Blockchain-Aided Edge Computing Market: Smart Contract and Consensus Mechanisms

Building upon the prevailing concept of edge computing (EC), a distributed EC market requires decentralized and verified transaction management to trade computing resources. Towards this goal, we study a blockchain-aided EC market wherein each data service operator (DSO) rents a group of edge computing nodes (ECNs) and leases the ECNs to the user terminals (UTs) to provide computation offloading services. A trustworthiness model is introduced to evaluate the quality of each network entity throughout the transactions. We develop a two-level trading mechanism over smart contract to enable the automatic and efficient transactions among the network entities and provide high quality services. First, we propose a smart contract based matching mechanism to establish the renting association between the DSOs and ECNs with the aim of maximizing the social welfare. Second, we propose a social welfare improved double auction (SWIDA) mechanism to build up the leasing association between the DSOs and UTs, and determine the pricing of the winners. We show that the proposed double auction mechanism can achieve individual rationality, balanced budget, truthfulness in expectation, and an improved social welfare than the benchmark mechanisms. Moreover, we put forth a trustworthiness driven Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to enable verified transaction and fair allocation of block generation reward. Following the principle of PoS, we formulate the block generation as a coalitional game, wherein each stakeholder votes according to its trustworthiness and coinage, and shares the reward among the coalition according to the Shapley values. The simulation results show that the proposed PoS consensus mechanism can reduce the wealth inequality among the network entities compared with the conventional consensus mechanisms.

Automated summary

In this study, a blockchain-aided distributed edge computing market is proposed, which provides decentralized and verified transaction management. A trustworthiness model is introduced to evaluate the quality of each network entity and a two-level trading mechanism over smart contract is developed for efficient transactions. Additionally, a trustworthiness-driven Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is put forth to enable verified transactions and fair allocation of block generation reward.