did:blox: A Secure and Efficient Decentralized Identifier Method for Scientific IoT Ecosystems Leveraging the Bloxberg Blockchain

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in scientific research presents a critical challenge to data integrity and reproducibility. Ensuring the verifiable provenance of data from distributed, autonomous sensors is essential for academic trust. This paper introduces did:blox, a novel decentralized identity (DID) method engineered to create a secure and efficient identity layer for academic IoT data. The method utilizes a hybrid on/off-chain architecture, anchoring immutable cryptographic hashes on the permissioned, consortium-governed Bloxberg blockchain while storing full <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DID documents</i> in off-chain storage. This approach is specifically designed to address the cost, performance, and governance requirements of the research community. We present a formal specification, system architecture, and a rigorous evaluation of a prototype implementation on the live Bloxberg mainnet. The performance of did:blox is benchmarked against a traditional, fully on-chain baseline did:eth. Empirical results demonstrate that did:blox reduces transaction gas costs for identity creation and updates by approximately 40%, improves throughput for concurrent device onboarding by 20%, and lowers latency for on-chain operations, at the cost of a minor, acceptable increase in resolution latency.