Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050

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Journal of Network and Computer Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jnca

Blockchain based solutions to secure IoT: Background, integration trends

and a way forward
Shivam Saxena a, Bharat Bhushan b, *, Mohd Abdul Ahad c, **
a
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HMR Institute of Technology and Management, New Delhi, 110036, India
b
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology, Sharda University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 201310, India
c
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 110062, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The lack of intrinsic security technologies in the current Internet of Things (IoT) systems brings forth numerous
Internet of things security vulnerabilities and privacy risks. To this end, a distributed and decentralized technology named
Blockchain blockchain comes out as a viable solution. This paper investigates the integration trends of blockchain tech­
Security
nology with IoT and discusses the insights of this new paradigm. In particular, this paper presents a compre­
Privacy
Smart contract
hensive survey on security improvements achieved in IoT systems using blockchain and the challenges that
originate during this integration. Further, the paper highlights the most relevant blockchain based IoT appli­
cations and outlines some future research directions.

1. Introduction applications refer to the elementary renovation of business processes

Nowadays, the interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) is rising
considerably with the development of information communication
which sanctions persistent, direct and automated Machine-to-Machine
(M2M) interaction or Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) (Chowdhury and
Raut, 2018; Tran-Dang and Kim, 2018). The IoT system endeavours to
implement a logic which is based on computer programs to an ecosystem
of things or devices, which then can be controlled or monitored by a
centralized engine (typically based on cloud computing) (Fan et al.,
2020). Entities or devices in IoT are provided with a digital description
in the physical world. This digital ‘wrapper’ authorizes communication
with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) entities which
are present on a private, public, hybrid cloud, on a Local Area Network
(LAN), or at the ends of Wide Area Network (WAN) (Brous et al., 2020).
IoT applications are categorized into two broad areas. The first class
includes various types of sensing applications, such as traffic monitoring
(Yamada et al., 2018), power administration (Radhakrishnan and
Gopalakrishnan, 2020), Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs)
(Madaan et al., 2020), smart cities (Bhushan et al., 2020a), crowd­
sensing (Luo et al., 2019) and industrial automation (Hassan et al.,
2020). Whereas, the second class deals with data analytics rather than
the physical aspects and characteristics of the sensors themselves. These
that are linked to marketable functions such as insurance, banking,
organizational processes and healthcare provision enhancement
(Makhdoom et al., 2019). Considering the broadening scope of IoT
implementation, security and safety of the network becomes a critical
aspect of the IoT system, especially under constrained resources in terms
of power, storage and controlled nodes proficiency. Furthermore,
limited capability of operating systems, vendor-specific application in­
stallations, deployment in uncontrolled open environment and limited
computational capability of the end nodes are several other factors that
contribute to this vulnerability of IoT systems (Arora et al., 2019; Goel
et al., 2019).
Owing to these challenges, it is necessary to rethink and funda­
mentally restructure the IoT systems (Butun et al., 2020). Currently,
“blockchain” has emerged as the most suitable candidate technology
that promises to support a distributed and secure ecosystem for the IoT
(Bhushan et al., 2020b). Blockchain technology was first described in
1991 as “a cryptographically secured chain of blocks” by Haber et al.
(Haber and Stornetta, 1991). However, it received universal recognition
after it was implemented as a public ledger by S. Nakamoto in a cryp­
tocurrency named Bitcoin (2018). Since then, it has received enormous
attention from various industries including finance, agriculture, logistics
and insurance. Owing to its ability to digitise transactions efficiently, it

* Corresponding author. 282, Metro Apartments, Jahangir Puri, New Delhi, 110033, India.
** Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: shivamsaxena2906@gmail.com (S. Saxena), bharat_bhushan1989@yahoo.com (B. Bhushan), itsmeahad@gmail.com (M.A. Ahad).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2021.103050
Received 25 September 2020; Received in revised form 13 December 2020; Accepted 4 March 2021
Available online 11 March 2021
1084-8045/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Saxena et al.
contributes towards making several processes faster, leaner and more
transparent. Blockchain can be described as a chain of cryptographically
linked timestamped blocks that operates as a distributed ledger whose
data is shared among its peers. Therefore, blockchain is capable of
solving the security issues associated with the traditional IoT systems by
leveraging a distributed and secure environment (Biswal and Bhushan,
2019; Ali et al., 2019a). Due to its decentralized, immutable, auditable
and fault tolerant features, several researchers are making efforts to
eliminate the need for a central trusted authority and leverage block­
chain to support decentralized IoT communications. The advantages
associated with a blockchain based IoT systems are manifolds. Firstly, it
mitigates single point of failure, promotes fault tolerance capabilities
and enables end-to-end communications without involvement of a
centralized server. Secondly, participants in a blockchain network can
verify data integrity as well as the sender’s identity. Thirdly, the tamper
proof data storage capability of blockchain enables to leverage secure
software updates to IoT devices. Further, blockchain stores the data and
event logs in an immutable manner thereby guaranteeing traceability
and accountability (Bhushan et al., 2020c; Wu et al., 2019a).
In recent research, numerous researchers have tried to exploit the
benefits of integrating blockchain with the IoT in varied application
scenarios. Several survey articles focussed on reviewing these solutions
in varied degree of dept and scope. Huckle et al. (2016) highlighted the
benefits of integrating blockchain technology and IoT for shared econ­
omy applications. Similarly, Christidis et al. (Christidis and Devetsi­
kiotis, 2016) highlighted the role of smart contracts and blockchain for
IoT systems. However, these works did not provide a detailed descrip­
tion of the security improvements in IoT using blockchain technology
and the challenges associated with this integration. In another work,
Zheng et al. (2018) comprehensively surveyed blockchain technology in
various application and technological perspectives. The work high­
lighted the architecture, consensus schemes, applications and challenges
related to blockchain. Similarly, Lu et al. (Lu, 2018) presented an
extensive survey on the principles of blockchain and its practical ap­
plications in diversified sectors. However, these works failed to explore
the blockchain transaction process and highlight the security improve­
ments in IoT using blockchain technology. In another work, Dai et al.
(2019) presented a detailed overview of blockchain technology and
investigated its convergence with IoT. Similarly, Alladi et al. (2019)
attempted to review existing blockchain applications in Industrial
Internet of Things (IIoT) settings and highlighted the associated industry
specific challenges. However, the work failed to highlight the ap­
proaches, security benefits and challenges associated with the integra­
tion of blockchain and IoT. In another work, Feng et al. (2019) discussed
blockchain in detail and highlighted the related privacy issues but did
not consider the applicability of blockchain in the realm of IoT. Simi­
larly, Alotaibi et al. (Alotaibi, 2019) attempts to survey the recent
blockchain-based advances to overcome the cyber security challenges in
IoT but does not throw enough light on background, transaction process,
consensus algorithms and the application areas of blockchain technol­
ogy. In another work, Li et al. (2020a) investigated various types of
security threats and attacks related to blockchain systems. Similarly,
Mohanta et al. (2020) highlighted the IoT architecture along with its
enabling technology and presented an in-depth description of various
security issues within the IoT system. However, these works did not
highlight the security benefits associated with the integration of IoT and
blockchain technology. In another work, Wang et al. (Sengupta et al.,
2020) highlighted the role of blockchain in Industry 4.0 and IoT. Simi­
larly, Sengupta et al. (Wang et al., 2020a) presented a detailed
description of security attacks in IIoT along with the proposed coun­
termeasures and highlighted the importance of blockchain technology
towards addressing the related issues. However, the work fails to explore
various aspects of blockchain technology including the transaction
process, consensus mechanisms and challenges associated with inte­
grating blockchain technology and IoT.
A comparative study of the existing work by different authors has
2
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
been summarized in Table 1 by considering the following 14 criterias. 1:
Characteristics of IoT; 2: Benefits and risks associated with IoT adoption;
3: Security requirements and challenges in IoT; 4: Blockchain overview
and characteristics; 5: Types of blockchain; 6: Layered architecture of
smart contract; 7: Blockchain transaction process; 8: Consensus mech­
anism; 9: Need for integrating blockchain and IoT; 10: Blockchain IoT
integration approaches; 11: Security improvements in IoT using block­
chain; 12: Challenges in IoT and blockchain integration; 13: Blockchain
based IoT applications; 14: Future research directions.
Although blockchain and IoT have been extensively studied in the
previous works, there are limited studies that survey the conjunction of
these two important areas. To fill this gap, this work surveys the state-of-
the-art blockchain technology that can be applied to the realm of IoT to
improve its security, efficiency and performance. This work presents a
comprehensive survey on the recent advances in the IoT, blockchain
technology and how the IoT systems are decentralized using block­
chains. This survey explores recent research efforts made towards
solving various security challenges in the IoT, blockchain-IoT integra­
tion schemes as well as open research directions for future work. Sum­
mary of the contributions of this work are enumerated as follows.
• This work presents a brief introduction of the IoT accompanied by a
summary of major security requirements and challenges in IoT.
• This work presents an in-depth survey and explores the state-of-the-
art blockchain technology by highlighting its background, charac­
teristics, classification, architecture and consensus mechanisms.
• This work highlights the motivation behind integrating blockchain
technology and IoT by exploring the achieved security improvements
in this regard.
• This work comprehensively reviews the recent research efforts on
blockchain based solutions for enhancing IoT security and various
blockchain based IoT applications.
• Finally, in addition to highlighting the research challenges in
decentralizing IoT systems using blockchain technology, this work
enumerates several future research directions for open IoT security
problems.
The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2
explored the background, characteristics, security challenges and re­
quirements of IoT. Section 3 presents an overview of the blockchain
technology, throws light on the blockchain transaction process and ex­
plores the most popular consensus algorithms. Section 4 discusses the
integration of Blockchain and IoT highlighting its major benefits and the
risks involved. This section further discusses in detail the various types
of security improvements achieved in IoT systems using blockchain and
highlights the challenges that originate during this integration. Section 5
outlines the IoT applications that exploit the advantage of blockchain
technology. Section 6 presents the future research trends followed by
conclusion in Section 7.
2. IoT background
IoT finds huge range of applications in our day-to-day life and the
internal composition of these applications includes the interaction of
end-devices and networking technologies. Heterogeneity and decen­
tralization are two key features of IoT (Ren et al., 2020). Given its large
structure and extensively large piles of data to be analysed, decentral­
ization property is crucial. Data is gathered, analysed and recorded in a
decentralized approach by the IoT devices. The algorithms implemented
in the IoT system, such as, decentralized computation algorithms and
clustering algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), which are
decentralized in nature can significantly improve the scalability and
capacity of the IoT network (Bhushan and Sahoo, 2020; Varshney et al.,
2019). The number of devices in the IoT network will continue to in­
crease with a massive rate. By 2020, this number is expected to increase
up to 50 billion (Georgakopoulos, 2019). Because of this expansion, the
S. Saxena et al. Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050

Table 1
A comparative summary of existing related surveys.
Author (s) Year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Huckle et al. (Huckle et al., 2016) 2016 ✓ ~ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ~ ✓ ⨯ ✓ ~

Christidis et al. (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016) 2016 ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ~ ~ ✓ ✓ ✓ ~ ~ ~ ⨯ ⨯
Zheng et al. (Zheng et al., 2018) 2018 ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ✓ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ~ ~ ~ ~ ✓ ✓
Lu et al. (Lu, 2018) 2018 ⨯ ~ ~ ✓ ✓ ⨯ ✓ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ~ ⨯
Dai et al. (Dai et al., 2019) 2019 ✓ ⨯ ✓ ✓ ✓ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ✓
Alladi et al. (Alladi et al., 2019) 2019 ~ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ✓ ✓
Feng et al. (Feng et al., 2019) 2019 ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ✓ ⨯ ✓ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ~
Alotaibi et al. (Alotaibi, 2019) 2019 ✓ ✓ ✓ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ✓ ✓ ~ ⨯ ~
Li et al. (Li et al., 2020a) 2020 ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ~ ~ ✓ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ✓
Mohanta et al. (Mohanta et al., 2020) 2020 ✓ ✓ ✓ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ~ ~ ~ ⨯ ⨯
Wang et al. (Sengupta et al., 2020) 2020 ~ ~ ~ ✓ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ~ ~ ⨯ ⨯ ~ ✓ ~
Sengupta et al. (Wang et al., 2020a) 2020 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ⨯ ⨯ ⨯ ✓ ⨯ ✓ ✓ ~ ⨯

✓ indicates that the topic has been covered in detail.

~ indicates that the topic has been partially covered.
⨯ indicates that the topic has not been covered.

