Incentive Assignment in PoW and PoS Hybrid Blockchain in Pervasive Edge Environments

Edge computing is becoming pervasive in our daily lives with emerging smart devices and the development of communication technology. Resource-rich smart devices and high-density supportive networks make data transactions prevalent over edge environments. To ensure such transactions are unmodifiable and undeniable, blockchain technology is introduced into edge environments. In this paper, we propose a hybrid blockchain system in edge environments to enhance the security for transactions and determine the incentive for miners. We propose a Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) hybrid consensus blockchain system utilizing the heterogeneity of devices to adapt to the characteristic of edge environments. We raise the incentive assignment problem that gives the corresponding PoW miner when a new block generates. We further formulate it into a two-stage Stackelberg game. We propose an algorithm and prove that it can obtain the global optimal results for the incentive that the miner will receive for a new block. Numerical simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can give reasonable incentive to miners under different system parameters in edge blockchain systems.