852 was
TABLE VIII
C LOUD S TORAGE FOR B LOCKCHAIN
fabricated under 16-nm technology. It could achieve 15TH/s A. On-Chain Hash Value Storage
with 100W/T energy efficiency. By 2019, Bitmain’s [178] Although blockchain was capable of storing temper-resistant
product occupied 70% percent miners in the market. They data on-chain, blockchain’s storage capability was limited. For
firstly proposed 7nm miner. It can achieve 40TH/s with example, Bitcoin’s block size was only 1MB, which can-
tolerable energy cost. not used to storage large volume of data [36]. Meanwhile,
Summary: We discussed four different cloud mining hard- storing high amount of data on-chain could lead the full
ware generation. CPU-based mining was original approach. It node size of the blockchain network intolerable high to PC
provided fully decentralization during PoW consensus. GPU and mobile users. Thus, off-chain [182] storage technology
miner, though energy costly, offered high amount of hashrate. was introduced to tackle this challenge. CSP could offer
FPGA miner was flexible and optimizable for any mining storage-as-a-service as a scalable off chain solution to users.
protocol. However, FPGA miner’s computing capability was Guo et al. [183] proposed a two-way-pegged multi-sidechain
limited. To tackle this problem, a customized, energy effi- approach in order to increase throughput through a novel
cient, and hashpower sufficient ASIC miner was designed and multi-sidechain setting. For explicitly presentation, we show
widely used since 2014. Although ASIC miner could take both a brief comparison about cloud storage for blockchain in
speed and efficiency into consideration, it is not as flexible as Table VIII.
FPGA miner. For FPGA miners, when consensus mechanism Zyskind and Nathan [87] used off-blockchain key value
changed, FPGA’s logic should be rewritten but the hardware store in a blockchain-based automatic access control system.
could remains. However, ASIC’s logic cannot be changed after To protect user privacy, user’s data were first encrypted.
tape-out. Therefore, the lifespan of ASIC miner was depend Then, these cyphertext routed to the off-blockchain stor-
on the pace of consensus change. In addition, cloud data cen- age system, which was implement by Distributed Hash
ter might not execute homogeneously mining task. Different Table (DHT) based distributed cloud. Only hash value
mining task cause the ASIC cloud heterogeneity. By using of each file saved on the public ledger. By this effort,
the FPGA, cloud data center could keep homology. As a user’s data privacy and blockchain system efficiency were
result, trade-offs between cloud data center’s homology and jointly optimized. The further study [88] used off-chain
efficiency is well-worth study in the future. storage in their secure multi-party computation system
(Enigma).
X. C LOUD S TORAGE AND B LOCKCHAIN Similarly, Sun et al. [184] applied off-chain technology
Using cloud storage is an alternative method for reinforc- to store high amount of EHR data. In this work, EHR
ing blockchain systems, from the perspective of mass data data address was stored on-chain, while the EHR data were
storage, which reduces the restriction caused by the limited encrypted and saved in data owner’s off-chain database. The
storage space of blocks. The crucial issue is to determine work introduced attributed based signature to secure data shar-
which data shall be stored in blocks in order to retrieve a ing in the off-chain database. During the sharing process,
great balance between block size and blockchain function- the data owner firstly signed the EHR data’s address with
ality. Another aspect is that using blockchain techniques to his attributes. Then the signed address was stored in the
facilitate secure data sharing, e.g., healthcare [75] and smart blockchain transactions. Users verify the data owner’s sig-
city [179]. Zheng et al. [180] pointed out the potential haz- nature when retrieving the data. Rifi et al. [185] also stored
ard caused by centralized data storage and demonstrated a hash pointer of each file on-chain. In Rifi’s work, off-chain
blockchain-based data sharing for securing personal health database was the widely used Inter Planetary File System
data. Another study [181] also addressed medical data shar- (IPFS).
ing and further assessed the performance of blockchain in Following the exploration above, Shafagh et al. [186]
enabling multi-party collaborations. Qian et al. [179] com- realized secure and reliable access control and key man-
pleted a study that demonstrated a secure data exchanging agement for the off-chain storage system with the support
between different organizations. However, most recent work of blockchain. In their work, blockchain acted as a control
concentrated on examining the potential of merging cloud layer over the blockchain. Distributed cloud storage used to
storage with the existing blockchain techniques. The attempts tackle the scalability issues of the blockchain system. Alike
were encountering various restrictions, such as multi-chain work [87], off-chain data stored in distributed cloud server
collaboration. powered by the DHT technology.
B. On-Chain Metadata Storage and cloud computing also share some service models, such as
Works we have discussed above all stored hash pointer BaaS and X-as-a-Service, which facilitates two technologies
of the file on-chain. While this method could protect the into one concept.
data from outsider’s temper, the data were lack-of-control Due to characteristics of distributed networks, blockchain
under the threat of malicious insider. To tackle this problem, and cloud computing also share similar network-relevant con-
Zhu et al. [15] proposed a controllable voting scheme based cerns (e.g., security and privacy issues). A few cyber threats in
on on-chain metadata. This work tackled collude attacks cloud computing apply to blockchain network, such as identity
during the file modification process. In this work, cloud leakage and data mining-based attacks, although adversarial
servers offered storage-as-a-service to user’s file. By this methods maybe distinct. Data recorded in blocks are available
effort, blockchain storage efficiency was greatly enhanced. to all authorized users, which implies a possibility of privacy
Meanwhile, three kinds of temper-resistant metadata (e.g., vot- leakage from mining block data. The situation is similar to
ing record, file changing history, and changed data’s hash data stored in remote cloud servers. Even for an anonymous
values) were stored on blockchain to make the system secure cloud dataset, privacy leakage may take place when a suc-
and controllable. In this approach, on-chain metadata pro- cessful linkage attack is launched. Both outsider and insider
vided transparent and traceable history of previously valid and attacks are threatening two technologies.
invalid changes of the document. Therefore, the file revisions In addition, similar to many prior researches in optimiz-
could be conveniently checked by users. Thus, the system was ing efficiency of cloud systems, enhancing performance of
controllable compared to above works. Trade-off between stor- blockchain systems also is a popular research topic. Efforts
age efficiency and data security was optimized by selecting have been made for both technologies in architecture improve-
suitable metadata on-chain. Extensive experiments revealed ment, hardware re-design, resource allocation strategy, and
the approach was secure, controllable, privacy-preserved, and data provenance.