IoT framework faces growing demand for volume. 2.1.2. Openness

2.1. Benefits and risks of IoT adoption [BOLD characteristics]
The impact of IoT technology can be understood by looking into the
expected benefits and risks associated with it. Studying benefits will
provide the reasons to adopt IoT whereas studying risks involved will
provide with an understanding of the impact of IoT adoption on different
industries. The impact on the organizations refers to the impact of data
produced by the IoT network. There are three major characteristics of
IoT namely “Big”, “Open” and “LinkeD” (denoted as BOLD) (Dwivedi
et al., 2016). In comparison to the traditional schemes, IoT generates
high-quality data in substantially large volumes with enhanced accu­
racy, diversity and timeliness. This data is also referred to as Big Data.
The Open characteristic of IoT data refers to the fact that the data
manufactured for a particular purpose can be utilized for multiple op­
erations aiming to achieve different goals. Linked characteristic of IoT
allows the combination of data from multiple sources or the combina­
tion of data from “things” (or devices) with that from traditional sources.
The expected benefits of IoT adoption along with the risks involved are
discussed in the subsections below.
2.1.1. Big
Considering the diversity of IoT technology, various kinds of sensors
can be installed for ensuring compliance to regulations and public
safety. IoT applications can offer more efficient and secure data collec­
tion process. Therefore, big data analytics can prove to be an important
factor in providing smart governance and aiding teamwork among
collaborating agencies (Hashem et al., 2016). Furthermore, the better
timeliness and large volumes of data generated by IoT can improve
operational planning and reaction to previously unforeseen events
enhancing the performance of industries. Moreover, IoT is progressing
in asset management domain where it is being used to monitor the
quality and health of industrial assets (Kwon et al., 2016).
On the other hand, data leaks can majorly impact the privacy of
individuals by revealing critical information such as personal financial
status, health conditions, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to allow selected
authorized access to manufacture or utilize data and prevent the misuse
of resources by unauthorized access. Although the previously unfore­
seen sights may be uncovered using big data, the duality of IoT can be
sighted in changes to industries that are important for the conversion of
big data into practical information while securing individual rights. The
quality of data is not clear and there exists no universally accepted
standard data storage architecture. High cost and risks induced due to
reduced return on investment is another important risk in adoption of
IoT (Wahyudi et al., 2018).
The big data feature provided by IoT can enable the data to be made
available for general open use. Organisational transparency, waste
reduction and improvement of business processes can be done by
making information open to the public (Brous et al., 2019). Businesses
and citizens can be empowered by enabling consumer self-service
through improved information access. IoT provides industries to
examine the real-world situations and thereby provides better
decision-making ability, increased service efficiency and flexibility in
deriving business values.
IoT relies on allowing other devices to utilize the publicly published
data on the IoT network. However, this requires a mature set of pro­
tocols capable of publishing and sharing information while guaranteeing
data accessibility. Furthermore, the challenges like scalability, real-time
processing and search locality proves to be strong barriers in IoT
adoption as the existing search mechanisms relies on remote informa­
tion sharing and fails to efficiently provide local entity search. Several
regulatory and technical barriers related to data sharing, security and
ownership also needs to be addressed.
2.1.3. Linked
The Linked feature of IoT can help in empowering the community by
providing consumer self-service and reduced labour costs. Fraud
detection and developing consumer trust can also be provided by linking
data from numerous sources. Besides, organizations can communicate
effectively with their clients, additional service revenues can be sup­
ported and new opportunities for interaction can be provided by the
insights gained from linking data from different sources. The insights
collected from the processed big data can be used to improve effec­
tiveness, compliance and efficiency (Amanullah et al., 2020).
IoT applications can be highly diverse in terms of potentials and
protocols etc. Since the data is gathered from different sources, the users
of this data are also different and the applications involving linked data
employs various techniques to process this data. This complicates the
design of an IoT architecture. Even though linking of data can ensure
benefits, inappropriate implementation of guidelines and lack of policies
can prove to be a challenge in the adoption of IoT. Since skilled staff and
new organisational processes are needed, a shortage of skilled
personnel, limited educational and training institutes can add to this
difficulty (Brous et al., 2017).
The major benefits and risks associated with the aforementioned
characteristics of IoT are summarized in Table 2.
2.2. Security requirements in IoT
Before estimating the potential security threats in the IoT system,
firstly, the associating security pre-requisites must be resolved. Re­
searchers have studied and determined the security prerequisites for IoT

3
S. Saxena et al.
Table 2
Benefits and risks of IoT adoption with respect to BOLD characteristics of IoT.
Big Data (Kwon et al., 2016; Wahyudi et al., Openness (Brous et al., 2019)
2018)
Benefits • Effective control mechanisms • Organisational transparency
• Smart Governance • Waste reduction
• Aid teamwork among collaborating • Improvement of business processes
agencies. • Improved information access
• Efficient data collection with high • Better decision making
granularity • Increased service efficiency and flexibility
• Enhancement of performance of industries
Risks • Data leaks threatening confidentiality • Scalability issues
• Duality of IoT data. • Real• time processing
• No best or standard architecture. • Failing to efficiently provide local search of entities.
• Risks induced due to reduced return on • Security challenges for allowing fine-grained access for
investment. IoT services
(Meneghello et al., 2019; Sinha et al., 2019). Some of the major security
requirements in IoT is listed below.
• Confidentiality: It is intended to hide information from unauthorized
malicious users and can be described using two concepts. Firstly, it
indicates that unauthorized users must not access confidential data.
Secondly, it guarantees the protection of proprietary data and
confidentiality. Cryptographic asymmetric and symmetric encryp­
tion schemes can contribute towards ensuring data confidentiality
(Leithardt et al., 2020).
• Integrity: It refers to the concept that data within IoT nodes cannot be
tampered, consumed or altered by unapproved users or entities.
Man-in-the-middle attack (Bhushan et al., 2017) is the most
commonly launched attack that compromise data integrity by
intercepting data in its way before it is passed on to the intended
receiver.
• Authenticity: It addresses the concerns related to origin of the infor­
mation and guarantees that the data and transactions are authentic.
Particularly, this principle must authenticate that the individuals or
groups participating in the operation must be the ones they claim to
be. Cryptographic digital signatures had contributed towards pre­
serving the data authenticity (Gope and Sikdar, 2019).
• Non-repudiation: This guarantees the ability to prove that an event or
task has occurred, with the goal that it is not denied later. In general
terms, it refers to data ownership where the receiver and sender
cannot deny after having received or sent the data.
• Authorization: It refers to the provision of granting permissions to any
user to have or perform some operation.
• Availability: It guarantees to provision data and other network ser­
vices to authorized users at all times. This implies that the data and
computational power must be available when required by a service.
This ensures that the computation systems required to analyse data,
the IoT nodes responsible for data capture as well as the communi­
cation links, all of the components should function appropriately
(Xiong et al., 2019; Amini and Baidas, 2020).
2.3. Security challenges in IoT
Security in IoT domain is considered as a high priority research di­
rection where interactions in the virtual world and the physical world
may be encountered. Therefore, apart from addressing the traditional
networking attacks, provisions for secure communications (for both
machine-to-machine and human-to-human interactions) must be
simultaneously provided by the deployed IoT protocols (Gazis, 2017;
Sinche et al., 2020). The most prominent security challenges in IoT
systems are listed as below.
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
Linked features (Amanullah et al., 2020; Brous et al.,
2017)
• Provision of consumer self-service
• Reduced labour costs
• Fraud detection
• Development of consumer trust
• Efficient organisation and client communication
• Improved effectiveness, compliance and efficiency.
• Different users and different data processing
techniques.
• IoT architecture design issues.
• Inappropriate implementation of guidelines and lack
of policies.
• Shortage of skilled personnel
• Limited educational and training institutes
• Data volume: Numerous IoT applications such as smart cities and
smart grids create huge piles of critical and confidential data, which
is a probable target for the rising security risks.
• Privacy protection: IoT nodes comprise of sensitive data which must
not be identifiable, linkable and traceable and must be protected.
Privacy protection is the major concern in today’s interconnected
world as the data is steadily being processed, conveyed, collected
and leveraged by huge enterprises using an array of IoT devices
(Granjal et al., 2015).
• Resource limitations: Owing to its constrained computation power and
memory, these devices do not even readily support operations of
regular security protocols such as asymmetric key encryption or
other advanced privacy preserving schemes (Benkhelifa et al., 2018).
• Scalability: Generally, the IoT system involves a large number of
entities. Thus, confidentiality and security protection procedures
must efficiently scale throughout the network.
• Heterogeneity: IoT connects numerous identities having varied
complexity and capability. Further, these devices also differ in their
release versions, technical interfaces they use and the function they
need to perform. Therefore, the IoT protocols must support different
devices under various situations and provide connection between
heterogeneous network and things (Ngu et al., 2016).
• Interoperability: The development and utilization of security proced­
ures in IoT systems should not completely restrict the operational
capabilities of IoT nodes. the lack of interoperability might lead to
major technological issues such as impossibility to develop cross
domain IoT applications, impossibility to employ non-interoperable
devices within heterogeneous systems and user dissatisfaction (Aloi
et al., 2017).
• Autonomous control: The conventional data systems require config­
uration from users. However, the settings must be autonomously
established in the end-devices of the IoT networks.
• Attack resistant: Generally, the end-devices in IoT system are small
with very little or no physical armour. For example, fixed devices
could be destroyed by natural disasters or small sensor devices or
mobile phones could be stolen (Hamad et al., 2020).
2.4. Security attacks in IoT
Owing to the huge number of devices connected in IoT systems, there
is a subsequent increase in the vulnerabilities leading to various security
attacks in IoT. Furthermore, the lack of network access control and data
encryption measures enable the adversaries to launch attacks such as
traffic analysis and eavesdropping (Kouicem et al., 2018; Bhushan and
Sahoo, 2017). The most prevalent security attacks in IoT are listed as
below.
S. Saxena et al.
• End Device Attacks: Adversaries seize the devices and control them
physically, resulting in perceptibility to the confidential data such as
certificates and keys. Furthermore, several malicious users may
pretend to be authentic nodes by utilizing the seized information and
orchestrate other attacks (Xu et al., 2017a).
• Communication Channel Attacks: sometimes, adversaries might
attempt to intercept the communication channels and obtain access
to the confidential data if the channel is not encrypted (Yin et al.,
2018). The wireless channels can also be interfered or even jammed
by these adversaries by transmitting corrupt or noisy signals.
• Network Protocol Attacks: The adversaries may exploit the network
protocol vulnerabilities to launch huge range of attacks such as sybil
attack, blackhole attacks, wormhole attacks, reply attacks and Denial
of Service (DoS) attack. These attacks would degrade the efficiency
and precision of protocols and the associated voting mechanisms
(Khan and Salah, 2018).
• Sensory Data Attacks: Communication in the IoT system is carried out
through ad hoc protocols, that is, the messages are communicated
hop-by-hop until they reach their destination thus providing at­
tackers with the opportunities to modify data or infuse corrupt data.
Data tampering or modification is the process in which adversaries
modify the data and broadcast it to other nodes (Zha et al., 2016).
Corrupt data infusion means that the adversaries transmit data across
the network with authentic identities (Xu et al., 2017b).
• DoS Attack: A DoS attack leads to bottleneck condition and depletes
resources of IoT systems so that the service is not available when
required (Sicari et al., 2018). IoT devices have restrictions on
communication and network resources thus proving DoS attacks to
be disastrous. These attacks completely consume the small energy
reserves of sensory nodes, degrade network interfaces, mitigate
network lifespan and paralyze the complete framework (Huang
et al., 2020a).
• Software Attacks: A group of attacks which utilize loopholes of the
software to mutate and control the entire system are referred to as
software attacks. Generally, these attacks comprise of malicious
scripts/virus/worms. Traditional internet security protocols, such as
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are used to overcome the soft­
ware attacks (Restuccia et al., 2018).
3. Overview of blockchain technology
In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto presented a revolutionary concept named
“Bitcoin” for solving the trust issues encountered within information
systems (Bitcoin, 2018). Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that nurtures its
value without any support from a financial entity or a centralized
Fig. 1. Basic blockchain structure.
5
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
authority. It is held by a decentralized Peer to Peer (P2P) network of
participants making it verifiable and auditable. Blockchain is the un­
derlying technology behind Bitcoin which gained even more popularity.
The Blockchain is a constantly increasing ledger of information records,
called blocks, which are connected to each other and are secured using
cryptographic algorithms (Dinh et al., 2018). Consensus algorithm in
blockchain ensures an unambiguous block ordering, consistency and
integrity among the nodes of the chain (Wang et al., 2019a). A general
block is comprised of information related to version, parent block hash,
timestamp, nonce (which starts from 0 and increases every time after a
hash calculation), transaction count and the combined hash of all
transactions (Merkle root). With the generation of a new block, every
node in the network will engage in block authentication process (Salman
et al., 2019). When validated and approved, the block will be appended
automatically with a reference that points to its previous or parent
block. This results in easy detection of unidentified or unauthorized
transactions since the hash value of the mutated or falsified block will be
very much different from that of an unchanged block (Belotti et al.,
2019). The basic blockchain structure is depicted in Fig. 1.
3.1. Characteristics of blockchain
The blockchain technology promises the highest degree of account­
ability and varied sectors are testing this innovation so that they can
utilize it for data transmission, record keeping and other backend pro­
cesses. As an un-alterable record, it progressively empowers them to
follow documentation and confirm ownership of assets digitally. The
key characteristics that make blockchain a revolution for the technical
world are listed as below.
• Transparency: Generally, for public blockchain systems, such as,
Ethereum and Bitcoin, users can approach and communicate with
blockchain network with equal rights. Furthermore, each transaction
is authenticated and recorded in the distributed ledger, simulta­
neously being available for all the users. Thus, data on the blockchain
is transparent to each node so as to validate the committed trans­
action in the blockchain (Al-Jaroodi and Mohamed, 2019a).
• Decentralization: A central agency conducts transaction validation in
traditional transaction management frameworks such as a bank thus
resulting in a performance bottleneck, costly architecture and a
single point of failure. On the other hand, blockchain provides
validation of transactions taking place between two nodes without
any intervention, jurisdiction or central entity jurisdiction. There­
fore, reduces the overall service cost, performance bottleneck and the
risk of single-point failure (Aderibole et al., 2020).
S. Saxena et al. Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050

