Connectivity-Aware Contract for Incentivizing IoT Devices in Complex Wireless Blockchain

Blockchain is considered the critical backbone technology for secure and trusted Internet of Things (IoT) in the future 6G network. However, deploying a blockchain system in a complex wireless IoT network is challenging due to the limited resources, complex wireless environment, and the property of self-interested IoT devices. The existing incentive mechanism of blockchain is not compatible with the wireless IoT network. In this article, to incentivize IoT devices to join the construction of the wireless blockchain network, we propose a multidimensional contract to optimize the blockchain utility while addressing the issues of adverse selection and moral hazard. Specifically, the proposed contract considers the IoT device’s hash power and communication cost and especially explores the connectivity of devices from the perspective of complex network theory. We investigate the energy consumption and the block confirmation probability of the wireless blockchain network via simulations under varied network sizes and average link probability. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed contract mechanism is feasible, achieves 35% more utility than existing approaches, and increases utility by four times compared with the original PoW-based incentive mechanism.