FlexBoT: A Scalable Architecture for Multi-Application Supporting BoT Environments with Application Shifting at Runtime

While existing approaches that integrate IoT and blockchain technologies have demonstrated efficiency, they often exhibit limitations by focusing on a single application scenario. These proposals require specific hardware configurations, resulting reduced adaptability and manageability when transitioning to new application scenarios and updating device configurations. Though, an additional management layer could mitigate vulnerabilities, it may also introduce performance and privacy issues, particularly as the system scales up rapidly. In response, this paper introduces an architecture for Blockchain of Things (BoT) systems, providing the flexibility to accommodate multiple application scenarios within a unified hardware infrastructure. Our methodology utilizes smart contracts for system orchestration, offering an agile and cost-effective alternative. The proposed architecture is designed mainly for IoT environments, ensuring scalability without the need for centralized authority or causing network centralization and associated vulnerabilities. Moreover, it facilitates real-time application scenario transitions through smart contracts. The obtained results demonstrate the proposal's capability to scale effectively in network size, and handle varying numbers of requests within each identified scenario type. Furthermore, the results support adoption of smart contract-based scenario transitioning in BoT environments.