The Concept of Secure Distributed Ledger Technology in the Digital Environment of a Smart City

Abstract

The security of the main distributed consensus algorithms used in distributed legers in the digital environment of a smart city is analyzed. A new concept for protecting a smart city’s distributed legers is presented, which consists of using a hybrid distributed consensus protocol based on the joint use of a tangle-class algorithm and a proof-of-authority-class algorithm, protected by trusted computing and remote attestation technologies. The proposed protocol compensates for the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the existing distributed consensus algorithms that are inherent in distributed ledger technology and hinder its widespread use in large digital environments of smart cities.