Blockchain Based Non-repudiable IoT Data Trading: Simpler, Faster, and Cheaper

Next-generation wireless technology and machine-to-machine technology can provide the ability to connect and share data at any time among IoT smart devices. However, the traditional centralized data sharing/trading mechanism lacks trust guarantee and cannot satisfy the real-time requirement. Distributed systems, especially blockchain, provide us with promising solutions. In this paper, we propose a blockchain based non-repudiation scheme for IoT data trading to resolve the credibility and real-time limits. The proposed scheme has two parts, i.e., a trading scheme and an arbitration scheme. The trading scheme employs a divide-and-conquer method and two commitment methods to support efficient IoT data trading, which runs in a two-round manner. The arbitration scheme first leverages a smart contract to solve disputes on-chain in real time. In case of on-chain arbitration dissatisfaction, the arbitration scheme also employs an off-line arbitration to make a final resolution. Short-term and long-term analysis show that the proposed scheme enforces non-repudiation among the data trading parties and runs efficiently for rational data owners and buyers. We implemented the proposed scheme. Experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme has an orders-of-magnitude performance speedup than the state-of-the-art scheme.