A Systematic Literature Review on Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms’ Security: Applications and Open Challenges

This study conducts a systematic literature review(SLR)of blockchain consensus mechanisms,an essential protocols that maintain the integrity,reliability,and decentralization of distributed ledger networks.The aim is to comprehensively investigate prominent mechanisms’security features and vulnerabilities,emphasizing their security considerations,applications,challenges,and future directions.The existing literature offers valuable insights into various consensus mechanisms’strengths,limitations,and security vulnerabilities and their real-world applications.However,there remains a gap in synthesizing and analyzing this knowledge systematically.Addressing this gap would facilitate a structured approach to understanding consensus mechanisms’security and vulnerabilities comprehensively.The study adheres to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses(PRISMA)guidelines and computer science standards and reviewed 3749 research papers from 2016 to 2024,excluding grey literature,resulting in 290 articles for descriptive analysis.The research highlights an increased focus on blockchain consensus security,energy efficiency,and hybrid mechanisms within 60%of research papers post-2019,identifying gaps in scalability,privacy,and interoperability for future exploration.By synthesizing the existing research and identifying the key trends,this SLR contributes to advancing the understanding of blockchain consensus mechanisms’security and guiding future research and structured innovation in blockchain systems and applications.

A Secure Microgrid Data Storage Strategy with Directed Acyclic Graph Consensus Mechanism

The wide application of intelligent terminals in microgrids has fueled the surge of data amount in recent years.In real-world scenarios,microgrids must store large amounts of data efficiently while also being able to withstand malicious cyberattacks.To meet the high hardware resource requirements,address the vulnerability to network attacks and poor reliability in the tradi-tional centralized data storage schemes,this paper proposes a secure storage management method for microgrid data that considers node trust and directed acyclic graph(DAG)consensus mechanism.Firstly,the microgrid data storage model is designed based on the edge computing technology.The blockchain,deployed on the edge computing server and combined with cloud storage,ensures reliable data storage in the microgrid.Secondly,a blockchain consen-sus algorithm based on directed acyclic graph data structure is then proposed to effectively improve the data storage timeliness and avoid disadvantages in traditional blockchain topology such as long chain construction time and low consensus efficiency.Finally,considering the tolerance differences among the candidate chain-building nodes to network attacks,a hash value update mechanism of blockchain header with node trust identification to ensure data storage security is proposed.Experimental results from the microgrid data storage platform show that the proposed method can achieve a private key update time of less than 5 milliseconds.When the number of blockchain nodes is less than 25,the blockchain construction takes no more than 80 mins,and the data throughput is close to 300 kbps.Compared with the traditional chain-topology-based consensus methods that do not consider node trust,the proposed method has higher efficiency in data storage and better resistance to network attacks.

SBFT:A BFT Consensus Mechanism Based on DQN Algorithm for Industrial Internet of Thing

With the development and widespread use of blockchain in recent years,many projects have introduced blockchain technology to solve the growing security issues of the Industrial Internet of Things(IIoT).However,due to the conflict between the operational performance and security of the blockchain system and the compatibility issues with a large number of IIoT devices running together,the mainstream blockchain system cannot be applied to IIoT scenarios.In order to solve these problems,this paper proposes SBFT(Speculative Byzantine Consensus Protocol),a flexible and scalable blockchain consensus mechanism for the Industrial Internet of Things.SBFT has a consensus process based on speculation,improving the throughput and consensus speed of blockchain systems and reducing communication overhead.In order to improve the compatibility and scalability of the blockchain system,we select some nodes to participate in the consensus,and these nodes have better performance in the network.Since multiple properties determine node performance,we abstract the node selection problem as a joint optimization problem and use Dueling Deep Q Learning(DQL)to solve it.Finally,we evaluate the performance of the scheme through simulation,and the simulation results prove the superiority of our scheme.