• Immutability: As blockchain structure relies on consecutively linked
blocks where each link is a hash of previous block’s header, any sort
of data tampering invalidates every consequently created block. Any
mutation is easily identified as even slight modification on any
transaction results in creation of a new Merkle tree data structure.
• Pseudonymity: Irrespective of the transparency within blockchain
transactions, the system can maintain a certain level of confidenti­
ality by creating anonymous addresses for the users. However,
blockchain systems can only maintain the confidentiality up to a
particular level as these addresses can be traced. Thus, blockchain
can only maintain the pseudonymity but not full confidentiality.
• Non-Repudiation: In the blockchain transaction mechanism, each
node is provided with a private key. This can later be accessed and
validated by other nodes through the corresponding public key of
that node. Thus, the transactions that are signed digitally using
cryptography cannot be denied by the source node of the transaction.
• Traceability: Every transaction recorded in the distributed ledger is
also attached with a timestamp which is recorded at the time of
transaction. Thus, the origin of transactions as well as the modifi­
cations can be easily verified and traced by the users after the
analysis of data of blockchain with associated timestamps (Ven­
katesh et al., 2020).
3.2. Types of blockchains
Participants can interact with blockchain either as writers or as
readers. A reader has a passive participation in the transaction process
and concentrates on analysing record contents or validating the block­
chain. On the other hand, writers participate actively in the transaction
process and have the facility to extend the chain by using consensus
protocols (Dasgupta et al., 2019; Soni and Bhushan, 2019). Blockchains
are classified into three categories on the basis of permissions given to
the users for interaction with the ledger. These categories are discussed
in the subsections below.
3.2.1. Public blockchains
Public blockchains are also known as permission less blockchains.
These facilitate participation in the consensus protocols and allows
unrestricted usage of the main chain to any entity as reader or writer.
Mining is mostly based on incentives so as to encourage miners to mine
blocks. Hence the transaction cost in public ledgers is more as compared
to private ledgers. The time taken by the transaction to complete is more
in public blockchain as compared to private because of less connectivity
in the nodes (Pilkington, 2016). Bitcoin (Bitcoin GitHub implementa,
2020), Ethereum (Wood and Ethereum, 2014) and Zerocash (Sasson
et al., 2014) are some of the examples of public blockchains.
3.2.2. Private blockchains
Private blockchains are also known as permissioned blockchains. In
this category, the number of the miner nodes are limited and their
identities are known. Therefore, the participation in the transaction is
only available to a selected number of miner nodes. Furthermore, a user
may only have permission to access the data linked to the user himself.
The confidentiality of user information is more in private blockchains as
compared to public blockchains. Since, the number of nodes committing
transactions is less, the transaction speed is more thus resulting in
greater transaction throughput (Andreev et al., 2018). Quorum
(JPMorgan, 2020) and Multichain (2020) are some examples of private
blockchains.
3.2.3. Consortium blockchains
Consortium blockchains are also known as hybrid blockchains. They
are called so as they reside between their public and private counter­
parts, but closer to the private form of blockchain (She et al., 2019a).
The main aim of a consortium blockchain is to handle the difficulties
faced by a particular industry by scaling the effect of cooperation.
Therefore, an advantageous framework is created which includes allies
along with business competitors. This blockchain is semi-decentralized
implying that it is under the supervision of specific group members
(Zhang and Chen, 2019). A multi-party consensus is there in which all of
the operations are authenticated by unique predetermined nodes, not by
everyone. The blockchain is completely managed by a particular group
but is conserved from monopoly. As soon as each node agrees, this
control allows to establish their own instructions, modify or delete
erroneous transactions, modify account balances, etc. On the other
hand, the centralized structure of consortium blockchain renders it
powerless against malicious entities. Some of the specific industries
where consortium blockchain fits in place are finance, banking,
healthcare, insurance and logistics. Hyperledger Fabric (Hyperledger
GitHub implem, 2020) and Ethermint (Ethereum GitHub implement,
2020) are some examples of consortium blockchains.
Table 3 presents the comparison of the aforementioned types of
blockchain on the basis of various attributes.

Table 3
Comparison of types of blockchain.
Attributes Public Blockchain (Pilkington, 2016; Bitcoin GitHub Private Blockchain (Andreev et al., Consortium Blockchain (She et al., 2019a; Zhang and Chen,
implementa, 2020; Wood and Ethereum, 2014; 2018; JPMorgan, 2020; Multichain, 2019; Hyperledger GitHub implem, 2020; Ethereum GitHub
Sasson et al., 2014) 2020) implement, 2020)

Framework Fully decentralized Partially decentralized Partially decentralized

Immutability Immutable Alterable Partially immutable
Traceability Fully traceable Fully traceable Partially traceable
Scalability Low High High
Flexibility Low High High
Transaction Slow Fast Fast
Speed
Throughput Less Higher Higher
Efficiency Low High High
Access Open for Read/Write May be restricted May be restricted
Security Consensus mechanism Pre-approved participants Pre-approved participants
Non-repudiation Non-refutable Refutable Partially refutable
Permission Permission less Permissioned Permissioned
Consensus Proof of Stake Ripple PBFT
Mechanism Proof Work, etc. PoA
PoET
Example Bitcoin (Bitcoin GitHub implementa, 2020), Quorum (JPMorgan, 2020) and Hyperledger Fabric (Hyperledger GitHub implem, 2020) and
Ethereum (Wood and Ethereum, 2014) and Zerocash ( Multichain (Multichain, 2020) Ethereum (Ethereum GitHub implement, 2020)
Sasson et al., 2014)

6
S. Saxena et al.
Fig. 2. Architecture of smart contracts.
3.3. Architecture of smart contract
On the basis of the operational mechanism of smart contracts, its
entire lifecycle can be represented using 5 stages namely negotiation,
development, deployment, maintenance and learning (Wang et al.,
2019b). According to this life cycle, a structure for exploration of smart
contracts comprises of a 6-layered architecture that includes infra­
structure layer, contract layer, operation layer, intelligence layer,
manifestation layer and application layer. These layers are depicted in
Fig. 2 and explored in the subsections below.
3.3.1. Infrastructure layer
Infrastructure layer envelops the infrastructure that supports the
smart contracts. It comprises of the Trusted Development Environments
(TDE) which possess the development tools required for smart contract
development such as programming languages, clients, wallets, devel­
opment frameworks and a trusted execution environment. Blockchain
provides a provision for the execution of smart contracts where the ul­
timate execution result is stored in the distributed ledger and trusted
data feeds. Smart contracts are executed generally in secure execution
environments in order to assure the safety of the framework. Hence,
trusted data feeds are required to import real-world data in the form of
transactions. The choice of these infrastructure components will impact
the smart contract’s overall attributes and design pattern.
3.3.2. Contracts layer
This layer comprises of situation-response rules, communication
criteria and contract terms. This layer captures the stationary data and
therefore can also be considered as a static database that include rules
about contract communication, invocation and implementation. At the
design stage, first, all responsible parties negotiate and establish the
terms which may include intention agreements, business logics and legal
provisions. Then, software engineers use technologies, such as design
pattern and algorithm design to express the contract terms into the code
of a program. Furthermore, the interaction standards (e.g., communi­
cation mode, access authority, etc.) should also be presented in this layer
for communication between contracts and contracts or contracts and
users (Karamitsos et al., 2018).
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
3.3.3. Operations layer
This layer summarizes all the dynamic processes in the smart con­
tracts, including security analysis, mechanical design, updates, formal
verification, and self-destruction. This layer contributes towards safe,
efficient and precise working of smart contracts as vulnerable contracts
can cause massive economic damage to the community. In the
perspective of smart contract’s life cycle, starting from negotiation to
self-destruction, the design procedures make use of incentive and in­
formation theory that assist contracts to accomplish their functions
effectively (Luu et al., 2016). Security analysis and formal verification
mechanisms are used to validate the security. Updates can be technically
implemented after the deployment of contracts on the blockchain.
Self-destruction is directed to ensure network stability and high-risk
susceptibility (Huang et al., 2019).
3.3.4. Intelligence layer
This layer provides intellect to the smart contracts by using various
intelligence algorithms related to reasoning, perception, learning, so­
cializing and decision-making. However, the newly developed smart
contracts will not only be relying on “if-then” declarations but will also
have “what-if” type calculation, deduction and decision-making in un­
identified situations. The advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) tech­
nology resulted in the smart contracts to have some enhanced level of
intellect (Modha et al., 2011; Gupta et al., 2020a). Therefore, these
contracts are not only independent as they have abilities of task prior­
itization, selection and goal-oriented behaviours but also have civility
through cooperation, interaction and negotiation. The optimization of
contract design and operation can be achieved by providing the learning
results as a feedback to the contracts layer.
3.3.5. Manifestation layer
This layer encapsulates various manifestations of smart contracts for
possible applications consisting of Decentralized Applications (DApps),
Decentralized Autonomous Corporations (DACs), Decentralized Auton­
omous Societies (DASs) and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
(DAOs) (What is aO? Available:, 2020). Smart Contracts that comprise of
the critical activities of network nodes are comparable to the application
interfaces of the blockchain which allows blockchain to be deployed in
numerous application scenarios. For example, a variety of DApps can be
S. Saxena et al.
created by writing business logics, legal provisions and intention
agreements into the smart contracts. Moreover, the system built on the
fourth layer will progressively transform into diverse DAOs, DASs and
DACs. The traditional businesses are expected to improve with the help
of these high-level manifestations laying the foundation for the
emerging programmable society.
3.3.6. Applications layer
The Application layer comprises of all the applications that are built
up to the manifestation layer. For instance, Plantoid is a DAO based
application which is developed on Ethereum to accomplish a fully
aesthetic society that connects designers, artists, audiences and net­
works into an interdependent relationship, thereby liberating art from
hierarchically organized capitalist markets (Lotti, 2016).
3.4. Blockchain transaction process
Transactions are small tasks stored in public records (known as
blocks) that are stored, implemented and executed for validation by all
participants (Tschorsch and Scheuermann, 2016). In this, it is possible to
review any previously committed transactions but their modification of
any kind is not possible (Zheng et al., 2017). Blockchain transforms
Bitcoin into a censorship-resistant, borderless digital currency as it fa­
cilitates decentralized execution of transactions within a peer-to-peer
global network. The major concern for traditional centralized systems
such as banks is “trust”. Blockchain serves to fill this requirement quite
efficiently as it is a trustless system and provides trust via functions
propagating various activities within the network (Glaser, 2017). The
mining and consensus mechanism of blockchain relies heavily on
cryptographic hash functions thereby enhancing its capability to address
the security issues (Odwyer and Malone, 2014; Manimuthu et al., 2019).
The hash output always remains the same for a given input and even a
small change in input results in a significant amount of change in the
output hash. It is a one-way function as calculating the input value from
the known output value is not feasible thereby making this secure.
Blockchain uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)
which helps to ensure that only the true possessors can spend funds
(Yuan and Wang, 2018). An attempt to make a fraudulent transaction is
infeasible as the signature of every transaction is of 256 bits therefore
the adversary needs to guess 2256 cases thereby leading to their resource
exhaustion. Apart from the sender identity verification, the transaction
validity (whether the sender has enough funds to transfer) also needs to
be checked. This can be well achieved by analysing the ledger holding
information about the past committed transactions.
Fig. 3. Bitcoin transaction process.
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
3.4.1. Bitcoin transaction
The main purpose of Bitcoin cryptocurrency was to enable decen­
tralized electronic cash payment system and eliminate central in­
termediaries between different parties. A bitcoin transaction deals with
the transferring of ownership and it is initiated from the client’s bitcoin
wallet and later broadcasted throughout the network. Only if the
transaction is valid, other network nodes associate it with the block they
are mining and rebroadcast the transaction. The time consumed in
including a transaction along with all other transactions is 10 min
approximately (Valdivia et al., 2019; Decker and Wattenhofer, 2013).
Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) is the capability of the user to
spend the received the output amount of a transaction therefore it forms
the major element of the bitcoin structure (Delgado-Segura et al., 2019).
The received amount stays put as a separate entity in a bitcoin wallet and
there is no chance of mixing of coins or cash as evident in a physical
wallet. This can be better explained using an example. Consider a sce­
nario in which bob receives two distinct amounts of $4 and $3 succes­
sively. If this is stored in any online or physical wallet, the result returns
the sum of the two amounts that is $7. But, in a bitcoin wallet, it is stored
as individual entities and the result shows the exact amounts of $4 and
$3.
The overall bitcoin transaction process is depicted in Fig. 3. Suc­
cessful miners are provided with incentives (transaction fees and block
creation rewards) for validating transactions, managing transactions
and creating new blocks to be added to the existing chain (Schrijvers
et al., 2017). Users assign a transaction fee for the successful miners
while sending a transaction. Even though there is no header information
with respect to the transaction fee, it is achieved by sending a slightly
lower value than the total UTXO to the recipients. Therefore, the
transaction fee is represented by this unassigned transaction amount as
depicted in equation (1).
InputUTXO − Output = Transaction Fees (1)
Apart from the transaction data being verified and validated, miners
also include a unique type of bitcoin transaction named “coinbase
transaction” which can only be created by the miner and is created with
every newly mined block on the network. The miners are also required
to send the transaction fees collected by them in this transaction. Now, it
is the responsibility of other network peers to verify whether the
transaction is levelled out. The sum of transaction fees and the block
reward is sent to the miners who need to assign its reward while block
creation. Every other network node validates whether the block adheres
to the requirements depicted in equation (2).
∑ ∑
BlockOutputs ≤ BlockInputs + Block Reward (2)
S. Saxena et al.
3.4.2. Ethereum transaction
Similar to bitcoin that define its state in terms of UTXO, Ethereum
brings forth the concept of account. The transactions in Ethereum are
capable of updating the account balance directly without any need to
maintain the states as in case of bitcoin UTXO thereby allowing easy
exchange of data, messages and values between the account resulting
state transactions. Ethereum basically works with two types of accounts:
Contract Account (CA) and Externally Owned Account (EOA). CA rep­
resents a Smart Contract (SC), is controlled by code and owned by pri­
vate keys. Whereas, EOA interacts with the blockchain via transactions
and is essentially required for participation in the Ethereum network
(Alharby and Moorsel, 2017; Hartel et al., 2019). “Ether” is the trans­
ferable amount in Ethereum and its denominator is known as “Wei”
(Atzei et al., 2017). Ethereum and bitcoin use several common attributes
such as transaction details, nonce and block hash. Apart from these,
Ethereum additionally uses several fields such as smart contract’s state,
fees limit and so on.
Furthermore, there is a requirement of gas or crypto-fuel for any kind
of action as an incentive-based model is employed by Ethereum for block
creation. In order to reduce the complexity and computation overhead,
gas is used instead of “ether” as the gas cryptocurrency is independent of
valuation for the computation as well as the transaction fees. The major
difference between ether and gas cryptocurrency is that the gas points
remains static with market swings. It is the responsibility of the mining
process to compute the gas points required to execute a transaction and
the transaction gets rejected if the specified fee (in gas points) is not
sufficient. If the gas points required for the execution is available in the
account balance, the transaction is executed successfully and the
remaining amount after executing is returned to the originating account.
Miners compete for block creation and the one solving the puzzle first is
labelled as “winner” and added to the main channel. Those solving them
afterwards are labelled as “ommers” and appended as side blocks of the
main channel (Ritz and Zugenmaier, 2018). The overall Ethereum
transaction process is depicted in Fig. 4.
3.5. Consensus techniques
A major benefit of the blockchain system is the technology to vali­
date the reliability and trustfulness of the block without the need of a
trusted central authority. The consensus algorithms are applied in order
Fig. 4. Ethereum transaction process.
9
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
to achieve a reliable and trustful consensus in the decentralized
distributed framework. The consensus mechanisms which are typically
implemented can be categorized into two: Probabilistic and Determin­
istic (Dai et al., 2019). The objective of probabilistic consensus mecha­
nism is to save the authenticated block and then seek the consensus. On
the other hand, the deterministic consensus mechanisms first reach the
consensus and then save the authenticated block. Moreover, the former
solves the discrepancy of multiple chain bifurcations by considering the
longest chain whereas the later solves this challenge by performing
numerous communication rounds in the network overlay. Numerous
consensus techniques have been proposed on the basis of utilization of
resources, attack tolerance capability, scalability and performance
(Wang et al., 2019c; Bamakan et al., 2020; Gramoli, 2020). These
mechanisms are generalized into two main categories: voting-based and
proof-based. In voting-based consensus techniques, voting is done
among participants for the validation of each block and a minimum
number of votes are required for the block authentication based on the
employed consensus mechanism. Whereas, in proof-based consensus
techniques, few manager (called miners) are chosen who validate and
append the freshly generated blocks to the main chain. These techniques
mainly differ on how the miners are selected. The most popular
consensus schemes are explored in the subsections below.
3.5.1. Proof of work (PoW)
PoW employs rigorous computation tasks (or consensus puzzle) that
the miners need to solve for the generation of a new block. The miners
who solve the puzzle receives the incentive for that block. Once the PoW
is completed, the freshly generated block is appended to the chain after
verification from the rest of the network. This verification is not a
rigorous task and requires less effort as compared to solving the
computational puzzle. Sometimes the blockchain may fork into different
branches due to concurrent generation of blocks which is solved by
contemplating that the longest chain of blocks will be the one which is
valid. This provides a trust less distributed-consensus technique. It is
extremely costly for the adversary to add a corrupt block or modify the
blockchain since the remaining miners would outpace such adversaries
in the process of block creation, thereby invalidating the maliciously
created block. Technically, in order to add a manipulated block to the
chain, it is mandatory to solve the puzzle before other miner nodes. But
this is too exorbitant as it requires the adversary to possess 51% of the
S. Saxena et al.
total resources, which is practically impossible (Kiayias and Zindros,
2020).
3.5.2. Proof of stake (PoS)
PoS was proposed to overcome the issues of high resource wastage in
PoW. In PoS implemented systems, the blocks are said to be ‘forged’ not
mined. The blockchain systems or the cryptocurrencies which are using
the PoS technique often starts by launching with PoW and later switches
to PoS. The “forger” is selected on the basis of its stake value in each
block generation process. The more the wealth, the more will be the
chance to win. In order to prevent the favouring of the wealthiest,
several unique methods have been proposed such as Coin Age Selection
(CAS) and Randomized Block Selection (RBS). The participants in CAS
are selected on the basis of duration for which their coins have been
stacked. The number of coins is multiplied with the number of days the
coins were stacked for to calculate Coin Age. Incentives are provided by
proposing an acceptable block after validation by other participants. On
the other hand, RBS methods choose forgers on the basis of combination
of the highest stake and the lowest hash value. Although PoS reduces
resource wastage, there is a possibility that rich goes on to get richer.
This conflicts with the main idea of a decentralized network (Deir­
mentzoglou et al., 2019; Saleh, 2018).
3.5.3. Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)
DPoS is more democratic and efficient variant of PoS in which only a
restricted number of participants (also called “witnesses”) participate in
the block generation process (“Delegated Proof of Stake, 2020). Any
participant who owns cryptocurrency is a stakeholder. These stake­
holders select the witnesses by voting and these witnesses are respon­
sible for obtaining consensus in the block generation and validation
process. The voting power for the stakeholders depend on the amount of
stake of each stakeholder. Generally, each witness presents an individual
proposal when asking for votes. Also, the incentives collected by the
witnesses are equally distributed with their respective electors.
Furthermore, if an elected witness does not work efficiently, it is
expelled and replaced by another witness. The mechanism is more
efficient and faster as the number of validators is less (Yang et al., 2019).
However, DPoS systems are vulnerable to centralization due to the
involvement of only limited number of witnesses.
3.5.4. Proof of Importance (PoI)
PoI is a consensus scheme proposed by NEM blockchain platform
that reward those users who actively participate in the network (Proof of
Importance (PoI), 2015). On the basis of its importance, each participant
is allotted a rating (also known as importance score) using mathematics
from page ranking and network clustering. At higher level, the score
calculation is based on 3 primary inputs: net transfers, currency vested and
cluster nodes. The higher the importance score the more will be the
chance to append a new block. POI solves two major issues prevalent in
PoS. Firstly, it solves the hoarding risk as the importance score is
designed in such a way that hoarding the coins will decrease the score
and spending the will increase the score. Secondly, it solves the chain
fork problem where participants can create blocks on either side of the
chain. Therefore, carrying two chains would require two transaction
designs which is not easy as it is impossible to immediately create blocks
on both the chains.
3.5.5. Proof of elapsed time (PoET)
PoET relies on a fair lottery system to mitigate the resource wastage
and high-power consumption. It is a consensus mechanism in which
every possible validator node requests a safe random waiting time from
a dependable execution system installed into the computing platform.
Each participant in the overall network creates a random wait time and
goes to inactive or sleep state for that particular time. The one to wake
up first commits a new block to the blockchain, broadcasting the
necessary information to the entire network. All the participants wait for
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
the assigned time period and the first one to finish the designated
waiting time obtains leadership for validation (Intel, 2017). The PoET
consensus technique needs to ensure two important factors. Firstly, the
participating nodes must select genuine random waiting time. Secondly,
it is necessary to ensure that the winner has indeed completed the
waiting time (Chen et al., 2017).
3.5.6. Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT)
PBFT consensus mechanism is based on the method of Byzantine
Fault Tolerance. Initially, a temporary leader is selected which is also
replaced frequently. There are 3 phases in every block validation round:
pre-prepared, prepared and commit. In pre-prepared phase, a block is
proposed by the leader to the rest of the nodes. In the prepared phase,
voting is carried out and the votes of the participants are broadcasted to
the leaders. Lastly, if two-thirds of the total votes are in favour then the
new block is appended to the blockchain. PBFT is suited for permis­
sioned access blockchain as it can tolerate less than 33 suspicious nodes
and also there is an initial filtering to select the participants for the
consensus mechanism. PBFT is not scalable when the network grows
(Wang et al., 2018a; Su and Vaidya, 2017).
3.5.7. Raft
Raft (Huang et al., 2020b) is a quick consensus technique used by R3
Corda (2020) and Quorum platforms (JPMorgan, 2020). The working of
Raft depends on three states namely follower, leader and candidate.
Follower is the starting state. After a predefined time, if the leader does
not respond to the follower or the follower does not receive a signal from
the leader it changes to the candidate state. Voting is done for the next
leader and the maximum voted candidate becomes the leader and all
other candidate returns to the follower state.
3.5.8. Proof of activity (PoA)
PoA is a hybrid consensus mechanism which is a combination of both
PoS and PoW (Bentov et al., 2014). Initially, the miners attempt to figure
out a hash function in a race to mine the new block which is similar to
the PoW consensus. Nonetheless, the newly generated block would
enclose the miner’s address and a header only. At first, there are no
transactions in the new block. The consensus is reached by selecting a
group of validators according to the new block’s header to sign the new
block. Proof of stake is used to achieve this step. Although it is more
secure against different attacks, this approach can face higher delay
which may not be sustainable for time-restricted IoT applications (Liu
et al., 2019).
3.5.9. Leased Proof of Stake (LPoS)
LPoS is a consensus mechanism that operates like PoS but can be
regarded as an improved version of PoS as it attempts to annihilate the
centrality challenge associated with PoS consensus. This mechanism
empowers the participants with nominal balance to engage in the
consensus by providing an option of leasing. Leasing here means that the
wealthy participants can lease funds to the nodes with lower balance for
a particular time interval. The amount to be leased will be kept by the
wealthy nodes at the time of lease contract. However, the contract will
boost the chances of mining blocks for participants having low balance.
As soon as the block is solved by these low balance nodes, the reward
will be shared with the leasing node proportionally. The LPoS consensus
makes the network more decentralized and thereby increasing the
overall network security (”Leased Proof of Stake”, 2020). Regrettably,
LPoS is not beneficial with respect to IoT, as the concept behind IoT does
not support monetary benefits which is the base for this consensus.
3.5.10. Stellar
Stellar consensus mechanism was presented by Mazieres utilizing a
modification of PBFT named Federated Byzantine Fault Tolerance
(FBFT) (Innerbichler and Damjanovic-Behrendt, 2018). This consensus
mechanism implements micro-finance services on the blockchain
S. Saxena et al. Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050

