Trusted Resource Allocation Based on Smart Contracts for Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Things

By sharing resources between edge servers and end users, edge-end cooperation is one important way to support various applications in Internet of Things, which have critical resource requirements on computing, storage, or bandwidth. How to price these resources and how to evaluate the service quality of edge servers are two key issues to support trusted resource allocation for blockchain-enabled Internet of Things. In this article, we provide a trusted resource allocation mechanism based on smart contracts, in which a group-buying pricing mechanism (GBPM) and a reputation evaluation mechanism (REM) are proposed to effectively address the problems existing in resources pricing and service quality evaluation of edge servers. In the trusted resource allocation mechanism, end users can choose a purchase mode from four pricing schemes in terms of actual demands on delay and price, and smart contracts can match end users with high-reputation edge servers automatically. Moreover, end users can submit reputation evaluations to smart contracts based on the behaviors of edge servers. Simulation results show the GBPM can provide differentiated prices and optimize the utility of end users accordingly, while the REM is more sensitive to edge servers with irregular behaviors and quickly reduces their reputations so that the success rate of transactions is improved.