Enhancing the blockchain voting process in IoT using a novel blockchain Weighted Majority Consensus Algorithm (WMCA)

ABSTRACT Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to improve our lifestyle in a noticeable way. However, although the IoT holds a lot of chances, it contains a lot of serious risks. This leads to a focus on developing security techniques that can increase the security level of IoT. Blockchain is considered as an innovative technique for securing IoT and sharing data in a secure and tamperproof way. The blockchain is a peer-to-peer connection system that performs transactions securely by using consensus algorithms with no need for a trusted third party. Blockchain proved its applicability in securing IoT networks, and the research in this area is still enticing researchers to delve deeper and deeper. Decentralized voting is considered the fundamental principle that blockchain relies on for making the appropriate decision that would offer a proper security level for IoT. In this research a novel decentralized blockchain Weighted Majority Consensus Algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is inspired by the well-known weighted majority voting algorithm in the ensemble data mining learning approach. A java implementation of WMCA has been created for testing several scenarios with the aim of confirming the applicability of the proposed WMCA and the results were very promising.