A survey of distributed trust mechanisms suitable for IoT devices

Abstract

There are challenges and trade-offs associated with building secure decentralised systems that incorporate resource constrained devices into the Internet ecosystem, particularly the Internet of things. Introducing distributed ledgers solves some of these problems while introducing new challenges. This paper identifies mechanisms that can be adopted to build distributed trust for smaller devices when attempting to balance the consensus, scalability and decentralisation trilemma. The building blocks of decentralised consensus networks are identified and problem areas with potential solutions discussed to provide proper requirements scope. Newer consensus protocols and cryptographic constructs are discussed that might provide secure, efficient and scalable consensus and avoid excessive computational-, bandwidth- and storage resources. The idea is to limit the conceptual design phase to a resource-constrained operational situation to avoid redesign when the Internet of things becomes widely adopted.