Blockchain for Secure IoT: A Review of Identity Management, Access Control, and Trust Mechanisms

Blockchain technologies offer transformative potential in terms of addressing the security, trust, and identity management issues that exist in large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. This narrative review provides a comprehensive survey of various studies, focusing on decentralized identity management, trust mechanisms, smart contracts, privacy preservation, and real-world IoT applications. According to the literature, blockchain-based solutions provide robust authentication through mechanisms such as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), enhance transparency via smart contract-enabled reputation systems, and significantly mitigate vulnerabilities, including single points of failure and Sybil attacks. Smart contracts enable secure interactions by automating resource allocation, access control, and verification. Cryptographic tools, including zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), proxy re-encryption, and Merkle trees, further improve data privacy and device integrity. Despite these advantages, challenges persist in areas such as scalability, regulatory and compliance issues, privacy and security concerns, resource constraints, and interoperability. By reviewing the current state-of-the-art literature, this review emphasizes the importance of establishing standardized protocols, performance benchmarks, and robust regulatory frameworks to achieve scalable and secure blockchain-integrated IoT solutions, and provides emerging trends and future research directions for the integration of blockchain technology into the IoT ecosystem.