Blockchain based multi-signature smart contract electronic seal orienting mobile IoT terminals

The surging interest in digitalization has revitalized research for digital business model. Mobile Internet of Things (IoT) terminals will reach billions and become an important infrastructure for a digital and intelligent society. In the digital business model of IoT terminals, the electronic seal of commercial contracts are especially investigated to provide the same level security as guaranteed by the traditional seal. However, the existing electronic seal is only applicable to the centralized network applications, which severely relies on the certificate authority. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based multi-signature smart contract electronic seal scheme. The key of our design is to deploy a smart contract for business parties on Ethereum for secure electronic seal towards mobile IoT terminals. Unlike the traditional seal, this electronic seal is verified and managed collectively by all mining nodes. Combining it with optimizations in terms of a multi-signature algorithm encoded in the smart contract, our design achieves complete digital contract functionality for all business participants of terminals. As an example, we demonstrate an implementation on the Goerli testnet of the Ethereum network with the smart contract deployment. The security analysis and evaluation demonstrate that our design is secure in its multi-signature implementation and can be used in practice.