Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compag

Review

Integrating blockchain and the internet of things in precision agriculture: T

Analysis, opportunities, and challenges
Mohamed Torkya,c, Aboul Ella Hassaneinb,c
a
Faculty of Computer and Information Systems-Islamic University in Madinah, KSA Higher Institute of Computer Science and Information Systems-Culture & Science City
Academy, Egypt
b
Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence-Cairo University, Egypt
c
Scientific Research Group in Egypt (SRGE), Egypt

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Blockchain quickly became an important technology in many applications of precision agriculture discipline.
Precision agriculture The need to develop smart P2P systems capable of verifying, securing, monitoring, and analyzing agricultural
Blockchain technology data is leading to thinking about building blockchain-based IoT systems in precision agriculture. Blockchain
Internet of things plays the role of pivotal in replacing the classical methods of storing, sorting and sharing agricultural data into a
Challenges and solutions
more reliable, immutable, transparent and decentralized manner. In precision farming, the combination of the
Internet of Things and the blockchain will move us from only smart farms only to the internet of smart farms and
add more control in supply-chains networks. The result of this combination will lead to more autonomy and
intelligence in managing precision agriculture in more efficient and optimized ways. This paper exhibits a
comprehensive survey on the importance of integrating both blockchain and IoT in developing smart applica­
tions in precision agriculture. The paper also proposed novel blockchain models that can be used as important
solutions for major challenges in IoT-based precision agricultural systems. In addition, the study reviewed and
clearly discussed the main functions and strengths of the common blockchain platforms used in managing
various sub-sectors in precision agriculture such as crops, livestock grazing, and food supply chain. Finally, the
paper discussed some of the security and privacy challenges, and blockchain-open issues that obstacles devel­
oping blockchain-IoT systems in precision agriculture.

1. Introduction will grow at an average rate of 13.7 percent to reach 10.55 billion U.S.
dollar by 2025 (Xinhuanet, 2020). In addition, the global precision
There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance farming market is evaluated to grow from USD 7.0 billion in 2020 to
of utilizing emerging technologies in precision agriculture (Zhang et al., USD 12.8 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)
2002; McBratney et al., 2005; Nikkil et al., 2010). Precision agriculture of 12.7% (Markets and Markets, 2020).
is a new technology that utilizes Information Technology (IT), satellite In precision agriculture, forecasting and predictive analytic software
technology, Geographical Information System (GIS), and remote sen­ systems can use agricultural data to provide farmers with guidance
sing for enhancing all functions and services of the agriculture sector about soil management, crop maturity rotation, optimal planting times,
(Khanal et al., 2017). Today, precision agriculture started to rely upon and harvesting times, etc. For example, machine learning technology
Mobile apps (Jagyasi et al., 2013), smart sensors (Sartori and Brunelli, can be integrated with remote sensing for accurate forecasting of crop
2016), drones (Puri et al., 2017), cloud computing (Mekala and production and nitrogen levels estimation in precision agriculture
Viswanathan, 2017), Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Jha et al., 2019), in­ (Chlingaryan et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2010). In addition, historical crop
ternet of Things (IoT)Ahmed et al., 2018), and blockchain (Ge et al., planting maps can be used for developing a machine learning system for
2017). Based on these technologies, it is become possible to process and predicting annual crop planting (Zhang et al., 2019; Elavarasan et al.,
access real-time data about the conditions of the soil, crops, and 2018). Predicting crop growth in the smart greenhouse using a self-
weather along with other relevant services such as crops and fruits learning model and IoT data is another contribution of machine
supply chain, food safety, and animal grazing. learning in precision agriculture (Kocian et al., 2020). AgriProduction
Many statistical reports announced that precision agriculture will (Dos Santos et al., 2019) is another system that able to anticipate
add more improvement to the global economy based on the use of agricultural problems related to soil humidity, temperature, and leaf
advanced technology in all agriculture subsectors. According to market growth based on both LoRa IoT technology and the ARIMA prediction
research and advisory firm, the global market of precision agriculture model.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2020.105476
Received 25 November 2019; Received in revised form 29 April 2020; Accepted 1 May 2020
Available online 08 September 2020
0168-1699/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Sensor technology and IoT can also mitigate various challenges in data assurance and security (Mann et al., 2018; Xie et al., 2017; Liang
precision agriculture (Tzounis et al., 2017). Agricultural monitoring et al., 2017). The Increased utilization of the public blockchain in food
systems can provide surveillance services that maintain the plant markets has also motivated the governments to restructure their legis­
growing at an optimal level and early anticipate the conditions that lead lative frameworks and regulations to consider blockchain in its eco­
to epidemic plant disease outbreak based on wireless sensor networks nomic policies. Recently, the need for blockchain in precision agri­
installed in the planted area (Khattab et al., 2019; Ibrahim et al., 2019). culture is mandatory to bridge the demand and supply gap along with
Smart irrigation systems based on IoT and sensor technology is another attaining sustainability in the ecosystem.
solution for the shortage of clean water resources that are necessary for Although some reviews studies in integrating blockchain with IoT
a lot of plants kinds as well as achieving optimum water-resource uti­ have been introduced (Dorri et al., 2017; Fernáez-Caramés and Fraga-
lization in the precision agriculture (Huong et al., 2018). Building Lamas, 2018), these reviews didn’t go deep into investigating the
flexible and automated platforms able to cope with soilless needs in full benefits and solutions that blockchain can introduce for developing new
smart greenhouses using moderately saline water is an important issue applications in precision agriculture (Bermeo-Almeida et al., 2018). As
in precision agriculture that depends on combining IoT with cloud and a response to this limitation in the literature, this paper is one of the
edge computing for mitigating this challenge. first mature studies that introduces a holistic approach and a systematic
Deep learning technology represents a recent technology in preci­ review for investigating more contributions of blockchain technology in
sion agriculture (Kamilaris and Prenafeta-Bold, 2018). This new tech­ precision agriculture. The rest of this paper is designed as follows:
nology can help in designing automated and reliable fruit detection Section 2 introduces an overview of blockchain technology. Section 3
systems for fruit yield estimation and automated harvesting through discusses the major contributions of Blockchain in IoT applications.
applying neural network models on imagery data obtained from two Section 4 discusses the major uses cases of integrating blockchain with
modalities: color (RGB) and Near-Infrared (NIR)Sa et al., 2016) like IoT in precision agriculture. Section 5 discusses some challenges and
Mango fruit detection (Koirala et al., 2019), cotton detection and seg­ open problems that obstacle building blockchain-IoT networks in pre­
mentation (Li et al., 2017), and apple detection and segmentation (Kang cision agriculture. Finally, Section 6 summarizes the general conclu­
and Chen, 2019). Utilizing deep learning for visual detection and re­ sion.
cognition of weeds in grasslands is an additional contribution of deep
learning in terms of weed control in precision agriculture discipline 2. Blockchain technology: an overview
(Kounalakis et al., 2018).
Decision Support Systems, data analysis, and data mining become a The theory of Blockchain was invented by ”Satoshi Nakamoto” in
significant technique for managing many services in precision agri­ 2008 to work as a public ledger of the bitcoin transactions (Nakamoto,
culture (Zhai et al., 2020). Managing smart farms through web-based 2008; Al-Jaroodi and Mohamed, 2019). The concept of blockchain can
decision support systems can help in complying with many require­ be defined as a decentralized, distributed ledger for storing time-
ments in precision agriculture such as crop production, optimizing stamped transactions between many computers in a peer to peer net­
farming costs, and monitoring market dynamics in more efficiency work. So that any involved record cannot tamper retroactively. This
(Narra et al., 2020). In addition, many steps have been made to improve allows the blockchain users to audit and verify transactions in­
irrigation decisions based on various irrigation decision models that can dependently and transparently. So, the blockchain can be designed as a
help the farmers to carry out critical irrigation actions and optimize growing stack of records, called ”blocks”, which are connected using
irrigation depth (Car, 2018; El Baki et al., 2018). Moreover, water loses cryptographic techniques. Each block must have a hash code of the
reduction and improving water supply efficiency can be achieved previous block, a timestamp, and a set of confirmed transactions (Zheng
through automating irrigation canal operations, and manipulating both et al., 2017). Simply, a blockchain is an invented way to structure data
known and unknown patterns of water demands that can be recognized in a decentralized manner, which structured as a book that contains an
by different irrigation systems in the farms (Shahdany et al., 2019). infinite number of pages, each page (i.e. block) contains new transac­
Agricultural robotics has brought also a significant development for tions in the blockchain. The blockchain ledger is controlled autono­
various applications in precision agriculture (Pedersen et al., 2006). mously using a P2P network and a public time-stamping server
The objective of agricultural robotics is more than just the use of ro­ (Tapscott and Tapscott, 2016). The decentralized transparent design of
botics for specific functions in precision agriculture, but most of the blockchain tracing and secure the transaction workflow. This feature
recent the automatic agricultural vehicles are multi-function, such that can solve the long-standing problem of double-spending (Chohan,
it can be used for weed detection, agrochemical dispersal, terrain le­ 2017). In the blockchain, each block has a unique hash value that
veling, irrigation, field supervision, as well as tree fruit production identifies the identity of the block. The first block in the chain is named
(Cheein and Carelli, 2013; Bergerman et al., 2015). Moreover, devel­ a ”genesis block” which has no parent block as depicted in Fig. 1. The
oping a smart drone system becomes an interesting and significant general architecture of each block is explained in Fig. 2. Each block unit
technology in precision agriculture (Mogili and Deepak, 2018). Smart consists of a block header and a block body. Especially, the block
drones able to solve many big challenges in precision agriculture such header involves six components:
as irrigation monitoring, weed identification, crop dusting, crop mon­
itoring, pesticide spraying as well as deterring fertility levels, identi­ • Block version is a software version number indicates which con­
fying bacteria, fungus or diseases based on Infra-red radiation com­ sensus protocol to follow.
monly reflected from sensors or thermal imagery (Smith, 2020). • Markle Tree Root Hash is used to verify the hash code that iden­
Recently, blockchain represents the last new technology that can be tifies all block transactions.It recursively defined as a binary tree of
used for mitigating significant challenges in precision agriculture, hash codes.
especially when integrated with IoT technology (Tripoli and • Timestamp is given in seconds since 1/1/1970. It is used to im­
Schmidhuber, 2018). According to a new market intelligence report by mutably track the creation and update time of the block for block
BIS Research, employing blockchain technology in precision agricul­ integrity guarantee.
ture,and food supply chain markets is anticipated to increase from • N-Bits identifies the target threshold of hash code that specifies the
$41.9 M in 2018 to $1.4B by 2028 (BIS Research, 2018). Blockchain can valid block.
introduce a variety of benefits and support in several applications in • Nonce is an arbitrary number that can be used just once in a
precision agriculture. For instance, Smart farming, supply chain mon­ cryptographic communication. It is a 4 byte field, which usually
itoring and tracking (Lin et al., 2018; Bordel et al., 2018; Tse et al., begins with ’0s’ and grows for every hash computation.
2017; Casado-Vara et al., 2018), finance management (Chinaka, 2016), • Parent Block Hash is a 256 bit hash code that refers to the

