Performance evaluation of ethereum consensus mechanisms in IoT-blockchain systems using resource-constrained devices

Abstract The integration of IoT with blockchain technology enhances security and privacy through decentralized, trust-based systems, addressing challenges like single points of failure and limited scalability in traditional IoT architectures. This study evaluates the performance of Ethereum-based IoT systems using resource-constrained devices (Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 3) on a private blockchain. Performance metrics, including CPU, memory, disk usage, power consumption, and latency, were analyzed across three consensus mechanisms: Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Authority (PoA), and Proof-of-Stake (PoS). To address the blockchain’s latency performance, we introduced the metrics Transaction-oriented latency (ToL) and Block-oriented latency (BoL) to characterize latency under PoS, capturing the distinctive dynamics of PoS. Our findings show that PoA achieves the lowest resource consumption, with CPU usage reduced by 98% compared to PoW and 20% compared to PoS, and power consumption decreased by 50% from PoW and 14% from PoS. Further, to assess blockchain scalability, we varied transaction transmission rates under PoA, identifying its impact on performance. These findings provide practical guidance for optimizing consensus mechanisms in resource-constrained IoT-blockchain systems.