unforgeable. Connectivity: Interconnectivity exists between blockchain
The work [187] applied blockchain to construct a decen- and cloud computing, based on our investigations. First, BaaS
tralized PingER model. Metadata included merkle roots with is a service model that derives from cloud computing. Many IT
raw data leaves and file off-chain storage locations were stored companies are seeking new markets by offering BaaS service
on-chain. Raw files offloaded to distributed monitory agents offerings. Blockchain infrastructure and backend support are
storage system that constructed by DHT. With the on-chain two major parts in most current BaaS models. Second, abun-
metadata, access control and identity verification could be dant computing resources in clouds are the supplementation
performed to ensure data security in off-chain storage system. of blockchain system for enhancing security, strengthening
Summary: In this section, we discussed off-chain solu- efficiency, and improving service quality. The supplementary
tions to address the blockchain storage limitations. Applying offerings not only cover software but also address hardware-
the off-chain storage benefited blockchain in scalability, stor- relevant supports, such as blockchain-oriented equipment (e.g.,
age efficiency and verification speed. As we can see in blockchain-purpose chips). Consensus mechanism plays a vital
the previous literature, trade-off between data security and role in building up a trustworthy environment for cloud appli-
blockchain system’s efficiency was a essential problem when cations. Finally, with a nature of auto control, smart contract
designing the on/off chain system. Storing many types related has a great potential in a wide scope of cloud applications, e.g.,
metadata could ensure the off-chain data secure and control- resource allocation and intelligent manufacturing. We observe
lable. However, high amount of data on-chain could reduce that smart contract is a crucial interconnection point by which
the blockchain’s scalability and efficiency. Therefore, how blockchain and cloud resource can be merged.
to select suitable data on-chain to tackle both security and Creativity: Emerging service models have been introduced
scalability issues could be a rewarded future research direction. to public in recent years. From the perspective of value chain,
we find that primary creativity of combining blockchain and
clouds derive from value creations, which can be categorized
XI. M AIN F INDINGS AND D ISCUSSIONS
into two motivations. The first intention is adding values to
A. Main Findings the existing system. Blockchain technique is used to solve
We explain main findings of this study in a few angles, the weakness of cloud solutions, such as lack of control and
which include the similarity, connectivity, and creativity. lower-level trust. Merits of blockchain are considered to be a
Similarity: The primary similarity between two technolo- supplement of clouds, such that additional values are added to
gies is that both technologies highly rely on the decentralized/ the existing cloud models. The other creativity route is to cre-
distributed networking environment. Even though cloud dat- ate new values. Cloud computing provides blockchain system
acenter delivers services in a centralized computing manner, with resource supply, e.g., infrastructure and software, so that
distributed/ decentralized settings still exist in clouds, such new service model has been created (BaaS). In practice, BaaS
as distributed multi-tenant, heterogeneous clouds deployment, still is at an early stage and more research is required for fitting
and third-party service providers. in distinct demands.
We observe that this similarity results in similar technical
attentions. From the perspective of the service, for example,
both technologies address intelligent controls (e.g., resource B. Discussions
allocations) to achieve a higher-level service quality. A smart We summarize a few representative challenges and oppor-
contract plays a similar role to a cloud controller. Blockchain tunities in this section.
Challenges: First, BaaS operations in multi-cloud (cloud applications, blockchain-powered offloading, blockchain hard-
federation) need more attempts in various dimensions, such ware development, and blockchain-related cloud storage. Main
as architecture, communication, and consensus mechanisms. findings of this work provide future work with a theoretical
As multi-chain technique is insufficiently mature, bridging reference in the field of blockchain-enabled reengineering of
up different BaaS service providers still is a challenging cloud datacenter.
issue. Second, challenges in blockchain-enabled cloud data
provenance are varied. It is still challenge to verify whether
R EFERENCES
data are used by unexpected parties in a network environ-
ment. It is also hard to decide whether the data in blocks [1] L. D. Xu and W. Viriyasitavat, “Application of blockchain in collab-
orative Internet-of-Things services,” IEEE Trans. Comput. Soc. Syst.,
are actually associated with physical objects, e.g., animals or vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 1295–1305, Dec. 2019.
hardware. Technical development in other domains is needed. [2] T. Aste, P. Tasca, and T. D. Matteo, “Blockchain technologies: The
Third, security of blockchain still is encountering a great foreseeable impact on society and industry,” Computer, vol. 50, no. 9,
pp. 18–28, 2017.
challenge. From blockchain infrastructure to smart contract, [3] A. Dorri, M. Steger, S. Kanhere, and R. Jurdak, “Blockchain: A dis-
potential threats exist in current blockchain systems from top tributed solution to automotive security and privacy,” IEEE Commun.
to bottom. Even though blockchain can strengthen security Mag., vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 119–125, Dec. 2017.
[4] H. Zhou, X. Ouyang, Z. Ren, J. Su, C. de Laat, and Z. Zhao, “A
protection, there are many unsolved issues, such as com- blockchain based witness model for trustworthy cloud service level
plex network nodes setting, multi-chain environment, hardware agreement enforcement,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Commun., 2019,
attacks, and privacy leakage. Finally, many performance spec- pp. 1567–1575.
[5] K. Gai, K. Choo, and L. Zhu, “Blockchain-enabled reengineering of
ifications of blockchain system have not reached other mature cloud datacenters,” IEEE Cloud Comput., vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 21–25,
active systems, e.g., throughput capacity, energy cost, and data Nov./Dec. 2018.
storage. [6] B. Chen, Z. Tan, and W. Fang, “Blockchain-based implementation for
financial product management,” in Proc. IEEE 28th Int. Telecommun.
Research Opportunities: This work focuses on the integra- Netw. Appl. Conf., 2018, pp. 1–3.
tion of blockchain and cloud computing; however, other asso- [7] A. Hari and T. Lakshman, “The Internet blockchain: A distributed,
ciated technologies shall not be ignored for future updates and tamper-resistant transaction framework for the Internet,” in Proc. 15th
ACM Workshop Hot Topics Netw., 2016, pp. 204–210.
research. We observe that future integration may have a higher-
[8] F. S. Hardwick, R. N. Akram, and K. Markantonakis, “Fair and
level coverage that combines multiple network-related tech- transparent blockchain based tendering framework—A step towards
nologies, based on our investigation on prior studies in other open governance,” in Proc. 17th IEEE Int. Conf. TrustCom, 2018,
manners of integrations, e.g., software-defined network [188], pp. 1342–1347.
[9] N. Fabiano, “Internet of Things and blockchain: Legal issues and pri-
IoT [189], and cloud radio access network [190]. In addi- vacy. The challenge for a privacy standard,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf.
tion, perfecting BaaS service model will become an attractive IoT, 2017, pp. 727–734.
research topic in both academia and the industry. Besides [10] W. Meng, E. Tischhauser, Q. Wang, Y. Wang, and J. Han, “When intru-
sion detection meets blockchain technology: A review,” IEEE Access,
infrastructure and backend, more service offerings (e.g., AI- vol. 6, pp. 10179–10188, 2018.
related services or access control) are needed to meet different [11] K. Biswas and V. Muthukkumarasamy, “Securing smart cities using
demands. Moreover, customized data provenance and object blockchain technology,” in Proc. IEEE 18th Int. Conf. HPCC, 2016,
pp. 1392–1393.
tracing services will turn into a great domain in practice. [12] R. Cole, M. Stevenson, and J. Aitken, “Blockchain technology:
Solving the issue of attaching physical objects to network Implications for operations and supply chain management,” Int. J.
nodes or data may lead an industrial transform. Furthermore, Supply Chain Manag., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 469–483, 2019.