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 1. Blockchain as a sequence of hashed blocks.

previous block. Without this component, there would be no con­ 2.1. Blockchain features
nection and chronology between blocks in the blockchain.
Blockchain has four major features as depicted in Fig. 4 that make it
On the other hand, the block body contains all the number of is better than the common centralized database systems:
transactions that are confirmed and validated within the block. All
transactions in the block are counted via Block Transaction Counter • Decentralization: The set of transactions in blockchain are pro­
(BTC). The block state represents who sent which data (e.g. Bitcoin) to cessed and validated through a distributed ledger-based on P2P
whom at a specific timestamp. An identified transaction between two network. For example, in the bitcoin blockchain, there is no need for
nodes only occurs once it is involved in a block, then the block is ver­ the central trusted party (i.e. the central Bank). All nodes work to­
ified and added to the blockchain. To achieve this, the ledger must be gether as peer to peer for adding and verifying block transactions in
publicly available, this clears the importance of peer-to-peer networks the blockchain.
in blockchain systems (Zyskind and Nathan, 2015). Fig. 3 explains how • Persistency: In blockchain, it is impossible to drop or rollback an
the blockchain system works while a user ’A’ transfers a transactional identified transaction once it is added to an block in the blockchain.
data (e.g. bitcoin) to a user ’B’. In a P2P network, the nodes can guar­ Moreover,invalid transactions could be discovered immediately.
antee the blockchain is protected and up-to-date, where, every node • Anonymity: Each participant can communicate with the blockchain
stores the last updated version of the blockchain. Utilizing P2P network by a generated virtual identity code, which does not uncover the
architecture in the blockchain system has three main advantages: real identity of the participant. Hence, this feature raises several
security and privacy challenges of blockchain transactions (Kosba
1. The user can always brows and check the blockchain status by a et al., 2016).
blockchain explorer without depending on a third party • Auditability: This feature specifies that each block is securely
2. A malicious attacker is challenged to attack thousands or millions linked to the previous block. This design makes transactions are
of nodes at the same time in order to compromise the blocks easily verified and tracked.
3. Blockchain is never removed because it would have to be re­
moved by all nodes in P2P network With respect to who are the miners and validators of blocks in
blockchain, who is authenticated to access blockchain system, level of

Fig. 2. Block design.

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 3. Blockchain system working.

network. These principles make sure the blockchain system works as

intended to do in a synchronization manner. The blockchain protocol
sets rules on three key issues: creating data blocks, verifying and vali­
dating data blocks, as well as resolving block conflicts in the chain.
Recently, there are different blockchain protocols used to verify and
add blocks to the blockchain in different ways. A newly mined block
can be inserted to the blockchain if it follows the formulated principles
stated by the blockchain protocol. Then, the peers in the network run
software to test if the block is rightful or not. An illegal block will
simply be rejected. In Table 2, the functionality of some major con­
sensus blockchain mechanisms is presented and compared in terms of
the mining process, the used technology for generating blocks, the
power save during mining process,the block verification speed, the
network structure on which each protocol is working, scalability, access
rights to users, and a platform example for each protocol. As depicted in
Fig. 4. The major features of blockchain. tale 2, the main disadvantages of old protocols such as Proof of Work
(Pow) (Zheng et al., 2018), Proof of Stake (PoS) (King and Nadal,
2012), Proof of Authority (PoA) (Bentov et al., 2014; Lin and Liao,
Table 1
2017), and Proof of Burn (PoB) (Frankenfield, 2018; CoinCheckup,
A Comparison between blockchain types.
2019) are that those protocols consume more powers and have low
Property Public Blockchain Private Consortium speed during mining process. On the other side, the new protocols such
Blockchain Blockchain as Proof of Luck (Pol) (Milutinovic et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2015; Chen
Blockchain All peers One Selected peers et al., 2017), and Proof of Assignment (PoAss) (ICO Bench, 2019; IOTW,
Validation organization 2019) are more power savers and able to generate a new block in the
Access Rights Public public or Private public or Private blockchain in less than 10 s. Moreover, these protocols is working based
Immutability and Very tough to tampered tampered on novel secure technologies, such as Intel Software Guard Extension
Security tamper
(SGX) as in Pol (Milutinovic et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2015; Chen et al.,
Efficiency Low High High
Centralization No Yes Partial 2017), and green mining technology as in PoAss (ICO Bench, 2019;
Blockchain Permissionless Permissioned Permissioned IOTW, 2019). This novel technologies provides more security, trusted
Authority environments for block mining, and more power saving during block
verification and generation.
The literature introduced additional blockchain protocols that can
security and efficiency, design method, blockchain authority, block­ be used in different fields and applications, for instance, in crypto­
chain systems can be classified into three types: public, private, and currency exchange (Schwartz et al., 2014; Buchman, 2016; Bach et al.,
consortium blockchain which are compared in Table 1. 2018; Gibbs and Yordchim, 2014; Jake Frankenfield, 2019; Chohan,
2019; Mser et al., 2018; Hileman and Rauchs, 2017; Chang and
2.2. Blockchain protocols Svetinovic, 2016), identity verification and privacy preserving (Umeh,
2016; Jeffrey Maxim, 2019; Keybase, 2019; Eric Weiss, 2019), E-gov­
Executing a specific blockchain protocol is where the magic occurs. ernment sector (Aman Soni, 2018; Nuss et al., 2018; Buchmann et al.,
It allows all nodes in a P2P network to cooperate and work together 2017; Vos et al., 2017; Pawlak et al., 2018), healthcare systems
without trust requirements between them. The blockchain protocol is (Brennan, 2017; Azaria et al., 2016), and energy and smart grids
responsible for verifying and securely adding blocks to the chain ac­ (Martens et al., 2017; Pop et al., 2018).
cording to the set of mining rules. So, the blockchain protocol is simply
a set of principles that are agreed upon by all peer nods in the P2P

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Table 2
A comparison between six blockchain protocols.
Measure Pow (Zheng PoS (King and PoA (Bentov et al., 2014; Lin PoB (Frankenfield, 2018; Pol (Milutinovic et al., 2016; Kim PoAss (ICO Bench,
et al., 2018) Nadal, 2012) and Liao, 2017) CoinCheckup, 2019) et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2017) 2019; IOTW, 2019)

Mining puzzle wager puzzle + wager burn coins. luck algo. hashcodes
Base Tech. coin-based coin-based coin-based coin-based Intel SGX green mining
Handling No partial partial No yes yes
Power Save No partial No yes yes yes
Verification > 100s < 100s < 100s < 100s < 10s < 10s
Structure P2P P2P P2P P2P P2P/central central
Scalability high high high high high low
Access public public public public public/private private
Platform Bitcoin-NG (Eyal Peercoin (King and Coin Proz (ProzCoin, 2019) Slimcoin (CoinCheckup, Hayekcoin(ANN, 2019) IOTW (IOTW, 2019)
et al., 2016) Nadal, 2012) 2019)

