Blockchain-Based Technology for Mobile Application

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Computer Science & Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 24113

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Teknologiveien 22, 2815 Gjøvik, Norway
Interests: blockchain technology; mobile and cloud computing; decentralized; peer-to-peer systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies have established themselves well in diverse social and business areas. There are numerous applications of blockchain technology in value and supply chain, fintech, social systems, industry 4.0, IoT, open-source development, and many others. Blockchain technology is disrupting well-established business models. However, contemporary blockchain systems rely heavily on the server-side infrastructure and this limits some of the potential uses. The next technological frontier is the adoption of blockchain technology by the wider community of consumers and expanding business cases by utilizing mobile and portable devices. Mobile blockchain research needs to address many unresolved issues related to mobile connectivity, consensus, identity, and Sybil attacks; however, the penetration potential and impact that blockchain technology could have on mobile applications can be truly disrupting. Mobile and decentralized trust applications without the need for heavy server-side infrastructure are predicted to have a huge impact on the blockchain space in the upcoming years. 

This Special Issue focuses on mobile blockchain technology and mobile applications that run on mobile and portable devices. We encourage researchers and practitioners that work in the mobile blockchain space to share their problems and solutions, as well as mobile and decentralized applications that utilize blockchain technology.

Dr. Mariusz Nowostawski
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Mobile blockchain technology
  • Mobile blockchain wallets
  • Mobile mining
  • Mobile cryptocurrency systems
  • Decentralized and peer-to-peer applications
  • Decentralized mobile applications
  • Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)
  • Mobile self-sovereign identity systems
  • Mobile blockchains and Sybil attack prevention
  • Off-chain transactions in mobile blockchain applications
  • Decentralized IDs in mobile applications
  • Verifiable credentials in mobile applications

