A Novel Quantum-Resistant Lightweight Consensus Algorithm for IoT Blockchain Networks Based on Lattice Cryptography

The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices calls for the design of computationally light blockchain consensus mechanisms immune to quantum threats. The conventional consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) may have quantum cryptanalysis and incur high computational overhead on resource-limited IoT devices. In this paper, we introduce QR-LightChain, a new quantum-robust light weight consensus algorithm with the combination of lattice-based cryptography and a brand-new Proof-of-Lightweight-Work (PoLW). Our proposal is based on formalism Learning With Errors (LWE) as a quantum resistant based scheme, also, but with the use of the adaptive difficulty tuning and energy efficient mechanism to validate the hashing. Experimental results show that QR-LightChain reduces the computational overhead by 52.3% with respect to traditional quantum-resistant approaches, while preserving security against both classical and quantum adversaries. The protocol shows good performance in IoT: The average block validation time of 1.2 sec is achieved and there is 40% less energy consumed than for current quantum-resistant consensus in the literature. Our work fills the important research challenge of providing 1 Post-Quantum Cryptography and Blockchain Modern internet of things (IoT) blockchain net- works are being developed in resource-constrained environments such as smart cities, while QCs