3. An integration model between blockchain and IoT energy and smart grids (Yang et al., 2017) is another important trend by
2030. In the subsections below, we will discuss in more details the
Internet of Things (IoT) is a base technology and key player in the blockchain design patterns for IoT, the major solutions which block­
digital transformation witnessed by industry 4.0 (Lu, 2017). In industry chain can provide to IoT challenges, as well as the recent blockchain
5.0 (Daniel Sontag, 2019), IoT is predicted to have more dependence on protocols in IoT.
sensing devices, big volumes of data, and more patterns of connected
devices within different network topologies. we must call it the Internet 3.1. Blockchain design patterns-based IoT Networks
of Things 2.0 (Sheth, 2016). Recently, IoT 2.0 moves from devices and
data technology to Actionable Intelligence Technology (I-Scope, 2019). In IoT-device communications, IoT peers collaborate and build trust
Based on more integration between IoT as a base technology and other over a blockchain design pattern. Each IoT- peer device can be re­
technologies such as AI, Cloud Computing, and Data Science, the digital presented by one or more nodes in a P2P network. This network is used
transformation moves from IoT 2.0 to the Internet of Transformation to broadcast IoT transactions between devices based on a blockchain
which makes the IoT communications so powerful (I-Scope, 2019; protocol. This protocol is responsible for managing, verifying, and se­
Darwish et al., 2017; Vermesan et al., 2017; Sowe et al., 2014). curing IoT transactions. The Effective monitoring and management of a
The integration of blockchain technology with IoT is another im­ blockchain-IoT network system requires a special framework for
portant contribution predicted to revolutionize the digital transforma­ managing data traffics, and sense the events and transactions between
tion of various domains (Makhdoom et al., 2018). Blockchain as a IoT devices. The blockchain-IoT framework should be modular enough
distributed ledger can be verified and deployed across several hetero­ to enable the monitoring of a variety of IoT transaction Patterns as
geneous IoT networks. In IoT-based environments, Blockchain is pre­ discussed in (Hitarshi, 2019). Fig. 6 depicts a proposed update of the
dicted to add 176B$ to the global economic value by 2025 and over 3T$ Standard Blockchain Monitoring Framework in IoT (SBMF-IoT) when
by 2030 (Fourquadrant, 2019). utilized to monitor three trucks which provide food patterns to various
Fig. 5 explains the top five predictions of integrating Blockchain customers through a specific food production company. The SMBF-IoT
with IoT by 2030. For example, In e-governments, by 2030, most comprises of the following components:
governments will depend on digital currency in most of (maybe all of)
financial transactions. In the digital economy, by 2030, blockchain will 1. A Monitoring Agent (MA) which embedded with each IoT truck
produce more token-based protocols for enhancing digital economy through the associated IoT-decentralized Application (IoT-dApp). It
transactions. By 2030, the Self-Sovereign Identity standard (Baars, can read the logs generated as a part of the transaction process.
2016) will emerge for managing the individuals’identities locally and 2. A log Collection Engine (LCE) that manipulates the streaming log
internationally. One of the most promising trends where blockchain information of IoT trucks and realize it for further transaction pro­
and IoT can work together by 2030 is the global supply chain man­ cessing.
agement and tracking. Moreover,Blockchain and IoT benefits in digital 3. The Elastic Nodes Cluster (ENC) which processes a large amount
of log data to organize and index it into matching IoT data files,
which are shared and stored as replicas.
4. A Visualization Platform (VP) consumes the transactional IoT
data collated by ENC and provides effective insight into the block­
chain nodes and network statistics.

Leveraging the SBMF-IoT as a design standard for managing and

monitoring blockchain-IoT transactions will help in achieving the fol­
lowing:

• Providing transparent end to end IoT transactions.

• Providing more control in the performance and throughput of the
blockchain network.
• Installing non-invasive monitoring routines that can be dynamically
enabled for each on-boarded IoT peer and also support a common
network provider model.

The blockchain is a distributed ledger that will perform a major role

in how IoT-devices will be linked together directly/indirectly between
Fig. 5. Top five predictions of integrating blockchain and IoT by 2030. each other. Integrating blockchain within IoT communications require

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 6. Standard Blockchain Monitoring Framework in IoT (SBMF-IoT): A proposed Model.

to identify the design pattern on which the communication occurs: the

communication may be in three basic design patterns: from IoT device
to IoT device, from IoT device to the blockchain, or a hybrid design. The
key benefits of utilizing blockchain as a design base for IoT transactions
are building trust, reducing cost, and accelerating transactions.
-IoT to IoT Design Pattern: In this design pattern, blockchain work
as only data storage for IoT- devices. Only some bytes of data are re­
gistered in the blockchain whereas the IoT communications occur
outside the blockchain. This design would be helpful in scenarios where
the IoT interactions are taking place with low latency. Fig. 7 explains
how two IoT-cars are communicating based on IoT-IoT design pattern
via a Management Hub component which allows the IoT devices to
store data in the blockchain.
-IoT to Blockchain Design Pattern: In this design pattern, all IoT
interactions go through blockchain. It works as a data storage and
transaction monitor and manager. This design guarantees that all IoT
communications are traceable as defined in the blockchain. Moreover,
it increases the independence of IoT nodes such that each device can
interact directly with the blockchain. This design approach is effective Fig. 8. Multi IoT-devices to Blockchain-design pattern: A proposed model.
when the transactions happen between a variety of IoT devices in dif­
ferent domains. However, assimilating a large number of IoT transac­
tions and data volumes in blockchain will lead to bandwidth and la­ appear that they are heterogeneous, based on this design pattern, the
tency problems. So the scalability is one of the well-known dilemmas of blockchain is used as a storage repository for heterogeneous data as
blockchain (Tasca and Widmann, 2017). Fig. 8 explains the three types well as a transaction monitor, and a verifier for different communica­
of interactions between three IoT-devices with the blockchain, IoT- tion patterns.
building,IoT-energy node, and IoT-Truck. Although the three nodes -Hybrid Design Pattern: In the early years of IoT communications,
the disparate endpoints of IoT-devices were not doing a lot of data
analysis and processing. Now, the endpoints are talking to each other
with more interdependence and processing more data, this a promising
approach is called Edge Computing (Satyanarayanan, 2017). The in­
tegration between IoT and other technologies, including Fog Com­
puting (Chiang and Zhang, 2016), Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Vermesan
et al., 2017), and blockchain (Li et al., 2018) leads to a hybrid design
pattern. In this pattern, the data needs to be manipulated just on the
IoT-device and does not need to be transmitted back to the cloud. Also,
AI will become a key player in this design pattern. such that it will help
IoT devices to make critical decisions. Blockchain can be leveraged for
providing trust and security as missed links in the edge computing
approach. The hybrid IoT network requires more security and relia­
bility. Moreover, it requires a lot of transmitted data volumes and dif­
ferent IoT transaction patterns which can be managed by the Block­
chain. Fog Computing can play a major role in this design pattern. It can
remedy the limitations of blockchain and IoT regarding energy con­
sumption and computing power, such that fog computing-based devices
such as gateways, and data sensors require a little computation power.
These advantages make fog computing a key player for reducing the
Fig. 7. IoT- device to IoT- device- design pattern: A proposed model.

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 9. Hybrid design pattern: A proposed model.

amount of bandwidth and latency. Moreover, it accelerate blockchain the other side, Precision agriculture network systems are challenged by
mining operations. Fig. 9 explains the architecture of the hybrid design network performance problems such as the communication speed with
pattern which integrates IoT, Cloud Computing, Fog Computing, and a huge number of heterogeneous devices and sensors, the power con­
Blockchain in a coherent design model. This figure depicts how sumption of these devices, bandwidth and latency as well as limited
blockchain can be utilized to work as a data repository and transactions data storage. So, this section explains how blockchain technology can
monitor and verifier for two different heterogeneous fog networks that makes IoT communications are more secure, transparent and tamper­
are managed by a cloud. The strength of this design pattern here is that proof. Moreover, it will improve digital agricultural processes with real-
blockchain is not only dedicated to store and verify data from different time data monitoring in accelerated end-to-end transaction processes.
IoT devices as explained in the previous design pattern but also to store Hence, blockchain technology can introduce good solutions to the se­
and verify data from different heterogeneous and complex fog and curity and performance of IoT networks in the precision agriculture
cloud networks. systems.

3.2. Challenges of IoT networks and blockchain solutions 3.2.1. IoT security challenges and blockchain solutions
By 2025, it is predicted that will be more than 21 billion IoT nodes
Building robust IoT networks in the precision agriculture systems is (more than 75 million IoT devices in agriculture sector lonely) which
challenged by a lot of network security threats, and communication will motivate the attackers for executing a variety of IoT attack patterns
performance dilemmas in this type of networks (Makhdoom et al., (Norton, 2019). In 2016, Mirai malware (Kambourakis et al., 2017) has
2018). For example, farmers need to secure supply chain systems for been considered as the first IoT malware that can infect linked devices
trading their crops and protecting their smart greenhouse networks such as Digital Video Recorder (DVR), IP cameras, and home router.
against cyber attacks. Moreover, they need a trusted environment to This malware is able to turn the affected devices into a botnet for ex­
manage and access their IoT-agricultural machines without threats to ecuting Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks (Kolias et al., 2017). Another
identity, privacy, and integrity of data processed by those devices. On example is IoT-reaper (Gary Davis, 2019), which appeared in 2017. It

