Performance evaluation of a lightweight consensus protocol for blockchain in IoT networks.

The consensus protocol is essential in practically every blockchain application. Most of these existing blockchain consensus protocols need massive computa-tional capabilities, substantial energy consumption, and dependency on monetary stakes. These shortcomings in the mainstream consensus approach leadto their unsuitability for low-resource applications like IoT. As a result of thiswork, a lightweight consensus process referred as Delegated Proof of Accessibility (DPoAC) is implemented and evaluated. DPoAC makes use of Shamir secretsharing, Proof of Stake (PoS) with random selection, and the Inter-PlanetaryFile System (IPFS). The DPoAC operation is composed of four modules: secret generation and distribution, retrieval of secret shares, block creation and verification, and block rewards and penalty. A detailed description of DPoAChas been provided and implemented in JavaScript and experimental resultsdemonstrate that our solution meets the necessary performance and securityrequirements for a lightweight scalable protocol for IoT systems.