Block-Chain Implementation in Industry 4.0: Critical Review

ICT has exploded over the past few decades, and as a result, the use of numerous smart applications—such as those for smart farming, smart healthcare, supply-chain & logistics, business, tourism and hospitality, and energy management—has increased exponentially. Due to the use of the open channel, or the Internet, for data transfer in all of the aforementioned apps, security and privacy are key issues. Although numerous security standards and solutions have been put forth during the recent years in order to increase the level of security of the smart applications mention previously, the current solutions either rely on centralized architecture or have high computational and communication cost. Furthermore, the majority of the security solutions currently available have a narrow focus and do not address important parameter called stability. Block-chain technology may provide a remedy for the aforementioned problems. These facts served as the impetus for the rigorous review of several Block-chain-dependent technologies with suitability for numerousindustrial applications that we offer in this article. We made 4 different contributions to this paper. First, we investigated the most cutting-edge Block-chain applications for smart apps currently available. The reference engineering for the Block-chain’s material in various Industry 4.0 applications was demonstrated further. The advantages and disadvantages of conventional security systems are then contrasted with their responses. In order to give readers a detailed understanding of the applicability of existing Block-chain-based security solutions in diverse applications, we finally offered a comparison of those solutions using a variety of characteristics.