IRJET- Credible Data through Distributed Ledger Technology

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 04 | Apr 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.211 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 4549
Credible Data through Distributed Ledger Technology
Karthik B S1, Shashank S2
1Eight Semester, Dept. of Cse, The National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, Karnataka, India
2Assistant Professor, Dept. of Cse, The National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, Karnataka, India
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Abstract –In centralized systems, the results of buying any
data online has always been questionable and untrustworthy
by customers. This problem has become more prevalent as
online shopping has become more common. Most of the
existing systems are based on centralized servers where
customers must trust the centralized organizing authorityfor
the integrity of the results. This paper proposes a
decentralized platform based on Ethereum Blockchain. This
idea of adapting decentralized system to make the process of
buying and selling data in a cheaper, faster, easier and
trustworthy way is a compelling one in the modern society.
Distributed systems are a technological improvement in the
current world. Distributed ledger technology in integration
with Ethereum offers an infinite range of applicationsthatare
more flexible.
Key Words: Blockchain, Distributed LedgerTechnology,
Ethereum, Smart Contracts, dApps, decentralization.
1. INTRODUCTION
As long as there is choice for customers, all data marketswill
work on reputation to a large extent. In early days, people
used to visit a physical store in order to buy the product. But
now people order their desired product online. The item a
user wishes to buy will be available at his doorstep. Soon, a
hybrid form of shopping will be evolved [1]. People will
search the product information online and then go to stores
to purchase their products. Around 70% of the consumers
read reviews before the purchase of the product. All popular
online data marketplaces include a reputation system that
facilitates trust in the vendors and the products. However,
the reviews and ratings are locked to the data marketplace’s
own platform, preventing the users/vendors from using the
reputation elsewhere. Additionally, the data marketplace
selects which reviews to go on top and thereby influences
the sales of individual data products. Such activities can be
prevented by using block chain. Transparency of data is
maintained across the network. Block chain prevents
modification of data as per the convenience of the vendors
and data holders as a change made in one node reflects in all
other nodes. If found improper, changes are roll backed. So,
in such a way the integrity of data that is present intheblock
chain in maintained. In this way users are guaranteed with
fair and true data. Malicious activities are hindered with the
use of block chain and ledger technologies.
Blockchain is a distributed database of records or a public
ledger of digital events or transactions that have been
executed and shared among participating parties across a
large network of untrusted participants. It stores data in
blocks that can verify information and are very difficult to
hack [6]. It eliminates the requirement of third-party
verification and thus disrupts any sector that leverages it
traditionally. Blockchain can replace a third party or middle
men whenever the third party or middle men is involved in
producing a transaction. Each transaction in the public
ledger is supposed to be verified by consensus of the
majority of participants in the system and once entered;
information will never be erased as it is immutable.
Blockchain data structure is a timestamped list of blocks,
which records and aggregates data on transactions that
might have ever occurred within the blockchainnetwork.So,
blockchain provides an immutable data storage that only
allows insertion of transactions and no updating or deletion
of existing transactions on blockchain to avoid tampering
and any revision. The entire network reaches a point of
consensus before a transaction is included into the
immutable data storage. The person who is to write the new
set of records on the immutable data storage is decided
through different mechanisms like Proof-of-work or Proof-
of-stake, which are basically the consensus algorithms.
Blockchain technology is non-controversial and it has
worked flawlessly over the years and is being successfully
applied to both financial and non-financial applications. A
blockchain-based system is yettobesystematicallyexplored
to design it a proper way and there is also a little
understanding about the impact of introducing blockchain
into software architecture.
2 EXISTING SYSTEM
The existing systems are the usual third-party interfaces
which are controlled by a single organizationandcanactasa
single point of failure. When we use third party websites or
interfaces, we are required to trusta particularorganization.
Traditional databases use client-server network
architecture. Here, a user (known as a client) can modify
data, which is stored on a centralized server. Control over
the database remains within a designated authority, which
authenticates the client’scredentialsbefore providingaccess
to the database. As this authority is responsible for
administration of the database, if the security of the
authority is compromised, the data can be altered, or even
deleted.
