survey

Applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies to the Internet of Things: A Survey

Authors:
Qingyi Zhu

Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications and Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications and Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

0000-0002-1168-1599
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,
Seng W. Loke

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

0000-0002-5339-9305
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,
Rolando Trujillo-Rasua

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
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,
Frank Jiang

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
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,
Yong Xiang

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
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Authors Info & Claims

ACM Computing Surveys Volume 52 Issue 6Article No.: 120pp 1–34https://doi.org/10.1145/3359982

Published:14 November 2019Publication History

ACM Computing Surveys

Abstract

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) and blockchain systems have received enormous academic, government, and commercial interest in recent years. This article surveys the integration of DLTs within another life-changing technology, the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT-based applications, such as smart home, smart transport, supply chain, smart healthcare, and smart energy, promise to boost the efficiency of existing infrastructures and change every facet of our daily life. This article looks into the challenges faced by such applications and reviews a comprehensive selection of existing DLT solutions to those challenges. We also identify issues for future research, including DLT security and scalability, multi-DLT applications, and survival of DLT in the post-quantum world.

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Index Terms

Applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies to the Internet of Things: A Survey
1. Security and privacy

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Reviews

Reviewer: Christoph F. Strnadl

If you have ever wondered how the Internet of Things (IoT)-the interconnection of physical and virtual things through existing and evolving communication technologies-might benefit from blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), this valuable survey gives a recent (but not totally up to date, and partly inaccurate) report. The introductory section on DLT features a nice five-layer architecture for structuring an explanation on how blockchains typically work. It also rightfully mentions the use of non-block-oriented architectures (like a directed acyclic graph in IOTA and others) in order to overcome scalability issues of classical blockchains. Unfortunately, the text contains some severe inaccuracies that render it unreliable for the unversed reader (for example, mining is not about finding a correct pre-hash; miners also get a block reward, not just transaction fees; Ethereum at large is still not using proof-of-stake; and others). The survey itself uses a bottom-up (technology-based) and a top-down (use case) approach to briefly introduce around 50 interesting applications of DLT. Security, privacy, identity management, machine-to-machine (M2M) transactions, traceability, and (data) provenance are the technology domains covered in more detail, while the smart city context with a focus on smart homes, smart transport, smart grids, healthcare, and supply chains is used to guide the top-down discussion regarding use cases. The booming area of decentralized finance (DeFi) is (deliberately) missing. Each section introduces the domain and explains how it operates today and what challenges are currently unsolved. The main part consists of vignettes (of widely varying detail) on how DLTs are solving some problems better than available technologies, typically citing several interesting but superficially explained example implementations. The authors include paragraph-long summaries for, and a superficial comparison of, 14 DLTs for IoT (including Bitcoin and Ethereum). Finally, they highlight open challenges such as the physical connection of the DLT to a device, the problem of scalability, and the quest for interoperability of the many multi-blockchain scenarios encountered previously. Disregarding several further inaccuracies-for example, a logically central application does not necessarily become a single point of failure; Hyperledger Indy is specialized for identity management; IOTA is not limited to M2M, but also provides identity management, marketplaces, and smart contracts-I really did like the breadth of the material, much of which is hard to obtain from other sources. For instance, I was easily able to identify the two prevalent architectural patterns employed in almost all applications, namely (i) the use of a blockchain gateway to enable resource-constrained IoT devices to access the ledger, and (ii) the deployment of several interconnected blockchains to solve some shortcomings of current DLTs (such as limited scalability). I recommend this survey to everyone interested in getting a comprehensive overview and initial understanding of how DLTs may benefit the IoT domain. While readers must not expect a good and exact introduction to blockchains, nor all the required (technical) details for every single use case, the nearly 180 references provide ample anchors to delve deeper into this exciting combination of two technology domains.

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Published in
ACM Computing Surveys Volume 52, Issue 6
November 2020
806 pages
ISSN:0360-0300
EISSN:1557-7341
DOI:10.1145/3368196
Editor:
Sartaj Sahni
Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Issue’s Table of Contents
Copyright © 2019 ACM
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
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Publication History
- Published: 14 November 2019
- Revised: 1 August 2019
- Accepted: 1 August 2019
- Received: 1 May 2019
Published in csur Volume 52, Issue 6

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Applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies to the Internet of Things: A Survey

ACM Computing Surveys

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Cited By

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Recommendations

Distributed Ledger Technology and the Internet of Things: A Feasibility Study

Internet of Things, Blockchain and Shared Economy Applications

Blockchain applications for the Internet of Things: Systematic review and challenges

Reviews

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