Edge Computing and Its Convergence With Blockchain in 5G and Beyond: Security, Challenges, and Opportunities

The internet is progressing towards a new technology archetype grounded on smart systems, heavily relying on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain platforms, edge computing, and the internet of things (IoT). The merging of IoT, edge computing, and blockchain will be the most important factor of empowering new automatic service and commercial models with various desirable properties, such as self-verifying, self-executing, immutability, data reliability, and confidentiality provided by the advancement in blockchain smart contracts and containers. Motivated by the potential paradigm shift and the security features brought by blockchain from the traditional centralized model to a more robust and resilient decentralized model, this tutorial article proposes a multi-tier integrated blockchain and edge computing architecture for 5G and beyond for solving some security issues faced by resource-constrained edge devices. We begin with a comprehensive overview of different edge computing paradigms and their research challenges. Next, we present the classification of security threats and current defense mechanisms. Then, we present an overview of blockchain and its potential solutions to the main security issues in edge computing. Furthermore, we present the classification of facilitating developers of different architectures to select an appropriate platform for particular applications and offer insights for potential research directions. Finally, we provide key convergence features of the blockchain and edge computing, followed by some conclusions.