See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/337935793

NFC Pure Wallet (PW): An Offline and Real-time Blockchain transaction

Architecture

Preprint · December 2019

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33806.31048

CITATIONS READS
0 2,253

7 authors, including:

Ikechi Saviour Igboanusi Jae Min Lee

Kumoh National Institute of Technology Kumoh National Institute of Technology
5 PUBLICATIONS   1 CITATION    113 PUBLICATIONS   294 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Development of Routing Protocol in UAV Network View project

Method and apparatus for multiplexing and demultiplexing data transmitted and received by using audio/video interface View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Ikechi Saviour Igboanusi on 15 December 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 NFC Pure Wallet (PW): An Offline and Real-time
Blockchain transaction Architecture
Ikechi Saviour Igboanusi IEEE Student Member, Jae-Min Lee IEEE Member,
Dong-Seong Kim IEEE Senior Member
Networked System Laboratory, School of Electronics Engineering,
Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Gumi, South Korea.
ikechisaviour@ieee.org (ljmpaul, dskim)@kumoh.ac.kr

Abstract—This article proposes an electronic payment archi- been successfully eliminated. But the need for instantaneous
tecture named Pure Wallet (PW), which extends the concept of connection to Internet before a blockchain transaction can be
blockchain cryptocurrency for real-time and offline transaction. done between two people is still a limitation of the current
The first stage in this process requires the use of Internet
connection, to convert cryptocurrency into a token. Then offline architecture. The existing blockchain methods has two major
transactions are performed between electronic devices like mobile limitations for everyday use:
phones through a secure Near Field Communication (NFC) using • Long transaction time [3] and,
the token in senders device. The financial value in form of a token • requires Internet connection at the moment of transaction.
is encrypted by the sender and sent with a key for decoding the
value at the receiver’s device via NFC. The receiver converts the As all transaction must be made with Internet connection,
received token into cryptocurrency in the presence of Internet it renders cryptocurrency unfit for transactions in places like
connection. The major idea is to propose an electronic payment rural areas, in aeroplanes (on flight) and even in case of sudden
architecture utilizing cryptocurrency, which will enable financial disconnection by Internet providers. The scope of this work
transactions without instant connection to the Internet. Hence
will be equivalent to cash transaction.
is to propose a payment architecture that will mitigate the
above listed limitations of cryptocurrency. This article will use
Index Terms—Blockchain, cryptocurrency, e-wallet, near field the concept of cryptocurrency payment systems to explain the
communication (NFC), offline transaction, pure wallet (PW) proposed Pure Wallet (PW) algorithm. This algorithm can also
be applied in other blockchain application. It is a combination
I. I NTRODUCTION of three stages; the online, the offline, and the online. Internet
connection is required during the two online stages and NFC
The need for daily financial transaction has lead to the devel- is required for the offline stage of the transaction. Pure wallet
opment of several electronic payment systems that have made (PW) proposes a solution not as a replacement to the existing
exchange of values relatively easier than the traditions means, Internet based architecture, but as a extension to enable offline
but require financial institutions and presence of heavy com- cryptocurrency transaction, for a more rapid adoption and
munication equipment to be done efficiently. The transactions users convenience.
using payment cards exposes a lot of personal information to The rest of this article is arranged as follows: in section
all the entities that participate in the transaction [1]. As mobile II, Papers that motivated this current work are summarized
phones are taking most of the function like complimentary in Related Works. Section III presents the proposed system
card, identification, credit/debit card, and so no, it still has model. The expected benefit of this approach is presented in
many limitations in its current form for global adoption. section IV, and finally the conclusion and future work is in
The beauty of traditional cash transaction is the freedom to section V.
spend money anywhere, at anytime, with whoever wants the
legal tender. The concept of blockchain has been invented to II. R ELATED WORKS
remove restrictions posed on financial transactions by financial Researchers have made effort to create an offline cryptocur-
institutions. This blockchain paradigm is especially popular rency. Though cryptocurrency is protected with cryptographic
for financial transaction but has also become popular for non- encryption, a blockchain device is prone to unauthorized hack-
financial purpose. ing. [4] proposed BlueWallet which uses hardware token for
Cryptocurrency has emerged to create a decentralized bank- completing transactions. This approach succeeded in keeping
ing system, where no financial institution will control the the private key (in hardware) offline, making the wallet secure.
money. It is a virtual currency that uses cryptography system But it still requires point of sale (POS) Internet connection
