Applications of Blockchains in the Internet of Things

Dear Colleagues,

With technological advancement, one can now envisage to connect things or objects at any time, at any place, using any path, any network, and any service to the Internet, thus leading to the novel paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT). These things or objects can be sensors, RFID tags, mobile phones, and actuators, having diverse computation, storage, and communication capabilities. The IoT paradigm enables things or objects to communicate with each other in a pervasive manner unlocking several applications ranging from healthcare to industrial automation and from smart transportation to smart cities. Thinking at a massive scale, these billions of devices connected to the Internet will be generating an enormous amount of data. To collect this data, process it, and then use it efficiently without breaching privacy concerns of users is of immense importance. The current IoT paradigm heavily relies on a centralized infrastructure which provides the network connectivity, handles this huge data, and ensures security and privacy. However, this centralized infrastructure also brings problems, such as it can be a single point of failure. Moreover, trusting on third parties is an integral part of a centralized infrastructure. Further, users’ personal data is highly vulnerable due to the centralized nature of data storage, processing, and handling in the current IoT.    

One way to deal with the aforementioned problems in the existing IoT infrastructure, is to think about using blockchain technology in IoT. One can think of blockchain technology as a distributed ledger system which achieves distributed database synchronization by using cryptography, decentralized consensus, public key infrastructure, and economic modelling. With its fault tolerance, auditability, immutability, and decentralization features, blockchain technology can play a pivotal role in almost all applications of IoT. For instance, blockchain technology can be used in IoT to achieve privacy preservation and securing the IoT network. In addition to this, it can be used for identity and data management. However, the integration of blockchain technology in different IoT applications will also open new research areas to investigate.

Overall, the goal of this proposed Special Issue in Future Internet is to publish and capture the most recent advances and trends in the promising applications of blockchain technology in the Internet of Things.

Topics of interest include, without being limited to:

• General applications of blockchain in IoT
• Blockchain in the Internet of Everything
• Use of smart contracts, public, private, and consortium blockchain in IoT
• Privacy preservation schemes for blockchain in IoT
• Trustless IoT architectures through blockchain
• Reliability and scalability issues of blockchains in IoT
• Security schemes for blockchain in IoT
• Data management schemes for blockchain in IoT
• Blockchain in industrial IoT
• Identity management schemes in IoT through blockchains
• Performance evaluation of blockchain in IoT

Prof. Massimo Vecchio
Dr. Mubashir Husain Rehmani
Guest Editors

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• Blockchain
• Internet of Things
• Smart contracts
• Trustless architectures
• Auditability
• Industry 4.0