Towards Secure Blockchain-enabled Internet of Vehicles: Optimizing Consensus Management Using Reputation and Contract Theory (1809.08387v1)

Abstract: In Internet of Vehicles (IoV), data sharing among vehicles is essential to improve driving safety and enhance vehicular services. To ensure data sharing security and traceability, highefficiency Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus scheme as a hard security solution is utilized to establish blockchain-enabled IoV (BIoV). However, as miners are selected from miner candidates by stake-based voting, it is difficult to defend against voting collusion between the candidates and compromised high-stake vehicles, which introduces serious security challenges to the BIoV. To address such challenges, we propose a soft security enhancement solution including two stages: (i) miner selection and (ii) block verification. In the first stage, a reputation-based voting scheme for the blockchain is proposed to ensure secure miner selection. This scheme evaluates candidates' reputation by using both historical interactions and recommended opinions from other vehicles. The candidates with high reputation are selected to be active miners and standby miners. In the second stage, to prevent internal collusion among the active miners, a newly generated block is further verified and audited by the standby miners. To incentivize the standby miners to participate in block verification, we formulate interactions between the active miners and the standby miners by using contract theory, which takes block verification security and delay into consideration. Numerical results based on a real-world dataset indicate that our schemes are secure and efficient for data sharing in BIoV.

• The paper introduces a two-stage enhancement to DPoS through reputation-based miner selection and contract-driven incentives for block verification.
• The study employs a multi-weight subjective logic model to assess miner reputation, reducing collusion risks and improving consensus reliability.
• Numerical results using real-world data confirm significant improvements in malicious miner detection and block correctness probability.

Secure Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Vehicles: Consensus Optimization

This paper addresses the integration of blockchain technology into the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), focusing on enhancing security and traceability in data sharing processes. The authors propose a novel solution that combines reputation management and contract theory to optimize consensus management within a blockchain-enabled IoV (BIoV) system.

Key Contributions

The paper offers a two-stage soft security enhancement to the Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus scheme:

1. Miner Selection: The authors propose a reputation-based voting mechanism for miner selection. Miner candidates are evaluated based on historical interactions and recommendations from other vehicles. High-reputation candidates are selected as active or standby miners.
2. Block Verification: To mitigate potential collusion among active miners, standby miners further verify newly generated blocks. An incentive mechanism based on contract theory is designed to encourage their participation, considering security and delay factors.

Technical Approach

• Reputation Management: The paper utilizes a multi-weight subjective logic model to calculate reputation, integrating interaction frequency, timeliness, and effects. This approach aims to reduce collusion risks by prioritizing reputation over stake-based voting.
• Contract Theory for Incentives: The paper employs contract theory to model interactions between block managers and miners. Miners are incentivized to participate in block verification through contracts that consider latency and security contributions.

Numerical Results

The paper presents numerical results based on real-world datasets, illustrating the efficacy of the proposed schemes. The results indicate significant improvements in detecting malicious miners and enhancing the correctness probability of blocks despite miner collusion.

Implications and Speculations

The proposed framework enhances the reliability of BIoV systems by addressing both miner selection and block verification stages, thus improving overall system security. The integration of subjective logic and contract theory offers a promising direction for future research in decentralized IoV systems.

• Practical Implications: This work could influence the design of secure vehicular networks, particularly in enabling trusted data sharing without relying on resource-intensive mechanisms like PoW.
• Theoretical Implications: The use of reputation as a metric introduces a fairer method for miner selection, which could inspire further research into reputation-based consensus mechanisms.
• Future Speculations: As blockchain technology evolves, integrating more nuanced trust models and incentive structures could further optimize IoV systems, potentially incorporating AI-driven analytics for dynamic reputation management.

Overall, the paper provides a robust framework for enhancing the security of blockchain-enabled vehicular networks, contributing valuable insights into the intersection of IoT, blockchain, and vehicular technology.