to protect transaction [2]. Before the introduction of cryp- to blockchain network to make transaction. This approach
tocurrency, two factors determine the success of an electronic uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for
transaction namely; financial institution and Internet connec- verification and signing of transactions. The transaction is
tion. With the introduction of cryptographic payment like introduced into the Bitcoin network if observed as valid by
Bitcoin and Ethereum, the role of financial institutions has the POS. Other peers in the network in due course will verify
and confirm the transaction before it is added to the Bitcoin
network. The ledger of a Bitcoin network is the end point of
every confirmed blockchain transaction. It takes between 10
and 40 minutes to complete this process.
In [5], the authors proposed the use blockchain in card
payment system. This is to reduce charges from financial
institutions incurred by merchants for using payment card
and to protect sensitive information especially personal iden-
tification details of the participants during transaction. The
blockchain has a centralized virtual ledger which controls
access of participants, save and encrypts transaction details,
removes the need for a trusted middle man and limits exposure
of information. A merchant local payment machine is able Fig. 1. Conventional blockchain architecture showing what happen when a
to determine at once if a card from customer can complete sender sends money a receiver, and what happens at the back-end from the
a transaction within limits of the payment card terms. The sender through the miner to the receiver. It also shows activities requiring
Internet access.
available amount saved to the blockchain ledger and the
last information time update is obtainable. The system will
refresh if the available information are outdated. Despite the
contributions of this work, the authors did not consider their
blockchain solution for offline transactions.
[6] explored the use of hardware to create a wireless mesh
connection, with other device user to overcome the problem
of poor or no Internet connection, for Bitcoin transaction.
In this case, the several equipment are need to complete the
setup. A block stream satellite receiver is installed to download
block chain data from the satellite. This device is bulky and
mostly stationary. To extent the connection from the receiver,
a GoTenna mesh is used to create a mobile connection within
a limited range. A device with a wallet is also required to
read the downloaded information. To create a means for up-
link, other sets of equipment will be required. This approach
succeeded in extending connection to fixed areas without
internet access. But it has the limitation of cost and mobility, Fig. 2. shows the block diagram of the proposed Pure Wallet Blockchain
because the hardware is costly, must be at a certain range from architecture. The sender sends token through NFC connection to the receiver.
other users to function and considerably bulky for mobile use. The verification process happens over the Internet connection through the
token manager and the miner.
The works in [7] explore the use of NFC enabled android
mobile for Bitcoin transaction. In there work the receiver
sends its address to the sender using an NFC connection. The
transfer of Bitcoin follows the conventional process requiring
than cryptocurrency in terms security provisions. Authors of
an Internet connection, and takes the same length of time as
[11] Proposed multi-factor authentication (MFA) which tries to
regular transaction.
improve cryptocurrency security. MFA approach is hinged on
Some papers have made contributions that served as moti-
time-based onetime based password (TOTP), which is found
vation for this work, which is to overcome the above listed
to provide a more secure transaction. The authors in [12]
limitations itemized in the introduction. The authors of [8]
demonstrated security-enabled near field communication tag
compared cryptocurrency and fiat currency, and their role in
using flexible architecture supporting cryptography. This is to
the economy. It attempts to figure out how cryptocurrency
solve the security problem of NFC by using symmetric and
improves fiat currency in terms of its performance of peer-
asymmetric cryptocurrency architecture.
to-peer network transaction. It pointed out the pros and cons
of cryptocurrency. Authors of [9] proposed the combination of Using the insight of the above discussed works, this article
Ethereum and IoTeX miner to shorten the transaction time in proposes Pure Wallet, an architecture to perform offline and
IIoT. In [10], privacy and security of cryptocurrency mobile real-time crypocurrency transaction. The coin in the presence
applications are considered. It examines Android cryptocur- of Internet connection is converted into a token transferable
rency and financial services applications and the underlying over an NFC mobile connection. The receiver device retrieves
security profile. After examining the common vulnerability, the token value in the presence of an Internet connection.
they reported that in terms of privacy, the financial service We assumed that the mobile application has the capacity to
applications are better and are still better (though marginally) identify if a co-transacting device is legitimate or not.
Fig. 3. The process of making cash transaction involving withdrawal of money from the payer’s bank account. The physical cash is used for transaction and
the payee deposits the money in a bank account.

