An evaluation framework for privacy‐preserving solutions applicable for blockchain‐based internet‐of‐things platforms

Abstract

Blockchain‐based applications provide many promising opportunities to overcome the challenges associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems (eg, centralized architecture, data integrity, and reliability). In particular, blockchain technology offers many desirable features for IoT infrastructures, such as decentralization, trustworthiness, trackability, and immutability. However, while logging all transactions in a distributed blockchain ledger provides transparency, it also makes it possible to compromise user's privacy, thus posing a grand challenge to IoT architects and implementers. Over the past years, a set of solutions have been proposed for various scenarios, to address these privacy issues. In this paper, we survey these solutions, classify, and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. We also introduce an evaluation framework to evaluate the quality of the privacy‐preserving based on an adjustable weighting scheme. Finally, we rate the analyzed solutions based on their privacy ranks, and hope our evaluation can shed light on the future design of privacy‐preserving solutions applicable for blockchain‐based IoT platforms.