Blockchain for Business

In Chapter 11, “Acceptance and Adoption of Blockchain Technology: An Examination of the Security and Privacy Challenges,” the prevalent security and privacy challenges associated with blockchain are explored along with the negative implications of these challenges. The author also details certain blockchain applications that reflect the acceptance and adoption of blockchain technology.

In Chapter 12, “Deficiencies in Blockchain Technology and Potential Augmentation in Cyber Security,” the major security concerns related to blockchain are discussed as well as issues and facts that reveal that blockchain invites new challenges or edging off risk of security. The author also discusses privacy as well as decentralization challenges related to blockchain technology.

In Chapter 13, “Internet of Things and Blockchain,” the historical background of the IoT is discussed along with the IoT gadgets currently being used and those being proposed for the future, different kinds of sensors and actuators, and a mix of blockchain and IoT.

In Chapter 14, “Blockchain Applications,” the author discusses the specific qualities every particular application possesses such as blockchain in big data predictive task automation along with digital identity verification, decentralized government services, and global public health.

In Chapter 15, “Advanced Concepts of Blockchain,” the future applications of blockchain technology are discussed. The author also discusses community supercomputing, blockchain geonomics, blockchain learning, community coin, monetary and nonmonetary currencies, some prominent alternate coins, and demurrage currencies in detail.

In conclusion, we would like to thank all the authors for their contributions to this book.

The Editors December 2020

Akshay Mudgal

GD Goenka University, Sohna, Gurugram, India

Abstract

Since its origin, the blockchain innovation has demonstrated promising application possibilities. From the initial crypto-currency to the current shrewd agreement, blockchain has been applied to numerous fields. In spite of the fact that there are a few investigations on the security and protection issues of blockchain, there comes up short on an efficient assessment on the security of blockchain system. Blockchain, as a decentralized and distributed open record technology in distributed system, has gotten significant consideration recently. It applies a connected square structure to check and store information, and applies the believed agreement instrument to synchronize changes in information, which makes it conceivable to make a sealed advanced stage for putting and sharing information. It is accepted that blockchain can be applied to differing Internet intelligent frameworks (e.g., Internet of Things, flexibly chain frameworks, human identity management and so on). In any case, there are some security challenges that may obstruct the wide utilization of blockchain. For all such in this chapter the broader aspects of privacy issues, decentralisation and regulatory challenges will be parleyed, whereas business models in association with blockchain will also be taken care off with a keen focus on security and privacy aspects of the blockchain.

Keywords:Blockchain, security, privacy, de-centralized, crypto-currency, data theft

Since the presentation of Bitcoin in 2009, its fundamental strategy, blockchain, has indicated promising application prospects and pulled in heaps of considerations from the scholarly community and industry [4]. Being the first digital money, Bitcoin was appraised as the top performing cash in 2015 and the best performing product in 2016, also, has more than 300K affirmed exchanges day by day in May, 2017. Simultaneously, the blockchain system has been applied to numerous fields, including medication, financial matters, Web of things, programming designing, etc. [4]. The presentation of Turing-complete programming dialects to empower clients to create brilliant agreements running on the blockchain marks the beginning of blockchain 2.0 time. With the decentralized accord component of blockchain, keen agreements permit commonly doubted clients to finish information trade or exchange without the need of any outsider confided in power [4]. Ethereum is presently (May of 2017) the most broadly utilized blockchain supporting keen agreements, where there are now 317,506 savvy contracts and in excess of 75,000 exchanges happened day by day [4].

Security comes on the top priority or the at most concern for any piece of action that is needed to be done or auctioned, hence the blockchain comes in a role play (Figure 1.1). Blockchain was basically developed by a group of researchers in the year 1991 to impart or emboss a time stamp on the digital documents but that didn’t work well and the experiment was the failure, due to which today’s psychedelic technology was garbaged [2]. In the year 2004 a computer scientist named Hal Finuey again reintroduced the blockchain with an alteration which was RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work).

A blockchain is a collection of four major components which collectively forms a block [2]. A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, public ledger. It (blockchain) is a place to keep the record (transactional) which is decentralized as it can be created anywhere, whereas it is accessible anywhere, hence it is distributed, but what about the security aspect? as it can be accessed and created by anywhere and by anyone, which means there is a need to make the concept more feasible and secure.

Figure 1.1Demonstrating the pictorial impression of blockchain [2].

When it is about privacy and security of any element/product/or a system, then it should have the basic working and the architectural knowledge of it. So, that the level of the security which are already existing can be updated or replaced for the better future [2].

In reference to the second chapter of this book, it explains to us about the working of the Blockchain. In this section of this chapter the basic architecture of the blockchain will be discussed, but moving ahead towards the architecture one should discuss few of the important terms which will be majorly used in the security and privacy aspects of the blockchain.

1 Immutable—Making the ledge secures with the digital signature or hash function.

2 POW—Proof of work, which is a protocol which has the main goal to deterring the cyber attacks.

3 Hash—It is unique value being assigned by the set of rules/algorithms/functions or the combination of all to make the ledger unique and separated from other blocks.

4 Digital Signature—It is another means of securing measure of the ledge, so that the data must be verified and treated as authentic.

5 Mining—Mining in general an activity to collect the useful out of whole.

These are the major terms which we may encounter in this chapter commonly. You will get to know more about these terms in the coming sections of this chapter, but before that the different types of blockchain architectures will be discussed below.

Logically, a blockchain is a chain of blocks which contain specific information (database), but in a secure and genuine way that is grouped together in a network (peer-to-peer) as shown in Figure 1.2. In other words, blockchain is a combination of computers linked to each other instead of a central server, meaning that the whole network is decentralized (Figure 1.3) [3].