III. S YSTEM M ODEL The token manager holds all the token submitted by all
payees until time Tt . The token manager completes all transac-
Consider a need to make payment on-board an aeroplane.
tions associated with a token generated during one coin-token
The only possible payment is using cash, which has no
conversion , before returning the balance of unused token to
equivalent in cryptocurrency following its current form. To
the payers coin account. This is meant to prevent the chance
make this kind of transaction possible there must be a sort of
of double redemption by the payee.
value that is transferable in an offline situation. To achieve a
secure transaction, a digital cash in form of a trusted secret
token is needed. Algorithm 1: Pure Wallet (PW) processes
1 Sender sends coin to Token Manager (TM) via Internet
A. PW Digital Cash architecture access
To achieve offline electronic transaction, it is necessary to 2 sender receives token via Internet access
create a form of value transfer system which work efficiently 3 while Transaction is in offline do
without instant connection to Internet. Fig. 1 illustrates a 4 hands shake
conventional blockchain architecture. Fig. 2 shows the configu- 5 sender sends encryption key to receiver
ration of PW blockchain architecture including the conversion 6 sender sends amount embedded in token
process from crypto coins to electronic token at the sender 7 receiver confirms amount
(payer) account and vice versa at the receivers (payee) end. 8 sender sends the token
This conversion process at token manager can only takes place 9 receiver checks value and authorization on token
when there is Internet connection. The token manager resides 10 receiver removes any duplicate of sent token from
in the network before the miner. Any transactions through the the senders account
token manager is seen in the network as a transaction that has 11 receiver confirms receipt and terminate transaction
been initiated but is yet to be mined. The token is transferred 12 end
from a sender to a receiver over an NFC connection. The 13 Receiver sends token to TM
receiver uses that token to retrieve the coin value from the 14 TM forwards the transaction to miners for mining
token manager following the standard mining process. The 15 Receiver receives the coin
PW algorithm is represented in Algorithm 1. A token is valid
for transfer at the senders device within a certain time Ts ,
and for only one transaction. Received token can only be sent
to the Token Manager, which implies that a receiver can not B. Real cash versus PW Digital cash
send it to a new account. A time Tr is given for the receiver The process of using cash for transaction is a traditional
to claim the value of the received token. If the sender does means and is illustrated in Fig.3. Before a transaction is
not make any transaction before Ts , it will have to wait for made, the payer withdraws cash from a bank account. During
Tt before the token can be reconverted to crypto coins. After transaction, the cash is handed over in exchange for a good or
Tt the unclaimed coins will return to the sender’s account. service. The cash is taken to bank and deposited in an account
by the payee. A similar process is mimicked in PW for offline
Ts + Tr ≤ Tt (1) transaction, but instead of physical cash a token is used. PW
Fig. 4. Proposed Pure Wallet Blockchain architecture showing the process of payment from the payer to the payee using a token over an NFC connection.
The token mimics the role of cash in cash transactions.

processes are illustrated in Fig. 4, to show its similarity with

cash transaction as show in Fig. 3.

C. NFC

To transfer the token without Internet connection, there must

be a close range communication between the receiver and
sender. It is important for this transfer of token to happen
under a secure condition capable of preventing cyber attacks.
Which makes Near Field Communication (NFC) a viable
candidate. Legacy NFC devices often are weakly encrypted
or even lack encryption due to power and computational
requirement, making them vulnerable to attacks [13], all that
has recently changed. Near field communication is a wireless
technology with short range (about 4cm) usually consisting of
two portable device, connected in a peer-to-peer configuration
as illustrated in Fig. 5. Using higher-layer cryptographic
protocols such as secure socket layer (SSL), NFC connections
are secured from eavesdropping. An NFC secure element (SE)
complimentary attestation and validation for mobile devices is
capable of providing a secure on-demand access, by utilizing
NFC-based Host Card Emulation (HCE) [14]. A token is
Fig. 5. Interaction between sender and receiver in pure wallet transaction
created by a cloud base Trusted Certifies Authority (TCA) and during NFC exchange of token. The process is initiated by sender and is
stored in a tamper resistant SE and Trusted Platform Module terminated by receiver. The acknowledgement and encryption is for security
(TPM)-based attestation modules on the devices. between sender and receiver.