A user with permissions associated with their account can
modify entries that are stored on a centralized server. By

changing the ‘master copy’, whenever a user accesses a
database using their computer, administrators will get the
updated version of the database entry. Control of the
database remains with administrators. Access and
permissions are restricted to the central authority.
3. BACKGROUND ON DISTRIBUTED LEDGER
TECHNOLOGY AND ETHEREUM
To solve this problem, we use the Distributed Ledger
Technologywhichisdecentralized,immutable,tamper-proof
and uses asymmetric encryption and achieves data privacy.
This technology possesses four main features:
a) The ledger is distributed i.e. it does not exist in only
one single location but it is distributed.Hence,there
is no single point of failure in the maintenance of
the distributed ledger.
b) Majority of the network nodes must reach the
consensus before a new block with new set of
transactions becomes a permanent part of the
ledger.
c) One single person cannot take control over the
distributed ledger. No middle men.
d) Any proposed “new block” to the ledger must
reference the previous version of the ledger,
creating an immutable chain from where the
blockchain gets its name, and thus preventing
tampering with the integrity of previous entries.
These technological features operate through the concept of
cryptography where the public keys and private keys of the
particular accounts are involved, providing a security level
equal and/or greater than any previously known database.
Blockchain can be referred to as a public decentralized
database with replicates distributed over several nodes
simultaneously [7]. In Blockchain there is no authority in
charge of managing and maintaining the ledger of
transactions. The validity of the ledger’s version is
established through a consensus mechanism among the
validating nodes. The use of Blockchain technology allows a
secure validation of transaction’s data integrity. Bitcoin, for
instance, is the first application developed over Blockchain
by Satoshi Nakamoto [8]. On another hand, Ethereum
Blockchain [9] is an open-source, distributed and
decentralized computing infrastructure that executes
programs called smart contracts. It is developed to enable
decentralization for applications and not only for digital
currency. It is achieved using a virtual machine (Ethereum
Virtual Machine, EVM) to execute a complete scripting
language. Unlike Bitcoin in which only Booleanevaluation of
spending conditions are considered, EVM is somehow
similar to a general-purpose computerthatsimulateswhata
Turing machine can execute. Changing the stateofa contract
in the Blockchain requires transaction fees which are priced
in Ether. Ether is considered as the fuel for operating the
distributed application platform.
3.1 Accounts in Ethereum
There exist 2 types of accounts in Ethereum:
1) Externally Owned Accounts (EOA): An account which is
controlled by private keys and has anaccountaddresswhich
is determined from the public key. The holder of the private
key can transfer ethers to other accounts and can make
transactions to the smart contract. EOA’s can hold ether as
balance in the wallet. It has no associated code with it.
Externally Owned Accounts are considered user type
accounts and are linked to unique cryptographic keys pair,
generated upon account creation. The public key is used to
reference the account and also called EOA address whereas
the private key on the other hand is used to sign transaction
before executing any type of transaction on the network to
prove authenticity. EOAs have balances which hold Ether
cryptocurrency [10].
2) Smart Contract Accounts: A smart contract is an account
which will be generated when a smart contract code is
compiled and is deployed to the blockchain. The address of
the contract account is determined atthetimethe contractis
created. The smart contract accounts are controlled by code
and are created by Externally Owned Account when the
smart contracts are deployed. It also has a walletto storethe
ether balance. And it has associated code by which itisbeing
controlled by. It is considered as an autonomous agent
executed by the EVM and is the core foundation and the
main building blocks of any Decentralised Application [10].
Once the code is deployedontotheBlockchain,theEthereum
Virtual Machine will take care of executing the code as long
as the conditions apply. It is important to note that smart
contracts once deployed to the Blockchainnetwork,theycan
be visited and viewed via their address with all their
associated transactions (to address, from address,
timestamp, etc.).
4. LITERATURE REVIEW AND RELATED WORK
We present in this section various solutions that attempt to
integrate data market and Blockchain to enable
decentralization of marketing of data. We then highlight the
added value of our proposed system comparedtotheothers.
