A Blockchain-based prototype for car registration
Date
2020
Authors
Njoroge, Nikita Thuo
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
Vehicle registration is an important exercise as it assists various departments including motor vehicle authorities, the police and tax authorities to make use of vehicle registration details for purposes of determining legitimate vehicle owners. Various methods including mobile and web technologies have been adopted in the registration of motor vehicles. However, inconsistencies have always emerged in the vehicle ownership details. Current vehicle registration systems have not been able to mitigate against the threat of tampering with vehicle owners’ details or at least keep track of the fraudulent transactions in the system. This has informed the need to review the current motor vehicle registration systems as well as the challenges faced in the registration of vehicle ownership details. Based on the weaknesses of the current systems this research focused on developing a prototype based on the blockchain technology that ensured there was proper trail of all the transactions that were performed in the system including vehicle registration, transfer of vehicle ownership as well as confirmation of ownership transfer. The proposed development of the product adopted agile methodology in its software development lifecycle. With known participants needed in a vehicle registration system, the study established that a permissioned blockchain was best suited to create the blockchain network. Hyper ledger Fabric framework was therefore used to create the blockchain network, the reason being it is an enterprise grade, permissioned, distributed ledger technology platform for use in enterprise contexts. This means Hyper ledger Fabric offers features that are required or essential in enterprise applications. Android platform was used for development of the mobile application and Angular JS used for the web portal. The tests done on the prototype were functional testing with 70% of the test cases indicating satisfied. Usability testing with 85% of the responses indicating that the system was user friendly. Finally, compatibility testing with the mobile application running efficiently on most of the Android versions and the web application was compatible with the major web browsers, Internet Explorer version 4 and above, Mozilla Firefox version 4 and above and Google chrome on all versions.
Description
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of a Master of Science Degree in Mobile Telecommunication and Innovation (MSc. MTI)
Keywords
Blockchain, Hyperledger fabric, Ledger, Smart contract, Chaincode, Consensus