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

doesn’t intrinsic depend on breaking prosaic passwords like Mirai does, Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is 20 bytes (Ziegler et al., 2015). With
but instead avails the vulnerabilities in various IoT devices and exclude 160-bit address space, blockchain can derive and assign addresses
them into a botnet cram. Due to the limitation to unstandardized se­ spaces about 1.46 * 10 48 for IoT nodes (Khan and Salah, 2018). Hence,
curity models for IoT, Other attacks can execute data forgery routines, the possibility of address collision is roughly 10 48 , which is secure
data block and encryption. Ransomware (Yaqoob et al., 2017) encrypt enough to assign a GUID (Global Unique Identifier) to IoT devices. With
victim’s data and ask for a ransom to decrypt it can work in different blockchain technology, there is no need for a central authority for
ways with IoT devices. It needs to identify the correct IoT-device providing and generating limited Internet Assigned Number Authority
owners to ask for ransom money. Moreover, plenty of IoT devices are (IANA) (Ziegler et al., 2015). Furthermore, blockchain able to derives
operated by other devices; hence, the attacker needs to get the In­ 4.3 billion addresses spaces compared to IPv6. So, Blockchain provided
dustrial Control Systems (ICS) to penetrate the target device and en­ a magical solution for solving the scalability and security challenges in
crypt the data. Shamoon 2 and DuQu-2 (Makhdoom et al., 2018) are IoT.
another IoT attack models that target ICS of IoT devices based on its 2) Managing Identity of Things. Generating identities and mana­
ability to replicate across different operating systems and IoT devices. ging access for IoT devices is considered another benefit of blockchain
In 2012, King Saudi Arabia announced that there were about 15 gov­ in IoT security. Blockchain can be utilized for granting trustworthy
ernmental proxies and communities have been attacked with Shamoon identity creation, ownership monitoring and tracking of goods, pro­
2 (Smith, 2019). Shamoon removed data within 35,000 devices and ducts, and services. Data transparency and end-to-end process tracking
hijacked the computer’s boot record, which prevents the computer from is another benefit of robust blockchain. For example, Trust-Chain
being rebooted. Hence, the development of future IoT communication (XXXX, YYYY) has been proposed for verifying and managing trusted
systems requires to meet the following security requirements: transactions while maintaining the integrity in distributed IoT net­
works. Each Block in the Trust-Chain represents a transaction between
1. IoT devices have to operate securely in an authenticated manner. two IoT participants and creating new transactions is depending on the
2. Data integrity should be ensured versus data forgery, alteration hash codes of the previous transaction. Trust-Chain records are cryp­
and unauthorized access. tographically authenticated and signed by both parties and connected
3. The IoT-device codes have to be secure against Tamper proof. in a directed graph. The main advantage of Trust-Chain beside security
4. All IoT-devices have to be authenticated within the IoT system is each agent in the Trust-Chain system monitors the interactions by
before installed in the network. others and collects records to compute trustworthiness levels. Block­
5. IoT Networks have to be tamper-resistant regarding both software chain also can provide control functions for trustworthy and decen­
and hardware tamper. tralized transactions in the three design patterns explained previously.
6. IoT data should be encrypted with efficient and secure key gen­ Moreover, it allows to remote asset management and instant data ver­
erator systems in which the breaked key can be updated as and ification from end to end between IoT devices.
when required 3) IoT Transaction Verification:
7. IoT systems have to ensure user security such as, ID management, Blockchain can perform an important function in managing the
enrollment, authentication, authorization, and non repudiation. authentication and authorization of IoT systems. With blockchain, all
8. IoT system has to be immunized against unauthorized access to IoT transactions mad by devices are registered on the distributed ledger
private IoT data and network. and can be monitored and tracked securely. Each IoT transaction
communicated with the blockchain system will always be crypto­
By the coming generations of blockchain systems and the advance in graphically proofed by the valid sender that holds a unique PK and
developing untraditional smart contracts and distributed ledger, it is GUID. Hence, this will be helpful in ensuring the authentication and
expected that blockchain will provide magic solutions for many chal­ integrity of the triggered transaction. Blockstack (Ourad et al., 2018) is
lenges in IoT networks security and achieve the required security re­ a common blockchain technique that utilizes JSON Web Token (JWT)
quirements. Fig. 10 depicts the key solutions, which blockchain can for authenticating IoT-transactions easily. As depicted in the proposed
grant for IoT-networks security (Khan and Salah, 2018). In the fol­ model in Fig. 11, Blockstack can be used to authenticate the access to a
lowing, these key solutions of blockchain that can mitigate the security smart greenhouse. The authentication with Blockstack requires a spe­
challenge in IoT networks are discussed in some details. cial communication between a decentralized application (DApp) of an
1) Extending Address Space: The limitation of IPv6 address space IoT greenhouse and the Blockstack Browser.
is a big scalability challenge for addressing IoT devices. IPv6 has a 128- The authentication process can be explained through eight steps:
bit address space, whereas Blockchain has a 160-bit address space. So,
with blockchain addressing, the generated PK by Elliptic Curve Digital 1. A user (e.g. farmer) signs in with blockstack by requesting a new
access to the smart greenhouse by establishing a new connection
with its decentralized application (DApp).
2. The DApp then sends the sign in data to the function
”Redirect _To _Sign ()” for processing the access request.
3. The function ”Redirect _To _Sign () ” asks the blockstack browser to
generate a new Authentication Request Token for the user’s access re­
quest.
4. The blockstack browser responds bycreating new JWT authentica­
tion response token that being forwarded to the DApp.
5. The DApp then manipulates the JWT authentication response token
by calling the function Habndle _Pending _Sign () for verifying the
issued JWT authentication response token by the blockstack
browser.
6. After the function Habndle _Pending _Sign () has verified the JWT
token, it forwards the JWT verification result to the DApp for re­
sponding the user’s access request.
7. The DAppm then grants the user the required access data to access
Fig. 10. Key security solutions of Blockchain for IoT. greenhouse system.

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 11. Blockstack authentication protocol: A proposed model.

8. The user (e.g. farmer) inputs the granted access data and establishes different bandwidth options.
the connection with his greenhouse system. 2. IoT platform layer:It is sometimes called network layer. It defines
the various communication protocols and networks used for con­
4) Securing IoT Communications: nectivity and edge computing. So, it is responsible for recording and
To provide secure communication between IoT devices, the classical analyzing the transmitted data from sensors and other physical
protocols such as ”Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)”, or ”Extensible endpoints through session protocols between IoT gateways and IoT
Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)” must be replaced with more platform.
secure protocols such as ”Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)” 3. Application Layer. Is responsible for providing IoT services to the
or ”Transport Layer Security (TLS)” for providing secure communica­ end users through several applications such as mobile applications,
tion (Nguyen et al., 2015; Kothmayr et al., 2013). However, DTLS or public web or back-office applications. It depend on HTTP protocol
TLS protocols have some drawbacks in terms of computation time or to exchange data between the IoT platform and those applications.
memory requirements as they considered heavy and complex protocols.
Moreover, these protocols have some problems with centralized gov­ The IoT performance problems in the precision agriculture networks
ernance and control of key generation and distributions using the can be summarized in five challenges as depicted in Fig. 12. Blockchain
common PKI protocol. Using blockchain can remove these problems can provides also good solutions for the those challenges:
and enhance key management between IoT devices by assigning each (1) Blockchain and Sensing problem. This problem is concerned
device a unique GUID and PKI pair once installed and connected to the with the perception layer in IoT layer model. IoT sensors are embedded
blockchain network (Khan and Salah, 2018). With blockchain, new in a lot of agricultural machines, such as agriculture tractors,smart
secure communication enhancement can be conceived such that there is greenhouses, farming devices, etc. These sensors continuously emit data
no need to handshake phase to exchange PKI certificates as in DTLS or about the working status and permit IoT nodes to send and receive data
TLS protocols. Therefore, blockchain is the best solution to cover run­ from each other via the cloud. Blockchain can be used for defining
time computing and memory management requirements for achieving communication rules between these sensors as well as managing all
secure communications between IoT devices. Moreover, the firmware M2M transactions. For instance, IOTA (Internet of Things Application)
of the IoT devices can be hashed into a Blockchain continually for de­ (Popov, 2016) is a promising update of the blockchain platforms which
tecting IoT Malware and alert the device owners to take the necessary specially designed to facilitate a large number of transactions between
security measures, or auto defends against the detected malicious bot. IoT devices using IOTA ledger and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Al­
Instruction verification and authentication is another benefit of block­ though IOTA is still new, it can provide magic solutions for the sensor
chain for securing communication between IoT devices. For instance,
the sender node hashes a message that wants to forward to another IoT
node and add the hash code into a Blockchain. On the other hand, the
receiver node then hashes the same message. The verification rule state
that, if the hash value matches the hash value on the Blockchain, then
the received message has not tampered in the transit.

3.2.2. IoT performance challenges and blockchain solutions

Due to the huge number connected IoT devices in the precision
agriculture networks, IoT system have to harmonize a future large
number of network topologies and process big data volumes with high
level of throughput. So, the performance of IoT networks in the preci­
sion agriculture systems represents another big challenge. The IoT
performance problems result from some limitations in the traditional
IoT layer model that involves three basic layers. The endpoints and
gateway layer, The IoT platform layer, and the Application layer.

1. Endpoints and Gateway layer: It is sometimes called perception

layer that involves several IoT devices such as sensors, controllers,
and mobile devices. in this layer, the physical endpoints send IoT
messages to the IoT platform through a gateway. Each sensor con­
nects to the gateway through one of several data link protocols with Fig. 12. IoT performance challenges in the precision agriculture networks.