[13] K. Gai, Y. Wu, L. Zhu, M. Qiu, and M. Shen, “Privacy-preserving
research on security and privacy issues in blockchain is an energy trading using consortium blockchain in smart grid,” IEEE Trans.
unavoidable topic. Future work needs to pay attention to both Ind. Informat., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 3548–3558, Jun. 2019.
blockchain-related attacks (e.g., attacks at smart contract) and [14] I. Eyal, A. Gencer, E. Sirer, and R. V. Renesse, “Bitcoin-NG: A scalable
blockchain protocol,” in Proc. 13th USENIX Symp. Netw. Syst. Design
emerging threats to blockchain-cloud systems. Finally, high Implement., 2016, pp. 45–59.
performance is still a keyword in the domain of blockchain- [15] L. Zhu, Y. Wu, K. Gai, and K.-K. R. Choo, “Controllable and trustwor-
cloud in the foreseeable future. Both software and hardware thy blockchain-based cloud data management,” Future Gener. Comput.
Syst., vol. 91, pp. 527–535, Feb. 2019.
need to be improved in order to deal with complex or [16] E. Heilman, F. Baldimtsi, and S. Goldberg, “Blindly signed contracts:
heavy-workload environments. Anonymous on-blockchain and off-blockchain bitcoin transactions,” in
Proc. Int. Conf. Financ. Cryptography Workshops, 2016, pp. 43–60.
[17] N. Herbaut and N. Negru, “A model for collaborative blockchain-based
video delivery relying on advanced network services chains,” IEEE
XII. C ONCLUSION Commun. Mag., vol. 55, no. 9, pp. 70–76, Sep. 2017.
This work addresses a few technical dimensions for reengi- [18] D. Qin, C. Wang, and Y. Jiang, “RPchain: A blockchain-based aca-
neering of cloud computing by using blockchain technology. demic social networking service for credible reputation building,” in
Proc. Int. Conf. Blockchain, 2018, pp. 183–198.
Three technical dimensions are involved in the work, namely, [19] Y. Xu, G. Wang, J. Yang, J. Ren, Y. Zhang, and C. Zhang, “Towards
service, security, and performance. To be specific, this sur- secure network computing services for lightweight clients using
vey explains contemporary explorations in blockchain-enabled blockchain,” Wireless Commun. Mobile Comput., vol. 2018, p. 12,
Nov. 2018.
reengineering of cloud datacenter through following aspects, [20] F. Tschorsch and B. Scheuermann, “Bitcoin and beyond: A technical
including BaaS service model, blockchain-enabled cloud survey on decentralized digital currencies,” IEEE Commun. Surveys
access control, blockchain-enabled cloud data provenance, Tuts., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 2084–2123, 3rd Quart., 2016.
[21] M. C. K. Khalilov and A. Levi, “A survey on anonymity and privacy
blockchain-based cloud searchable encryptions, blockchain- in bitcoin-like digital cash systems,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts.,
based cloud data deduplications, smart contract-based cloud vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 2543–2585, 3rd Quart., 2018.
[22] M. Conti, E. S. Kumar, C. Lal, and S. Ruj, “A survey on security and [48] Y. Xu, J. Ren, Y. Zhang, C. Zhang, B. Shen, and Y. Zhang, “Blockchain
privacy issues of bitcoin,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 20, no. 4, empowered arbitrable data auditing scheme for network storage as a
pp. 3416–3452, 4th Quart., 2018. service,” IEEE Trans. Services Comput., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 289–300,
[23] X. Li, P. Jiang, T. Chen, X. Luo, and Q. Wen, “A survey on the secu- Mar./Apr. 2020.
rity of blockchain systems,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 107, [49] H. Chen and L. Zhang, “FBaaS: Functional blockchain as a service,”
pp. 841–853, Jun. 2020. in Proc. Int. Conf. Blockchain, 2018, pp. 243–250.
[24] T. Salman, M. Zolanvari, A. Erbad, R. Jain, and M. Samaka, [50] Q. Lu, X. Xu, Y. Liu, and W. Zhang, “Design pattern as a ser-
“Security services using blockchains: A state of the art survey,” IEEE vice for blockchain applications,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Data Min.
Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 858–880, 1st Quart., Workshops, 2018, pp. 128–135.
2019. [51] H. Zhang, E. Deng, H. Zhu, and Z. Cao, “Smart contract for secure
[25] Q. Feng, D. He, S. Zeadally, M. Khan, and N. Kumar, “A survey billing in ride-hailing service via blockchain,” Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.,
on privacy protection in blockchain system,” J. Netw. Comput. Appl., vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 1346–1357, 2019.
vol. 126, pp. 45–58, Jan. 2019. [52] A. Karinsalo and K. Halunen, “Smart contracts for a mobility-
[26] R. Yang, F. R. Yu, P. Si, Z. Yang, and Y. Zhang, “Integrated blockchain as-a-service ecosystem,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. QRS-C, 2018,
and edge computing systems: A survey, some research issues and chal- pp. 135–138.
lenges,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 1508–1532, [53] P. J. Marandi, C. Gkantsidis, F. Junqueira, and D. Narayanan, “Filo:
2nd Quart., 2019. Consolidated consensus as a cloud service,” in Proc. USENIX Annu.
[27] M. Ali, M. Vecchio, M. Pincheira, K. Dolui, F. Antonelli, and Technol. Conf., Denver, CO, USA, 2016, pp. 237–249.
M. Rehmani, “Applications of blockchains in the Internet of Things: A [54] G. Kumar, R. Saha, M. K. Rai, R. Thomas, and T.-H. Kim, “Proof-of-
comprehensive survey,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 21, no. 2, work consensus approach in blockchain technology for cloud and fog
pp. 1676–1717, 2nd Quart., 2018. computing using maximization-factorization statistics,” IEEE Internet
[28] H.-N. Dai, Z. Zheng, and Y. Zhang, “Blockchain for Internet of Things: Things J., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 6835–6842, Aug. 2019.
A survey,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 8076–8094, [55] Z. Zhou, B. Wang, M. Dong, and K. Ota, “Secure and efficient
Oct. 2019. vehicle-to-grid energy trading in cyber physical systems: Integration
[29] J. Xie et al., “A survey of blockchain technology applied to smart of blockchain and edge computing,” IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern.,
cities: Research issues and challenges,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., Syst., vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 43–57, Jan. 2020.
vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 2794–2830, 3rd Quart., 2019. [56] D. Reinsel, J. Gantz, and J. Rydning, “The digitization of the world:
[30] M. Samaniego and R. Deters, “Blockchain as a service for From edge to core,” Int. Data Corporat., Framingham, MA, USA,
IoT: Cloud versus fog,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. IoT, 2016, White Paper, 2018.
pp. 433–436. [57] M. Westerkamp, F. Victor, and A. Kupper, “Tracing manufactur-
[31] W. Viriyasitavat, D. Li, Z. Bi, and A. Sapsomboon, “New blockchain- ing processes using blockchain-based token compositions,” Digit.
based architecture for service interoperations in Internet of Things,” Commun. Netw., to be published.