platform. In FBFT, participants within the intersecting groups that are the digitalization of facilities in every major sector. The implementation
capable of performing local consensus among themselves are called of IoT integrated with Cloud Computing (Munoz et al., 2018) has proved
federates (Sankar et al., 2017). This method permits anyone to partici­ to be instrumental. Similarly, blockchain has the potential to revolu­
pate in the consensus since the process is open to public and decen­ tionize the current IoT structure and the integration of both can prove to
tralized. The inherent characteristics of stellar such as low latency, low be invaluable. Blockchain can provide a reliable information
computational requirements and high throughput makes its suited for sharing-service where data is trusted and is perceptible. The security
IoT systems. level escalates automatically since the data remains immutable and
source of the data can be tracked at any time (Sethi et al., 2020).
3.5.11. Ripple
Ripple consensus mechanism is identical to Stellar as it also utilizes
4.1. Need for integration
FBFT consensus mechanism. This algorithm was suggested to decrease
the latency of blockchains (Schwartz and YoungsArthur, 2014). Every
Issues related to IoT systems (such as resource constrained end-
miner in this method uses a dependable subgroup of nodes among the
devices, heterogeneity, privacy protection and confidentiality vulnera­
larger network to establish a consensus. The nodes in the network are
bilities) can be complemented using the blockchain technology (Malik
classified into two types based on their operations. The nodes in the first
et al., 2019a; Gupta et al., 2020b). Blockchain can enhance innumerable
set are called server nodes responsible for performing the consensus. The
aspects of IoT and the integration of both these technologies yields
nodes in the second set are called client nodes which are only responsible
several potential benefits that are enumerated below.
for transferring funds. Every server node has a Unique Node List (UNL).
The participants enlisted in UNL are referred in order to reach consensus
• Enhanced security: The data generated from IoT devices can be pro­
among new transactions. If 4/5th of the total nodes in UNL are in favour
tected by blockchains as the data will be stored in the form of
of the new transaction then the consensus is established. This algorithm
encrypted and cryptographically signed transactions (Pan et al.,
can permit up to 20% malicious nodes in UNL (Zheng et al., 2017).
2017). Furthermore, the automatic software updates in IoT devices
Ripple is generally utilized for financial requirements to empower
provided by the integration of blockchain proves to be a remedy for
transactions where there are no chargebacks (Chalaemwongwan and
the vulnerable security breaches and thus improves the immunity of
Kurutach, 2018).
the entire system (Zhang et al., 2019).
• Improved interoperability: Essentially, blockchain can provide
3.5.12. Tendermint
enhanced interoperability of IoT systems by storing and modifying
Tendermint is a permissioned consensus algorithm and belongs to
IoT generated data into blockchains. Different types of IoT datasets
the group of BFT consensus mechanisms that are able to host random
are transformed, processed, mined, resized and ultimately recorded
application states (Tendermint, 2020). In the PBFT, every participant
in the decentralized distributed ledger.
has equivalent voting capability whereas in tendermint, the participants
• Autonomous interactions: Automatic interaction of IoT devices is an
have distinctive voting capabilities which directly depend on their
excellent feature which can be provided by the blockchain technol­
respective stakes. Thus, it can also be considered as a hybrid combina­
ogy. Decentralized Autonomous Corporations (DACs) (Wu et al.,
tion of PoS and PBFT. Tendermint can permit mischievous activity from
2019b) are proposed for the automation of transactions involving big
at most 33% of the overall byzantine voting power. This consensus al­
payment where there is no role for the traditional agencies. DACs are
gorithm has some serious benefits such as high scalability, high
implemented by smart contracts and work autonomously without
throughput and a very little latency. It can be moulded for IoT use cases
any human interference consequently reducing the cost. This func­
if the monetary concepts behind this process can be replaced by other
tionality could also benefit IoT applications to implement decoupled
mechanisms.
and device-agnostic applications.
Table 4 presents the comparison of different types of consensus
• Reliability: Since the information in blockchain based systems remain
protocols in terms of various parameters.
distributed over the entire network and immutable over time, the
members of the system are capable of authenticating the data and
4. Blockchain integration with IoT
have the confidence that the data is not meddled with. Blockchain
can also provide sensor data accountability and traceability.
IoT is optimizing and transforming physical procedures to convert
• Secure Code Deployment: Code can be securely and safely deployed by
them into the elements of the digital era. In this process, piles of infor­
taking benefit of immutable storage secured by blockchain. This
mation are being created that are providing knowledge and insights at
functionality can be used by IoT systems to safely update the device’s
unthinkable levels. This data helps to improve the quality of life through
software (Lin et al., 2018).

