DAGSec: A hybrid distributed ledger architecture for the secure management of the Internet of Things

Abstract

The rise of 5G mobile broadband networks creates new possibilities for the Internet of Things. Billions of devices will provide comprehensive services, including e-health applications, smart grids, and industry 4.0. Distributed ledger technologies solve most security and privacy threats of current IoT systems connected to a cloud or multi-access edge communication (MEC). Unfortunately, the volume of transactions imposed by 5G networks prevents blockchain-based solutions due to scalability issues. Nonetheless, emerging solutions based on directed acyclic graphs (DAG), still require some form of centralization or global view. This article proposes DAGSec, a hybrid distributed ledger architecture that provides a secure Internet of Things environment with high throughput and low latency. Our proposal uses directed acyclic graphs and local transaction validation instead of global transaction validation to attain a high transaction rate. Furthermore, we propose a blockchain-based witness system to approximate chronological order of independent transactions.