A collaborative data storage with incentive mechanism for blockchain-based IoV

As the volume of data in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) continues to grow, challenges such as insufficient storage capacity and potential privacy breaches become more pronounced. To address these issues, this article proposes a novel collaborative data storage scheme with an incentivization mechanism, termed Blockchain-Based Collaborative Data Storage with Incentive Mechanism for IoV (CDS-BIoV). The CDS-BIoV framework consists of vehicles, roadside units (RSUs), and cloud infrastructure. In the first phase, vehicles collect and transmit data to their nearest RSU nodes. To encourage active participation in data reception and storage, an incentive mechanism is introduced to motivate RSU nodes. Two algorithms are developed: the Incentive Mechanism Collaborative Data Storage Algorithm (I-CDSA) and the Data Offloading Algorithm (DOA). The I-CDSA uses a competitiveness matrix to incentivize RSU nodes to minimize storage consumption, while the DOA employs incentives to secure additional cloud storage for offloading data. Experimental results show that the CDS-BIoV scheme reduces storage consumption by up to 93% compared to the Generic Parallel Database (GPDB), particularly as the number of blocks increases, effectively alleviating storage capacity limitations.