Table 4
Comparison of consensus protocols.
Consensus protocols Blockchain Scalability Latency Fault Decentralization Throughput IoT
Type Tolerance Suitability

PoW (Kiayias and Zindros, 2020) Permission less High High <25% High Low Low
PoS (Deirmentzoglou et al., 2019; Saleh, 2018) Both High Medium <50% High High Medium
DPoS (“Delegated Proof of Stake, 2020; Yang et al., 2019) Both High Medium <50% Medium High Medium
PoI (Proof of Importance (PoI), 2015) Permission less High Medium <50% High High Medium
PoET (Intel, 2017; Chen et al., 2017) Both High Low N/A Medium Medium High
PBFT (Wang et al., 2018a; Su and Vaidya, 2017) Permissioned Low Low <33% Medium High High
Raft (Huang et al., 2020b; Corda, 2020) Permissioned Low Low <50% Medium High Medium
PoA (Bentov et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2019) Permission less High Medium <50% High Low Low
LPoS (”Leased Proof of Stake”, 2020) Permission less High Medium <50% High Low Low
Stellar (Innerbichler and Damjanovic-Behrendt, 2018; Sankar Permission less High Medium Variable High High Medium
et al., 2017)
Ripple (Schwartz and YoungsArthur, 2014; Chalaemwongwan Permission less High Medium <20% High High Medium
and Kurutach, 2018)
Tendermint (Tendermint, 2020) Permissioned High Low <33% Medium High Medium

11
S. Saxena et al.
• Service Market: By making the transactions between peers possible
without central authorities, blockchain can speed up the develop­
ment of IoT system of information and service markets, where micro-
services can be effortlessly installed and micro-payments can be done
securely in a full-proof environment.
• Dependability and traceability: The data residing in the blockchain can
be identified and validated wherever and whenever the user wants.
All of the transactions recorded on the blockchain are traceable.
Wang et al. (2019d) developed a product traceability network based
on the blockchain system which ensures the availability of product
tracing services to suppliers and retailers. The immutability feature
of blockchain also provides the dependability of IoT data as it is
nearly impossible to modify or alter the data recorded on the system.
4.2. Levels and approaches of integration
The core characteristics of blockchain such as P2P network partici­
pation, endorsing peer functionality and PoW, committing enhances the
overall complexity of the network. Therefore, it is not always efficient to
implement a mature blockchain-secured network in an IoT ecosystem.
However, certain applications like smart grids, smart contracts, e-health
systems and transportations systems might have enough facilities to
assist the required P2P functionality. The employment of above-
mentioned functionalities in generic IoT devices is a challenge due to
the restraints in storage and computing ability of devices. Thus, the
blockchain mechanisms may have to be installed in particular elements
of the IoT network (Minoli and Occhiogrosso, 2018). Another scheme
would be to use a basic decentralized ledger in which blocks are signed
digitally along the way. Different levels of blockchain IoT integration are
listed as follows.
• End-to-End Blockchains: The source miner creates the first block that
holds the transaction data. Other elements or miners in the network
then append the newly mined blocks in the blockchain as the data
flows through the framework to its final stage.
• Analytics or Storage-Level: It is also similar to an end-to-end block­
chain. However, the transaction is ‘exhausted’ at the analytics stage,
where the information is extracted and utilized for further
processing.
• Gateway-Level: The data created by individual users is not immedi­
ately protected. As soon as the data reaches a gateway, it is combined
up and stored in a blockchain along with the data from other devices.
Fig. 5. Blockchain-IoT integration approaches.
12
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
• Site-Level: The users at a given site individually creates data that is
not immediately secured. However, as soon as the data reaches the
local assembly point it is assimilated to a blockchain.
• Device-Level: Each device has the potential as well as the forced
requirement to create blockchains of data so that the data can be
immediately secured.
When integrating blockchain and IoT, it is critical to decide where
the communication in the IoT infrastructure will take place. This
communication is classified into three different categories as shown in
Fig. 5 and listed below.
• IoT-IoT: In this approach, the IoT communication takes place with no
use of blockchain. This scheme operates by storing only a small
amount of IoT data in the blockchain. Discovery and routing mech­
anisms are required for devices to be able to communicate
throughout the network. This could be the quickest approach in
terms of security and latency.
• IoT-Blockchain: IoT-Blockchain approach confirms that the important
transactions are traceable as their particulars are stored in the
blockchain. It enhances the independence of IoT devices. There is an
immutable record of interactions as all the interactions are recorded
in the blockchain. This can result in increased data and high band­
width requirement which itself is a challenge.
• Hybrid Approach: Here a part of the data and interactions is stored in
the blockchain and the remainder data is directly shared between the
devices. Fog computing and cloud computing could play a major role
in complementing the drawbacks of IoT and blockchain. A major
challenge here would be to choose which data should be stored in the
blockchain.
Despite the rapid development of blockchain technology, it is
meaningless to implement it in situations where current data structures
are sufficient. Depending upon the requirements of the application it can
be decided when it is worth to use blockchain. For example, it may not
be efficient to use blockchain only when high performance is required,
but a hybrid approach can be implemented for the same to achieve the
desired functionality. Still, loads of investigation and research is
required for a global, real-time implementation of IoT objects as
blockchain elements.
S. Saxena et al.
4.3. Security improvements in IoT using blockchain
With more and more physical devices joining the Internet, the system
vulnerabilities expand exponentially producing numerous complex se­
curity insinuations. In IoT systems, end-devices are at a high risk of at­
tacks such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS), eavesdropping,
message fabrication, blackhole and MITM attacks (Bhattacharjya et al.,
2018; Rathi et al., 2020; Miloslavskaya and Tolstoy, 2018). As observed
in botnet attacks (Kolias et al., 2017), a group of malicious devices or
nodes can attack collectively to demolish the entire IoT service frame­
work. Moreover, a central point of failure within a centralized archi­
tecture not only risks accessibility but also risks authorization and
privacy (Sicari et al., 2017). Currently, security measures implemented
in the IoT network are centralized, comprising of third-party agencies. A
blockchain-based IoT framework is less vulnerable to falsified validation
since the transaction issuing devices have their own blockchain ad­
dresses. The consensus mechanisms implemented in public blockchain
systems provide prevention of DDoS attacks by imposing a fee for every
transaction (Halpin and Piekarska, 2017). Therefore, the IoT security
measures can be improved by implementing blockchain in the system.
Utilizing blockchains for security policy prosecution and maintaining an
openly inspectable ledger of IoT interactions, exclusive of the
third-party security dependence, can be extremely advantageous to the
IoT network. Various types of blockchain based security improvements
achieved in an IoT system is explored in the subsections below.
4.3.1. Access control provision of blockchain
Many researchers have shown that enforcement of access control
policies using Blockchain in the IoT network has the potential to
improve the overall network security. Zhang et al. (Zhang and Wen,
2016) proposed a token-based approach in developing a blockchain
supported e-business model where participants can buy access permis­
sions for a temporary period using custom cryptocurrencies. Axon et al.
(Axon and Goldsmith, 2017) proposed a multi-layer blockchain frame­
work where data storage and access control are handled by different
layers. The first layer is a decentralized data record based on blockchain
for storing IoT data along with their respective blockchain addresses.
The second layer handles a stream of messages to provide a discussion of
access decisions among different parties. The final layer has access
control operations for different individuals with different roles. In
another work, Ouaddah et al. (2016) analysed another approach for
access control based on tokens where different roles are assigned to users
and access control protocols. In another work, Ali et al. (2017) suggested
an idea where access policies were coded into the blockchain to main­
tain access permissions. This helps in keeping an eye on malicious ac­
tivities and prevents the wastage of overall transaction fees. Shafagh
et al. (2017) presented a blockchain based access control solution for
data recorded in a Decentralized Hash Table (DHT). The DHT nodes
identify the blockchain data to make decisions for access control. Dagher
et al. (2018) proposed a blockchain based framework that facilitates an
efficient, interoperable and secure access to medical records by patients,
providers and third party. Ding et al. (2019) proposed to simplify the
access management using an attribute-based access control technique.
Blockchain is employed to record the distribution of attributes and
thereby prevent data tampering and single point of failure. Lyu et al.
(2020) proposed a blockchain based access control scheme to enable the
provider to share, audit and revocate his content securely. Bera et al.
(2020) proposed a similar framework to enable secure communication
among drones. Liu et al. (2020) proposed Fabric-IoT, a Hyperledger
Fabric based access control mechanism. It implements three types of
smart contracts namely device, policy and access. The device contract
implements a method to store the URL of resource data produced by
devices. Policy contract contains functions to maintain access control
policies for admin users. Access contract is the main code that imple­
ments access control techniques for normal users.
13
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
4.3.2. Data integrity management through blockchain
It is nearly impossible to create invalid blocks, alter records or hide
transactions previously stored in the blockchain architecture because of
the decentralized distributed consensus mechanism. Thus, it is required
to decentralize IoT using blockchain since the features of blockchain
mitigate the data integrity threats. Dorri et al. (2017) proposed a
multi-level blockchain based framework to store piles of IoT data and
maintain an unalterable record of datasets in the cloud. Liu et al. (2017)
highlighted a blockchain based data integrity policy where integrity
verification can be performed without the need of third-party authen­
tication on the basis of queries. The proposed scheme relies on query
issuing and data verification in order to find any data integrity loss. Yang
et al. (2017) projected a credibility assessment technique based on
blockchain for Internet of Vehicles (IoV). A reputation system based on
blockchain is proposed which resolves the credibility of the information
obtained depending upon the reputation of the source transmitter. Also,
the application of blockchain for secure firmware update of IoT end
devices is gaining research attention. In another work, Boudguiga et al.
(2017) stated the use of consortium blockchains to record firmware
updates inside the transactions, making IoT devices obtain updates in a
safe, peer-to-peer environment. In another work, Hammi et al. (2018)
proposed “bubbles of trust” to ensure a robust authentication and
identification of devices. The proposed approach facilitates the creation
of secure virtual zones named bubbles for the devices to trust and
identify each other. Chen et al. (2018a) employed blockchain based
stochastic scheme that distributes the load over IoT edge nodes by
limiting the number of cooperative nodes. Altulyan et al. (2019)
addressed the issue of data integrity from an end-to-end perspective and
proposed a holistic framework relying on three concepts, namely,
blockchain, fog computing and secret sharing. In another work, Wei
et al. (2020) proposed a distributed virtual machine model to ensure
data trust verification by enabling cooperation among multi-tenants.
Jamil et al. (2020) proposed a hyperledger fabric based novel patient
monitoring platform that provide patients with global access to immu­
table and extensive medical information. The proposed scheme out­
performed the traditional scheme in terms of resource utilization,
transaction latency and transactions per second.
4.3.3. Privacy guarantee through blockchains
The inherent addressing feature of the blockchain comprising of
public and private keys provide built-in validation and privacy features
to the blockchain applications. Aitzhan et al. (Aitzhan and Svetinovic,
2018) studied a privacy solution for smart grids focussed on hiding the
identity of the energy producers. This proposed scheme does not intend
to completely decentralize the environment as Distribution System
Operators (DSOs) are used to maintain the security of producers as
autonomous mediators. In another work, Cha et al. (2018) employed
Ethereum blockchain to manage privacy among different IoT gateways
that maintain Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices such as smart factory
tools and wearables. The interaction among these gateways are carried
out via smart contracts and remain confidential under signatures based
on blockchain. Similarly, Ali et al. (Chakraborty et al., 2018a) proposed
a technique where access control negotiations are maintained in the
header of the blockchain where off-chain data is stored using Inter
Planetary File System (IPFS). A key is provided to access the file every
time a request is granted which guarantees data privacy. Hassan et al.
(2019) discussed the privacy issues associated with blockchain-IoT
integration focussing on the daily use applications. The work discusses
five different strategies namely differential privacy, private contract,
mining services, encryption and anonymization. In another work,
Mohanty et al. (2020) proposed a lightweight model for smart homes
that relies on three set of optimizations: distributed throughput man­
agement, certificateless cryptography and lightweight consensus algo­
rithm. The proposed scheme achieved enhanced performance in terms of
energy consumption and processing time. Gai et al. (2020) proposed a
novel Internet of Edge model that integrates IoT framework with
S. Saxena et al.
blockchain and edge computing. The proposed model is devised for a
mountable and well-regulated IoT system that exploits the benefits of
edge computing and blockchain to enable privacy-preserving. Lu et al.
(2020) utilized blockchain to empower a secure data sharing platform
for distributed parties. The data sharing problem is formulated into a
machine learning problem with the help of privacy preserved federated
learning model. The achieved results show that the proposed scheme
enhanced security, accuracy and efficiency.
4.3.4. IoT availability improvement through blockchain
The inherent properties of blockchain such as decentralization im­
proves the service availability in the IoT system. The on-chain data
storage solution has built-in availability features whereas in the off-
chain storage solution the availability depends on the mechanism used
to store data. Bahga et al. (Bahga and Madisetti, 2016) created a smart
factory and manufacturing units based on blockchain where
manufacturing commands can be issued directly to the machines. In
another work, Charaborty et al. (Chakraborty et al., 2018b) demon­
strated a multilevel blockchain platform to counter the security issues in
resource-restricted IoT nodes. The end-nodes interact with each other
Table 5
Security improvements in IoT using blockchain.
Security improvements Reference
Access control provision of Zhang et al. (Zhang and Wen,
blockchain 2016)
Axon et al. (Axon and Goldsmith,
2017)
Ouaddah et al. (Ouaddah et al.,
2016)
Ali et al. (Ali et al., 2017)
Shafagh et al. (Shafagh et al.,
2017)
Dagher et al. (Dagher et al., 2018)
Ding et al. (Ding et al., 2019)
Lyu et al. (Lyu et al., 2020)
Bera et al. (Bera et al., 2020)
Liu et al. (Liu et al., 2020)
Data integrity management Dorri et al. (Dorri et al., 2017)
through blockchain Liu et al. (Liu et al., 2017)
Yang et al. (Yang et al., 2017)
Boudguiga et al. (Boudguiga
et al., 2017)
Hammi et al. (Hammi et al.,
2018)
Chen et al. (Chen et al., 2018a)
Altulyan et al. (Altulyan et al.,
2019)
Wei et al. (Wei et al., 2020)
Jamil et al. (Jamil et al., 2020)
Privacy guarantee through Aitzhan et al. (Aitzhan and
blockchains Svetinovic, 2018)
Cha et al. (Cha et al., 2018)
Ali et al. (Chakraborty et al.,
2018a)
Hassan et al. (Hassan et al., 2019)
Mohanty et al. (Mohanty et al.,
2020)
Gai et al. (Gai et al., 2020)
Lu et al. (Lu et al., 2020)
Availability improvement through Bahga et al. (Bahga and Madisetti,
blockchain 2016)
Charaborty et al. (Chakraborty
et al., 2018b)
Iftekhar et al. (Iftekhar et al.,
2020)
Ozyilmaz et al. (Ozyilmaz and
Yurdakul, 2019)
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
using higher-layer devices which have higher computational and storage
capacity. As the higher-level devices are in a blockchain framework, the
liveness of the proposal is guaranteed. Iftekhar et al. (2020) integrated
the existing conventional food tracking infrastructure with the enter­
prise ready blockchain platform named Hyperledger Fabric. The trans­
action records remain secured and accessible to the stakeholders based
on the agreed set of policies. Ozyilmaz et al. (Ozyilmaz and Yurdakul,
2019) proposed a standardized IoT infrastructure that is resistant and
fault tolerant to DDoS attacks. The proposed system uses Ethereum
blockchain, a distributed data storage platform named ‘Swarm’ and an
emerging network technology named ‘LoRa’. The proposed system
minimized security risks and ensured high availability.
The afore discussed blockchain based security improvements ach­
ieved in an IoT systems are summarized in Table 5.
4.4. Challenges in IoT and blockchain integration
Apart from numerous improvements, there also exists several chal­
lenges that are encountered when integrating IoT domain and block­
chain technology. Some of the major challenges faced in this integration
Year Contribution
2016 Token-based access permissions for off-chain records
2017 PKI system based on multi-layer blockchain framework
2017 Token-based access control strategy for assigning varied roles to the users.
2017 Policies for access control coded in smart contracts for IPFS files
2017 Access permission coded in smart contracts for data stored in DHT
2018 Blockchain based framework to enable efficient, interoperable and secured access to medical
records
2019 Simplify the access management using an attribute-based access control technique
2020 Access control scheme to enable the provider to securely share, audit and revocate
2020 Enable secure communication among drones
2020 Hyperledger Fabric based access control mechanism
2017 Cloud-based data records maintained by multilevel blockchains
2017 Blockchain based data integrity policy that relies on query issuing and data verification
2017 Incoming command credibility reputation system based on blockchain
2017 Consortium blockchains to record firmware updates inside the transactions
2018 “Bubbles of trust” to ensure a robust authentication and identification of devices
2018 Blockchain based stochastic scheme that distributes the load over IoT edge nodes
2019 A holistic framework relying on three concepts, namely, blockchain, fog computing and secret
sharing
2020 Distributed virtual machine model to ensure data trust verification by enabling cooperation
among multi-tenants
2020 Hyperledger fabric based novel patient monitoring platform that provide patients with global
access to immutable and extensive medical information
2018 Privacy solution for smart grids focussed on hiding the identity of the energy producers
2018 Ethereum blockchain to manage privacy among different IoT gateways
2018 Access control negotiations are maintained in the header of the blockchain
2019 Privacy issues associated with blockchain-IoT integration focussing on the daily use applications
2020 Lightweight model for smart homes
2020 Internet of Edge model that integrates IoT framework with blockchain and edge computing
2020 Blockchain to empower a secure data sharing platform for distributed parties
2016 Blockchain based smart factory and manufacturing units
2018 Multilevel blockchain platform to counter the security issues in resource-restricted IoT nodes
2020 Food tracking infrastructure with the enterprise ready blockchain platform named Hyperledger
Fabric
2020 Standardized IoT infrastructure that is resistant and fault tolerant to DDoS attacks
14
S. Saxena et al. Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050

