– Chapter 7 examines how blockchain technology can disrupt the traditional financial practices of the agro sector by drastically minimizing the financial costs in the international commodity exchange. In addition, blockchain helps in transparent commodity exchange settlement, easy tracing of exchanged trading, specified documents formatting for sales contracts, as well as accelerates the settlement process.
– Chapter 8 delivers a complete secure blockchain-based framework for smart farming based on IoT sensors and the use of an interplanetary file system (IPFS) for storing sensitive information related to farming. Also, blockchain-based smart farming provides farmers with a support system to meet some of their needs.
– Chapter 9 provides a review of different aspects of blockchain technology and highlights its key characteristics, architecture, and taxonomy. Moreover, it also provides insights into the various consensus algorithms and major application areas of blockchain technology.
– Chapter 10 explores the mechanisms that make a city smart as well as explains the different technological dimensions of smart cities. It explains the problem domain along with the various challenges faced during the development of a smart city such as waste management issues, pollution, traffic congestion, outdated homes, huge energy consumption, etc.
– Chapter 11 focuses on the future status of blockchain, which will either revolutionize the digital world and transcend trending technologies, or pose a threat to them becoming obsolete. It explores the keys to making blockchain a debatable benchmark rather than an unfortunate event in the technical podium.
– Chapter 12 provides an overview of blockchain technology along with its detailed architecture and components. It also discusses various types of consensus mechanisms used in blockchain technology.
– Chapter 13 considers the prospects of implementing blockchain technology in the construction industry to help alleviate the current challenges and disruption in supply chain and value chain activities. It also discusses the issues faced by the industry as a result of blockchain still being in its infancy stage and therefore is crippled by limited funding, the unavailability of skilled manpower as well as lack of proper governmental support. It presents strategies for robust, resilient, reliable, less costly, environmentally friendly smart cities by initiating all the stakeholders in private and public sectors to work jointly with the provisional guidelines prescribed by the policy makers.
This book is formatted in such a way as to allow relevant requirements to be analyzed and adopted by the reader. The wide range of topics presented in this book was chosen to provide the reader with a better understanding of smart cities integrated with AI and blockchain and related security issues. We anticipate that the reader will benefit from this approach.
Vishal Kumar Vishal Jain Bharti Sharma Jyotir Moy Chatterjee Rakesh Shrestha
Acknowledgment
I would like to acknowledge the most important people in my life; my grandfather, the late Shri. Gopal Chatterjee, my grandmother, the late Smt. Subhankori Chatterjee, my father, Shri. Aloke Moy Chatterjee, my late mother Ms. Nomita Chatterjee, and my uncle Shri. Moni Moy Chatterjee. The book has been my long-cherished dream which would not have been turned into reality without the support and love of these amazing people. They have continuously encouraged me despite my failing to give them the proper time and attention. I am also grateful to my friends, who have encouraged and blessed this work with their unconditional love and patience.
Jyotir Moy Chatterjee Department of IT Lord Buddha Education Foundation (Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation) Kathmandu, Nepal
1
Deep Dive Into Blockchain Technology: Characteristics, Security and Privacy Issues, Challenges, and Future Research Directions
Bhanu Chander
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India
Abstract
Since the innovation, blockchain technology has exposed ingenious applications in our daily passing life. From the beginning of crypto-currency to the current smart contract, blockchain is practiced in numerous fields like digital forensics, insurance payments, online micro-payments, healthcare records sharing, and supply chain tracking. Through enlarge the blockchain talent to the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), we can obtain a provable and noticeable record transaction data offline-to-online data verification and optimize existing network performance. The abovementioned works aimed at expanded safety measures, automatic transaction command, decentralized stands, etc. The incorporation of blockchain technology has modernized the traditional trade due to its distributed ledger characteristic. Every record is secure by rules of cryptography which makes it more secure and impregnable. Therefore, blockchain can modify the way we buy and sell, how we intermingle with the government, and prove the legitimacy of everything from property names to natural fresh vegetables.
In recent times, the rapid expansion in urbanization population causes various cost-effective and environmental issues, influencing people’s living circumstances and class of life. The thought of a smart city that developed with the rise of IoT brings the ability to solve urban issues. Information and Communication Technology (ICT), IoTs, and WSNs play a vital part in executing smart cities. Blockchain has several good creations like pseudonymity, trust-free, intelligibility, democratic state, computerization, decentralization, and safety measures. These creations of blockchain useful to progress smart city services then endorse the expansion of smart cities. On the other hand, to use blockchain efficiently, it must consider security and privacy portions.
This chapter presents the exceptional safety as well as privacy sides of blockchain. Mainly, we present a detailed explanation of the background work of blockchain and consensus methods. After that, we shifted focus to blockchain integration with smart city development, challenges, and applications. Further, we review common security attacks on blockchain and security improvement solutions and the directions for future research.
Keywords: Blockchain, smart city, security, privacy, Internet of Things
1.1 Introduction
Blockchain has gained tremendous popularity in recent times because of its fundamental properties and peer-to-peer operations. Blockchain theory was the future of well-known researcher Santoshi Nakamotos in 2008 with Bitcoin crypto-currency innovation. More than 2,500 crypto-currencies exist, but the authentic utilization of Bitcoin is still not explored effusively. Various issues like secure document transferring, anti-money laundering, decentralization, and authorized and unauthorized mining actions are near related to Bitcoin [1–5]. The Bitcoin system model nearly takes 5 to 8 minutes for the mining process and validation of the transaction, which