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 1206 KiB  
Article
Blockchain-Based Privacy-Preserving System for Genomic Data Management Using Local Differential Privacy
by Young-Hoon Park, Yejin Kim and Junho Shim
Electronics 2021, 10(23), 3019; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10233019 - 3 Dec 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3129
Abstract
The advances made in genome technology have resulted in significant amounts of genomic data being generated at an increasing speed. As genomic data contain various privacy-sensitive information, security schemes that protect confidentiality and control access are essential. Many security techniques have been proposed [...] Read more.
The advances made in genome technology have resulted in significant amounts of genomic data being generated at an increasing speed. As genomic data contain various privacy-sensitive information, security schemes that protect confidentiality and control access are essential. Many security techniques have been proposed to safeguard healthcare data. However, these techniques are inadequate for genomic data management because of their large size. Additionally, privacy problems due to the sharing of gene data are yet to be addressed. In this study, we propose a secure genomic data management system using blockchain and local differential privacy (LDP). The proposed system employs two types of storage: private storage for internal staff and semi-private storage for external users. In private storage, because encrypted gene data are stored, only internal employees can access the data. Meanwhile, in semi-private storage, gene data are irreversibly modified by LDP. Through LDP, different noises are added to each section of the genomic data. Therefore, even though the third party uses or exposes the shared data, the owner’s privacy is guaranteed. Furthermore, the access control for each storage is ensured by the blockchain, and the gene owner can trace the usage and sharing status using a decentralized application in a mobile device. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain-Based Technology for Mobile Application)
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15 pages, 1599 KiB  
Article
CioSy: A Collaborative Blockchain-Based Insurance System
by Faiza Loukil, Khouloud Boukadi, Rasheed Hussain and Mourad Abed
Electronics 2021, 10(11), 1343; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10111343 - 3 Jun 2021
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4702
Abstract
The insurance industry is heavily dependent on several processes executed among multiple entities, such as insurer, insured, and third-party services. The increasingly competitive environment is pushing insurance companies to use advanced technologies to address multiple challenges, namely lack of trust, lack of transparency, [...] Read more.
The insurance industry is heavily dependent on several processes executed among multiple entities, such as insurer, insured, and third-party services. The increasingly competitive environment is pushing insurance companies to use advanced technologies to address multiple challenges, namely lack of trust, lack of transparency, and economic instability. To this end, blockchain is used as an emerging technology that enables transparent and secure data storage and transmission. In this paper, we propose CioSy, a collaborative blockchain-based insurance system for monitoring and processing the insurance transactions. To the best of our knowledge, the existing approaches do not consider collaborative insurance to achieve an automated, transparent, and tamper-proof solution. CioSy aims at automating the insurance policy processing, claim handling, and payment using smart contracts. For validation purposes, an experimental prototype is developed on Ethereum blockchain. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach is both feasible and economical in terms of time and cost. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain-Based Technology for Mobile Application)
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22 pages, 1515 KiB  
Article
When Data Fly: An Open Data Trading System in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks
by Markus Lücking, Felix Kretzer, Niclas Kannengießer, Michael Beigl, Ali Sunyaev and Wilhelm Stork
Electronics 2021, 10(6), 654; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10060654 - 11 Mar 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4216
Abstract
Communication between vehicles and their environment (i.e., vehicle-to-everything or V2X communication) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) has become of particular importance for smart cities. However, economic challenges, such as the cost incurred by data sharing (e.g., due to power consumption), hinder the [...] Read more.
Communication between vehicles and their environment (i.e., vehicle-to-everything or V2X communication) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) has become of particular importance for smart cities. However, economic challenges, such as the cost incurred by data sharing (e.g., due to power consumption), hinder the integration of data sharing in open systems into smart city applications, such as dynamic environmental zones. Moving from open data sharing to open data trading can address the economic challenges and incentivize vehicle drivers to share their data. In this context, integrating distributed ledger technology (DLT) into open systems for data trading is promising for reducing the transaction cost of payments in data trading, avoiding dependencies on third parties, and guaranteeing openness. However, because the integration of DLT conflicts with the short available communication time between fast moving objects in VANETs, it remains unclear how open data trading in VANETs using DLT should be designed to be viable. In this work, we present a system design for data trading in VANETs using DLT. We measure the required communication time for data trading between a vehicle and a roadside unit in a real scenario and estimate the associated cost. Our results show that the proposed system design is technically feasible and economically viable. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain-Based Technology for Mobile Application)
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15 pages, 5871 KiB  
Article
IOTA-BT: A P2P File-Sharing System Based on IOTA
by Li-Yuan Hou, Tsung-Yi Tang and Tyng-Yeu Liang
Electronics 2020, 9(10), 1610; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9101610 - 1 Oct 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4311
Abstract
BitTorrent (BT) is the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing system. According to official BT information, more than 100 million active users use BT for file transfers every month. However, BT mainly relies on either a central tracker (tracker) or distributed hash table (DHT) for [...] Read more.
BitTorrent (BT) is the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing system. According to official BT information, more than 100 million active users use BT for file transfers every month. However, BT mainly relies on either a central tracker (tracker) or distributed hash table (DHT) for locating file seeders while it runs a risk of a single point of failure or cyber-attacks such as Sybil and Eclipses. To attack this problem, we proposed a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing system called IOTA-BT by integrating BitTorrent with IOTA in this paper. The advantages of IOTA over blockchain include scalability for high throughput, compatibility with Internet of Things (IoT) footprints, zero transaction fees, partition-tolerant, and quantum-resistant cryptography. The autopeering and neighbor selection of the Coordicide of IOTA is aimed at defending a Sybil or Eclipse attack. IOTA-BT inherits these advantages from IOTA. Moreover, our experimental results have shown that the cost of executing BT functions, such as releasing torrent files and retrieving seeder information on IOTA-BT, is acceptable for improving the security of BT. IOTA-BT can indeed efficiently provide users with a P2P file-sharing environment of higher security. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain-Based Technology for Mobile Application)
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36 pages, 668 KiB  
Article
Bitcoin’s APIs in Open-Source Projects: Security Usability Evaluation
by Philipp Tschannen and Ali Ahmed
Electronics 2020, 9(7), 1077; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9071077 - 30 Jun 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5141
Abstract
Given the current state of software development, it does not seem that we are nowhere near vulnerability-free software applications, due to many reasons, and software developers are one of them. Insecure coding practices, the complexity of the task in hand, and usability issues, [...] Read more.
Given the current state of software development, it does not seem that we are nowhere near vulnerability-free software applications, due to many reasons, and software developers are one of them. Insecure coding practices, the complexity of the task in hand, and usability issues, amongst other reasons, make it hard on software developers to maintain secure code. When it comes to cryptographic currencies, the need for assuring security is inevitable. For example, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer software system that is primarily used as digital money. There exist many software libraries supporting various programming languages that allow access to the Bitcoin system via an Application Programming Interface (API). APIs that are inappropriately used would lead to security vulnerabilities, which are hard to discover, resulting in many zero-day exploits. Making APIs usable is, therefore, an essential aspect related to the quality and robustness of the software. This paper surveys the general academic literature concerning API usability and usable security. Furthermore, it evaluates the API usability of Libbitcoin, a well-known C++ implementation of the Bitcoin system, and assesses how the findings of this evaluation could affect the applications that use Libbitcoin. For that purpose, the paper proposes two static analysis tools to further investigate the use of Libbitcoin APIs in open-source projects from a security usability perspective. The findings of this research have improved Libbitcoin in many places, as will be shown in this paper. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain-Based Technology for Mobile Application)
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