‘Blockchain needs IPv6’ in the connected world

IPv6 will give the world a safer, more connected internet. Bitcoin and IPv6 complement each other with similar transaction and packet header structures. The BSV blockchain is ideal for storing and managing data in the IPv6-enabled, connected-everything world.

Exactly how this will happen was the topic of the IEEE 5G/6G Cybersecurity Digital Trust Summit at Mohammed B University in Rabat, Morocco, this week.

Speakers at the event included IPv6 Forum President Professor Latif Ladid, nChain Licensing Chief Science Officer Dr. Owen Vaughan, and Bharat IPv6 Forum Chair Dr. Satya Gupta. All emphasized the need for continued efforts in education and a willingness to evolve the Internet into something more secure than the current model—using IPv6’s built-in security features and the time-stamped guarantees of blockchain transactions and recorded data.

Internet and blockchain ‘generations’

Professor Ladid gave a brief history of the “generations” that led to today’s Internet, from Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn’s original ARPAnet to the OSI Internet, the IPv4/NAT Internet that is still widely used today, and the new IPv6 Internet or “Global Internet. “

End-to-end communication and a proliferation of new devices online are creating a fully networked world consisting of human users and IoT devices/sensors. The aim is to have an IPv6-only internet by 2025, and countries such as France, Germany, India and the US have made strong moves towards this goal in the last couple of years.

“IPv6 brings user experience from economy class to business class” (and NAT is baggage class), Ladid said.

Like the internet, blockchain has also seen several “generations” – the first is the decentralization of payments (money), the second is smart contracts and decentralization of markets, and the third brings whole smart cities, IoT, government and healthcare, scientific research and art on one blockchain record that is secured with “digital keys.”

Make payments and PKI more secure with Bitcoin

nChain’s Owen Vaughan presented strategies more specific to Bitcoin, noting that while three ledgers use that name, only (perhaps lesser known) BSV offers the unlimited scaling capacity required and the ability to produce blocks of transactions on an energy-efficient manner.

“Bitcoin can only sustain itself through real-world use cases,” he said.

Bitcoin enables user-to-user payments using the more scalable BIP 270 method, where Bob and Alice (the parties to a transaction) exchange data with each other first and then broadcast the transaction to the network, where it will be processed and recorded for always on the chain. This way, there is no need for each party to monitor the network themselves or keep complete blockchain records. As long as the validity of a transaction can be verified in the future, the data remains secure.

Vaughan went on to describe how blockchain can improve public key infrastructure (PKI). The most used model today is based on certificates and certificate-issuing authorities. However, this has several problems, including not always knowing when a certificate was issued or having up-to-date information on whether a particular certificate has been revoked.

Blockchain can keep these records up to date, and control processes can be automated. Revoking a certificate would be as easy as sending a transaction, and those who trust the certificates could receive instant notifications. The blockchain also acts as an independent timestamp, is more private and scalable, and allows for more versatile certificates, such as time-limited certificates or one-time access tokens.

In response to an audience question about the possibility of malicious miners, Vaughan also mentioned the financial incentives behind running a large-scale proof of work (PoW) transaction processing (mining) operation gave them more accountability and especially more than proof-of-stake (PoS) ) network, which is more susceptible to manipulation due to the ability to move large “stakes” around between unknown controllers.

India alone needs 10+ billion unique IP addresses

Dr. Satya Gupta presented from his home country of India, where he said that IPv6 would finally mean a “ubiquitous Internet” that is open, flexible, secure, reliable, accountable…and future-proof. This is necessary in the “new normal” world where employees often need to work from a home network with all the same security and multi-device capabilities as their office network.

NAT (Network Address Translation) is absent in IPv6 and is no longer needed, thanks to IPv6’s vast unique IP address spread. Each device can have its own IP address, which makes them more visible and enables a proper “internet of things” (IoT) since everything from devices to simple sensors can have their own unique place on the network. Blockchain-based CGAs (cryptographically generated addresses) also prevent spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Calling IPv6 and blockchain architecture “layers in the value of the Internet,” he praised India for its initiatives and gains in building awareness and deploying IPv6 across the country. Continued cooperation between advocacy groups such as the IPv6 forum, Internet providers, universities/research laboratories and “stakeholders” in business and government. India has been at the forefront of IPv6 deployment out of necessity, he said: if 1 billion people each have ten devices, it will need 10 billion IP addresses (with IoT still requiring billions more).

As the world wide web scales, it needs a scalable ledger to keep track of all the data. The BSV blockchain is the only one capable of this feat, with the potential to process trillions of transactions per day, all time-stamped and recorded, for verification at any time.

nChain is calling for research papers exploring the growing field of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) for a workshop event as part of the IEEE COINS 2023 event, which will take place July 23-25 ​​in Berlin (and online). The deadline for papers is 15 March 2023.

See why IPv6 is a major research program for nChain

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