The token is used for transactions as shown in Fig. 5.

between NFC devices even without connection to Internet. The IV. E VALUATION / BENEFITS OF PW
NFC process is initiated by the sender with a hand shake. An
acknowledgment shows the profile of the receiver and is used This proposed pure wallet system is necessary to improve
to confirm the token is sent to the right device. The receiver the experience of using cryptocurrency in four major areas
device pulls the value of token to be transferred. The sender name: Real time transaction, rural adoption, reduced transac-
device transfers token after confirming the value of transfer. tion fees, and Internet blind spot.
The receiver device removes the used tokens from senders • Real time transaction
device and terminate transaction. The removal of used token A regular block-transaction takes about 10min to be
is the first precautionary measure to prevent double. added into a block. The amount of time spent to com-
Fig. 6. The Internet usage penetration index in % from 2000-2017, according to the International Telecommunication Union, and the predicted predicted
penetration index from 2018-2034.

plete a transaction can even take days based on certain faster.

reason. For examples: Block Propagation Time, Number • Internet blind spot
of Miners in the Network, Transaction Fee Set by the Passengers during flight, can buy products sold by air-
User, Speed of the Web, Spam on the Network and so on hostesses through PW without having physical cash. Also
[3]. With PW, real-time transaction can be successfully in urban area, areas with poor or no Internet connectivity
done at any time. An NFC phone operating at 13.56 MHz are considered as part of potential beneficiaries of our
frequency delivers a data rate of 424 kbit/s. A token of proposed blockchain algorithm.
64 characters encoded with UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-
32 is delivered in 0.0012, 0.0023,and 0.0047 seconds V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
respectively. The token manager completes the transfer to This article has proposed a new payment technique for
the receivers crypto coin account at time Tt after receipt cryptocurrency introducing pure wallet (PW). This involves
of the token from the payee. conversion of cryptocurrency into digital token which is used
• Reduced transaction fee for transaction over a secure NFC connection. Some of the
With the growing popularity of cryptocurrency, users are benefits of this new technique are listed. Although this paper
exploited by miner who take the advantage of excess considers payment system, this algorithm can be useful in
waiting time by concentrating on transaction with high other areas of blockchain transaction.
fee [?]. With PW transactions, can go on at anytime The application of this proposed algorithm to other areas
independent of the immediate average transaction fee, of blockchain such as IoT systems, notary and digital identity
and the token manager will complete the transfer at a will be the future of this work. A method of detecting falsified
time with low average transaction fee. token and the behavior of the PW in a large environment are
• Rural area adoption still open issue.
The concept of cryptocurrency is to provide financial
services to all include those in the rural area, where there R EFERENCES
are no banking infrastructure. But in such rural areas, the [1] A. N. Mian, A. Hameed, M. U. Khayyam, F. Ahmed and R. Beraldi,
possibility of making cryptocurrency transaction is slim “Enhancing communication adaptability between payment card process-
because of poor or no Internet connection. According ing networks, in ”IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 53, no. 3, pp.
58-64, March 2015.
to the data from International Telecommunication Union, [2] B. A. Ramadhan, and B. M. Iqbal,“User Experience Evaluation on the
[15] in 2017 some countries have less that 15(%) Internet Cryptocurrency Website by Trust Aspect,”International Conference on
usage, thus making it unlikely to adopt cryptocurrency in Intelligent Informatics and Biomedical Sciences 2018. (ICIIBMS), pp
274-279.
such area. [3] J. Fawkes, “Seven Reasons Behind a Delayed Crypto Transaction
In Fig.6 the actual value from year 2000 to 2017 shows Confirmation”CoolBitX, Oct. 16, 2018.
continuous growth in Internet penetration trend . Predic- [4] T. Bamert, C. Decker, R. Wattenhofer, and S. Welten, “BlueWallet: The
Secure Bitcoin Wallet ”Security and Trust Management, 2014, pp. 65-
tion made using the actual value shows it will take about 80.
15 years to achieve near 100% adoption worldwide. With [5] D. Godfrey-Welch, R. Lagrois, J. Law, and R. S. Anderwald,
PW the goal of banking the unbanked will be achieved “Blockchain in Payment Card Systems,”SMU Data Science Review, Vol.
1, No. 1 , Article 3, pp. 1-44, 2018.
 [6] Hackernoon, “Completely Offline Bitcoin Transactions, at Cornell University, NY. From 2007 to 2009, he was a
”https://hackernoon.com/completely-offline-bitcoin-transactions- vistiting professor with Department of Computer Science,
4e58324637bd, February 4th, 2019
[7] D.A. Bronleewe, “Bitcoin NFC. Technical report, ”University of Texas University of California, Davis, CA. He is currently a director
Aug. 2011, pp. 1-26 of kit Convergence Research Institute and ICT Convergence
[8] M. R. Islam, I. F. Al-Shaikhli, R. M. Nor, and K. S. Moham- Research Center (ITRC and NRF advancd reserch center
mad,“Cryptocurrency vs Fiat Currency: Architecture, Algorithm, Cash-
flow and Ledger Technology on Emerging Economy,”2018 International program) supported by Korean government at Kumoh National
Conference on Information and Communication Technology for the Institute of Technology. He is a senior member of IEEE and
Muslim World, pp. 69-73. ACM. His current main research interests are real-time IoT and
[9] K. P. Dirgantoro, J. M. Lee, D. S. Kim,“Private Ethereum Blockchain for
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT),”KICS-Winter 2019, pp. 1416-1417. smart platform, industrial wireless control network, networked
[10] A. R. Sai, J. Buckley and A. L. Gear,“Privacy and Security analysis of embedded system and Fieldbus.
cryptocurrency mobile applications,”2019 Fifth Conference on Mobile
and Secure Services (MobiSecServ), pp 1-6.
[11] K. A. Taher, T. Nahar, and S. A. Hossain,“Enhanced Cryptocur-
rency Security by Time-Based Token Multi-Factor Authentication Algo-
rithm,”2019 International Conference on Robotics,Electrical and Signal
Processing Techniques (ICREST), pp. 308-312.
[12] T. Plos, M. Hutter, M. Feldhofer, M. Stiglic and F. Cavaliere, “Security-
Enabled Near-Field Communication Tag With Flexible Architecture
Supporting Asymmetric Cryptography,”IEEE Transactions on Very
Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, vol. 21, no. 11, pp. 1965-1974,
Nov. 2013.
[13] R. Jin, and K. Zeng,“Secure Inductive-Coupled Near Field Communica-
tion at Physical Layer,”IEEE Transaction on Information Forensics and
Security, Vol. 13, No. 12, pp. 3078-3093 Dec. 2018.
[14] D. Sethia , D. Gupta, and H. Saran,“NFC Secure Element-Based Mutual
Authentication and Attestation for IoT Access,”IEEE Transaction on
consumer electronics, Vol. 64, No. 4, pp 470-479, Nov. 2018.
[15] International Telecommunication Union (ITU), “Proportion
of households with Internet access, 2017 ”ICT Facts and
Figures 2017, Jul. 2017. https : //www.itu.int/en/IT U −
D/Statistics/P ages/stat/def ault.aspx