For Mega-Constellations: Edge Computing and Safety Management Based on Blockchain Technology

In mega-constellation Communication Systems, efficient routing algorithms and data transmission technologies are employed to ensure fast and reliable data transfer. However, the limited computational resources of satellites necessitate the use of edge computing to enhance secure communication.While edge computing reduces the burden on cloud computing, it introduces security and reliability challenges in open satellite communication channels. To address these challenges, we propose a blockchain architecture specifically designed for edge computing in mega-constellation communication systems. This architecture narrows down the consensus scope of the blockchain to meet the requirements of edge computing while ensuring comprehensive log storage across the network. Additionally, we introduce a reputation management mechanism for nodes within the blockchain, evaluating their trustworthiness, workload, and efficiency. Nodes with higher reputation scores are selected to participate in tasks and are appropriately incentivized. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach achieves a task result reliability of 95% while improving computational speed.

A Public Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computing in LEO Satellite Communications

In LEO(Low Earth Orbit)satellite communication systems,the satellite network is made up of a large number of satellites,the dynamically changing network environment affects the results of distributed computing.In order to improve the fault tolerance rate,a novel public blockchain consensus mechanism that applies a distributed computing architecture in a public network is proposed.Redundant calculation of blockchain ensures the credibility of the results;and the transactions with calculation results of a task are stored distributed in sequence in Directed Acyclic Graphs(DAG).The transactions issued by nodes are connected to form a net.The net can quickly provide node reputation evaluation that does not rely on third parties.Simulations show that our proposed blockchain has the following advantages:1.The task processing speed of the blockchain can be close to that of the fastest node in the entire blockchain;2.When the tasks’arrival time intervals and demanded working nodes(WNs)meet certain conditions,the network can tolerate more than 50%of malicious devices;3.No matter the number of nodes in the blockchain is increased or reduced,the network can keep robustness by adjusting the task’s arrival time interval and demanded WNs.

A new proof-of-work mechanism for bitcoin

Background:Bitcoin system,when more than 51%computing power is controlled by a single node,the block chain can be distorted maliciously.This is called 51%attack which is a well-known potential risk that could destroy the Bitcoin system.Method:The paper proves that under the current proof-of-work mechanism,computing power eventually will be centralized at a single node if miners are rational enough.Result:The paper propose a new proof-of-work mechanism that improves decentralization and reduces the risk of 51%attack without increasing the risk of Sybil attack.Concusions:This new mechanism introduces a series of principles such as Career open to all talents,without distinction of birth,Distribution according to labor and All Men are created equal.

A Dynamic Reputation–based Consensus Mechanism for Blockchain

In recent years,Blockchain is gaining prominence as a hot topic in academic research.However,the consensus mechanism of blockchain has been criticized in terms of energy consumption and performance.Although Proof-of-Authority(PoA)consensus mechanism,as a lightweight consensus mechanism,is more efficient than traditional Proof-of-Work(PoW)and Proof-of-Stake(PoS),it suffers from the problem of centralization.To this end,on account of analyzing the shortcomings of existing consensus mechanisms,this paper proposes a dynamic reputation-based consensus mechanism for blockchain.This scheme allows nodes with reputation value higher than a threshold apply to become a monitoring node,which can monitor the behavior of validators in case that validators with excessive power cause harm to the blockchain network.At the same time,the reputation evaluation algorithm is also introduced to select nodes with high reputation to become validators in the network,thus increasing the cost of malicious behavior.In each consensus cycle,validators and monitoring nodes are dynamically updated according to the reputation value.Through security analysis,it is demonstrated that the scheme can resist the attacks of malicious nodes in the blockchain network.By simulation experiments and analysis of the scheme,the result verifies that the mechanism can effectively improve the fault tolerance of the consensus mechanism,reduce the time of consensus to guarantee the security of the system.

PoEC: A Cross-Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Governing Blockchain by Blockchain

The research on the governing blockchain by blockchain supervision system is an important development trend of blockchain technology.In this system there is a supervisory blockchain managing and governing the supervised blockchain based on blockchain technology,results in a uniquely cross-blockchain demand to consensus mechanism for solving the trust problem between supervisory blockchain and supervised blockchain.To solve this problem,this paper proposes a cross-blockchain consensus mechanism based on smart contract and a set of smart contracts endorse the crossblockchain consensus.New consensus mechanism called Proof-of-EndorseContracts(PoEC)consensus,which firstly transfers the consensus reached in supervisory blockchain to supervised blockchain by supervisory nodes,then packages the supervisory block in supervisory blockchain and transmits it to the smart contract deployed in the supervised blockchain,finally miners in supervised blockchain will execute and package the new block according to the status of the smart contract.The core part of the consensus mechanism is Endorse Contracts which designed and implemented by us and verified the effectiveness through experiments.PoEC consensus mechanism and Endorse Contracts support the supervised blockchain to join the governing blockchain by blockchain system without changing the original consensus mechanism,which has the advantages of low cost,high scalability and being able to crossblockchain.This paper proves that our method can provide a feasible crossblockchain governance scheme for the field of blockchain governance.