are explored in the subsections below. 4.4.5. Data privacy and anonymity
Numerous IoT applications work with private data therefore, it is
4.4.1. Security necessary to consider data anonymity and confidentiality. The problems
Several research works have labelled blockchain as a major of data privacy introduce greater complexity in the blockchain itself as it
requirement for the much-needed security enhancement in IoT. Never­ starts from the data assortment stage and extends to the communication
theless, a major challenge in the blockchain-IoT integration is the and application stage (Choo et al., 2020). It is a major challenge to
trustworthiness of the information generated by the IoT devices. Even secure the devices, since it entails the implementation of cryptographic
though, blockchain provides data immutability and transaction valida­ software into the devices. The limitation of computation resources and
tion but once the corrupted data enters, it will reside within the block­ restriction to economic viability should also be taken into account. IoT
chain. Also, there are various risks such as rejection of services, MITM device constraints often make it essential to secure communication using
and eavesdropping (Neshenko et al., 2019). The devices are prone to be encryption standards such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), Secure
attacked or hacked preventing them from working over the security Sockets Layer (SSL) and Internet Protocol Security (IPSec). Trust is also a
breaches or possible bugs. The Blockchain-IoT combination can have major aspect of IoT where blockchain implementation can play a vital
serious consequences on the communication of IoT devices. At present, role.
the IoT application protocols like MQTT (Messaging Queuing Telemetry
Transport) and CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) use the safety 4.4.6. Legislative issues
protocols such as DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) or TLS Blockchains, especially with respect to cryptocurrencies, has brought
(Transport Layer Security) to provide communication (Quincozes et al., with it a lot of controversy regarding authenticity. A country’s laws and
2019). However, these schemes are heavy, complex and require su­ regulations about data privacy also affect the IoT domain, for example,
premacy of key organisation. the data protection directive. With the emergence of new technologies,
majority of these laws are now becoming obsolete and are needed to be
4.4.2. Consensus revised. The development of new standards and rules can degrade the
The resource constrained nature of IoT devices make them incom­ security features of devices. In this way it can help towards building the
patible for solving consensus algorithms, such as PoW, directly. As most trusted and secure IoT network. Therefore, the laws of different
mentioned, there are a lot of suggestions for consensus mechanisms, countries regarding information handling and information security
though they are, generally unformed and are not tested much. Even proves to be a big challenge in tackling IoT. The issue even deteriorates
though there are certain proposals to incorporate full blockchain nodes when combined with blockchain (Novak, 2019; Gürkaynak et al., 2018).
into the IoT objects, mining is yet a major challenge in IoT. In Babelchain The aforementioned challenges associated with IoT and blockchain
(Alaslani et al., 2019), a consensus algorithm known as Proof of Un­ integration are summarized in Table 6.
derstanding is suggested to target the implementation of PoW. The
protocol, rather than making miners to compute hash algorithms, ad­ 5. Blockchain based IoT applications
vises conversion from various other protocols with less energy
consumption. Developers and researchers around the world are innovating inge­
nious ways to integrate blockchain in IoT systems (Alfandi et al., 2020;
4.4.3. Storage capability and scalability Wang et al., 2019e). These use cases focus on taking benefits from the
Scalability and storage capability of blockchains are still under inherent features of blockchain such as immutability, fault tolerance,
debate, but with respect to IoT, these inadequacies make the imple­ capability to run smart contracts, cryptographic security, decentralized
mentation of blockchain in IoT a much greater challenge. In the IoT
system, this drawback can prove to be an enormous obstacle to its Table 6
combination with blockchain. Moreover, blockchain was not created to Challenges associated with IoT and blockchain integration.
record huge data sets such as those generated from the devices in the IoT
Areas Challenges
framework. These challenges should be addressed before integrating
Security (Neshenko et al., 2019; • If corrupted data enters the chain, it will
blockchain with IoT. At present, a lot of data gathered from the devices
Quincozes et al., 2019) always reside
is stored and a small part is used for generalizing actions and extracting • Risks rejection of services, MITM and
knowledge. Theoretically, various techniques to compress, normalize eavesdropping
and filter data have been proposed. Data compression can improve • Resource constrained devices are prone to
computing tasks, transmission and storing large volumes of IoT gener­ be attacked or hacked
Consensus (Alaslani et al., 2019) • Devices are incompatible for solving
ated data (Qi et al., 2020; Mangia et al., 2019).
complex puzzle or consensus algorithms
• Mining is a major challenge in IoT
4.4.4. Smart contracts Storage capability and scalability (Qi • Large amount of generated data
Smart contracts can prove to be beneficial for IoT but there are et al., 2020; Mangia et al., 2019) • Need for techniques to compress,
numerous ways in which the smart contracts can be implemented in the normalize and filter data
Smart contracts (Rouhani and Deters, • Validation and verification of smart
IoT framework. Smart contracts can ensure a dependable and safe pro­ 2019) contracts.
cessing engine. These contracts or codes can safely replicate the concept • Retrieving data from different sources can
behind IoT applications, although certain challenges are there which overburden the contracts.
should be referred to beforehand. Since the IoT structure may get un­ • Resources to perform a large amount of
processing are not shared
stable at times, validating and verifying these contracts could be
Data privacy and anonymity (Choo • Problems of data privacy introduce
compromised. Retrieving data from different sources could further et al., 2020) greater complexity in the blockchain itself
overburden the contracts. Even though the smart contracts are decen­ • Major challenge to secure the devices.
tralized and distributive, the resources to perform a large amount of • The limitation of computation resources
processing are not shared as the execution of the contract code takes and restriction to economic viability.
• Laws will need to be updated to wrap new
place in every node simultaneously. Smart contracts must support group models
mechanisms and filtering to address the requirements of IoT (Rouhani Legislative Issues (Novak, 2019; • Country’s laws and regulations about data
and Deters, 2019). Gürkaynak et al., 2018) privacy
• Majority of these laws are obsolete and
needs to be revised.

15
S. Saxena et al.
control, data integrity and authentication. It is evident that some of the
applications use patented blockchains developed for their particular
needs rather than using open source blockchains like Ethereum and
Hyperledger. Various types of blockchain based IoT applications are
explored in the subsections below.
5.1. Blockchain-based smart home
Dorri et al. (2017) proposed a lightweight, secure and private
infrastructure of a blockchain-based smart home application which is
centrally managed by its owner and the miners provide a distributed key
to the interacting devices as per the scheme provided by the user. This
policy ensures controlled IoT data access as well as guarantees avail­
ability, confidentiality and integrity. However, the Cluster Heads (CHs),
the cloud storage and the Home-Minister in this scheme provide a single
point of failure at the corresponding layer. Furthermore, in the proposed
scheme, it is the responsibility of the CH to decide whether to reject a
block or retain it. In another work, Qashlan et al. (2019) proposed
Ethereum based private blockchain implementation for smart homes
where the owner can monitor and access the home appliances. Shi et al.
(She et al., 2019b) proposed a homomorphic encryption-based data
structure to record the transactions of a smart home and at the same time
protect customer privacy. Lin et al. (2020a) constructed a novel safe
mutual verification system, which can be implemented in smart homes.
The researchers described the security and privacy constraints,
including anonymity, traceability, and confidentiality that the proposed
system fulfils. Afzal et al. (2020) presented a decentralized demand side
management system for numerous smart homes in community micro­
grid. The proposed system is integrated with the IoT smart meter and
energy consumption game is planned for decreasing the electricity cost.
5.2. Supply chain management
To ensure a product’s transparency and authenticity in its overall
supply chain cycle, blockchain is an ideal platform. It helps to maintain a
formal registry that tracks the origin and the modifications in the
products in the supply chain. In a supply chain, the sensor framework,
linking storage coolers and cargo trucks can be connected to the digital
ledger in order to keep the track of the location of the product. A Global
Digital Ledger based on IBM Bluemix (Bluemix is nowloud:, 2017) is
launched by Everledger to certify the diamonds digitally and to
contribute in the avoiding of frauds. Complete information is stored by
the ledger including transaction history and ownership. The organisa­
tion claims that it uses a hybrid blockchain replica in order to exploit the
benefit of permission-controlled access. Malik et al. (2019b) proposed
TrustChain, a three-layered consortium blockchain based trust man­
agement framework to trace communications among supply chain par­
ticipants. In another work, Botcha et al. (2019) utilized the concept of
blockchain and IoT edge devices to enhance traceability in pharma
supply chains. Vaio et al. (Vaio and Varriale, 2020) investigated the
implications of blockchain considering the decision-making process in a
supply chain. Italian airport used a blockchain based collaborative
decision-making platform that promotes cooperation between the air
traffic controllers and the aviation industry. Liu et al. (Liu and Li, 2020)
proposed a blockchain based product information traceability frame­
work to achieve effective tag verification in cross border e-commerce
supply chain. In another work, Yadav et al. (Yadav and Singh, 2020)
proposed to integrate blockchain technology and supply chains to ach­
ieve sustainability. Despite having practical implementation of block­
chain in supply chain management, there are still issues of implementing
blockchain. Also, there are doubts regarding the condition and situation
of a product in shipment to the customer which is presently done by a
sensing device or a human manually. Since no other node knows the
current state of the product, despite the one broadcasting it, there must
be a component of reliability, such that its input is accepted in the
ledger. The complete supply chain can be compromised if there is no
16
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
trust (Wamba and Queiroz, 2020; Duan et al., 2020).
5.3. Impact on business models
Blockchain promotes the growth of entirely new businesses and can
contribute towards shutdown of traditional incumbents. Zhang et al.
(Zhang and Wen, 2016) offered a blockchain based decentralized elec­
tronic business model aimed to distribute smart properties and paid data
such as a parking space, automobiles, commodities, fuel and online
shopping. The proposed model relies on the idea of the Decentralized
Autonomous Corporations (DACs) which is automated by smart con­
tracts without any human involvement. The DAC model can be imple­
mented for every sensor or device to exchange its paid information for
some services like software upgradation, power and additional modules.
Burer et al. (Bürer et al., 2019) considered the drivers for use cases of
blockchain in energy industry and explored the role of blockchain for
sustainability. Lizcano et al. (2019) evaluated the benefits of blockchain
technology to manage transactions of competencies, teaching and con­
tent to eliminate the existing gap between the working world and aca­
demic world. In another work, Schneider et al. (2020) developed a
theoretical framework to analyse blockchain implications on value
creation. The framework shows that the blockchain technology serves as
an agent, a capability, and a resource to its users. Therefore, it con­
tributes to the emergence, enablement and efficiency gains in various
business models and business ecosystems. Prybila et al. (2020) proposed
a bitcoin-based business process management system for seamless
verification and execution monitoring of choreographies and at the same
time preserving independence and anonymity of the participants.
5.4. Security for smart cities
Conventionally, problems related to complications in distributing
data retrieved from heterogeneous devices and implementing to deliver
cross-functionality are faced due to unavailability of a general standard
for devices. Biswas et al. (Biswas and Muthukkumarasamy, 2016) pre­
sented a secure communication framework among smart cities, based on
blockchain. Authors claimed that the implementation of blockchain to
the nodes in the smart city will ensure a distributed platform where all of
the devices would be able to interact safely. Also, data integrity and data
availability attacks will also be prevented using blockchain. It also
provides an immutable ledger of transactions, that can be later used for
auditing. In another work, Rahman et al. (2019) utilized spatio-temporal
smart contracts to design a secure infrastructure for economy sharing in
mega smart cities. Yetis et al. (Yetis and Sahingoz, 2019) utilized the
distributed blockchain node structure with blocks to design a device
authorization system. In another work, Sabrina et al. (Sabrina, 2019)
proposed an access control model for assigning resources in a large scale
IoT system such as smart cities. Access control for external users are
achieved by using public blockchain and smart contracts whereas access
control for internal users are achieved using local off-chain storage. In
another work, Hakak et al. (Makhdoom et al., 2020) presented a
blockchain based conceptual framework for securing smart cities.
Makhdoom et al. (Hakak et al., 2020) proposed a blockchain based se­
curity framework named “PrivySharing” to enable secure IoT data
sharing within a smart city. In order to achieve data privacy, blockchain
is divided into channels having specific type of data from finite number
of authorized organizations. In addition to this, the data within these
channels are further secured and isolated by using encryption and pri­
vate data collection respectively.
5.5. Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETS)
Conventionally, VANETS are managed by a centralized working
authority. There are many limitations to this arrangement such as ex­
istence of a single point of failure and restrcited user privacy due to
centralized management. Leiding et al. (2016) proposed an Ethereum
S. Saxena et al. Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050

