SmartTwin: A Blockchain-Based Software Framework for Digital Twins Using IoT

A Digital Twin provides a virtual representation of a physical object, complementing theoretical models with real-world data provided by the Internet of Things. Currently, most cloud-based IoT platforms provide device virtualization with different levels of detail and complexity. Nonetheless, this approach has inherited the disadvantages and risks of cloud computing, such as centralizing and isolating the information. Thus, a blockchain-based Digital Twin could provide a unique combination of properties to address these challenges while ensuring availability, integrity, and confidentiality. Current research on blockchain-based Digital Twin has focused on the data-sharing functionalities. However, the role of the IoT sensors as secure, trustworthy data sources is still an issue that needs to be addressed in the Digital Twin domain. In this work, we propose SmartTwin as a software framework to develop blockchain-based Digital Twins. The architecture’s key is considering IoT as direct actors on the blockchain system, taking advantage of the cryptographic capabilities of Blockchain to create a root-of-trust for the data feeding the Digital Twin. In addition, our proposal uses smart contracts as a software platform to define complex business logic. Finally, to illustrate the benefits of SmartTwin, we describe two use cases where the framework was used.