IEEE Trans. Comput. Soc. Syst., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 739–748, Aug. 2019. [58] X. Liang, S. Shetty, D. K. Tosh, C. A. Kamhoua, K. A. Kwiat, and
[32] Y. Chen, J. Gu, S. Chen, S. Huang, and X. S. Wang, “A full-spectrum L. Njilla, “ProvChain: A blockchain-based data provenance architec-
blockchain-as-a-service for business collaboration,” in Proc. IEEE Int. ture in cloud environment with enhanced privacy and availability,” in
Conf. Web Services, 2019, pp. 219–223. Proc. 17th IEEE/ACM Int. Symp. Cluster Cloud Grid Comput., 2017,
[33] Q. Lu, X. Xu, Y. Liu, I. Weber, L. Zhu, and W. Zhang, “uBaaS: A pp. 468–477.
unified blockchain as a service platform,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., [59] A. Ramachandran and M. Kantarcioglu, “SmartProvenance: A dis-
vol. 101, pp. 564–575, Dec. 2019. tributed, blockchain based dataprovenance system,” in Proc. 8th ACM
[34] W. Zheng, Z. Zheng, X. Chen, K. Dai, P. Li, and R. Chen, Conf. Data Appl. Security Privacy, 2018, pp. 35–42.
“NutBaaS: A blockchain-as-a-service platform,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, [60] Q. Xia, E. Sifah, K. Asamoah, J. Gao, X. Du, and M. Guizani,
pp. 134422–134433, 2019. “MedShare: Trust-less medical data sharing among cloud service
[35] A. Azaria, A. Ekblaw, T. Vieira, and A. Lippman, “MedRec: Using providers via blockchain,” IEEE Access, vol. 5, pp. 14757–14767,
blockchain for medical data access and permission management,” in 2017.
Proc. IEEE 2nd Int. Conf. Open Big Data, 2016, pp. 25–30. [61] J. Gao et al., “GridMonitoring: Secured sovereign blockchain based
[36] C. Esposito, A. D. Santis, G. Tortora, H. Chang, and K. Choo, monitoring on smart grid,” IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 9917–9925, 2018.
“Blockchain: A panacea for healthcare cloud-based data security [62] R. Neisse, G. Steri, and I. Nai-Fovino, “A blockchain-based approach
and privacy?” IEEE Cloud Comput., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 31–37, for data accountability and provenance tracking,” in Proc. ACM 12th
Jan./Feb. 2018. Int. Conf. Availability Rel. Secuity, 2017, p. 14.
[37] X. Liu et al., “Adaptive data and verified message disjoint security rout- [63] A. Al-Mamun, T. Li, M. Sadoghi, and D. Zhao, “In-memory
ing for gathering big data in energy harvesting networks,” J. Parallel blockchain: Toward efficient and trustworthy data provenance for HPC
Distrib. Comput., vol. 135, pp. 140–155, Jan. 2020. systems,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Big Data, 2018, pp. 3808–3813.
[38] J. Singh and J. D. Michels, “Blockchain as a service (BaaS): Providers [64] D. K. Tosh, S. Shetty, X. Liang, C. A. Kamhoua, and
and trust,” in Proc. IEEE Eur. Symp. Security Privacy Workshops, 2018, L. Njilla, “Consensus protocols for blockchain-based data provenance:
pp. 67–74. Challenges and opportunities,” in Proc. IEEE 8th Annu. Ubiquitous
[39] IBM. (2019). IBM Developer: Blockchain. [Online]. Available: Comput. Electron. Mobile Commun. Conf., 2017, pp. 469–474.
https://developer.ibm.com/technologies/blockchain/ [65] A. Maw, S. Adepu, and A. Mathur, “ICS-BlockOpS: Blockchain for
[40] Oracle. (2019). Oracle Blockchain Blog. [Online]. Available: operational data security in industrial control system,” Pervasive Mobile
https://blogs.oracle.com/blockchain/blockchain-use-cases Comput., vol. 59, Oct. 2019, Art. no. 101048.
[41] Microsoft. (2019). Microsoft Azure. [Online]. Available: https://azure. [66] W. Oliveira, D. Oliveira, and V. Braganholo, “Provenance analytics for
microsoft.com workflow-based computational experiments: A survey,” ACM Comput.
[42] Amazon. (2019). Blockchain on AWS. [Online]. Available: https:// Surveys, vol. 51, no. 3, p. 53, 2018.
amazonaws-china.com/cn/blockchain [67] M. Interlandi et al., “Titian: Data provenance support in spark,” Proc.
[43] IBM. (2019). IBM Blockchain. [Online]. Available: https://www.ibm. VLDB Endow., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 216–227, 2015.
com/cloud-computing/cn/zh/newplatform/blockchain/offerings [68] P. Buneman and W. Tan, “Data provenance: What next?” ACM
[44] M. Samaniego and R. Deters, “Using blockchain to push software- SIGMOD Rec., vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 5–16, 2019.
defined IoT components onto edge hosts,” in Proc. ACM Int. Conf. [69] F. Zafar et al., “Trustworthy data: A survey, taxonomy and future
BDAWT, 2016, p. 58. trends of secure provenance schemes,” J. Netw. Comput. Appl., vol. 94,
[45] A. E. Kosba, A. Miller, E. Shi, Z. Wen, and C. Papamanthou, “HAWK: pp. 50–68, Sep. 2017.
The blockchain model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart [70] Z. Xiao and Y. Xiao, “Security and privacy in cloud computing,” IEEE
contracts,” in Proc. IEEE Symp. S&P, 2016, pp. 839–858. Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 843–859, 2nd Quart., 2013.
[46] C. Melo et al., “Dependability evaluation of a blockchain-as-a- [71] P. Ivie and D. Thain, “Reproducibility in scientific computing,” ACM
service environment,” in Proc. IEEE Symp. Comput. Communi., 2018, Comput. Surveys, vol. 51, no. 3, p. 63, 2018.
pp. 909–914. [72] S. Zawoad, R. Hasan, and K. Islam, “SECProv: Trustworthy and effi-
[47] J. Lee, “BIDaaS: Blockchain based ID as a service,” IEEE Access, cient provenance management in the cloud,” in Proc. IEEE Conf.
vol. 6, pp. 2274–2278, 2017. Comput. Commun., 2018, pp. 1241–1249.
[73] S. Ali, J. Wang, M. Bhuiyan, and H. Jiang, “Secure data provenance [98] D. Song, D. Wagner, and A. Perrig, “Practical techniques for searches
in cloud-centric Internet of Things via blockchain smart contracts,” in on encrypted data,” in Proc. IEEE Symp. Security Privacy (S&P), 2000,
Proc. IEEE SmartWorld, 2018, pp. 991–998. pp. 44–55.
[74] M. Reddy and M. Seltzer, “Provenance as first class cloud data,” ACM [99] D. Boneh, G. D. Crescenzo, R. Ostrovsky, and G. Persiano, “Public
SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev., vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 11–16, 2010. key encryption with keyword search,” in Proc. Annu. Int. Conf. Theor.
