A Blockchain-Based Framework for IoT Data Monetization Services

摘要

Within internet of things (IoT) research, there is a growing interest in leveraging the decentralization properties of blockchains, towards developing IoT authentication and authorization mechanisms that do not inherently require centralized third-party intermediaries. This paper presents a framework for sharing IoT data in a decentralized and private-by-design manner in exchange for monetary services. The framework is built on a tiered blockchain architecture, along with Interplanetary File System for IoT data storage and transfer. The goal is to enable IoT data users to exercise finegrained control on how much data they share with entities authenticated through blockchains. To highlight how the framework would be used in real-life scenarios, this paper presents two use cases, namely an IoT data marketplace and a decentralized connected vehicle insurance. These examples showcase how the proposed framework can be used for varying smart contract-based applications involving exchanges of IoT data and cryptocurrency. Following the discussion about the use cases, the paper outlines a detailed security analysis performed on the proposed framework, based on multiple attack scenarios. Finally, it presents and discusses extensive evaluations, in terms of various performance metrics obtained from a real-world implementation.