Blockchain Technology and Smart Cities - A Review

Blockchain technology can be termed as a revolutionary innovation that has transformed the manner of data sharing by making it more secure and immutable. The existence of a mutual trust model which includes every participating entity makes it a widespread adopted technology in recent years. Due to its impeccable application domains the blockchain technology is slowly becoming an essential enabling technology of modern day. Smart cities ecosystem is one such domain wherein blockchain is finding numerous application and implementation avenues. Due to the diverse nature of devices and heterogeneity of data involved in smart cities ecosystem blockchain is considered an apt technology. In this paper, the current status of “blockchain based smart cities” is discussed. The paper further systematically reviews the various existing proposals, frameworks and architectures which were developed by researchers in order to mitigate the issues and challenges in the implementation of smart cities by utilizing the blockchain innovation.