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

communications and the scalability challenge in the precision agri­ Table 3

culture. Cloud versus Blockchain as a data storage medium.
(2) Blockchain and Energy Consumption Problem: This problem Cloud-based Storage Blockchain-based Storage
is concerned with the Network layer in IoT layer model. Due to the
increasing of IoT network systems in the precision agriculture, IoT Centralized Trust by the cloud provider Decentralized Trust in the network
Centralized Design Decentralized Design
devices are predicted to be low-power devices. Moreover, IoT com­
Not protected against data alteration Protected against data alteration
munications in precision agriculture networks are depending on Single point of failure multi points of failure
Wireless technology which consumes far more energy than wired con­ Vulnerable to un-authorized data propagation are based on
nections Such as Fiber (5G? IoT, 2019). Although fiber is safer, faster, data propagation smart contracts
more reliable, and energy-efficient than wireless, pushing for 5G tech­ User data is managed by User data is replicated between all
peers
nology everywhere is cheaper than to depend on fiber. But un­
cloud provider and controlled by smart contracts.
fortunately, this will greatly grow energy consumption. Recent IoT The transactions aren’t transparent The transactions are transparent
devices in precision agriculture networks consume energy via data regarding users identities to user identities.
centers, M2M communication, embodied energy (e.g. mining, manu­ Not ideal for low latency and Provide edge/fog computing at IoT
endpoints
facturing, and transporting), and Obsolescence of digital technologies.
high availability for IoT networks so it is a good option for IoT networks.
But with the decentralization feature of Blockchain, it can introduce Costly design infrastructure Less expensive infrastructure
some solutions to handle the energy consumption problem. The private
blockchain can be utilized for ensuring the proportion between the high
computation power along with the high bandwidth connection for IoT storage,and bandwidth is very importantMakhdoom et al., 2018). On
nodes (Makhdoom et al., 2018). Blockchain will grant the resilience the other hand, with a private blockchain, these limitations can be re­
needed for the smart grids in the future. Blockchain-based flexible moved, such that the private Blockchain can process over 1,000
power systems will witness low-carbon power produced at scale-not transactions per second on Ethereum or Bitcoin (Preethi, 2017). Hence,
only by large utilities, but also by renewable power sources. Blockchain a huge number of heterogeneous agriculture transactions can be pro­
will enable us to measure how much energy IoT-devices and sensors cessed using the coming blockchain systems based on processing digital
consume in real-time. Blockchain can maximize three energy trends asset tokens.
decarbonization, digitization, and electrification (Maher Chebbo, (5) Blockchain and Limited Data Storage Problem: Due to the
2019). All renewable energy-based processes such as energy selling/ rapid growth of IoT-precision agriculture networks, large volumes of
payments transaction, and energy contracts can take place on a data have to be stored and managed through flexible repositories. The
blockchain immediately. Blockchain can provide techniques for col­ existing cloud-based storage has limited solutions to manipulate the
lecting and storing data from countless distributed sources as well as large scale of different patterns of IoT data. This limitation based on the
processing it in real-time. Blockchain will also maximize the elec­ requirements of real-time data monitoring, high availability, scalability,
trification by providing decentralized energy ledgers for monitoring a security, and low latency (Sharma et al., 2017 Sep). In response to these
large number of batteries and a variety of energy sensors used in the limitations of cloud-based storage, Blockchain-based storage will enable
precision agriculture networks. IoT endpoints to make more data analysis and manipulation in real-
(3) Blockchain and Networks Complexity Problem: This problem time. Satyanarayanan (2017). Table 3 explains the major differences
is also concerned with the Network layer in IoT layer model. IoT sys­ between cloud-based storage and blockchain-based storage. The P2P
tems in precision agriculture are designed based on un heterogonous design of blockchain makes the trust is replicated among all peers.
Network topologies which lead to complex communications. The IoT- Hence, if any tamper occurred in any node, all peers in the system will
farming machines have to communicate and interact seamlessly detect it rejects its procedure, moreover, the current status of block­
through different platforms and infrastructures. It’s possible, but it can chain will not be modified or tampered. Moreover, the cloud is also
be hard, expensive,and time-consuming. In response to these chal­ vulnerable to unauthorized data sharing, whereas, blockchain gives
lenges, Blockchain can help in acquiring and managing data based on users the freedom to set access rules without dependence on a third
secure standard-based and decentralized networks. As we mentioned party or a cloud service provider. Hence, blockchain is also a very good
previously in Section 3.1, blockchain can manage the communications option for data availability and security (Makhdoom et al., 2018).
between IoT devices through three design patterns, this lead to more
simplicity in IoT communications, supporting edge processing at
farming machines endpoints, and decrease the latency of data trans­ 4. Blockchain opportunities in IoT-based precision agriculture
mission across the precision agriculture networks.
(4) Blockchain and bandwidth and latency Problem: Another The IoT growth in the last few years has granted many opportunities
important IoT performance problem against building precision agri­ for enhancing the precision agriculture sector. The witnessed increase
culture networks is the bandwidth and latency of device communica­ in using mobile-broadband access devices, smart networks, analyzing
tions. In IoT communications, the data traffic always originates outside big data volumes, and AI have provided the stakeholders with some
the data centers. Hence, immediately, the communication has to be magic tools in developing precision agriculture systems. Blockchain is
installed in the highest latency between large numbers of scattered IoT one of the most promising technologies that can provide untraditional
devices. A large number of different IoT devices need to be updated solutions in smart agriculture (Lin et al., 2017). Blockchain can be used
every small time period. Moreover, device communication needs lots of in managing warehouses, soils, and supply chains more intelligently. It
routing and multiple levels of packet inspection. Replacing the data can be utilized as a key tool to transmit real-time data about crops and
center with blockchain will mitigate these problems. The decen­ livestock. Moreover, it can be used for food safety, logistics, monitoring,
tralization feature of blockchain will make the workload more dis­ as well as managing payment transactions (Sam, 2018). Blockchain
tributed closer to the endpoints. Hence, the IoT communication will be adoption in smart agriculture and food supply chain market is predicted
constructed inefficient bandwidth and low latency. However, the de­ to grow at a CAGR of 47.8% by 2023 (Report Linker, 2018). Moreover,
centralized public blockchain may take control of the public nodes is utilizing blockchain in the supply chain market is evaluated to be $60.8
very difficult such that there is a great chance that the IoT device with million in 2018 and is forecasted to reach $ 429.7 million by 2023
the smallest bandwidth will cause network bottleneck. In addition, due (Report Linker, 2018). In the following subsections, the major use cases
to the growth of blockchain size, the need for computing power, of utilizing blockchain in developing IoT-precision agriculture networks

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

proving quality and ethicality (Caro et al., 2018). This can provide
consumers and stakeholders more trust in the agricultural products,
ensuring food safety, and reducing food frauds (Sylvester, 2019). In the
supply chain process, blockchain can provide key five services:

1. Data Recording. Blockchain is able to work as a distributed storage

unit for all information moving between supply chain nodes
2. Monitoring. Blockchain is able to track purchases, orders, updates,
receipts, shipment notifications, or other trade-related transactions
(Li and Wang, 2018).
3. Verifying. Blockchain can be utilized for verifying transactions or
certain properties of physical products, such as identifying if a food
product is an organic or fair trade (Platform with duplicated and
shared bookkeeping, 2018).
4. Assigning and Linking. Blockchain can be used to link the physical
products to bar codes, serial codes, digital tags like RFID, etc.
5. Sharing. Blockchain can be utilized for disseminating information
about manufacturing procedures, delivery, assembly and main­
tenance of agricultural products with suppliers and vendors.
Fig. 13. Five Use Cases of Blockchain in the precision agriculture.
Moreover, blockchain can provide three advantages to the shippers:
Transparency Enhancement, Greater Scalability, where Blockchain
will be discussed in subSection 4.1. Moreover, some of the prominent
virtually enables stakeholders from any endpoint to access the supply
blockchain platforms that can be used in managing different sectors in
chain system, and Better Security, where blockchain could potentially
precision agriculture are investigated and discussed in subSection 4.2.
protect the system against any tamper and data alteration during the
product lifecycle.
4.1. Blockchain usecases in the precision agriculture Table 4 compares between blockchain-based supply chain and tra­
ditional supply chain system in terms of achieving data integrity, the
Although the research in adopting blockchain technology in the way in which data security is managed, the possibility of data ver­
precision agriculture is in its early stages, the research trend explained ification, and government regulations for authenticating processes and
major five use cases of applying blockchain in the precision agriculture activities in the supply chain system.
as summarised in Fig. 13. Using blockchain technology in the precision Fig. 15 explains a proposed architectural model in which blockchain
agriculture can introduce new contributions and improve many func­ can manage agricultural transactions process between resource de­
tions such as monitoring and traceability, transparency, and efficiency mands and resource suppliers in a supply chain system. The main role
at levels of the farmers and the consumers. of blockchain in this model is storing new supply chain transactions
1) Farm Overseeing: building smart farms based on IoT sensors between many customers’ demands and many suppliers’ products. The
(e.g. temperature, humidity, light, crop maturity sensors, etc.) Enable customers can create new demand as a new transaction through the
the farmers and stakeholders to digitize the obtained agricultural data decentralized customers’orders engine, and the suppliers can offer new
from the sensors for different purposes. Utilizing blockchain here will product as a new transaction through the decentralized suppliers’products
provide more rapid and smooth communication between sensor net­ engine. The smart contract works here as an authenticating protocol
works. For example, blockchain can be used for monitoring crop storage between the two engines for verifying and protecting the transaction
techniques for preventing post-harvest losses. Moreover, it can be uti­ data patterns between suppliers and customers, then store the valid
lized for tracking CO2 concentration for avoiding mold growth invasion transactions as a new block in the blockchain.
(Sam, 2018). Traditional sensors able to detect the potential for losses 3) Land Registration: (Barbieri and Gassen, 2017). It can be de­
3 5 weeks earlier than traditional monitoring techniques do, how­ fined as the process of determining, recording and sharing transactional
ever, 52% of the nation’s essential fruits and vegetables being thrown information about rights, value, and use of land pieces (Anand et al.,
out due to missing the control and monitoring over the supply chain. 2016). The current classical land registry system has a lot of limitations.
Blockchain can be utilized also for providing secure communication in These systems don’t provide the full authentication for all land trans­
Smart Greenhouse Farming (SGF) as depicted in the proposed model in actions between peoples, organizations, and governments. It is esti­
Fig. 14 (Patil et al., 2017). The figure explains a farm overseeing fra­ mated that about(70–80%) of land transactions worldwide are not
mework that involves four subsystems: smart greenhouse farm, private formally registered in any national system (Anand et al., 2016).
blockchain, cloud storage, overlay network and the end-users (farmer With Blockchain technology, we became to have a big chance to
(s)). The SGF is equipped with several IoT sensors (e.g. humidity sen­ solve these problems. Blockchain can enhance data security and ensure
sors, light sensors, water level sensors, and CO2 sensors) as well as some the authenticity of land registration records. With the transparent, de­
actuators (such as, LED light, Fan, Heater and sprinkling). All transac­ centralized public ledger it becomes easy to store time-stamped land
tions that can be occurred between IoT devices in the SGF can be stored transactions and historical rights of land pieces. Since blockchain does
and mined in a private blockchain. Moreover, the secure data com­ not rely on a single data center, It is able to auto-reject any illegal land
munications between SGF, blockchain, cloud storage and end-user (i.e. transaction. It is able to detect tamper proofs on registered records and
farmers who can remotely access its SGF using smart devices such as protect all land transactions and registry details based on ”colored
mobiles and computers) can be managed through an overlay network. coins. The colored coins-based protocol can be applied to land regis­
On the other hand, Blockchain can be used for monitoring water sys­ tration by representing the ownership of a piece of land by a single or
tems that serve a set of smart farms (Lin et al., 2017) at the same time. multiple tokens. The metadata associated with the token can be used to
2) Supply Chain: Monitoring processes of the supply chain using a monitor public registry information such as size, GPS coordinates, year
public blockchain ledger adds a great value to agricultural goods and built etc. Verifying and tracking the ownership of each token can be
promote the transparency of supply chain processes. Blockchain enables executed across the internet using a blockchain explorer software. Proof
consumers to track agricultural machinery, crops, and livestock for of Concept (Luckas, 2019) with Ethereum (Vujicic et al., 2018) is a good

