A secure and trustworthy blockchain-assisted edge computing architecture for industrial internet of things

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) seeks to improve smart factory productivity by leveraging automation and scalability. For automation in industry, optimization, collaboration and protection, and scalability, the IoTs paradigm, technology for communication and information, and intelligent systems are integrated as a single organism. This article presents a blockchain-assisted safe data-sharing mechanism that provides security requirements in the industry using IoT. End-to-end authentication is developed based on the blockchain's reputation, and the smart contract is used to validate nodes' security measures. Through integrity verification and categorization in node terminals and industry, the blockchain paradigm manages data collection and dissemination. An efficient proof of authentication (PoAh) consensus mechanism is created using the blockchain network to build a collaborative network to preserve logs and verification data in the industrial IoT. It accomplishes trustworthy authentication and endpoint activity tracing, and edge computing is used in blockchain nodes to offer device authentication processes that utilize smart contracts and PoAh. According to an experimental study, the proposed architecture lowers the authentication time and obtains a high response rate. The proposed system's service time shows the efficiency of PoAh-based blockchain architecture for industrial IoT compared with existing works. Finally, we evaluated various block sizes to ensure an efficient transaction rate. The outcomes demonstrate the practicality of the suggested and put-into-practice architecture, distinguished by enhanced data audibility, device data ownership, security, and privacy while utilizing decentralized storage.