Jul 2026· IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking· Vol 12, pp. 10589-10606· 0 citations· 47 references
Computer Science
TL;DR
Experimental results on a hardware prototype demonstrate that compared with no-blockchain trust-by-default baselines, the zero-trust overhead of TrustAgentNet is dominated by off-chain inference, while the blockchain layer incurs minor ledger costs via the ledger-IPFS storage and on/off-chain integration design.
Abstract
Agentic AI networking (AgentNet) systems rely heavily on third-party skillset implementations and distributed multi-agent collaboration, yet they face major claim-to-capability inconsistencies and security vulnerabilities under trust-by-declaration assumptions. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes TrustAgentNet, a dual-tier blockchain-secured zero-trust framework. Specifically, a global Chain of Skillsets (CoS) governs the lifecycle of skillset metadata with protocols empowered by specialized agents to enforce off-chain auditing while maintaining lightweight on-chain cryptographic consensus. Furthermore, transient, task-oriented Chains of Collaboration (CoC) are dynamically established to enable trustless distributed multi-agent collaboration. Theoretical analysis of the three-way trade-off among security level, task performance, and resource overhead is provided and empirically validated. Experimental results on a hardware prototype demonstrate that compared with no-blockchain trust-by-default baselines, the zero-trust overhead of TrustAgentNet is dominated by off-chain inference, while the blockchain layer incurs minor ledger costs via the ledger-IPFS storage and on/off-chain integration design. Crucially, the proposed verification pipeline achieves a flawless 100% accuracy across 50 AI models, correctly validating 40 honest skillsets and intercepting 10 adversarial ones, and generalizes to non-AI domains with an 83.91% accuracy and a 0.85 F1-score across 1478 features from 171 ClawHub skills. Adversarial experiments further show that TrustAgentNet enables autonomous skillset self-recovery against various malicious attacks.
Modern supply chain management systems increasingly rely on distributed architectures to ensure transparency, integrity, and trust between participants. Blockchain technology provides a promising foundation for such systems; however, traditional consensus mechanisms introduce high computational overhead, energy inefficiency, and privacy risks. These limitations are particularly critical for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with constrained computational resources, that they are using to expand on their traditional informational systems and not to integrate distributed technologies into the work process, as setup process for blockchain tools is more complex than centralized approach. This paper proposes a private, dockerized blockchain architecture for supply chain management that combines the Proof of Friendship (PoF) consensus mechanism with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP). By integrating a private, dockerized framework with the Proof of Friendship consensus and Zero-Knowledge Proofs, this architecture enables resource-constrained enterprises to achieve a high-performance decentralized network that simultaneously ensures sub-second transaction validation through social trust metrics, robust protection of competitive business intelligence via cryptographic privacy, and seamless cross-platform deployment through containerization, ultimately overcoming the traditional trade-offs between system transparency, operational cost, and data confidentiality in global trade. PoF extends Proof of Stake by incorporating social trust indicators, including transaction success rate and geographic diversity of validators, enabling resource-efficient and decentralized consensus. ZKP mechanisms are integrated through an off-chain prover module, allowing transaction correctness to be verified without revealing sensitive business data. The proposed approach enhances cybersecurity, data confidentiality, and system scalability while reducing computational costs. Simulation results demonstrate improved resistance to Sybil attacks, reduced validator centralization, and acceptable transaction latency for corporate blockchain deployments.
Pavlo Zherzherunov, O. Shmatko· Bulletin of NTU "KhPI". Seri...· 0 citations
BEAT (Blockchain–Edge AI Trust) is presented, which closes that gap through co-design of three coupled layers: a Graph Attention Network–Long Short-Term Memory (GAT-LSTM) edge module that converts device interaction graphs into normalised trust evidence vectors.