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 14. Blockchain-based smart greenhouse farming model: A proposed model.

Table 4 10B 15B annually (Galvin, 2017). Utilizing Blockchain in the food
A comparison between blockchain-based supply chain and traditional supply industry, consumers will be able to verify the source and safety of their
chain. food in seconds. Blockchain could be used to tell consumers that the
Comparative item Blockchain-based supply Traditional supply chain fruit and vegetables were grown with herbicide. It will provide real-
chain time tracking, authenticating, securing and monitoring functions for the
food supply chain process (Ge et al., 2017; Galvez et al., 2018).
Data integrity Tamper proof No tamper proof
Blockchain also can introduce good solutions for detecting food fraud
Data Security Decentralized protection Centralized protection
Data Verification Achieved Not achieved and enhance provenance transparency such as organic food verifica­
Government regulations using authentication without authentication tion. Although utilizing blockchain technology in food safety is in its
protocol protocol early stage, some interesting benefits of integrating blockchain and IoT
can be summarized as follows (Tian, 2016):

integration example of colored coins in managing the ownership and 1. Food tracking and monitoring management.
land transactions (Alexandru and Chami, 2019). The proposed model in 2. Reducing the agri-food loses and logistic costs
Fig. 16 explains how blockchain can be utilized to manage the land 3. Detecting food fraud and verifying product information.
registry process in an automated form based on NEM blockchain (New 4. Protecting agri-food safety information based on integrating RFID
Economy Movement)Bach et al., 2018) and ”InterPlanetary File System technology with blockchain and IoT
(IPFS)” (Benet, 2014). NEM is a P2P cryptocurrency blockchain laun­ 5. Maintaining safety and quality of food products.
ched in 2015 as a novel platform depends on the colored coin XEM 6. Facilitating the communication between all stakeholders of food
which can be mined using Proof of Importance (POI) algorithm (Bach industry process.
et al., 2018). InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a distributed ubiqui­
tous file system that allows users/devices to not only receive but host Integrating IoT sensors and electronics chips such as RFID tags are
P2P shared content of land pieces information (Benet, 2014). The land evolving rapidly. So, companies will be able to attach IoT sensors to
registry process is based on NEM multi-signature accounts that ask N food products to track and detect food fraud incidents and potential
out of M (e.g. 10 out of 30) proofs to create certain land transactions failures. Forwarding these data from IoT sensors to the blockchain can
process. The system issue NEM mosaics which are used as confirmation provide standardization, transparency and traceability to the supply
tokens. The system uses a dashboard to monitor all land transaction chain and help food stakeholders to detect temper-proof. Walmart’s
updates and present them in a visualized form through web APP. The blockchain is a good example of tackling the food safety of Mango and
core logic layer is responsible for managing the communications be­ Pork in the food supply chain process (Kamath, 2018). The proposed
tween the dashboard, API, and IoT land location sensor and IPFS. It also model in Fig. 17 explains a general architecture model of how block­
enables to create logical NEM account for land pieces or other real chain can be used in the food safety during the major four stages of food
estates through NEM server layer. supply chain process: food production, food processing, food shipping,
4) Food Safety (Lin et al., 2018): In the food industry, Blockchain and food distribution.
could transform the entire process and introduce untraditional solutions 5) Real Time Remittance for small farms: Farmers may need to use
for food problems. Several studies reported that almost 1 in 10 people a public payment system for receiving real rime remittances from the
in the world fall ill after eating contaminated food every year. More­ agricultural organizations or from the governments. With mobile block­
over, 68.2% of food safety events happened in China was caused by chain systems (Xiong et al., 2018), small farmers become able to execute
illegal activities, and the cost of food fraud incidents reaches to

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 15. Managing supply chain process using blockchain technology: A proposed model.

Fig. 16. Managing Land registry and administration using blockchain technology: A proposed model.

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 17. Managing food safety using blockchain technology: A proposed model.

real-time payments for goods, crops, agricultural services. Moreover, they Table 5,6 summarizes the research work in the five blockchain-use
can receive agricultural remittances through a blockchain mobile APP. cases in the precision agriculture.
Mobile blockchain will make all real-time transactions are faster, trans­ Fig. 19 depicts the research progress with respect to a number of
parent and keep farmer information protected. With mobile blockchain published papers for each use case. The research analysis result con­
APPs, the farmer can get the following benefits (David, 2019): firms that blockchain has more contributions to supply chain proce­
dures than other agriculture use cases. Moreover, farm overseeing, land
• Cryptocurrency Applications enable farmers to execute payment registry and real-time agricultural remittance transfer still in the early
transactions with crop traders and receive real time remittances. stages of maturity, whereas food safety tracking become a real appli­
• Electronic Wallet APPs that enable farmer to store and manage their cation of blockchain technology.
digital assets and money.
• Digital crop tracker apps to provide farmers updated information 4.2. Blockchain platforms in precision agriculture
about the trade rates, cryptocurrency-based transactions, crop
market dynamics and a portfolio of various agricultural variables.
•
The rapid growth of using blockchain in precision agriculture leads
Retail APPs allowing its Farmer to execute payment transactions
to developing some platforms that can be used for various agricultural
through digital currencies
•
activities. This subsection discusses the most common five blockchain
Smart Contracts or self-executable protocols APPs allow the farmer
platforms in smart agriculture.
to detect any fraud or illegal operations regarding their digital crops
1) Provenance is founded by Jessi Baker in 2013 as the first
or digital assets
blockchain platform that supports supply chain activities (Digital Social
Innovation, 2019). Provenance enables producers, consumers and re­
Integrating blockchain with a remote sensing satellite, data, and
tailers to track their products during all stages of the product’s life
mobile money techniques can ensure transparent secure transactions,
cycle. It enables every physical product to authenticated by ”a digital
automated payment remittance transfer between smart farms
passport” that confirms its authenticity and origin for preventing selling
(Sylvester, 2019). The farmer can execute all financial transactions
fake goods. With Provenance’s trust engine, the participants able to
through a mobile wallet account created on a mobile blockchain such as
verify their supplier transactions for better supply chain integrity. They
COIN22 (Sylvester, 2019). As depicted in the proposed model in Fig. 18,
can also turn their digital certifications into data-backed marks for the
farmers can exchange, buy, sell their digital crops through the wallet
customers to review, then it is forwarded to the blockchain to be stored
App created in COIN22 blockchain. When a new transaction occurs
in a secure, and genuine form. Provenance enables stakeholders to
between two or more farmers, it should be verified by other farmers
share honest stories about their goods and products in a trustworthy
who work as verifiers for the new transactions. If the transaction is
mode. Producers and consumers can show the traceability of each
valid, a new digital token is issued regarding this transaction and stored
product item through the Provenance’s tracking tool (Provenance,
in a new block that will added to the COIN22-blockchain. On the other
2019). Moreover, issuing a digital asset for a specific physical product
hand, based on satellite data sent to COIN22-blockchain, farmers can
using Provenance and connect to it via a protected tag, e.g. an NFC, will
trace some major indexes of their farms (e.g. soil, water, drought in­
decrease the traceability time from days to seconds, reducing good
dexes, etc) by using a digital tracer App connected with COIN22.
frauds, providing faster recalls, improving transparency, protecting

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 18. The architectural model of real time financial transactions between smart farms: A proposed model.