PoQ-Consensus Based Private Electricity Consumption Forecasting via Federated Learning

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and computer technology,grid corporations have also begun to move towards comprehensive intelligence and informatization.However,data-based informatization can bring about the risk of privacy exposure of fine-grained information such as electricity consumption data.The modeling of electricity consumption data can help grid corporations to have a more thorough understanding of users’needs and their habits,providing better services for users.Nevertheless,users’electricity consumption data is sensitive and private.In order to achieve highly efficient analysis of massive private electricity consumption data without direct access,a blockchain-based federated learning method is proposed for users’electricity consumption forecasting in this paper.Specifically,a blockchain systemis established based on a proof of quality(PoQ)consensus mechanism,and a multilayer hybrid directional long short-term memory(MHD-LSTM)network model is trained for users’electricity consumption forecasting via the federal learning method.In this way,the model of the MHD-LSTM network is able to avoid suffering from severe security problems and can only share the network parameters without exchanging raw electricity consumption data,which is decentralized,secure and reliable.The experimental result shows that the proposed method has both effectiveness and high-accuracy under the premise of electricity consumption data’s privacy preservation,and can achieve better performance when compared to traditional long short-term memory(LSTM)and bidirectional LSTM(BLSTM).

Proximal Policy Optimization-Based Committee Selection Algorithm in Blockchain-Enabled Mobile Edge Computing Systems

To cope with the low latency requirements and security issues of the emerging applications such as Internet of Vehicles(Io V)and Industrial Internet of Things(IIo T),the blockchain-enabled Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)system has received extensive attention.However,blockchain is a computing and communication intensive technology due to the complex consensus mechanisms.To facilitate the implementation of blockchain in the MEC system,this paper adopts the committee-based Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance(PBFT)consensus algorithm and focuses on the committee selection problem.Vehicles and IIo T devices generate the transactions which are records of the application tasks.Base Stations(BSs)with MEC servers,which serve the transactions according to the wireless channel quality and the available computing resources,are blockchain nodes and candidates for committee members.The income of transaction service fees,the penalty of service delay,the decentralization of the blockchain and the communication complexity of the consensus process constitute the performance index.The committee selection problem is modeled as a Markov decision process,and the Proximal Policy Optimization(PPO)algorithm is adopted in the solution.Simulation results show that the proposed PPO-based committee selection algorithm can adapt to the system design requirements with different emphases and outperforms other comparison methods.

A survey on blockchain consensus mechanism: research overview, current advances and future directions

Purpose-As the core technology of blockchain,various consensus mechanisms have emerged to satisfy the demands of different application scenarios.Since determining the security,scalability and other related performance of the blockchain,how to reach consensus efficiently of consensus mechanism is a critical issue in the blockchain.Design/methodology/approach-The paper opted for a research overview on the blockchain consensus mechanism,including the consensus mechanisms’consensus progress,classification and comparison,which are complemented by documentary analysis.Findings-This survey analyzes solutions for the improvement of consensus mechanisms in blockchain that have been proposed during the last few years and suggests future research directions around consensus mechanisms.First,the authors outline the consensus processes,the advantages and disadvantages of the mainstream consensus mechanisms.Additionally,the consensus mechanisms are subdivided into four types according to their characteristics.Then,the consensus mechanisms are compared and analyzed based on four evaluation criteria.Finally,the authors summarize the representative progress of consensus mechanisms and provide some suggestions on the design of consensus mechanisms to make further advances in this field.Originality/value-This paper summarizes the future research development of the consensus mechanisms.

