An Access Control System Based on Blockchain with Zero-Knowledge Rollups in High-Traffic IoT Environments

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Centralized access control (AC) systems in Internet of Things (IoT) environments face single points of failure.
• Blockchain and zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technologies offer potential solutions for enhanced security and privacy in AC.
• Existing blockchain-based AC systems struggle with low transactions per second (TPS) and high latency in high-traffic IoT settings, and cannot fully guarantee honest user behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel blockchain-based AC system utilizing zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) to overcome limitations of current solutions.
• To improve the adaptability and efficiency of AC systems in high-traffic IoT environments.
• To enhance the trustworthiness and security of user behavior within AC systems.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a blockchain-based AC system incorporating ZK-rollups.
• Grouping multiple AC authorization requests into batches for uniform ZKP generation.
• Performance evaluation in both low- and high-traffic IoT environments.
• Security analysis to demonstrate the prevention of malicious behaviors.

Main Results:

• The proposed system demonstrates the least AC authorization time cost in low-traffic environments compared to existing methods.
• ZK-rollups optimization reduces authorization time overhead by 86% in high-traffic IoT environments.
• The system's security analysis confirms its capability to prevent malicious user actions.

Conclusions:

• The proposed blockchain-based AC system with ZK-rollups effectively addresses the scalability and security challenges in IoT environments.
• The system offers significant improvements in authorization time and ensures participant trustworthiness.
• This approach provides a robust and efficient solution for secure access control in the evolving landscape of IoT.