PoFEL: Energy-Efficient Consensus for Blockchain-Based Hierarchical Federated Learning

Facilitated by mobile edge computing, client-edge-cloud hierarchical federated learning (HFL) enables communication-efficient model training in a widespread area but also incurs additional security and privacy challenges from intermediate model aggregations and remains vulnerable to the single point of failure issue. To tackle these challenges, we propose a blockchain-based HFL (BHFL) system that operates a permissioned blockchain among edge servers for model aggregation without the need for a centralized cloud server. The employment of blockchain, however, introduces additional overhead. To enable a compact and efficient workflow, we design a novel lightweight consensus algorithm, named Proof of Federated Edge Learning (PoFEL), to reuse computational work performed for local model training. Specifically, the leader node is selected by evaluating the intermediate FEL models from all edge servers instead of other additional mechanisms used solely for leader elections. This design thus improves the system efficiency compared with traditional BHFL frameworks. To prevent model plagiarism and bribery voting during the consensus process, we propose Hash-based Commitment and Digital Signature (HCDS) and Bayesian Truth Serum-based Voting (BTSV) schemes. Finally, we devise an incentive mechanism to motivate continuous contributions from clients to the learning task. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed BHFL system with the corresponding consensus protocol and incentive mechanism achieves effectiveness, low computational cost, and fairness.