An Overview on Blockchain for Smartphones: State-of-the-Art, Consensus, Implementation, Challenges and Future Trends

Abstract

The blockchain technology is currently penetrating different areas of the modern Information and Communications Technology community. Most of the devices involved in blockchain-related processes are specially designed targeting only the mining aspect, i.e., solving the computational puzzle task. At the same time, the use of wearable and mobile devices may also become a part of eCommerce blockchain operation, especially during the on-charge time. The paper considers the possibility of using a large number of constrained devices to support the operation of the blockchain with a low impact on battery consumption. The utilization of such devices is expected to improve the system efficiency as well as to attract a more substantial number of users. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge with a survey of the main applications of blockchain for smartphones along with existing mobile blockchain projects. It also proposes a novel consensus protocol based on a combination of Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Activity (PoA), and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithms for efficient and on-the-fly utilization on resource-constrained devices. The system was deployed in a worldwide testnet with more than two thousand smartphones and compared with other projects from the user-experienced metrics perspective. The results prove that the utilization of PoA systems on a smartphone does not significantly affect the lifetime of the smartphone battery while existing methods based on PoW have a tremendous negative impact. Finally, the main open challenges and future investigation directions are outlined.

The blockchain technology is currently penetrating different areas of the modern Information and Communications Technology community. Most of the devices involved in blockchain-related processes are specially designed targeting only the mining aspect, i.e., solving the computational puzzle task. At the same time, the use of wearable and mobile devices may also become a part of eCommerce blockchain operation, especially during the on-charge time. The paper considers the possibility of using a large number of constrained devices to support the operation of the blockchain with a low impact on battery consumption. The utilization of such devices is expected to improve the system efficiency as well as to attract a more substantial number of users. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge with a survey of the main applications of blockchain for smartphones along with existing mobile blockchain projects. It also proposes a novel consensus protocol based on a combination of Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Activity (PoA), and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithms for efficient and on-the-fly utilization on resource-constrained devices. The system was deployed in a worldwide testnet with more than two thousand smartphones and compared with other projects from the user-experienced metrics perspective. The results prove that the utilization of PoA systems on a smartphone does not significantly affect the lifetime of the smartphone battery while existing methods based on PoW have a tremendous negative impact. Finally, the main open challenges and future investigation directions are outlined.