Transparency-privacy Trade-off in Blockchain-Based Supply Chain in Industrial Internet of Things

The integration of blockchain and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) results in a new model of supply chain in which blockchain provides common platform to record the data whereas IIoT facilitates connectivity of the devices. The temper-proof record, traceability, and verification of each step (transparency) from manufacturing to final availability of the product is made possible through blockchain which results in a transparent supply chain. However, the high-level transparency also increases the risk of disclosure of business-related and personal information (minimum privacy) such as business secrets, intellectual property, and special incentives to adversaries. Consequently, a trade-off between transparency and privacy is established. Therefore, this work proposes a blockchain-based supply chain management in the context of IIoT known as SM-IIoT which discusses this transparency-privacy trade-off. Furthermore, the trade-off problem is turned into a Game in which the participants act as players whereas the transparency and privacy leakage are the payoff and loss, respectively. Consequently, the players compete to maximize their payoffs but minimize their individual losses due to privacy leakage. Nash equilibrium gives the solution for the Game which optimizes the payoffs of the players (e.g., maximum transparency and minimum privacy leakage). The scenario is implemented through Hyperledger fabric (HF) blockchain. Moreover, the results suggested that the proposed SM-IIoT outperforms the game theory based privacy preserving analysis approach in big data (GB-PPABD) in terms of transparency. Furthermore, the comparison with other similar works revealed that SM-IIoT owns the key attributes of the supply chain including transparency-privacy trade-off, fairness, and competitive behavior modeling of the participants.