Pavansai Ramarao Maddali, Vijay Kumar Damera, Ratna Kumar Prathipati· International Journal of Adv...· 0 citations
The rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has placed considerable pressure on both security and stability in heterogeneous, resource-constrained networks. In such dynamic environments, trust management is a central issue to determine which service providers can be trusted and to combat malicious activity. Although blockchain-based solutions have offered a means for decentralized, tamper-resistant trust management, most rely on classical cryptographic primitives, which are vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks. This study proposes a Quantum-Resistant Blockchain-Based Trust Management (QR-BCTM) framework in which Post-Quantum Cryptographic mechanisms, Permissioned Blockchain Platform, and Fog-assisted Trust Management architecture are combined and utilized in IoT networks. The framework introduces a quantum-aware trust computation model that combines behavioral trust, indirect recommendations, and a cryptographic assurance score quantifying each participant’s compliance with security requirements. Trust evidence is compressed to reduce blockchain storage and communication overhead, while the hierarchical fog-blockchain architecture offloads computationally intensive operations from resource-constrained IoT devices. The performance of the framework has been simulated in the presence of an adversary, including bad-mouthing, ballot-stuffing, on-off behavior, and identity attacks using a Sybil-type mechanism. Trust accuracy, false trust acceptance, communication overhead, and computation cost were measured, and a sensitivity analysis on the trust-weight parameters was performed. The simulation results suggest that QR-BCTM can enhance the accuracy of trust evaluation, mitigate the impact of malicious nodes, and remain scalable and efficient despite the existing cryptographic overhead. Post-quantum digital signatures and formal security analysis provide protection against quantum-era threats and attacks, while classical threats are mitigated through behavioral trust aggregation and recommendation filtering. In summary, QR-BCTM provides a scalable, simulation-validated and quantum-aware framework for trustworthy IoT network operation, offering practical guidelines for future deployment and prototyping.
M. A. Al-Khasawneh, D. Alsekait, K. Alkayid et al.· Scientific Reports· 0 citations
AI agents are evolving from isolated task executors into networked autonomous entities that can communicate, delegate tasks, invoke tools, access external knowledge, and participate in cross-platform service and economic workflows. This evolution gives rise to open agent networks, where heterogeneous agents owned by different stakeholders interact without naturally shared infrastructures for identity, authorization, auditability, reputation, or settlement. This survey and tutorial article reviews the literature over the period 1980--2026 on the evolution from classical multi-agent systems to open agent networks, with a particular focus on LLM-based autonomous agents, agent interoperability protocols, Internet-of-Agents infrastructures, and blockchain-enabled trust mechanisms. We first review this evolution and show how the trust boundary expands from individual execution to cross-agent, cross-platform, and cross-organizational interaction. We then identify a network-level trust crisis that cannot be fully addressed by single-agent safety mechanisms or closed multi-agent coordination techniques, and develop a five-dimensional taxonomy covering entity and capability trust, authorization and delegation trust, information and provenance trust, coordination and group-robustness trust, and accountability and settlement trust. Based on this taxonomy, we examine how blockchain can provide shared identity, verifiable authorization, tamper-evident provenance, auditable collaboration, incentive alignment, and value settlement for trustworthy agent networks. We further synthesize the mapping between agent-network risks, trust requirements, and blockchain-enabled mechanisms, and clarify the role of blockchain as a shared trust layer rather than a replacement for agent security, semantic verification, privacy protection, or robust reasoning.
Liehuang Zhu, Yuhang Li, Tianxing Wang et al.· 0 citations
This work demonstrates that a dynamic, reputation-based security layer can provide near-total protection against the modeled threats at negligible performance cost, offering a viable, highly effective solution for securing resource-constrained IoT deployments.
N. N. A., A. T, Bhuvaneswari M.· Discover Internet of Things· 0 citations
Blockchain systems are undergoing a fundamental transition from decentralized ledgers for digital assets to general-purpose trust infrastructures for verifiable computation, decentralized physical resources, and automated infrastructure management. Meanwhile, the limitations of the Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) model stem from a common structural problem: outsourcing control of infrastructure to third-party service providers inevitably involves a systemic surrender of trust, flexibility, and data sovereignty. RISC-V, with its open, modular, and extensible design, provides a general-purpose computing foundation for public blockchains that is open, low-level, compileable, verifiable, and scalable. Inspired by the development and characteristics of eSIM, the embedded Blockchain infrastructure management (eBIM) is defined as a software-hardware collaborative paradigm for blockchain infrastructure management with RISC-V. This study aims to provide a comprehensive survey on eBIM supporting research and technologies, to answer the following research questions (RQs): RQ1 What is eBIM? RQ2 How does eBIM work? RQ3 What can eBIM do? By introducing the concept of eBIM, this paper establishes a foundational reference for researchers, hardware architects, and protocol designers in this rapidly evolving landscape, including cryptographic acceleration, trusted execution environments, zero-knowledge virtual machines, and smart contract execution engines. The prospects of the proposed e-BIM and its future research directions are indicated in this paper.
Qinglin Yang, Yuan Liu, Yaoyao Zhang et al.· 0 citations