PUF-Based Ownership Transfer Using Blockchain

Abstract

Counterfeiting of electronic components in the branded products is one of the most important and difficult issues to deal with in national/international markets along with the trusted ownership transfer of the product. Today we have to trust an individual while buying a product believing that the product is not tampered. But, we do not have any trusted source which can back this claim. This creates a lot of speculation in the market. For a long time RFID tags were used to find the anti counterfeits in the supply chain, but the problem with the RFID tag is that they can be cloned and hence the authenticity of the tags over the network is questionable. Hence, in order to counter this, we are leveraging blockchain technology to build a novel ownership transfer protocol where the ownership transfer mechanism is secured and authenticated using Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF). The genuinity of the product is checked by PUF by using Challenge Response check during the ownership transfer. Further, the ownership transfer history of the particular product is also maintained in the blockchain which helps the buyer to get more details on the product. The proposed blockchain architecture also provides a temporary ownership transfer option for the owners during servicing or leasing. The proposed architecture is implemented in ethereum blockchain platform and tested for its efficiency. The architecture is found to be promising. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.