B IOGRAPHIES
Igboanusi Ikechi Saviour received his B. Tech degree
in Physics from Federal University of Technology Owerri,
Nigeria in 2013. He is currently working towards his M.S.
degree in IT Convergence Engineering, at Kumoh National
Institute of Technology, Gumi, South Korea. His interest
research area include Network load balancing, real-time
networks, machine learning, and blockchain.

Jae-Min Lee received the Ph. D degree in electrical and

computer engineering from the Seoul National University,
Seoul, Korea, in 2005. From 2005 to 2014, he was a Senior
Engineer with Samsung Electronics, Suwon, Korea. From
2015 to 2016, he was a Principle Engineer in Samsung
Electronics, Suwon, Korea. Since 2017, he has been an
assistant professor with School of Electronic Engineering and
Department of IT-Convergence Engineering, Kumoh National
Institute of Technology, Gyeongbuk, Korea. He is a member
of IEEE. His current main research interests are industrial
wireless control network, performance analysis of wireless
networks, and TRIZ.

Dong-Seong Kim received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical

and Computer Engineering from the Seoul National University,
Seoul, Korea, in 2003. From 1994 to 2003, he worked as a
full-time researcher in ERC-ACI at Seoul National University,
Seoul, Korea. From March 2003 to February 2005, he worked
as a postdoctoral researcher at the Wireless Network Labora-
tory in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

View publication stats