IoETTS: A Decentralized Blockchain-based Trusted Time-stamping Scheme for Internet of Energy

Abstract

As a new-style smart grid, Internet of Energy (IoE) is important and how to provide its trusted time-stamping service becomes a hit. For example, an energy provider needs to prove he/she transferred some energy to a consumer at some time. Nevertheless, traditional trusted time-stamping scheme with a central service provider is not suitable for IoE. Some researchers try to solve this problem via blockchain, due to its decentralization, traceability and tamper-proof. However, there are still chal­lenges when using blockchain. Some have to introduce another kind of central participant. Some have to face the problem of accuracy and availability when using the Bitcoin blockchain. Some have to generate too many extra transactions. To address the aforementioned problems, we propose a fully decentralized trusted time-stamping scheme without any central participant and fulfill six design goals. Compared with the state-of-the-art blockchain-based time-stamping scheme named Chronos, our scheme enjoys less cryptographic operations. We then tested our scheme in the development (local) network and two live networks of the Ethereum. The experiment shows that we have implemented a simple, effective, accurate and low-cost decentralized trusted time-stamping scheme.