brand valueFilatov, 2019). OriginTrail (Konic, 2019) is a similar based transactions, trusted expertise, such that more than 1500 com­
blockchain platform that developed for data integrity and validation in pany and technical experts prefer to work with IBM blockchain.
supply chain activities. Moreover, it can bring together regulators, suppliers, consumers, and
2) AgriDigital is a cloud-based blockchain platform founded in professionals to work with each other in IBM Blockchain Ecosystem
2015 by a team of Australian farmers and agribusiness professionals (Xu (IBM, 2019). IBM Blockchain enables equal visibility of activities and
et al., 2019) AgriDigital makes the agriculture supply chain simple, easy reveals where an agricultural asset is at any point in time, who owns it
and secure between farmers and consumers. The farmers and stake­ and what condition it’s in (Tripoli and Schmidhuber, 2018; Kamath,
holders are able to manage their contracts, deliveries, orders and pay­ 2018).
ments all in one place and in real-time. The AgriDigital platform has 4) Foodcoin (Bitcoin Wiki, 2018) is a new blockchain ecosystem
five core subsystems (Agridigital, 2019): consists of 1000 Eco Farms. It designed to create a global marketplace
of food and agricultural products. The Foodcoin system is working
1. Transactions. Through this subsystem, farmers and stakeholders through the use of smart contracts and verifying food transactions
able to easily buy and sell several goods based on a cryptocurrency called Foodcoin (FOOD). In order to develop
2. Storage. In which, the accounts, payments, orders, delivers, and the FOOD ecosystem, the FOOD tokens will be created on the Ethereum
other sensitive information are digitized and stored blockchain, where it can be used as a colored token currency
3. Communications, through which, the farmer and consumers can (Rosenfeld, 2012) to purchase or sell food products. The implementa­
build the connections patterns. tion of the FoodCoin Ecosystem is based on seven subsystems (Bitcoin
4. Finance, through which, all financial transactions and virtual Wiki, 2018):
currency transfers between farmers and consumers can performed.
5. Remit, through which, the real time remittances issued to the 1. Distributed database in a distributed ledger
farmers can be transferred. 2. The Foodcoin (FOOD)
3. Multi-functional crypto wallet called (WALLOK).
The main feature of AgriDigital is the creation of digital assets in the 4. Payment system called (DiPay).
form of tokens. These tokens represent the physical agricultural goods 5. Participant verification called DIGID
(e.g. tons of grains). Since the digital asset transfer from farmer to the 6. Multi-signature (Multisig)-based smart contracts systems called
consumer along the supply chain, an immutable data of the physical (Smaco).
asset is created using proof of concept protocol (Luckas, 2019). Once a 7. Food Product authentication system called (Product Orgin ID
digital asset is issued, users can use the application layer of AgriDigital (PRORID))
platform to send/receive data.
3) IBM Blockchain is one of the most common blockchain plat­ There are also similar blockchain platforms that can be utilized in
forms that is used in agricultural logistics. It is a good choice for opti­ food industry and supply chain such as ’Ambrosus’, ’TE-Food’, and
mizing agricultural transactions and global trade relationships (Cook, ’Ripe.io’,Cook, 2018).
2018). What makes IBM blockchain is a popular platform for agri­ 5) AppliFarm is a leading blockchain platform which founded in
cultural stakeholders are: the high security, multi-cloud flexibility- 2017 by Neovia combines (Neovia, 2019). It can be utilized for

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Table 5
Summary of the research work of adopting blockchain in smart agricultures.
Use Case Research Blockchain Contribution Year

Farm Overseeing Lin et al. (2017) Monitoring system for water 2017
distributions
Farm Overseeing Patil et al. (2017) Tracing system for securing 2017
sensor communications in the farms
Farm Overseeing De Clercq et al. (2018) Future farming tech. in agriculture 4.0. 2018
Supply Chain Caro et al. (2018) AgriBlockIoT mechanism for 2018
managing Agri-Food supply chain.
Supply Chain Dujak and Sajter (2019) Blockchain application in 2019
supply chain and logistics
Supply Chain Li and Wang (2018) Monitor system 2018
for agricultural products.
Supply Chain Platform with duplicated and shared bookkeeping (2018) Provenance system 2018
for supply chain trust
Supply Chain Toyoda et al. (2017) Blockchain system 2017
for the Post Supply Chain
Supply Chain Leng et al. (2018) Double Blockchain chain system 2018
for securing public transactions
Supply Chain Saberi et al. (2019) Review of blockchain 2019
in supply chain
Supply Chain Chen et al. (2017) Supply Chain system for 2017
Quality Management
Supply Chain Lu and Xu (2017) Monitoring system the product origins 2017
in supply chains
Supply Chain Xie et al. (2017) Secure blockchain system 2017
for tracking products
Land Registration Barbieri and Gassen (2017) A Blockchain model 2017
for managing digital land registry
Land Registration Anand et al. (2016) Blockchain system for 2016
managing land admiration activities
Land Registration Vos et al. (2017) Analysis model for applying blockchain 2017
in Land Administration
Land Registration Chavez-Dreyfuss (2016) ”Proof of concept”: 2016
a blockchain in the Swedish land registry
Food Safety Lin et al. (2019) Blockchain system for preventing food data 2019
tampering
Food Safety Lin et al. (2018) Food tracking technique based on 2018
IOT and blockchain
Food Safety Tse et al. (2017) Blockchain usecases in securing 2017
food supply chain process
Food Safety Tian (2016) Tracking system for an agri-foo 2016
supply chain in China

Table 6 5. Challenges and open issues

Summary of the research work of adopting blockchain in smart agricultures
(Cont—). Adopting blockchain in precision agriculture is in its early phases.
Use Case Research Blockchain Contribution Year Most agricultural projects are less than two years old, and none of those
projects are recently more than 1,000 beneficiaries. Moreover, pilot and
Food Safety Galvez et al. Blockchain in 2018 small scale blockchain projects are started in a limited number of
(2018)
countries around the world. 93% of these projects are either in concept
food Sypply chain
Real Time Agricultural Chinaka (2016) Blockchain for managing 2016 stage or have started a small pilot and 7% of these projects don’t have
Remittance agricultural products in available information (Galen et al., 2019). Fig. 20 summarises the
Africa current status of blockchain-based projects in the precision agriculture.
Real Time Agricultural Holotiuk (2019) Blockchain impacts in 2017 In precision agriculture, Merging blockchain technology with IoT as
Remittance financial transactions
well as other techniques such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
(Ali and Haseeb, 2019), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) (Hu et al., 2012),
providing digital proof of animal welfare, and livestock grazing (Carole, and 4G/5G broadband communications (Dahlman et al., 2016; Agiwal
2018). It is able to track livestock data within the animal production et al., 2019) faces several important challenges and requires more re­
sector. Placing linked tags around the cows’necks, that identifies the search work (Fernáez-Caramés and Fraga-Lamas, 2018). Developing
areas in which they graze, enough digital data can be gathered to IoT networks and applications in precision agriculture based on
guarantee high-quality grazing. For instance, presence in grazing, the blockchain technology is a complex process and leads to more chal­
number of actual pasture days, pasture changes, etc. Moreover, the lenges and open questions. The next subsection discusses these chal­
Applifarm system can ensure the dependency of monitored livestock lenges in some details.
farms with animal welfare requirements. Moreover, animal welfare
digital data is integrated into the AppliFarm platform and accessible by 5.1. Privacy and security challenges
stakeholders at any time. AppliFarm is well ahead of the market and
already operational for #meat, #dairy and #cattle. Another application Although the P2P design and time stamping-based transactions of
of Applifarm is the guarantee of tracked livestock farms provides GMO- blockchain make IoT networks are more secure against a lot of attacks,
free feed for their animals. blockchain-based IoT systems and networks still suffer from four major

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Fig. 19. Research progress of blockchain in precision agriculture use cases.

attacks: Denial of Services (DoS) attacks (Kolias et al., 2017), Sybil attack (Chun-Tao et al., 2012), Permanent Denial-of-Service (PDoS) or
Attacks (Zhang et al., 2014), Eclipse Attacks (Nayak et al., 2016), and Phlasing attack (Leyden, 2019), Shrew Attack (Mahjabin, 2018), Slow
Routing Attacks (Apostolaki et al., 2017). DoS is a cyber-attack in which Read Attack (Park et al., 2015), Mirai Botnet (Kolias et al., 2017),
the adversary tries to compromise the availability of an IoT device or a Teardrop Attack (Shekhar, 2016), and RUDY attack (Najafabadi et al.,
network device to the authenticated users. For example, the attacker 2016) are another examples of DoS attacks that can be executed on
can create this attack by sending a fake connection to the blockchain blockchain-based IoT networks in e-agriculture systems.
network to deceives the authenticated users and prevents them to mine There are some techniques to limit the probability of success of DoS
the valid tokens of a digital asset. DoS can target blockchain-based IoT attacks but it is very tough to completely remove it. One of these
systems through different types such as Distributed Denial of Services techniques is Application Front-End Hardware (O’Dell, 2009). It can be
(DoS), in which the adversary uses thousands of fake IP address to flood used as smart hardware which works as a firewall for IoT networks for
IoT nodes with streams of bits to make it unable to correctly respond. verifying data packets before traffic reaches the blockchain system.
The common instances of DDoS attacks are SYN flooding, smurf, and Blackholoing and Sinkholing (Xie and Ettema, 2016) is another DoS
Fraggle (Bhattacharyya and Kalita, 2016). defense technique. Blackhole Routing can be utilized for protecting
An application-layer DDoS attack (Beitollahi and Deconinck, 2012) blockchain-based IoT system in e- agricultural against DoS attacks
is another form of DDoS attack where the adversary target application- where all packet traffic to the attacked IoT device, DNS or IP address is
layer functions and features in blockchain-based IoT systems. For ex­ sent to a ”black hole” (e.g. non-existent server). on the other hand,
ample, disrupting the farming functions of farmers’accounts for drop­ Sinkholing Routing can be used to routes traffic to a valid IP address of
ping the smart wallet system in COIN22 blockchain (Sylvester, 2019). IoT device or server which analyzes traffic and rejects bad packets,
DDoS Extortion (Dragomiretskiy, 2018), A Challenge Collapsar (CC) however, Sinkholing technique is not efficient for most severe attacks.