[75] T. McGhin, K. Choo, C. Liu, and D. He, “Blockchain in healthcare Appl. Cryptol. Techn., 2004, pp. 506–522.
applications: Research challenges and opportunities,” J. Netw. Comput. [100] P. Golle, J. Staddon, and B. Waters, “Secure conjunctive keyword
Appl., vol. 135, pp. 62–75, Jun. 2019. search over encrypted data,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Appl. Cryptography
[76] K. Gai, Y. Wu, L. Zhu, Z. Zhang, and M. Qiu, “Differential privacy- Netw. Security, 2004, pp. 31–45.
based blockchain for industrial Internet of Things,” IEEE Trans. Ind. [101] J. Li, Q. Wang, C. Wang, N. Cao, K. Ren, and W. Lou, “Fuzzy key-
Informat., vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 4156–4165, Jun. 2020. word search over encrypted data in cloud computing,” in Proc. IEEE
[77] G. Liang, S. R. Weller, F. Luo, J. Zhao, and Z. Y. Dong, “Distributed INFOCOM, 2010, pp. 1–5.
blockchain-based data protection framework for modern power systems [102] G. Poh, J. Chin, W. Yau, K. Choo, and S. M. Mohamad, “Searchable
against cyber attacks,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 10, no. 3, symmetric encryption: Designs and challenges,” ACM Comput.
pp. 3162–3173, May 2019. Surveys, vol. 50, no. 3, p. 40, 2017.
[78] Y.-J. Chen, L.-C. Wang, and S. Wang, “Stochastic blockchain for IoT [103] X. Chen, J. Li, X. Huang, J. Ma, and W. Lou, “New publicly veri-
data integrity,” IEEE Trans. Netw. Sci. Eng., vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 373–384, fiable databases with efficient updates,” IEEE Trans. Depend. Secure
Jan.–Mar. 2020. Comput., vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 546–556, Sep./Oct. 2015.
[79] J. Lopez and J. Rubio, “Access control for cyber-physical systems
[104] Z. Fu, J. Shu, X. Sun, and N. Linge, “Smart cloud search services:
interconnected to the cloud,” Comput. Netw., vol. 134, pp. 46–54,
Verifiable keyword-based semantic search over encrypted cloud data,”
Apr. 2018.
IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 762–770, Nov. 2014.
[80] M. Qiu, K. Gai, B. Thuraisingham, L. Tao, and H. Zhao, “Proactive
user-centric secure data scheme using attribute-based semantic access [105] R. Cheng, J. Yan, C. Guan, F. Zhang, and K. Ren, “Verifiable search-
controls for mobile clouds in financial industry,” Future Gener. Comput. able symmetric encryption from indistinguishability obfuscation,” in
Syst., vol. 80, pp. 421–429, Mar. 2018. Proc. 10th ACM Symp. ICCS, 2015, pp. 621–626.
[81] S. Rane and A. Dixit, “BlockSLaaS: Blockchain assisted secure [106] L. Chen, W.-K. Lee, C.-C. Chang, K.-K. R. Choo, and N. Zhang,
logging-as-a-service for cloud forensics,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Security “Blockchain based searchable encryption for electronic health record
Privacy, 2019, pp. 77–88. sharing,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 95, pp. 420–429, Jun. 2019.
[82] Y. Zhang, S. Kasahara, Y. Shen, X. Jiang, and J. Wan, “Smart contract- [107] Y. Zhang, C. Xu, J. Ni, H. Li, and X. S. Shen, “Blockchain-assisted
based access control for the Internet of Things,” IEEE Internet Things public-key encryption with keyword search against keyword guessing
J., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1594–1605, Apr. 2019. attacks for cloud storage,” IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput., early access,
[83] S. Rouhani and R. Deters, “Blockchain based access control Jun. 17, 2019, doi: 10.1109/TCC.2019.2923222.
systems: State of the art and challenges,” 2019. [Online]. Available: [108] J. Niu, X. Li, J. Gao, and Y. Han, “Blockchain-based anti-key-leakage
arXiv:1908.08503. key aggregation searchable encryption for IoT,” IEEE Internet Things
[84] I. Sukhodolskiy and S. Zapechnikov, “A blockchain-based access J., vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 1502–1518, Feb. 2020.
control system for cloud storage,” in Proc. IEEE EIConRus, 2018, [109] P. Jiang, F. Guo, K. Liang, J. Lai, and Q. Wen, “Searchain: Blockchain-
pp. 1575–1578. based private keyword search in decentralized storage,” Future Gener.
[85] S. Wang, X. Wang, and Y. Zhang, “A secure cloud storage frame- Comput. Syst., vol. 107, pp. 781–792, Jun. 2020.
work with access control based on blockchain,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, [110] Y. Zhang, R. Deng, X. Liu, and D. Zheng, “Outsourcing service
pp. 112713–112725, 2019. fair payment based on blockchain and its applications in cloud com-
[86] D. Nguyen, P. Pathirana, M. Ding, and A. Seneviratne, “Blockchain for puting,” IEEE Trans. Services Comput., early access, Aug. 7, 2019,
secure EHRs sharing of mobile cloud based e-health systems,” IEEE doi: 10.1109/TSC.2018.2864191.
Access, vol. 7, pp. 66792–66806, 2019. [111] Y. Zhang, R. H. Deng, J. Shu, K. Yang, and D. Zheng, “TKSE:
[87] G. Zyskind and O. Nathan, “Decentralizing privacy: Using blockchain Trustworthy keyword search over encrypted data with two-side ver-
to protect personal data,” in Proc. IEEE Security Privacy Workshops, ifiability via blockchain,” IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 31077–31087,
2015, pp. 180–184. 2018.
[88] G. Zyskind, O. Nathan, and A. Pentland, “Enigma: Decentralized com- [112] C. Cai, X. Yuan, and C. Wang, “Towards trustworthy and private key-
putation platform with guaranteed privacy,” 2015. [Online]. Available: word search in encrypted decentralized storage,” in Proc. IEEE Int.
arXiv:1506.03471. Conf. Commun., 2017, pp. 1–7.
[89] D. Nguyen, J. Park, and R. Sandhu, “Dependency path patterns as the [113] S. Hu, C. Cai, Q. Wang, C. Wang, X. Luo, and K. Ren, “Searching
foundation of access control in provenance-aware systems,” in Proc. an encrypted cloud meets blockchain: A decentralized, reliable and
Workshop Theory Practice Provenance (TaPP), 2012, pp. 1–4. fair realization,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Commun., 2018,
[90] Q. Xia, E. Sifah, A. Smahi, S. Amofa, and X. Zhang, “BBDS: pp. 792–800.
Blockchain-based data sharing for electronic medical records in cloud [114] A. Zhang and X. Lin, “Towards secure and privacy-preserving data
environments,” Information, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 44, 2017. sharing in e-health systems via consortium blockchain,” J. Med. Syst.,
[91] M. Rahman et al., “Blockchain-based mobile edge computing vol. 42, no. 8, p. 140, 2018.
framework for secure therapy applications,” IEEE Access, vol. 6,
[115] F. Han, J. Qin, and J. Hu, “Secure searches in the cloud: A survey,”
pp. 72469–72478, 2018.
Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 62, pp. 66–75, Sep. 2016.
[92] A. Ouaddah, A. A. Elkalam, and A. A. Ouahman, “FairAccess: A new
blockchain-based access control framework for the Internet of Things,” [116] A. Choudhuri et al., “Fairness in an unfair world: Fair multiparty com-
Security Commun. Netw., vol. 9, no. 18, pp. 5943–5964, 2016. putation from public bulletin boards,” in Proc. ACM SIGSAC Conf.
[93] O. Novo, “Blockchain meets IoT: An architecture for scalable CCS, 2017, pp. 719–728.
access management in IoT,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 5, no. 2, [117] L. Luu, J. Teutsch, R. Kulkarni, and P. Saxena, “Demystifying incen-
pp. 1184–1195, Apr. 2018. tives in the consensus computer,” in Proc. 22nd ACM SIGSAC Conf.
[94] S. Wang, Y. Zhang, and Y. Zhang, “A blockchain-based framework for CCS, 2015, pp. 706–719.
data sharing with fine-grained access control in decentralized storage [118] IDC. (May 2020). IDC IVIEW: The Digital Universe DecadeŰAre
systems,” IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 38437–38450, 2018. You Ready? [Online]. Available: https://group47.com/The_Digital_
[95] M. S. Ferdous, A. Margheri, F. Paci, M. Yang, and V. Sassone, Universe_Decade-Are_You_Ready.pdf
“Decentralised runtime monitoring for access control systems in cloud [119] Y. Shin, D. Koog, and J. Hur, “A survey of secure data deduplication
federations,” in Proc. IEEE 37th Int. Conf. Distrib. Comput. Syst., 2017, schemes for cloud storage systems,” ACM Comput. Surveys, vol. 49,
pp. 2632–2633. no. 4, p. 74, 2017.
[96] S. Alansari, F. Paci, and V. Sassone, “A distributed access control [120] J. Douceur, A. Adya, W. Bolosky, P. Simon, and M. Theimer,
system for cloud federations,” in Proc. IEEE 37th Int. Conf. Distrib. “Reclaiming space from duplicate files in a serverless distributed file
Comput. Syst., 2017, pp. 2131–2136. system,” in Proc. IEEE 22nd Int. Conf. DCS, 2002, pp. 617–624.
[97] F. Schiavo, V. Sassone, L. Nicoletti, and A. Margheri, FaaS: [121] M. Bellare, S. Keelveedhi, and T. Ristenpart, “Message-locked encryp-
Federation-as-a-Service: The SUNFISH Cloud Federation Solution. tion and secure deduplication,” in Proc. Annu. Int. Conf. Theor. Appl.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer Int., 2021. Cryptol. Techn., 2013, pp. 296–312.
[122] S. Keelveedhi, M. Bellare, and T. Ristenpart, “DupLess: Server-aided [146] M. Liu, F. Yu, Y. Teng, V. Leung, and M. Song, “Joint computation
encryption for deduplicated storage,” presented at the 22nd USENIX offloading and content caching for wireless blockchain networks,” in
Security Symp., 2013, pp. 179–194. Proc. IEEE INFOCOM WKSHPS, 2018, pp. 517–522.
[123] D. Harnik, B. Pinkas, and A. Shulman-Peleg, “Side channels in cloud [147] W. Shi, Q. Ling, K. Yuan, G. Wu, and W. Yin, “On the linear conver-
services: Deduplication in cloud storage,” IEEE Security Privacy, gence of the ADMM in decentralized consensus optimization,” IEEE
vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 40–47, 2010. Trans. Signal Process., vol. 62, no. 7, pp. 1750–1761, Apr. 2014.
[124] J. Yuan and S. Yu, “Secure and constant cost public cloud storage audit- [148] M. Liu, F. R. Yu, Y. Teng, V. C. M. Leung, and M. Song, “Computation
ing with deduplication,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Commun. Netw. Security, offloading and content caching in wireless blockchain networks with
2013, pp. 145–153. mobile edge computing,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 67, no. 11,
[125] Y. Li et al., “CloudShare: Towards a cost-efficient and privacy- pp. 11008–11021, Nov. 2018.
preserving alliance cloud using permissioned blockchains,” in Proc. [149] M. Liu, F. R. Yu, Y. Teng, V. C. M. Leung, and M. Song, “Distributed
Int. Conf. Mobile Netw. Manag., 2017, pp. 339–352. resource allocation in blockchain-based video streaming systems with
[126] H. Liu, Y. Zhang, and T. Yang, “Blockchain-enabled security in elec- mobile edge computing,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 18,
tric vehicles cloud and edge computing,” IEEE Netw., vol. 32, no. 3, no. 1, pp. 695–708, Jan. 2019.
pp. 78–83, May/Jun. 2018. [150] Y. Wu et al., “Optimal computational power allocation in multi-access
[127] J. Li, J. Wu, L. Chen, and J. Li, “Deduplication with blockchain mobile edge computing for blockchain,” Sensors, vol. 18, no. 10,
for secure cloud storage,” in Proc. CCF Conf. Big Data, 2018, p. 3472, 2018.
pp. 558–570. [151] Y. Wu, J. Shi, X. Chen, K. Ni, L. Qian, and K. Zhang, “Optimal multi-
[128] C. H. Liu, Q. Lin, and S. Wen, “Blockchain-enabled data collection access computation offloading for mobile blockchain,” in Proc. IEEE
and sharing for industrial IoT with deep reinforcement learning,” IEEE Int. Conf. Commun. Syst., 2019, pp. 198–203.
Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 3516–3526, Jun. 2019. [152] Y. Jiao, P. Wang, D. Niyato, and Z. Xiong, “Social welfare
[129] K. Gai, M. Qiu, H. Zhao, L. Tao, and Z. Zong, “Dynamic energy-aware maximization auction in edge computing resource allocation for mobile
cloudlet-based mobile cloud computing model for green computing,” blockchain,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Commun., 2018, pp. 1–6.
J. Netw. Comput. Appl., vol. 59, pp. 46–54, Jan. 2016. [153] Y. Jiao, P. Wang, D. Niyato, and K. Suankaewmanee, “Auction
[130] K. Gai, M. Qiu, and H. Zhao, “Energy-aware task assignment for mechanisms in cloud/fog computing resource allocation for public
mobile cyber-enabled applications in heterogeneous cloud computing,” blockchain networks,” IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst., vol. 30,
J. Parallel Distrib. Comput., vol. 111, pp. 126–135, Jan. 2018. no. 9, pp. 1975–1989, Sep. 2019.
[131] X. Qiu, L. Liu, W. Chen, Z. Hong, and Z. Zheng, “Online deep [154] Z. Li, Z. Yang, and S. Xie, “Computing resource trading for edge-
reinforcement learning for computation offloading in blockchain- cloud-assisted Internet of Things,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 15,
empowered mobile edge computing,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., no. 6, pp. 3661–3669, Jun. 2019.
vol. 68, no. 8, pp. 8050–8062, Aug. 2019. [155] N. Luong, Z. Xiong, P. Wang, and D. Niyato, “Optimal auction for
[132] W. Chen et al., “Cooperative and distributed computation offloading edge computing resource management in mobile blockchain networks:
for blockchain-empowered industrial Internet of Things,” IEEE Internet A deep learning approach,” in Proc. IEEE ICC, 2018, pp. 1–6.