Krešimir Mišura; Mario Žagar [11] “Data Marketplace for
Internet of Things” published in international conference on
smart systems and technologies/IEEE05December2016. In
this paper, a P2P-network-based system is proposed, where
the data marketplace emerged as a platform to facilitate
transparent data transactions between IoT device usersand
IoT device producers. The data generated by Internet of
Things is mostly owned by device owners and is often
private in nature. There are however third partiesthatcould
benefit from using that data, and the challenge is in allowing
them to access it under the conditions that data owners find
acceptable. An opportunity presents itself to create a

marketplace where device owners could sell that data and
data consumers could buy it. Some properties of IoT data
make it difficult to trade in traditional data markets.
5. PROPOSED SYSTEM
In this section, we introduce our proposed data marketplace
system that aims at solving the existing barriers.
5.1 SYSTEM COMPONENTS
The following are the components that the proposed system
consists of:
1) Remix IDE: The main goal of the Remix IDE is to compile
the smart contract code using the solc translator and to
deploy the smart contract to the blockchain network. After
smart contract is deployed on to the blockchain a unique
address is generated using which interaction can be done
with the smart contract either by making calls or
transactions to the smart contract.
2) Web Application: The web applicationallowsthebuyer or
seller of the data marketplace to authenticate for further
processes. The seller when logged into the data marketplace
can upload the data and set a desired amount of price to the
respective data. If the buyer of the data marketplace wishes
to buy the particular data, he can buy it by sending the
respective amount of ethers to the seller, after which he can
download or view the data and also can validate the data
against the hash of the data which will be stored in the
ledger.
3) Smart contracts: Here there exists a single smart contract
for the data marketplace which handles all the end users of
the data marketplace. The selling process includes updating
the smart contract ledger with the meta-data of the data
uploaded by the seller.Thebuyingprocessinvolvesupdating
the smart contract with the flags for the respective buyers of
the particular data.
5.2 SELLING THE DATA
The seller uses the web application to authenticate himself
as discussed previously. After the authentication, the seller
can sell a particular data on the data marketplace platform
by simply uploading the data files and specifying a desired
amount of ethers as price and submitting the form
accordingly. This process involves a tiny bit of cost which is
spent as the gas required for the ethereum virtual machine
to execute the smart contract code.
5.3 BUYING THE DATA
The buyer uses the web application to authenticate himself.
After the authentication if the buyer wishes to buy specific
data, he can just click the buy button and again confirm to
buy the data by paying the respective amount of ethers as
price which will be sent to the owner of the respective data.
The smart contract takes care of the sending the ethers to
the owner of the respective data.
6. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
To validate the proposed data marketplace system, the
following solution has been implemented using various
technologies. Django is a web framework for python, which
is used to create a user interface which is user friendly.
Python is used for the server side scripting. Web3.py a
python module is used to interact with the blockchain
network. Solidity,a contractorientedprogramminglanguage
which is used for writing smart contracts [12], and HTML,
CSS for frontend user interface, JavaScript for the backend
interface. A private blockchain network is created using the
go-implementation of the ethereum protocol; proof-of-
authority is used as a consensus mechanism. And finally, the
Django webserver for hosting the decentralized web
application.
Fig. 1. User login page
Fig. 2. Home page of the web application

Fig. 3. Choose to buy or sell the data.
Fig. 4. Seller selling page
Fig. 5. Buyer home page
Fig. 6. Buyer buying page
Fig. 7. Block exploring page
Fig. 8. Block information page
6. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
The number of IoT devices used in industries and in day to
day life is increasing exponentially. Hencetheneedtobuilda
trustworthy medium where the data can be shared is also
increasing. This project hopes to move towards building a
decentralized network of peers using blockchain chain
environment. Users can share the data within a network
where its integrity will be achieved through the distributed
ledger. Ethereum has four development stages, namely,
Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and Serenity. Even though
there is no official roadmap for Ethereum, a lot has been
planned for its implementation in the coming years,
including a major consensus overhaul fromproof-of-work to
proof-of-stake.
The next advancement associated with this projectwill be to
add a security feature. The location wheredata storedcanbe
encrypted and stored in the ledger. When a buyer buys the
data, the location of the data will be decrypted and sent to
him, which can be achieved through asymmetric key
cryptography. Another advancement that can be added is to
upgrade the storage of files from local disk to the clouds.
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