Trustworthy Inter-Provider Agreements in 6G Using a Privacy-Enabled Hybrid Blockchain Framework

2025-05-05

AI Summary

To address the challenge of jointly ensuring dynamism, transparency, and privacy preservation in cross-operator service sharing for 6G networks, this paper proposes a privacy-enhancing hybrid blockchain framework. The framework integrates a public blockchain—ensuring global verifiability—with a permissioned private blockchain—guaranteeing data confinement within administrative domains. It incorporates the Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance 2.0 (IBFT 2.0) consensus mechanism, privacy-preserving group transactions, on-chain service-level agreement (SLA) registration, off-chain coordination, and role-driven smart contracts. Key innovations include verifiable SLA violation detection and localized processing of sensitive data. A proof-of-concept implementation demonstrates stable latency for public operations; private transactions incur only controllable cryptographic overhead; block generation rate exhibits negligible impact on private transaction latency; and the system supports highly dynamic, multi-domain collaboration—effectively balancing trustworthiness and privacy.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Blockchains and distributed ledgers
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Inter-provider agreements are central to 6G networks, where administrative domains must securely and dynamically share services. To address the dual need for transparency and confidentiality, we propose a privacy-enabled hybrid blockchain setup using Hyperledger Besu, integrating both public and private transaction workflows. The system enables decentralized service registration, selection, and SLA breach reporting through role-based smart contracts and privacy groups. We design and deploy a proof-of-concept implementation, evaluating performance using end-to-end latency as a key metric within privacy groups. Results show that public interactions maintain stable latency, while private transactions incur additional overhead due to off-chain coordination. The block production rate governed by IBFT 2.0 had limited impact on private transaction latency, due to encryption and peer synchronization. Lessons learned highlight design considerations for smart contract structure, validator management, and scalability patterns suitable for dynamic inter-domain collaboration. Our findings offer practical insights for deploying trustworthy agreement systems in 6G networks using privacy-enabled hybrid blockchains.

Problem

• Ensuring secure and dynamic inter-provider agreements in 6G networks
• Balancing transparency and confidentiality in blockchain-based service sharing
• Optimizing latency and scalability for hybrid blockchain in 6G

Innovation

• Privacy-enabled hybrid blockchain using Hyperledger Besu
• Role-based smart contracts for decentralized services
• IBFT 2.0 governance with encryption for scalability