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Articles

CJICT: VOL. 12, NO. 1, June 2024

Proof-of-Congruity Consensus Scheme: A Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Mining Potential Data for Forensic Analysis

Submitted
July 11, 2024
Published
2024-06-07

Abstract

Consensus mechanisms are crucial to achieving the desired security for blockchain data. They are used to coordinate the agreement process and endorse the value mined in blockchain. Forensic analysis requires data with sound integrity and fidelity to establish the truth. Existing blockchain data endorsement mechanisms are based on either the concept of effort throttling or risk-taking as used in Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, respectively. Effort throttling could make forensic analysis take longer time than necessary, while risk-taking may divert miners’ focus from ensuring the accuracy of data to protecting their stakes. This paper proposed a new data endorsement solution, called the Proof-of-Congruity Consensus Scheme, for ensuring miners’ trust and data authenticity in blockchain. Gestalt psychology principles, the principle of pattern completion and the law of perceptual constancy, were used for implementing partial hash collision in the proposed solution to enhance data accuracy and validation speed.  It also attaches to endorsers’ responses the trend of compliance of a miner in the past consensus processes it participated. The proposed solution took an average of 207.44 milliseconds to mine data when it was tested. It ensures that the miner’s level of trustworthiness is accessible from its responses for authenticating the response and provides faster data mining that is suitable for forensic investigation.