Blockchain-based internet of things security architecture and applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain are two emerging information technologies that will significantly impact the lives and production patterns of people. When they meet together, blockchain services can be used to solve some IoT challenges, however some new risks will be introduced. Therefore, how to use blockchain services in IoT environment and which key security and privacy challenges in IoT environment can be addressed by blockchain services are two critical issues. Thus, we propose a novel hybrid IoT architecture based on blockchain services for the first issue. To address the second issue, we design system architecture for implementing blockchain-as-a-service in the IoT environment, select the dimensions of fog computing, edge computing and software vulnerability to classify the challenges and solutions. Then practical application scenarios are summarized. The single on-chain time is between 15 and 20 s and the single off-chain in IOTA is about 2 s. The on-chain time is longer than the off-chain time. Finally, seven challenges and the related solution for blockchain-based IoT are proposed to promote future blockchain and IoT research. The proposed architecture can improve the structural security and functional security for IoT and Blockchain. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.