Improved TrustChain for Lightweight Devices

In recent years, Blockchain technology has been used in many fields, including Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Integrating Blockchain and IoT with its lightweight devices has benefits such as enhanced security and reduced costs. In this field, critical challenges that need to be addressed are providing security and performance guarantees. An available solution to meet the mentioned challenges is TrustChain in which each node has a local chain, built and maintained by that node. There are, however, some drawbacks. TrustChain cannot resist Whitewashing attacks and results in the node’s high recovery time once a fatal error occurs. In this article, we propose the usage of a smart contract-based authentication system on top of TrustChain to address the Whitewashing attack. Moreover, we connected the TrustChain to a distributed cloud (i.e., IPFS), with the aim of significantly reducing the recovery time of nodes (up to 90%) in the fatal errors. Finally, we evaluate improved TrustChain with PoW Blockchains simulator (As the most secure and basic Blockchain) and MIB (As a PoW-based Blockchain for smartphone) from two aspects of security and performance and prove that the improved TrustChain propagation delay is less than Pow-based Blockchains and it is more secure than these systems against main attacks.