Blockchain-Based Open Data: An Approach for Resolving Data Integrity and Transparency

Abstract

Smart cities bring together technology, governments, and society to enable a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, and smart governance. However, they come with many technological challenges due to the lack of an efficient and secure mechanism for open data. The gap between a government and its citizens of public data prevents society from evolving. Many current proposals face serious problems of integrity and security issues. In this paper, we design and implement a mechanism for secure storing and exchanging open data leveraging Hyperledger Fabric and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). The proposed solution relies on two of the most interesting properties of blockchain which are immutability and decentralization to bring transparency and integrity to open data while ensuring its availability. The novel idea is to enable users to check the integrity of the data and retrieve all information about data-log without the help of any third party. As a result, it improves the trust among people who need to use data in other applications, also reduces the risk of making wrong decisions due to bad data. Moreover, the implementation results show that our solution is efficient for practical uses.