Blockchain-based authentication and registration management system for vehicles

Owners of motor vehicles are legally required to fulfill numerous obligations related to their vehicles. These obligations aim to ensure the safety of other drivers and pedestrians as well as to fulfill the regulatory functions of the state. Vehicle owners are responsible for various procedures such as motor vehicle tax, mandatory vehicle insurance, vehicle inspection, exhaust inspection, various registration records, bridge and highway toll payments, traffic violations and fines, and accident and repair tracking. These procedures are carried out through the information processing and data management systems of various public and private institutions. Current vehicle data management systems do not provide direct access to data for both vehicle owners and institutions that require various information and documents related to vehicles. Due to their centralized structure, institutions face single point of failure issues and are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Furthermore, the fact that vehicle-related data is stored in different institutions, access to data is limited and non-transparent, data is susceptible to misuse and manipulation, and the existence of incomplete and inconsistent data provide opportunities for various fraud and deception, causing insecurity in second-hand vehicle purchase and sale processes. In this study, we propose a new model called the Blockchain-Based Vehicle Identification and Registration System (BAKSİS), which enables secure, reliable, and transparent data management through the collaboration of many organizations that can contribute to solving existing problems related to vehicles. This model also has a special IPFS distributed file storage system for the secure storage of documents and files related to transactions while maintaining their integrity. The proposed model has been created using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform, which is a special and customized blockchain network consisting of organizations involved in vehicle registration and licensing processes in Turkey. Thanks to smart contracts written according to the roles and authorities of the institutions and organizations participating in the designed blockchain network, a reliable collaboration is established, and vehicle registration information is recorded on an immutable ledger that provides a complete record history. Performance tests conducted on a simulation application running on a single computer and a virtual machine application revealed that the system achieved a transaction volume of 70 tps under a workload of 200 tps, with a maximum transaction confirmation delay of 33.07 seconds. In read-query operations sent from 10 different clients, gradually increased up to 1000 tps, a 97% efficiency rate was achieved.