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Blockchain in Digital Forensics

single point failure, security issues and trust management. Shala et al.

(2019) elaborated the trust evaluation consensus protocol for digital

ledger in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) systems. The integration of IoT

and blockchain technology makes the system tamper proof and more

robust. Filho et al. (2019) and Carnevale et al. (2019) described energy-

efficient distributed computing in a Body Area Network. In Aly et al.

(2019), details of layers of IoT applications and various security issues

are explained.

14.2.3 Legal Perspective: Blockchain offers a decentralized platform for the

distribution of digital content. The licensor gives permission to upload

each digital document using the smart contract. Users can also access the

digital documents available in the blockchain database using the smart

contract. Giancaspro (2017) and Nath (2016) explained that the present

legal frameworks can use blockchain as an effective way to maintain a

digital ledger without having any involvement of a third party, thereby

ensuring privacy and security of individuals.

14.2.4 Government: There are several potential advantages of implementing

blockchain in the government sector, such as sharing of information

across various organizations in the country, accessibility, transparency,

and quality and quantity of service enhancement. Sullivan and Burger

(2017) and Nordrum (2017) elaborated how blockchain technology can

be implemented in the government sector due to its properties of being

secure, peer to peer, decentralized and accessible to all users in the

network.

14.2.5 Advertising: Blockchain is quite suitable for digital advertising due to

its inherent characteristics of being immutable, transparent, and a dis­

tributed digital ledger. Inefficiency, lack of transparency and advertise­

ment frauds are some major concerns faced by the advertising sector.

Blockchain technology can potentially help to boost efficiency, improve

transparency and optimize costs, and can significantly reduce the num­

ber of frauds. MetaX (Goldin Mike et al., 2017), a blockchain company,

utilizes blockchain technology to deal with the issues of transparency

and fraud affecting digital advertising.

The applications of blockchain are not limited to these areas but span various

domains such as digital forensics, smart transportation, reputation systems, cloud

computing, the commercial world, e-business, insurance, etc.

14.3  CHALLENGES AND PROTOCOLS OF

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

14.3.1  Challenges Faced by Blockchain Technology

One of the major challenges faced by blockchain technology is scaling up the

system, as it is not as fast as other electronic transaction schemes. For example,