Table 7
Blockchain based IoT applications.
Application Reference Year Contribution

Blockchain-based Dorri et al. (Dorri et al., 2017) 2017 Blockchain-based lightweight, secure and private infrastructure
smart home Qashlan et al. (Qashlan et al., 2019) 2019 Ethereum based private blockchain implementation
Shi et al. (She et al., 2019b) 2019 Homomorphic encryption-based data structure to record the transactions
Lin et al. (Lin et al., 2020a) 2020 Safe mutual verification system
Afzal et al. (Afzal et al., 2020) 2020 Decentralized demand side management system for smart homes in community microgrid.
Supply Chain Malik et al. (Malik et al., 2019b) 2019 Consortium blockchain based TrustChain to trace communications among supply chain participants
Management Botcha et al. (Botcha et al., 2019) 2019 Enhance traceability in Pharma supply chain
Vaio et al. (Vaio and Varriale, 2020) 2020 Collaborative decision-making platform that promotes cooperation participants
Liu et al. (Liu and Li, 2020) 2020 Blockchain based product information traceability
Yadav et al. (Yadav and Singh, 2020) 2020 Integrate blockchain technology and supply chains to achieve sustainability
Wamba et al. (Wamba and Queiroz, 2020 Bibliometric analysis on blockchain and its interplay with supply chain management
2020)
Duan et al. (Duan et al., 2020) 2020 Blockchains within food supply chain to inprove food traceability, efficiency and information
transparency
Impact on business Zhang et al. (Zhang and Wen, 2016) 2016 Blockchain based decentralized electronic business model aimed to distribute smart properties and
models paid data
Burer et al. (Bürer et al., 2019) 2019 Use cases of blockchain in energy industry for sustainability
Lizcano et al. (Lizcano et al., 2019) 2019 Blockchain technology to manage transactions of competencies, teaching and content
Schneider et al. (Schneider et al., 2020) 2020 Framework to analyse blockchain implications on value creation.
Prybila et al. (Prybila et al., 2020) 2020 Process management system for seamless verification and execution monitoring of choreographies
Security for smart Biswas et al. (Biswas and 2016 Blockchain based secure communication framework among smart cities
cities Muthukkumarasamy, 2016)
Rahman et al. (Rahman et al., 2019) 2019 Spatio-temporal services for economy sharing in mega smart cities.
Yetis et al. (Yetis and Sahingoz, 2019) 2019 Authorization system for IoT devices using the distributed blockchain node structure
Sabrina et al. (Sabrina, 2019) 2019 SRBAC model aimed to assign resource access rights
Hakak et al. (Makhdoom et al., 2020) 2020 Blockchain based conceptual framework for securing smart cities
Makhdoom et al. (Hakak et al., 2020) 2020 “PrivySharing” to enable secure IoT data sharing within a smart city.
VANETs Leiding et al. (Leiding et al., 2016) 2016 Ethereum based self-managing VANET for problem-reaction based verification
Javaid et al. (Javaid et al., 2019) 2019 Blockchain based trust less system for registering IVs.
Ali et al. (Ali et al., 2019b) 2019 Bilinear pairing based certificateless public key signature
Deng et al. (Deng and Gao, 2020) 2020 Blockchain enabled electronic payment scheme in VANETs
Luo et al. (Luo et al., 2020) 2020 Blockchain based data structure to record the trustworthiness of vehicles and provide trust-based
location privacy preserving in VANETs.
Blockchain for Xia et al. (Xia et al., 2017) 2017 MeDShare for efficient data sharing among medical custodians
Healthcare Gordon et al. (Gordon and Catalini, 2018 Simplify the patient-centric interoperability in healthcare using blockchain technology
2018)
Wang et al. (Wang et al., 2018b) 2018 Consortium blockchain for connecting patients, health bureaus and hospitals in order to enable data
sharing, care auditability and review of medical records
Griggs et al. (Griggs et al., 2018) 2018 Maintaining PHI by utilizing smart contracts and a private blockchain
Chen et al. (Chen et al., 2018b) 2018 Maintain personal medical records based on cloud storage implementing blockchain
Omar et al. (Omar et al., 2019) 2019 Patient pivotal healthcare system for data management
Shahnaz et al. (Shahnaz et al., 2019) 2019 Framework for implementing blockchain in EHRs
Celesti et al. (Celesti et al., 2020) 2020 Direct clinical examination of patients with the help of IoT enabled medical devices
Wang et al. (Wang et al., 2020b) 2020 Consortium blockchain based framework named “GuardHealth” for secure data sharing

based self-managing VANET for problem-reaction based verification.
Each user is identified by the hash of its public key or Ethereum address
and are required to pay (in Ethers) to exploit application facilities. This
payment serves as incentives for vendors providing services on
Ethereum-based applications. However, the work does not explain what
data about each device will be recorded on the blockchain. Javaid et al.
(2019) a trustless system model for VANETs that employs a certificate
authority and blockchain for registering Intelligent Vehicles (IVs). Ali
et al. (2019b) proposed a bilinear pairing based certificateless public key
signature aimed to enable conditional privacy preserving authentication
in VANETs. The proposed scheme included blockchain for efficiently
implementing transparency of pseudo-entities before signature verifi­
cation. In another work, Deng et al. (Deng and Gao, 2020) proposed a
blockchain enabled electronic payment scheme in VANETs. Luo et al.
(2020) proposed a blockchain based data structure aimed to record the
trustworthiness of vehicles and provide trust-based location privacy
preserving in VANETs.
5.6. Blockchain for healthcare
The traditional client-server data management systems are vulner­
able to centralized data stewardship, data privacy and single point of
failure. Blockchain technology promises to solve some of these inherent
issues associated with healthcare systems owing to its replication
mechanism and security features. Xia et al. (2017) proposed a
blockchain-based system named “MeDShare” aimed to solve the data
sharing issues among medical custodians. The proposed framework
implements an access control mechanism and smart contracts to effi­
ciently trace the behaviour of the data and revoke access to offending
individuals in case of permission violations. In another work, Gordon
et al. (Gordon and Catalini, 2018) aimed to simplify the patient-centric
interoperability in healthcare using blockchain technology. Wang et al.
(2018b) presented a Parallel Healthcare Systems (PHSs) framework
using Artificial systems, Computational experiments and Parallel
execution (ACP) as its platform in order to achieve accurate and effec­
tive diagnosis. The presented PHS framework relies on consortium
blockchain for connecting patients, health bureaus and hospitals in
order to enable data sharing, care auditability and review of medical
records. Similarly, Griggs et al. (2018) proposed a system for main­
taining Protected Health Information (PHI) by utilizing smart contracts
and a private blockchain. Chen et al. (2018b) designed a storage blue­
print to maintain personal medical records based on cloud storage
implementing blockchain. Similarly, Omar et al. (2019) presented a
patient pivotal healthcare system for data management that implements
blockchain as the storage unit to obtain confidentiality. Shahnaz et al.
(2019) proposed a framework for implementing blockchain in

