Performance evaluation of a lightweight consensus protocol for blockchain in IoT networks

Abstract

The consensus protocol is essential in practically every blockchain application. Most of these existing blockchain consensus protocols need massive computational capabilities, substantial energy consumption, and dependency on monetary stakes. These shortcomings in the mainstream consensus approach lead to their unsuitability for low-resource applications like IoT. As a result of this work, a lightweight consensus process referred as Delegated Proof of Accessibility (DPoAC) is implemented and evaluated. DPoAC makes use of Shamir secret sharing, Proof of Stake (PoS) with random selection, and the Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS). The DPoAC operation is composed of four modules: secret generation and distribution, retrieval of secret shares, block creation and verification, and block rewards and penalty. A detailed description of DPoAC has been provided and implemented in JavaScript and experimental results demonstrate that our solution meets the necessary performance and security requirements for a lightweight scalable protocol for IoT systems.