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Octopus: privacy preserving peer-to-peer transactions system with InterPlanetary file system (IPFS)

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Abstract

Blockchain-based decentralized infrastructure is intended to achieve peer-to-peer transactions without relying on centralized/trusted third parties. However, most of the existing blockchain systems suffer from several weaknesses including a certain level of centralization, centralized authority (e.g., data miners), and continuous increase in data storage or data bloating. To overcome these issues, in this paper, we propose Octopus, a truly peer-to-peer transactions system, based on Interplanetary File System (IPFS). Here, transactions between two parties take place via a direct peer-to-peer channel while the proofs of transactions are stored in an IPFS cluster. Unlike traditional blockchain-based systems, Octopus does not require blocks, chains, or miners to provide transaction proofs. Octopus offers several features such as horizontal and vertical scalability, data privacy, and high transaction throughput. Performance results from our prototype confirm these properties.

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Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Funding

This work was supported in part by the DoD Center of Excellence in AI and Machine Learning (CoE-AIML) under Contract Number W911NF-20-2-0277 with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Eranga Bandara, Sachin Shetty, Ravi Mukkamala & Peter Foytik

  2. University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Xueping Liang

  3. University of Colombo School of Computing, Colombo, Sri Lanka

    Nalin Ranasinghe & Kasun De Zoysa

Authors
  1. Eranga Bandara
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  2. Xueping Liang
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  3. Sachin Shetty
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  4. Ravi Mukkamala
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  5. Peter Foytik
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  6. Nalin Ranasinghe
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  7. Kasun De Zoysa
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Contributions

EB: Methodology, Software Implementation, Writing, Draft Preparation. XL: Investigation, Writing-Reviewing-Editing, Supervision. PF: Visualization, Writing-Reviewing-Editing. SS: Supervision, Investigation, Writing-Reviewing-Editing. RM: Investigation, Writing-Reviewing-Editing, Supervision. NR: Supervision, Investigation. KZ: Supervision, Investigation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eranga Bandara.

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Bandara, E., Liang, X., Shetty, S. et al. Octopus: privacy preserving peer-to-peer transactions system with InterPlanetary file system (IPFS). Int. J. Inf. Secur. 22, 591–609 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-022-00650-2

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