Performance analysis of blockchain for civil aviation business data based on M/G/1 queuing theory

An Ethereum blockchain based on proof of stake ( PoS) consensus mechanism is used to achieve the data sharing within the civil aviation service platform for both airport group management and passengers. Considering the Gas consumption of Ethereum, the dynamic batch-service capacity constraint by the Block Gas Limit and the priority mechanism depending on the different Gas Price of transactions, M/ G/1 queuing theory with batch-service is used to construct the service model of transactions confirmation process in the proposed blockchain system, where the effects of transactions arrival rate, block capacity, service rate and number of nodes on the average confirmation time of transactions with different priority are analyzed, and eventually a performance analysis model of blockchain for civil aviation business data is proposed. The simulation results prove the usability and accuracy of the model, which can provide both theoretical basis for data sharing of civil aviation using Ethereum blockchain and the further optimization of transactions confirmation time.

Blockchain:A Technical Support for the Modernization of the National Governance System and Capacity

The modernization of national governance needs to be supported with modern technical tools to conform relations of production to productive forces and enable positive and orderly interaction between the two.Blockchain,as an emerging technology in the age of information,features distributed architecture,greater transparency,improved traceability and enhanced security.Blockchain’s consensus mechanism can be introduced into community governance mechanisms,which,by virtue of its marketoriented operation nature,helps define the respective functions of the government and market in the modernization of national governance.The application of blockchain technology to the national governance system enables stakeholders to seek consensus and the largest possible common interests to improve the national governance system and better achieve the governance goal,reduce governance costs,improve governance performance and meet the development needs of the times.Through a proper top-down design,China can effectively integrate blockchain technology into its national governance system and thereby efficiently advance the modernization of its national governance system and capacity.Still,due attention should be paid to blockchain’s possible technical risks and impact during the reform and modernization of national governance.

E-voting system using cloud-based hybrid blockchain technology

With the invention of Internet-enabled devices,cloud and blockchain-based technologies,an online voting system can smoothly carry out election processes.During pandemic situations,citizens tend to develop panic about mass gatherings,which may influence the decrease in the number of votes.This urges a reliable,flexible,transparent,secure,and cost-effective voting system.The proposed online voting system using cloud-based hybrid blockchain technology eradicates the flaws that persist in the existing voting system,and it is carried out in three phases:the registration phase,vote casting phase and vote counting phase.A timestamp-based authentication protocol with digital signature validates voters and candidates during the registration and vote casting phases.Using smart contracts,third-party interventions are eliminated,and the transactions are secured in the blockchain network.Finally,to provide accurate voting results,the practical Byzantine fault tolerance(PBFT)consensus mechanism is adopted to ensure that the vote has not been modified or corrupted.Hence,the overall performance of the proposed system is significantly better than that of the existing system.Further performance was analyzed based on authentication delay,vote alteration,response time,and latency.

Extensive game analysis and improvement strategy of DPOS consensus mechanism

Delegated proof-of-stake(DPOS) consensus mechanism is widely adopted in blockchain platforms, but problems exist in its current applications. In order to explore the security risks in the voting attack of the DPOS consensus mechanism, an extensive game model between nodes was constructed, and it was concluded that the DPOS consensus mechanism relies too much on tokens, and the possibility of node attacks is very high. In order to solve the problems of frequent changes of DPOS consensus mechanism nodes, inactive node voting, excessive reliance on tokens, and malicious nodes, a dynamic, credible, and attack-evading DPOS consensus mechanism was proposed. In addition, the Python simulation results show that the improved Bayesian voting algorithm is effective in calculating node scores.

ULS-PBFT:An ultra-low storage overhead PBFT consensus for blockchain

Since the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance(PBFT)consensus mechanism can avoid the performance bottleneck of blockchain systems caused by Proof of Work(PoW),it has been widely used in many scenarios.However,in the blockchain system,each node is required to back up all transactions and block data of the system,which will waste a lot of storage resources.It is difficult to apply to scenarios with limited storage resources such as unmanned aerial vehicle networks and smart security protection;thus,it is often used in small-scale networks.In order to deploy PBFT-based blockchain systems in large-scale network scenarios,we propose an ultra-low storage overhead PBFT consensus(ULS-PBFT),which groups nodes hierarchically to limit the storage overhead within the group.In this paper,we first propose an optimal double-layer PBFT consensus from the perspective of minimizing the storage overhead,and prove that this consensus can significantly reduce the storage overhead.In addition,we also investigate the superiority of ULS-PBFT in terms of communication overhead while setting the security threshold in the presence of the possibility of Byzantine nodes.The simulation results demonstrate the advantages of ULS-PBFT.Then,we extend such grouping idea to the blockchain system with X-layer PBFT and analyze its storage and communication overhead.Finally,the node grouping strategy of double-layer PBFT is studied for four application scenarios when the performance of storage overhead,communication overhead,and security are considered comprehensively.

