Collaborative edge computing (CEC) is a novel extension for several edge paradigms (e.g., mobile edge computing, fog computing, and cloudlet) to further enhance processing capabilities to support computation-intensive and latency-sensitive applications in edge-centric networks. While existing schemes keep adding new functionalities (e.g., collaborative computing and caching), they overlook an important issue of establishing trustworthiness among all CEC participants. In general, due to the heterogeneity of all participants, simply assuming trustworthiness among them is undesirable. To address this issue, in this article, we present BlockEdge, a blockchain-powered framework that delivers trusted CEC services. Toward this end, BlockEdge first introduces incentive schemes to attract edge nodes to participate in CEC tasks. Then it publicly and persistently stores all task results on blockchain to enable smart-contract-based correctness verification and automated punishment in case of failures. Such a built-in accountability scheme allows BlockEdge to establish a trust reputation system for all CEC stakeholders, which can be further used for reliable selection of CEC participators. Our security analysis and experimental evaluation demonstrate that BlockEdge is both technically feasible and financially beneficial. We hope that the blockchain-based trustworthiness establishment designed in BlockEdge can provide a fundamental primitive for building a more secure collaborative ecosystem, especially for complex networks such as 5G and IoT.

中文翻译：

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面向以边缘为中心的网络的区块链支持的可信协作服务

协作边缘计算（CEC）是对几种边缘范例（例如，移动边缘计算，雾计算和cloudlet）的新颖扩展，以进一步增强处理能力，以支持边缘中心网络中计算密集型和延迟敏感的应用程序。尽管现有的方案不断增加新的功能（例如，协作计算和缓存），但它们却忽略了在所有CEC参与者之间建立可信度的重要问题。通常，由于所有参与者的异质性，仅假设他们之间的可信度是不可取的。为了解决这个问题，在本文中，我们介绍了BlockEdge，这是一种由区块链支持的框架，可提供可信的CEC服务。为此，BlockEdge首先引入了激励机制，以吸引边缘节点参与CEC任务。然后，它将所有任务结果公开并持久地存储在区块链上，以实现基于智能合约的正确性验证，并在出现故障时自动进行惩罚。这种内置的问责机制允许BlockEdge为所有CEC利益相关者建立信任信誉系统，该系统可进一步用于可靠地选择CEC参与者。我们的安全性分析和实验评估表明，BlockEdge在技术上既可行又在经济上有利。我们希望，在BlockEdge中设计的基于区块链的可信赖性机构可以为构建更安全的协作生态系统提供基本基础，特别是对于5G和IoT等复杂网络而言。