Fig. 20. Recent status of blockchain projects in precision agriculture.

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) (Rodas and To, 2015) is another DoS This makes the privacy is a complex challenge and open problem. For
defense technique that works efficiently on attack recognition, how­ addressing privacy challenges, some limited techniques are proposed
ever, it is not able to block behavior-based DoS attacks. for mitigating privacy issues. Permission blockchain (Nikkil et al.,
One of the serious attacks that targets blockchain-based IoT net­ 2010) can be utilized for issuing digital certificates for identifying the
works in precision agriculture systems is Sybil attacks (Zhang et al., identities of IoT devices. Extracting device signature automatically can
2014). In this attack scenario, the attacker seeks to use fake IoT nodes be used for authenticating IoT applications and its users (Dorri et al.,
or fake sensors by duplicating their identities to set up fake connections 2017). Blockchain-based multi-level mechanisms (Li and Zhang, 2017)
in the blockchain-based IoT networks. The honest IoT nodes become can be utilized also to define a set of access lists and access rights for
unable to distinguish between valid and valid connections. Detecting authorizing user/device access. Privacy can also be improved through
such attacks is a very hard task, but unfortunately, they do occur. For zero-knowledge proof techniques such as Zerocoin (Miers et al., 2013)
example, the Swiss-based company Chainalysis that provides block­ and Zerocash (Sasson et al., 2014). However, these techniques still
chain services created over 250 fake Bitcoin nodes to harvest in­ vulnerable to other attack patterns (Peng, 2012).
formation about transactions propagating over the network (Caffyn,
2019). Although there are some countermeasures can be used for de­ 5.2. Blockchain size and energy consumption
creasing the chance of succeeding Sybil attacks, there isn’t a way to
eliminate them. Verifying node identities and detecting fake nodes Due to the continuous transactions with blockchain, blockchain
using Finite Automat can be utilized in IoT networks for detecting Sybil tends to grow rapidly and block size will increase. This leads to larger
nodes (Meligy et al., 2017). Sybil Guard (Yu et al., 2008), Sybil Infer download times and the need for a larger memory space for mining
(Danezis and Mittal, 2009) are other techniques that can be utilized to purposes (Fernáez-Caramés and Fraga-Lamas, 2018). Moreover, a lot of
defend against Sybil attack. moreover, Sybil resistant for bitcoin IoT devices must store large volumes of data that are not interesting to
(Bissias et al., 2014) can be used to address Sybil attacks, denial-of- them. this leads to a waste of computational power and resources. This
service attacks, and timing-based inference attacks. Sybil belief (Gong issue can be addressed by using lightweight blockchain (Gruber et al.,
et al., 2014) also is another Sybil attacks defender which based on a 2018). However, this approach requires designing a hierarchical and
semi-supervised learning algorithm. centralized blockchain system.
1) Eclipse Attack (Nayak et al., 2016) is another attack in which An alternative approach to address the block size growth is mini-
the adversary aims to obscure certain nodes from the entire P2P net­ blockchain (França, 2019). This approach is working through the use of
work. The attack scenario monopolizes an IoT node’s connections so an accounting tree, which registers only the recent status of every node
that it cannot receive data from any nodes other than the attacking linked to the blockchain. Also, block size has to be scaled according to
nodes. In contrast to Sybil attacks, Eclipse attacks mainly target single the bandwidth limitations. Many small transactions would increase
IoT nodes rather than the entire network at once. The attacking node energy consumption, while a few large ones may involve big payloads
could easily execute double-spending transactions with the blockchain that cannot be processed by some IoT devices (Fernáez-Caramés and
system. This can easily be done by sending a transaction showing proof Fraga-Lamas, 2018). Moreover, energy consumption is a major factor in
of payment to the victim IoT node, obscuring it from the network, then blockchain-based IoT computing since most IoT nodes are powered by
finally sending another transaction to the entire network spending the batteries. Therefore, energy efficiency is a major aspect of keeping long-
same tokens again. In this way, the victim node becomes isolated and time computing of IoT nodes. Energy consumption can result during
only receives data from the malicious nodes until to drop it (Wst and blockchain mining operations (Truby, 2018) and P2P communication
Gervais, 2016). There have been multiple countermeasures discussed (Zhou et al., 2014). Proof of Stake (King and Nadal, 2012) and Proof of
that may reduce the success of eclipse attacks. Most of them propose Space (Dziembowski et al., 2015) are good algorithms for solving en­
how a specific IoT node locally stores IP addresses that it will use to ergy-consuming problems during mining processes.
later reconnect to the network or set an upper limit on the number of Mini-blockchain (França, 2019) is also a good choice to reduce
incoming TCP connections (Marcus et al., 2018). However, there is no energy consumption during P2P communications. Moreover, the cryp­
effective way to completely remove the Eclipse attacks (Fantacci et al., tographic techniques such as Scrypt (Asolo, 2018) or Myriad and multi-
2009). algorithm mining (CoinBrief, 2018) are faster and thus can be utilized
2) Routing attack is the last attack model that target blockchain- for reducing mining energy consumption.
based IoT networks. The attacker seeks to intercept messages propa­
gating between IoT devices and tamper these messages before sending 5.3. Complex technical challenges
them to the peers in the network (Wallgren et al., 2013). Routing at­
tacks can be executed through two models: 1) Portioning attacks, in There are still unsolved technical challenges that can oppose de­
which the adversary divides the network into two or more disjoint signing blockchain-based IoT network systems in precision agriculture
groups by hijacking a bridge node between two groups of networks. 2) (Nikkil et al., 2010). Some of these challenges can be summarized as
Delay attack in which the adversary intercepts the propagated mes­ follows:
sages, tamper with them and finally propagate them again to the net­ 1) Storage capacity and scalability. In the context of IoT-based e-
work (Apostolaki et al., 2017). Routing attacks cannot completely be agricultural applications the scalability limitations are much difficult to
prevented, however, there are some countermeasures that may reduce address. Blockchain may appear to be not appropriate for IoT models.
its success on blockchain-based IoT networks. For example, diversifying With IoT communication, IoT nodes can send gigabytes (GBs) of data in
the connections between IoT nodes based on dynamic topologies will real-time. This attribute represents a solid barrier against the block­
prevent the attacker to hijack the bridge nodes between two sub-net­ chain and IoT integration model. The known blockchain platforms can
works topologies (Lu, 2014). Another technique is to monitor the net­ only manipulate a few numbers of transactions per second. So this could
work features such as Round-Trip Time (RTT) (Tun and Thein, 2008) lead to a potential bottleneck for IoT systems. Moreover, blockchain is
and detect anomalous patterns. not designed to store large amounts of data, So, scaling blockchain to
3) Privacy preserving is another challenge in blockchain-based IoT serve thousands of different heterogeneous devices is a big technical
network systems (Fernáez-Caramés and Fraga-Lamas, 2018). All IoT challenge (Khan and Salah, 2018).
devices and participants are authenticated by their public key or a hash 2) Blockchain Forking. Forking is a common technical problem
value with the blockchain. The anonymity is not ensured and, since all with blockchain. It occurs when two peers (i.e. miners) add two right
transactions are shared publicly, there is a likelihood for the attacker to blocks to the chain at the same time. This situation is called ”Blockchain
analyze such transactions and infer the real identities of the IoT nodes. forking” (Spanos et al., 2017). All known blockchain protocols solve the

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M. Torky and A.E. Hassanein Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 178 (2020) 105476

forking problem with a simple rule: The longest chains of blocks is the issues that obstacles developing blockchain-IoT systems in precision
right one. When we have blockchain fork, some IoT-peers will start agriculture.
mining through one branch of the chain, and the other peers mine Before this study, a lot of research work discussed the integration
through the other chain. Definably, one chain will have more miners between IoT and blockchain as abstract technologies, but this study is
than the other, and as such, will insert new blocks to their chain faster. one of the first research attempts that investigated how this integration
The rest of the miners will then switch over to the longer chain and the between IoT and blockchain can be implemented in precision agri­
forked chain will always die out. Hence, A specific IoT device miner culture domain. Further research work is needed to be carried out in
must be programmed to doesn’t execute a transaction on a forked order to validate the proposed blockchain solutions and implement the
blockchain. The Conventional rule said that it is therefore wise to wait conceptual models introduced in this study. Moreover, additional re­
for 6 blocks to really verify and confirm a specific transaction search should focus on investigating more blockchain platforms used in
(Cryptohelp, 2018). Blockchain forking can create confusion, fake precision agriculture and conducting a comparison study under some
transactions, technical challenges, and economic uncertainty. Some major criteria in deeper analysis and assessment. Finally, more research
new blockchains platforms such as Tezos (Fernandes and Alexandre, work is also needed to examine more closely the link between block­
2019) suggest formal design structures of blockchain systems to de­ chain and IoT in additional use cases in precision agriculture tech­
crease the risk of occurring blockchain forking. nology.
3) Latency and Throughput. Due to developing many topologies of
IoT networks, developing blockchain-based IoT networks requires rapid Declaration of Competing Interest
processing for a variety of transaction patterns per time unit. This re­
presents a great challenge in IoT networks regarding throughput. For The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
example, Bitcoin’s blockchain can execute a maximum of 7 transactions interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ­
per second (Vukolic, 2015) while VISA network (VisaNet) able to pro­ ence the work reported in this paper.
cess 100,000 transactions per minute (Vermeulen, 2016). Latency is
another challenge related to the time required by the blockchain al­ References
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