LoRaTRUST: Blockchain-Enabled Trust and Accountability Service for IoT Data

Environmental monitoring is a growing application of the Internet of Things. The low cost of the sensor nodes, LoRa connectivity, and increased awareness of environmental issues have motivated many citizens to participate in open IoT monitoring applications. However, the value of these applications for decision makers is limited since the data from the IoT sensors do not have sufficient guarantees to be trusted. In this paper, we introduce a new concept that attributes value to both IoT data and devices, such as sensor nodes and gateways, and leverage distributed ledger technology to enable a data trust system. A first design decision was to assign Ethereum addresses with their associated public and private key pairs to all actors. This allows the authentication of data senders and hence the accounting for the contribution of each participant. Secondly, we introduce an auditor to validate the received IoT data. The results of these audits increase the trust in the quality of the data. We present the architectural components that we designed to enhance trust in open IoT monitoring applications and present an operational prototype to show the feasibility of the implementation. By achieving both trust in the data and accounting of contributions for giving rewards, open participatory IoT monitoring applications can become both valuable and sustainable. Then, trusted open monitoring may complement commercial solutions as a technical and economic alternative for addressing the increasing environmental monitoring needs of our society.