On coexistence of decentralized system (blockchain) and central management in Internet-of-Things

Abstract

Networks are composed of logical nodes and edges for communications. The atomistic component of things connected to the network is a memory chip. Accordingly, the unique linkage of a memory chip and a logical node can be promising to resolve the root-of-trust problem on the Internet-of-Things. For this aim, we propose a protocol of challenge-response using a memory chip. For the central management, a central node controls the entry of electronic appliances with a memory chip into the network, and excludes a fake node (e.g., the spoofing entity) from the network that the central node manages. For the decentralized communications, Merkle's tree turns out to be composed of memory chips to which the logical nodes are uniquely linked, respectively. The root of Merkle turns out to be the memory chip that stores the latest record of data transactions. We can register this memory chip as a new block by satisfying the requirement of the proof-of-consensus. After blocks are chained, it gets harder for even the central node to manipulate transaction record among memory chips. By this way, the decentralized system (e.g., blockchain) and the central management can coexist. A new idea of security state is also discussed briefly.