[Paper Review] EdgeChain: Blockchain-based Multi-vendor Mobile Edge Application Placement

He Zhu, Changcheng Huang+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jan 12, 2018

Blockchain Technology Applications and Security9 references3 citations

TL;DR

EdgeChain proposes a blockchain-based, trustless framework for decentralized mobile edge application placement across multiple service providers, minimizing placement costs while ensuring fairness and transparency. By modeling placement as a stochastic optimization problem and executing it via smart contracts on a permissioned blockchain, EdgeChain enables dynamic, low-latency, and cost-effective application deployment across multi-vendor edge infrastructures with verifiable, traceable decisions.

ABSTRACT

The state-of-the-art mobile edge applications are generating intense traffic and posing rigorous latency requirements to service providers. While resource sharing across multiple service providers can be a way to maximize the utilization of limited resources at the network edge, it requires a centralized repository maintained by all parties for service providers to share status. Moreover, service providers have to trust each other for resource allocation fairness, which is difficult because of potential conflicts of interest. We propose EdgeChain, a blockchain-based architecture to make mobile edge application placement decisions for multiple service providers. We first formulate a stochastic programming problem minimizing the placement cost for mobile edge application placement scenarios. Based on our model, we present a heuristic mobile edge application placement algorithm. As a decentralized public ledger, the blockchain then takes the logic of our algorithm as the smart contract, with the consideration of resources from all mobile edge hosts participating in the system. The algorithm is agreed by all parties and the results will only be accepted by majority of the mining nodes on the blockchain. When a placement decision is made, an edge host meeting the consumer's latency and budget requirements will be selected at the lowest cost. All placement transactions are stored on the blockchain and are traceable by every mobile edge service provider and application vendor who consumes resources at the mobile edge.

Motivation & Objective

• Address the challenge of decentralized, fair, and efficient mobile edge application placement across multiple mobile edge computing service providers (MECSPs) with conflicting interests.
• Overcome the limitations of centralized placement systems that require trust in a single authority and are vulnerable to bias or failure.
• Enable dynamic, real-time placement decisions that consider latency, budget, resource availability, and service chaining across heterogeneous edge hosts.
• Ensure transparency and immutability of placement decisions through a decentralized blockchain ledger accessible to all participating MECSPs and application vendors.
• Support resource sharing and cost optimization in multi-vendor 5G edge environments by modeling placement as a stochastic programming problem with economic and QoS constraints.

Proposed method

• Formulate the mobile edge application placement problem as a stochastic programming model that minimizes total cost, incorporating unit resource prices, latency constraints, service chaining dependencies, and user distribution.
• Design a heuristic placement algorithm based on the cost model to efficiently compute optimal or near-optimal host assignments under real-time constraints.
• Implement the placement logic as a smart contract on a permissioned blockchain, ensuring consensus-based agreement and immutability of decisions across all participating MECSPs.
• Use blockchain to maintain a global, shared ledger of resource availability, allocation, and consumption status across all edge hosts and MECSPs.
• Integrate user demand distribution (via $P_m$) and MECSP-specific pricing parameters ($\gamma_m$, $\delta_m$) into the decision logic to reflect real-world economic and geographic factors.
• Ensure that placement decisions are made independently of any MECSP’s interest, with the blockchain enforcing neutrality and fairness through consensus mechanisms.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can mobile edge application placement be made fair and transparent in a multi-vendor environment where service providers have conflicting economic interests?
• RQ2 What cost model can jointly optimize for latency, budget, resource utilization, and service chaining in a decentralized mobile edge computing environment?
• RQ3 How can blockchain technology be effectively leveraged to enforce trustless, consensus-driven placement decisions without relying on a central authority?
• RQ4 How do changes in user distribution and MECSP pricing policies affect the placement outcomes and cost efficiency in a multi-vendor edge system?
• RQ5 To what extent can resource sharing across MECSPs improve overall system efficiency and service quality while minimizing placement costs?

Key findings

• MEHosts with lower combined base price ($\gamma_m$) and premium ($\delta_m$) are prioritized for application placement, especially when users are concentrated in a specific MECSP’s coverage area.
• As the unit resource premium $\delta_{m_1}$ increases from 0.1 to 0.6, the system dynamically shifts application placements away from $m_1$'s hosts to reduce cost, demonstrating sensitivity to economic incentives.
• When user demand shifts from $m_2$ to $m_1$, the number of MEApps placed on $m_1$'s hosts increases significantly, while placements on $m_2$'s hosts decrease, showing responsiveness to user distribution.
• Even with no users from $m_3$, its hosts still host applications from $m_1$ and $m_2$ when they offer better latency or cost efficiency, confirming effective cross-SP resource sharing.
• The system achieves lower overall placement costs by prioritizing hosts from MECSPs with higher user density and favorable pricing, while maintaining low-latency service delivery through strategic placement.
• The blockchain-based smart contract ensures that all placement decisions are publicly verifiable, immutable, and agreed upon by consensus, eliminating reliance on a trusted third party.