Constrained Resource Clients: Mar 2019 Update

Magicians Primordial Soup
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Short Summary

Diode is a project focused on complementing internet PKI with certificate pinning in Ethereum blockchains, making mechanisms such as ENS available to constrained IoT devices, it’s initiated and run at Exosite an IoT company to fix some of the long-standing PKI issues.

At its core is the ability to connect constrained devices to an Ethereum blockchain to allow them to read contract state data and validate the corresponding Merkle proofs. The algorithm we developed coined BlockQuick is a gateway-free reputation based method for embedded devices to get a trustable understanding of a relatively recent block. We haven’t published the full paper yet, as we’re still looking for an independent reviewer - so please hands up if anyone has the time.

Roadmap: Status

The Diode Proof-of-Concept is functional but also work in progress. It comes in two parts

  1. Full Ethereum Node, but modified in block headers, node-to-node, and node-to-edge protocols.
  2. Light Client (go) running on a raspberry pi.

Roadmap: In Progress - Proto

  • Get the BlockQuick paper reviewed and published
  • Improve PoC implementations to include Light Client incentive structure

Roadmap: Next - Testnet

  • Release full Diode whitepaper including light client incentive structures
  • Release Testnet & Sources
  • Port the Light Client to C and onto a real embedded device
    • Device Targets: Arduino, Embedded Chip, e.g., CC3220, Mobile Phone

Roadmap: Far Future

  • Commercial Application for IoT devices

Challenges and Concerns

ETH1 vs. ETH2 brings a lot of changes that directly affect BlockQuick, some of them good, some we don’t know yet.

  • Signatures in Beacon chain are a good thing, something we’re having right now to add in our ETH1 variant. Though changes of consensus group and quick block authorship changes might be an issue for the reputation system, this needs further investigation.
  • BLS vs. ECDSA looks like a huge step. Usage if BLS signatures could also for the light client protocol have significant advantages but the maturity of BLS seems still very low and before embedded devices will have hardware accelerated BLS support is likely going to be a couple of years.
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