Things J., vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 8433–8446, Oct. 2019. [156] Z. Xiong, S. Feng, W. Wang, D. Niyato, P. Wang, and
[133] Z. Zhang, Z. Hong, W. Chen, Z. Zheng, and X. Chen, “Joint compu- Z. Han, “Cloud/fog computing resource management and pricing
tation offloading and coin loaning for blockchain-empowered mobile- for blockchain networks,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 3,
edge computing,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 9934–9950, pp. 4585–4600, Jun. 2019.
Dec. 2019. [157] V. Krishna, Auction Theory. Academic, 2009.
[134] J. Xu, K. Ota, M. Dong, A. Liu, and Q. Li, “SIoTFog: Byzantine- [158] C. Xia, H. Chen, X. Liu, J. Wu, and L. Chen, “ETRA: Efficient
resilient IoT fog networking,” Front. Inf. Technol. Electron. Eng., three-stage resource allocation auction for mobile blockchain in edge
vol. 19, no. 12, pp. 1546–1557, 2018. computing,” in Proc. 24th IEEE Int. Conf. Parallel Distrib. Syst., 2018,
[135] Z. Zhan, X. Liu, Y. Gong, J. Zhang, H. Chung, and Y. Li, “Cloud pp. 701–705.
computing resource scheduling and a survey of its evolutionary [159] J. Kang, R. Yu, X. Huang, S. Maharjan, Y. Zhang, and E. Hossain,
approaches,” ACM Comput. Surveys, vol. 47, no. 4, p. 63, 2015. “Enabling localized peer-to-peer electricity trading among plug-in
[136] S. Kumar and P. Balasubramanie, “Dynamic scheduling for cloud reli- hybrid electric vehicles using consortium blockchains,” IEEE Trans.
ability using transportation problem,” J. Comput. Sci., vol. 8, no. 10, Ind. Informat., vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 3154–3164, Dec. 2017.
pp. 1615–1626, 2012. [160] C. Qiu, H. Yao, C. Jiang, S. Guo, and F. Xu, “Cloud computing assisted
[137] Y.-L. Li, Z.-H. Zhan, Y.-J. Gong, W.-N. Chen, J. Zhang, and Y. Li, blockchain-enabled Internet of Things,” IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput.,
“Differential evolution with an evolution path: A DEEP evolution- early access, Jul. 2019, doi: 10.1109/TCC.2019.2930259.
ary algorithm,” IEEE Trans. Cybern., vol. 45, no. 9, pp. 1798–1810, [161] Z. Xiong, Y. Zhang, D. Niyato, P. Wang, and Z. Han, “When mobile
Sep. 2015. blockchain meets edge computing,” IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 56,
[138] B. Ghosh, S. Addya, A. Satpathy, S. Ghosh, and S. Chakraborty, no. 8, pp. 33–39, Aug. 2018.
“Towards a democratic federation for infrastructure service provision- [162] Z. Xiong, S. Feng, D. Niyato, P. Wang, and Z. Han, “Optimal pricing-
ing,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. SCC, 2019, pp. 162–166. based edge computing resource management in mobile blockchain,” in
[139] M. Yang, A. Margheri, R. Hu, and V. Sassone, “Differentially pri- Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Commun., 2018, pp. 1–6.
vate data sharing in a cloud federation with blockchain,” IEEE Cloud [163] P. Fairley, “Blockchain world-feeding the blockchain beast if bitcoin
Comput., vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 69–79, Nov./Dec. 2018. ever does go mainstream, the electricity needed to sustain it will be
[140] D. Chatzopoulos, M. Ahmadi, S. Kosta, and P. Hui, “FlopCoin: A cryp- enormous,” IEEE Spectr., vol. 54, no. 10, pp. 36–59, Oct. 2017.
tocurrency for computation offloading,” IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput., [164] I. Magaki, M. Khazraee, L. Gutierrez, and B. M. Taylor, “ASIC clouds:
vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 1062–1075, May 2018. Specializing the datacenter,” in Proc. ACM/IEEE 43rd Annu. Int. Symp.
[141] C. Xu, K. Wang, and M. Guo, “Intelligent resource management in Comput. Architect., 2016, pp. 178–190.
blockchain-based cloud datacenters,” IEEE Cloud Comput., vol. 4, [165] N. Amit, M. Wei, and C. Tu, “Extreme datacenter specialization for
no. 6, pp. 50–59, Nov./Dec. 2017. planet-scale computing: ASIC clouds,” ACM SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev.,
[142] Y. Zhang, R. Deng, X. Liu, and D. Zheng, “Blockchain based efficient vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 96–108, 2018.
and robust fair payment for outsourcing services in cloud computing,” [166] M. Taylor, “The evolution of bitcoin hardware,” Computer, vol. 50,
Inf. Sci., vol. 462, pp. 262–277, Sep. 2018. no. 9, pp. 58–66, 2017.
[143] S. Nakamoto. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. [167] J. Liu, W. Li, G. O. Karame, and N. Asokan, “Scalable Byzantine
[Online]. Available: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf consensus via hardware-assisted secret sharing,” IEEE Trans. Comput.,
[144] K. Gai, Y. Wu, L. Zhu, L. Xu, and Y. Zhang, “Permissioned vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 139–151, Jan. 2019.
blockchain and edge computing empowered privacy-preserving smart [168] N. Courtois, M. Grajek, and R. Naik, “Optimizing SHA256 in bit-
grid networks,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 7992–8004, coin mining,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Cryptography Security Syst., 2014,
Oct. 2019. pp. 131–144.
[145] G. Ramezan and C. Leung, “A blockchain-based contractual routing [169] M. Taylor, “Bitcoin and the age of bespoke silicon,” in Proc. IEEE Int.
protocol for the Internet of Things using smart contracts,” Wireless Conf. CASES, 2013, pp. 1–10.
Commun. Mobile Comput., vol. 2018, p. 14, Nov. 2018. [170] C. Lee. (2011). Litecoin. [Online]. Available: https://litecoin.org/
[171] C. Percival. (2009). Stronger Key Derivation via Sequential Memory- Jinnan Guo is currently pursuing the bachelor’s
Hard Functions. [Online]. Available: https://www.bsdcan.org/2009/ degree in electronic science and technology with
schedule/attachments/87_scrypt.pdf the School of Information and Electronics, Beijing
[172] B. Ekbote, V. Hire, P. Mahajan, and J. Sisodia, “Blockchain based Institute of Technology. His research interests
remittances and mining using CUDA,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Smart include blockchain, cloud computing, and network
Technol. Smart Nation, 2017, pp. 908–911. security.
