Trusted consensus protocol for blockchain networks based on fuzzy inference system

Blockchain technology with its inherent security features revolutionizes the field of distributed networks and has become one of the significant areas of research. To preserve the security features and to maintain its global state, consensus mechanisms are very essential and are performed by a set of peers in the underlying network called miners. Therefore, the miners need to be a trusted entity and their trustworthiness plays a vital role in preserving the security of the asset ledger. To ensure trusted nodes perform the consensus process, fuzzy-based trust models are robust and effective. Therefore, fuzzy inference system-based trusted consensus mechanism (FISTCON) is proposed as an effective security solution resulting in a fast and secure consensus process. The proposed scheme works in two phases. In phase 1, a fuzzy-based trust model that includes transaction history and trust feedback (F-THTF trust model) to identify trusted miners for consensus is proposed. In phase 2, a fuzzy-based effective practical byzantine fault tolerance (F-EpBFT) consensus protocol with an optimized broadcasting mechanism to decrease the communication overhead is proposed. The proposed work is implemented in the Hyperledger fabric framework, and the outcomes are thoroughly analyzed to prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme in a variety of scenarios.