Smart Mining and Consensus Protocols in Blockchain-enabled Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems: A Survey
Salah Eddine Elgharbi, Samir Ouchani, Abderrahim Ait Wakrime, Yassine Ouhammou · 2023
The integration of emerging technologies into industrial systems is essential for facilitating collaboration among diverse stakeholders and optimizing the management of extensive assets. Efficient decision-making processes in contemporary autonomous systems greatly benefit from the substantial volumes of collected data. Addressing the challenges of decentralized data collection, the incorporation of blockchains emerges as a viable solution. Blockchains, in their decentralized structure, facilitate the trustworthy and transparent sharing of data. A sophisticated blockchain implementation has the potential to address real-world industrial challenges, spanning resource management, data collection, and analysis. This survey paper has dual objectives. Firstly, it aims to investigate existing decentralized architectures within industrial and production systems, primarily influenced by Industry 4.0 principles, ensuring the security and data privacy of various stakeholders. Secondly, the study delves into the diverse strategies employed in mining algorithms, classifying them based on the underlying architecture. These objectives complement each other through a comprehensive survey of decentralized architectures in industrial systems, an in-depth analysis and comparison of mining algorithms and protocols, and the practical application of the most effective strategy within a real industrial system. This work contributes to the understanding and advancement of smart mining and consensus protocols in Blockchain-enabled Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, providing insights for future developments in research area.