[173] M. Skach et al., “Thermal time shifting: Leveraging phase change
materials to reduce cooling costs in warehouse-scale computers,”
in Proc. ACM SIGARCH Comput. Archit. News, vol. 43, 2015,
pp. 439–449.
[174] A. Kampl, “Bitcoin 2-phase immersion cooling and the implications
for high performance computing,” Electron. Cooling, vol. 20, no. 1,
pp. 1–5, 2014.
[175] S. Ziegenbalg. (2012). BTCMINER—Open Source Bitcoin Miner.
[Online]. Available: https://open
cores.org/projects/btcminer
[176] (2019). Butterflylab. [Online]. Available: https://butterflylabs.com/
category/bitcoin/
[177] (2019). Avalon. [Online]. Available: https://canaan.io/
[178] (2019). Bitmain. [Online]. Available: https://www.bitmain.com/
[179] Y. Qian, Z. Liu, J. Yang, and Q. Wang, “A method of exchanging data
in smart city by blockchain,” in Proc. IEEE 20th Int. Conf. HPCC,
2018, pp. 1344–1349. Liehuang Zhu (Member, IEEE) received the B.E.
[180] X. Zheng et al., “Blockchain-based personal health data sharing system and M.E. degrees from Wuhan University, Wuhan,
using cloud storage,” in Proc. IEEE 20th Int. Conf. Healthcom, 2018, China, in 1998 and 2001, respectively, and the Ph.D.
pp. 1–6. degree in computer science from the Beijing Institute
[181] X. Liang et al., “Integrating blockchain for data sharing and collabora- of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2004.
tion in mobile healthcare applications,” in Proc. IEEE 28th Annu. Int. He is currently a Professor with the School
Symp. PIMRC, 2017, pp. 1–5. of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing
[182] R. Khalil and A. Gervais, “Revive: Rebalancing off-blockchain pay- Institute of Technology. He has published more
ment networks,” in Proc. ACM SIGSAC CCS, 2017, pp. 439–453. than 200 peer-reviewed journal or conference papers,
[183] J. Guo, K. Gai, L. Zhu, and Z. Zhang, “An approach of secure two- including over ten IEEE/ACM T RANSACTIONS
way-pegged multi-sidechain,” in Proc. ICA3PP, 2019, pp. 551–564. papers (IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NFORMATION
[184] Y. Sun, R. Zhang, X. Wang, K. Gao, and L. Liu, “A decentralizing F ORENSICS AND S ECURITY, the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRIAL
attribute-based signature for healthcare blockchain,” in Proc. 27th Int. I NFORMATICS, the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON V EHICULAR T ECHNOLOGY,
Conf. Comput. Commun. Netw., 2018, pp. 1–9. the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON S MART G RID, Information Sciences, IEEE
[185] N. Rifi, E. Rachkidi, N. Agoulmine, and N. Taher, “Towards using N ETWORK, and Computer & Security). His research interests include security
blockchain technology for IoT data access protection,” in Proc. IEEE protocol analysis and design, wireless sensor networks, and cloud computing.
17th Int. Conf. Ubiquitous Wireless Broadband, 2017, pp. 1–5. He has been granted a number of IEEE Best Paper Awards, including IWQoS
[186] H. Shafagh, L. Burkhalter, A. Hithnawi, and S. Duquennoy, “Towards 17’ and TrustCom 18’.
blockchain-based auditable storage and sharing of IoT data,” in Proc.
ACM Cloud Comput. Security Workshop, 2017, pp. 45–50.
[187] S. Ali, G. Wang, B. White, and R. Cottrell, “A blockchain-based decen-
tralized data storage and access framework for pinger,” in Proc. IEEE
17th Int. Conf. TrustCom, 2018, pp. 1303–1308.
[188] R. Chaudhary, A. Jindal, G. Aujla, S. Aggarwal, N. Kumar, and
K. Choo, “BEST: Blockchain-based secure energy trading in SDN-
enabled intelligent transportation system,” Comput. Security, vol. 85,
pp. 288–299, Aug. 2019.
[189] P. K. Sharma, S. Singh, Y.-S. Jeong, and J. H. Park, “DistBlockNet:
A distributed blockchains-based secure SDN architecture for IoT
networks,” IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 55, no. 9, pp. 78–85, Sep. 2017.
[190] X. Ling, J. Wang, T. Bouchoucha, B. Levy, and Z. Ding, “Blockchain
radio access network (B-RAN): Towards decentralized secure radio
access paradigm,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 9714–9723, 2019.
Shui Yu (Senior Member, IEEE) is a Professor

with the School of Computer Science, University
Keke Gai (Senior Member, IEEE) received the of Technology Sydney, Australia. He has published
B.Eng. degree in automation from the Nanjing three monographs and edited two books, more than
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 350 technical papers, including top journals and
China, in 2004, the M.E.T. degree in educational top conferences, such as IEEE T RANSACTIONS
technology from the University of British Columbia, ON PARALLEL AND D ISTRIBUTED S YSTEMS , the
Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 2010, the M.B.A. IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON C OMPUTERS, the IEEE
degree in business administration in 2009, the M.S. T RANSACTIONS ON I NFORMATION F ORENSICS
degree in information technology in 2014 from the AND S ECURITY , the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI, M OBILE C OMPUTING, the IEEE T RANSACTIONS
USA, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from ON K NOWLEDGE AND DATA E NGINEERING , the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
Pace University, New York, NY, USA. E MERGING T OPICS IN C OMPUTING, the IEEE/ACM T RANSACTIONS ON
He is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science N ETWORKING, and INFOCOM. His research interest includes big data, secu-
and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. He has rity and privacy, networking, and mathematical modeling. He initiated the
published three books and more than 110 peer-reviewed journal/conference research field of networking for big data in 2013. His H-index is 43. He
papers, including eight ESI Highly Cited Papers. His research interests include is currently serving a number of prestigious editorial boards, including the
cyber security, blockchain, edge computing, cloud computing, and rein- IEEE C OMMUNICATIONS S URVEYS AND T UTORIALS (Area Editor), IEEE
forcement learning. He has been granted the five IEEE Best Paper Awards Communications Magazine, and IEEE I NTERNET OF T HINGS J OURNAL. He
(TrustCom 18’ and HPCC 18’) and the two IEEE Best Student Paper Awards is a member of AAAS and ACM, and a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE
(HPCC 16’) in recent five years. Communication Society.

Blockchain Meets Cloud Computing: A Survey

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Blockchain Meets Cloud Computing: A Survey

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 22, NO.

3, THIRD QUARTER 2020 2009

Blockchain Meets Cloud Computing: A Survey

implementations, albeit some attempts have been made over

II. B LOCKCHAIN - AS - A -S ERVICE customized acquisitions to host their blockchain apps

mechanism to enable a low-cost demand-supply matching

B. Blockchain-Enabled Searchable Encryption

nodes (edge devices), such that the real-world performance

B. GPU/FPGA-Based Cloud Mining

Shui Yu (Senior Member, IEEE) is a Professor

You might also like