Incentive Mechanism for Edge Computing-Based Blockchain: A Sequential Game Approach

Dueto its distributed characteristics, the development and deployment of the blockchain framework are able to provide feasible solutions for a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. While the IoT devices are usually resource-limited, how to make sure the acquisition of computational resources and participation of the devices will be the driving force to realize blockchain at the network edge. In this article, an edge computing-based blockchain framework is considered, where multiple edge service providers (ESPs) can provide computational resources to the devices for mining. We mainly focus on investigating the trading between the devices and ESPs in the computational resource market, where ESPs act as the sellers and devices act as the buyers. Accordingly, a sequential game model is formulated and by exploring the sequential Nash equilibrium (SE), the existence of the optimal solutions of selling and buying strategies can be proved. Then, a deep Q-network-based algorithm with modified experience replay update method is applied to find the optimal strategies. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed incentive mechanism on forming the blockchain via the assistance of edge computing.