17
S. Saxena et al.
Electronics Health Record (EHR) and defined granular access user rules
so as to achieve secured storage of electronic medical records. In another
work, Celesti et al. (2020) proposed a tele-medical laboratory service
that enables direct clinical examination of patients with the help of IoT
enabled medical devices. Wang et al. (2020b) proposed a secure, pro­
ductive, dynamic and decentralized consortium blockchain based
framework named “GuardHealth” for secure data sharing. Apart from
handling sensitive information, the proposed scheme also maintains
authentication, confidentiality and efficient data preserving.
The afore discussed blockchain based IoT applications are summa­
rized in Table 7.
6. Future challenges and research directions
Even though blockchain is a powerful technology, it is still under
development and several obstacles are faced in the adoption of block­
chain for IoT systems irrespective of its innumerable advantages. Ma­
jority of these challenges arise due to the utilization of blockchain
technology in systems that have limited capabilities in terms of re­
sources, scalability and privacy preservation. This section provides a
brief overview of the challenges that restricts its practicality for
numerous security applications discussed in aforementioned sections.
Some of these challenges are explored in the subsections below.
6.1. Edge device constraints and reputation in IoT
As IoT uses traditional Internet for connecting smart devices and
providing automated tasks, while integration with blockchain technol­
ogy, many devices pose issues, due to limited computation and
networking capabilities. Furthermore, these devices cannot process PoW
consensus because of constraints on computational power and battery.
Apart from this, the edge devices suffer from lack of authorization and
authentication standards and limited interoperability. The interopera­
bility can be enabled for different edge devices by implementing
blockchain that is focused on storing structured and unstructured data
transmission over data communication networks. Fortino et al. (2020a)
analysed the role of reputation and trust in integration of IoT with
fog/edge computing. The work considered intelligent agents technology
for incorporating social behaviour in the smart object’s community. In
another work, Fortino et al. (2020b) proposed a blockchain based
reputation model that relies on reputation capital of each agent. The
proposed model yields better group composition and achieves protec­
tion against the misleading agents. Extension of blockchain to the IoT
edge is an important research direction and several recent works have
been proposed in this regard. Lin et al. (2019) developed a consortium
blockchain for efficient and secure knowledge trading in edge
AI-enabled IoT using smart contracts and proof of trading consensus
mechanism. Xu et al. (2020a) proposed a lightweight blockchain
framework using dynamic trust right algorithm to improve the
throughput and transaction load in IIoT edge applications. However, the
major challenge in this research direction would be to provide IoT
gateways and devices with mechanisms to publish transactions on the
blockchain using constrained devices, without validating blocks in a
centralized pool.
6.2. Public-private blockchain trade-off
Blockchains are technologically immature to compete with the pro­
cessing speed of traditional centralized systems in financial applications
(Yao et al., 2019; Al-Jaroodi and Mohamed, 2019b). Even if, the
transaction throughput of private blockchains are much higher, a total
decentralization is not provided as the organisation itself controls the
blockchain. Private blockchain consensus mechanisms, such as PBFT (Su
and Vaidya, 2017), require rounds of voting to obtain Byzantine Fault
Tolerance which is not appropriate for implementing in public block­
chains. In public blockchains, latency depends on the lottery-based
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
consensus mechanisms, thus a trade-off between decentralization and
high speed is created by the consensus mechanisms. Therefore, this
trade-off needs to further investigation.
6.3. Complex technical barriers
Numerous works have been proposed that focussed on securing IoT
systems using blockchain technology. Shen et al. (2019) proposed a
privacy preserving SVM scheme named “secureSVM” tha ensures
confidentiality for the blockchain-based encrypted IoT data. Biswas
et al. (2019) utilized the concept of local peer network to restrict the
number of transactions entering the global blockchain without
compromising the peer validation of transactions at global and local
level. In another work, Alghamdi et al. (2020) proposed a consortium
blockchain based secure service provisioning scheme and
reputation-based incentive mechanism to enable fair payment among
lightweight clients. However, the issues regarding security, scalability,
stability constraints and graphical development of Blockchain IoT ap­
plications are still needed to be addressed. Furthermore, challenges
regarding the design of validation protocols, transaction capacity or
smart contracts implementation also needs to be addressed from varied
angles.
6.4. IoT blockchain and cellular networks
In the rapid development of the LTE cellular network, research is in
progress for finding a balanced decentralized and centralized network.
The essential security features of the application layer of blockchain can
be implemented in IoT edge devices by decentralizing cellular networks
from the perspective of control (Haddad et al., 2020). It can also help in
influencing the features provided by lower layers of cellular networks
like data authentication and protection. Although most of the edge de­
vices depend on cellular networking, the research is still at very early
stages in decentralizing cellular networks.
6.5. Smart contracts scripting standards for security
Regardless of the massive security features provide by blockchain
technology, there are major exploitable voids in the smart contracts that
make the system vulnerable (Singh et al., 2020). Due to the open source
nature of the smart contract code, it is possible for the involved parties to
determine how the code is initiated and what it does. Adversaries
frequently exploits the attacks related to mining pools, transaction
authentication, cryptocurrency wallets and smart contracts. Parity
Wallet hack and the DAO attack are the result of ingenuous bugs within
the smart contract code. was an example of attackers exploiting these
voids (Sayeed et al., 2020). Furthermore, assigning execution of smart
contracts to machines brings some problems with it, since it makes them
susceptible to technical concerns like bugs, communication failures,
viruses or hacking. The immutable and irreversible nature of the
blockchain framework make “bugs in coding” a critical problem. Formal
validation of the contract logic and exploring precision of the contracts
are some of the important areas that can serve as future research di­
rection. Also, developing a secure smart contract scripting standard for
blockchain IoT integration needs further investigation and is a strong
future research direction.
6.6. Rapid field testing
Heterogenous blockchains for different applications are needed to be
identified in the near future. Furthermore, the first step in combining
blockchain with IoT environment is to decide the type of blockchain
which satisfies the purpose (Alaba et al., 2017). Therefore, a system is
mandatory for checking various type of blockchains. This can be per­
formed in two stages namely standardization and testing. In the stan­
dardization stage, all the needed requirements are to be analysed and
S. Saxena et al.
negotiated after deeply understanding the market, services, products
and supply chains. Once the blockchain type is decided, testing and
validation needs to be performed against the requirement. In the testing
stage, numerous criteria need to be evaluated such as security,
throughput, energy efficiency, blockchain capacity, latency and privacy.
Designing an efficient standardization and testing frameworks can be
another interesting future research direction.
6.7. Blockchain towards green IoT
The exponential rise in the global industry activity has contributed
towards global warming due to increased fossil fuel energy consumption
and technological processes resulting in high carbon footprints. Green
IoT has gained considerable attention as increased energy consumption
by IoT devices have diverted our focus towards realizing an eco-friendly
IoT system. Green IoT aims to provide an energy efficient service by
enabling the production and use of renewable energy (Janhunen et al.,
2018; Poongodi et al., 2020). However, malicious IoT devices can
launch energy attacks and thereby cause significant energy loss. Owing
to its decentralized and secure nature, blockchain technology can
contribute towards creating a secure, low-power and eco-friendly IoT
system (Sharma et al., 2020). Several works have been proposed in this
regard. Jiang et al. (2019) proposed a blockchain-based secure and
distributed wireless power transfer architecture that offers mitigated
energy loss for low-power IoT devices. Similarly, Yazdinejad et al.
(2020) proposed a secure and low latency PoW protocol to improve the
overall computation processing speed of blockchain based green IoT
networks. However, research exploring the role of blockchain technol­
ogy in green IoT ecosystems is still in its nascent stage and needs further
investigation.
6.8. Incentive mechanism in BCIoT
The mining mechanism in blockchain technology involves high
computational resources. IoT devices, therefore, purchase computa­
tional power from edge servers and divest the gigantic tasks. Ding et al.
(2020) suggested a two-stage Stackelberg game incentive mechanism
where the blockchain platform act as a leader and IoT nodes act as
followers. This motivates IoT devices to purchase more computational
resources for participating in the mining process. The increased sale of
computational resources would result in a more secure IoT environment
and at the same time assures the profits of blockchain platform. Simi­
larly, Lin et al. (2020b) devised a similar incentive mechanism for
trading energy knowledge along with optimum economic incentives and
power distribution techniques using Stackelberg game mechanism. In
another work, Alghamdi et al. (2020) proposed an incentive mechanism
based on the reputation of Service Providers. The proposed mechanism
encourages the Service Providers to leverage precise and protected
services at an affordable cost to the lightweight clients. Yin et al. (2020)
proposed an incentive mechanism for Mobile Crowdsensing IoT. This
mechanism is crucial for active participation of multiple vehicles and
task collaboration in the Internet of Vehicles network. An innovative
time-window based procedure is devised to orchestrate the tasks among
vehicles and also provide incentives to the vehicles to participate. In
another work, Wu et al. (2018) introduced a novel incentive architec­
ture, referred to as SmartRetro, for incentivizing and attracting distrib­
uted IoT devices to contribute in retrospective vulnerability detection
and showcase results powered by blockchain. The authors performed a
theoretical analysis of security and performance to demonstrate the
achievements of SmartRetro. Lin et al. (2019) proposed a P2P knowl­
edge market to make knowledge tradable in IoT enabled with edge-AI.
The researchers developed a knowledge consortium blockchain for
safe and well-organized management of knowledge including knowl­
edge coins. Even though numerous incentive mechanisms have been
proposed, it is still an emerging research area.
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
6.9. Scalability of BCoT
The state-of-the-art IoT framework still faces numerous scalability
problem with respect to both devices and underlying communication.
Scalability is also a major hurdle in the development of blockchain
technology. Rivera et al. (2019) proposed a blockchain-framework to
address the scalability and security issues in the IoT network. It is
blockchain-based IoT framework in which a set of edge nodes are inte­
grated to offer security and processing functionalities. In another work,
Dang et al. (Le-Dang and Le-Ngoc, 2019) suggested an architecture for
scalable reconfiguration of immense IoT devices based on blockchain
technology. The IoT devices are decoupled from blockchain operations
in order to minimize resource utilization using a REST API. In another
work, Lao et al. (2020) demonstrated a (GPBFT) Geographic Practical
Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus protocol which is a location-based
scalable consensus mechanism. The main concept behind this consensus
is that a majority of Blockchain IoT applications depend upon a fixed IoT
edge device for data collection and processing. The GPBFT utilizes the
geographical information to reach consensus, thereby avoiding Sybil
attacks. Biswas et al. (2019) proposed a local peer network-based so­
lution to address the challenges of scalability and resource constraints in
a blockchain-based IoT network. The local peer network limits the
number of transactions entering the global Blockchain by implementing
a scalable local ledger, without negotiating on the peer validation of
transactions at the local and global level. In another work, Arellanes
et al. (Arellanes and Lau, 2019) presented a DX-MAN semantics
leveraging technique for apprehending distributed data flows in IoT
systems. The technique is validated with the help of smart contracts and
experimentally analysed to examine scalability. Similarly, Baouya et al.
(2020) proposed a blockchain system for scalable management of IoT
devices. The proposed system deployed smart contracts to provide the
functionality of ledger update. Even though, significant amount of work
has been done in this regard, new theories and technologies needs to be
developed to enhance the scalability of BCoT.
6.10. Mobile edge computing (MEC) for blockchains
MEC is a standard architecture for distributed cloud computing that
moves the computational overload from a centralized cloud, closer to
the customer, to the edge of the network. Instead of transmitting whole
data to the cloud for analysis, the edge of the network processes, stores
and analyses the data for further utilization. IoT and MEC together play
a significant role in modernizing the interaction of humans and the
physical world. Sekaran et al. (2020) analysed the implementation of
blockchain technology with 6G enabled IoT framework which utilizes
the power of MEC in order to reduce the computation overload and
increase overall performance and efficiency. In another work, Asher­
alieva et al. (Asheralieva and Niyato, 2020) studied the pricing and
resource management in the IoT system which use services based on
blockchain and MEC. The model use servers based on clouds to gather
information from IoT nodes using a set of peers. The MEC model push
the task of peers to blockchain server using Unmanned Arial Vehicles
(UAVs). Similarly, Kumar et al. (2020) proposed a framework known as
BlockEdge to address the problems faced by current IoT networks. The
BlockEdge framework is a combination of blockchain and edge
computing which aids the IoT network in terms of latency, network
usage and power consumption. Similarly, Xu et al. (2020b) presented
Edgence for managing huge distributed decentralized applications
(dApps) in IoT scenarios. It utilize edge clouds to access IoT nodes and
further use in-built blockchains to accomplish self-administration and
self-management on edge clouds. In another work, Wu et al. (2020)
considered an IoT-Edge-Cloud Computing scenario based on blockchain
technology which utilize the advantages of both MEC and MCC. The
authors in this work also developed an EEDTO (Energy-Efficient Dy­
namic Task Offloading) algorithm by selecting the optimum computing
place, either on the MEC server, MCC server or on the IoT device itself
S. Saxena et al.
taking into consideration the joint minimization of task response time
and resource consumption. Similarly, Xu et al. (2020c) explained
BeCome, a Blockchain-based Computation Offloading Method. The re­
searchers employed Blockchain to ensure data integrity in the IoT
network along with MEC in order to aid offloading in cloud computing.
Blockchain based 6G-enabled mobile edge computation for IoT auto­
mation needs further investigation and is a strong future research
direction.
6.11. Directed acyclic graph (DAG) based blockchains
With massive advancements related to optimized authentication
mechanism, efficiency, high scalability and support for multiparty
environment and IoT, DAG architecture is quickly replacing conven­
tional blockchain architectures (Pervez et al., 2018). Zhao et al. (Zhao
and Yu, 2019) presented a critical analysis on two different DAG based
models for blockchain namely IOTA and Hashgraph. The authors also
provided an in-depth analysis on the different blockchain architectures
and the challenges faced by them while combining with IoT framework.
In another work, Li et al. (2020b) investigated the impact of network
load on security and performance of DAG based ledger using tangle
consensus mechanism. The trade-off between confirmation delay and
security level acts as guidance for practical deployment of DAG block­
chains. Similarly, Cullen et al. (2020) analysed parasite chain attack
scenario which focuses on destroying the immutability and irrevers­
ibility of the blockchain with respect to DAG-based blockchain of IOTA
foundation. Authors compared the traditional blockchain platforms with
DAG-based blockchain systems in these attack scenarios. In another
work, Bhandary et al. (2020) highlighted the use of blockchain tech­
nology focussing on a newer version of DAG based architecture called
IOTA. The practical limitation of classical blockchain framework and the
installation of IOTA for authenticated transmission of sensor data is also
highlighted. Similarly, Cao et al. (2019) investigated the results of
network load on DAG consensus mechanism for blockchain based IoT
systems. The consensus mechanism dynamics for DAG based IoT systems
are demonstrated specifically by applying Markov chain model. How­
ever, research exploring the DAG based blockchains is still in its nascent
stage and needs further investigation.
7. Conclusion
The exponential rise in adoption of IoT led to the emergence of
numerous security vulnerabilities ranging from attacks on data to at­
tacks on devices. The current IoT devices are insecure and impotent of
defending themselves majorly due to its resource constrained nature,
immature standards, poor interoperability, absence of secure software
and hardware design, deployment and development. This has drawn
huge attention from the research community and numerous efforts have
been carried out in order to define a robust global mechanism for IoT
systems. In such an ecosystem, a decentralized, distributed technology
named “blockchain” can offer solutions to the issues related to security,
privacy, traceability, reliability and interoperability. Blockchain tech­
nology grants integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation by default,
and utilizing smart contracts, manages automation and authorization of
transactions as well.
In this paper, we presented a comprehensive survey of blockchain
technology applied to resolve the myriad of data security and privacy
issues in IoT. The paper throws light on the background of IoT and
presents the state-of-the-art survey of blockchain technology in detail
highlighting its characteristics, classification, architecture, transaction
process and consensus protocols. Further, the paper discuss how
blockchain technology can be leveraged to solve the most pertaining IoT
security problems and highlights the major benefits and risks involved in
integration of Blockchain and IoT. Moreover, the paper presents a ho­
listic survey on major security improvements achieved in IoT systems
using blockchain technology and outlines the challenges that originate
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Journal of Network and Computer Applications 181 (2021) 103050
during this integration. The discovery suggests that blockchain tech­
nology is an ideal and most suitable candidate for empowering IoT and
realizing a safe, convenient, supervisable and transparent system that
paves the way for newly emerging business models. It can be concluded
that the development and deployment of blockchain based IoT systems
are still in nascent stage and additional technological advances are
required to address the specific demands for its broader use. Therefore,
this survey points out interesting open research directions to improve
security, capacity and scalability of blockchains for future effective
integration of IoT and blockchain technology.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
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Shivam Saxena is a graduate student of Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
HMR Institute of Technology and Management, New Delhi, India. He has completed
several training modules and developed projects based on blockchain technology and
smart contracts. He is IEEE student member. He has published several research papers in
reputed international conferences. His research area includes Internet of Things, Block­
chain and Supply Chain Management.
Bharat Bhushan received the B.Tech. degree in computer science and engineering from
SHIATS, Allahabad, India in 2012, and the M.Tech degree in information security from
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Jharkhand, India in 2015, and is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree at Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Jharkhand, India. From
2012 through 2013, he worked as a network engineer at HCL Infosystems Ltd., Noida,
India. Currently, he is working as assistant professor in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology, Sharda university. He is
IEEE student member. He has published more than 50 scientific research publications in
reputed International Journals and Conferences including 7 SCI Indexed journal publica­
tions. His research interests include Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Things and
Blockchain.
Dr. Mohd Abdul Ahad is currently working in the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi,
India. He has a rich experience of more than 11 years in the field of Computer Science and
Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the field of Big Data Architecture. His
research areas include big data architecture, Distributed Computing, IoT, Sustainable
Computing and Blockchain Technology. He has published several research papers in
various International Journals of repute. He has chaired several sessions in International
Conferences of Springer, Elsevier etc. He is a Certified Microsoft Innovative Educator and a
certified Google Educator. He is a life member of Indian Society of Technical Education
(ISTE) as well as an active member of IEEE and ACM.