Design of improved PBFT algorithm based on aggregate signature and node reputation

The alliance chain system is a distributed ledger system based on blockchain technology,which can realize data sharing and collaboration among multiple parties while ensuring data security and reliability.The Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance(PBFT)consensus algorithm is the most popular consensus protocol in the alliance chain,but the algorithm has problems such as high complexity and too simple election of the master node,which will make PBFT unable to be applied in scenarios with too many nodes.At the same time,there are certain security issues.In order to solve these problems,this paper proposes an improved Byzantine consensus algorithm,Polymerization Signature and Reputation Value PBFT(P-V PBFT).Firstly,the consistency protocol process is improved based on the aggregate signature technology.The simulation results show that the P-V PBFT algorithm can effectively reduce the overhead of network transmission,and the time complexity of the algorithm decreases exponentially,which improves the efficiency of the consensus process.Secondly,the node reputation election mechanism is introduced to elect the primary node,and the security analysis is carried out to verify the fairness and security of the primary node election of the P-V PBFT algorithm.Therefore,as a feasible improvement of the blockchain consensus protocol,the P-V PBFT algorithm can provide more efficient and secure guarantee for the blockchain system in practical application.

A survey on the adoption of blockchain in IoT:challenges and solutions

Conventional Internet of Things(IoT)ecosystems involve data streaming from sensors,through Fog devices to a centralized Cloud server.Issues that arise include privacy concerns due to third party management of Cloud servers,single points of failure,a bottleneck in data flows and difficulties in regularly updating firmware for millions of smart devices from a point of security and maintenance perspective.Blockchain technologies avoid trusted third parties and safeguard against a single point of failure and other issues.This has inspired researchers to investigate blockchain’s adoption into IoT ecosystem.In this paper,recent state-of-the-arts advances in blockchain for IoT,blockchain for Cloud IoT and blockchain for Fog IoT in the context of eHealth,smart cities,intelligent transport and other applications are analyzed.Obstacles,research gaps and potential solutions are also presented.

Blockchain-based collaborative edge caching scheme for trustworthy content sharing

Moving data from cloud to the edge network can effectively reduce traffic burden on the core network,and edge collaboration can further improve the edge caching capacity and the quality of service(QoS).However,it is difficult for various edge caching devices to cooperate due to the lack of trust and the existence of malicious nodes.In this paper,blockchain which has the distributed and immutable characteristics is utilized to build a trustworthy collaborative edge caching scheme to make full use of the storage resources of various edge devices.The collaboration process is described in this paper,and a proof of credit(PoC)protocol is proposed,in which credit and tokens are used to encourage nodes to cache and transmit more content in honest behavior.Untrusted nodes will pay for their malicious actions such as tampering or deleting cached data.Since each node chooses strategy independently to maximize its benefits in an environment of mutual influence,a non-cooperative game model is designed to study the caching behavior among edge nodes.The existence of Nash equilibrium(NE)is proved in this game,so the edge server(ES)can choose the optimal caching strategy for all collaborative devices,including itself,to obtain the maximum rewards.Simulation results show that the system can save mining overhead as well as organize a trusted collaborative edge caching effectively.

A scalable blockchain-based scheme for traffic-related data sharing in VANETs

Recent advances in wireless technology and embedded systems enable vehicles to share relevant traffic-related data to improve the transportation Quality-of-Service(QoS).However,due to the ubiquitousness of cyber-attacks,it is challenging to ensure the integrity of the data collected from cars.This paper proposes a novel architecture for road traffic events management in Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks(VANETs)relying on a permissioned blockchain.It also introduces the concept of micro-transactions to minimize communication and storage overhead.Through simulations,a rigorous performance evaluation of the proposed approach was conducted,and the micro-transactions effectiveness was assessed.In addition,a comparison with close works in the literature was performed.The proposed scheme ensures road traffic records integrity and traceability,and simulation results on the considered scenarios showed good performance.