# Blockchain-Based Decentralised Authentication in Closed Environments
## 6 Discussion  
It can be seen in the proposed decentralised authentication protocol that the blockchain plays a crucial role by providing a secure, transparent, and immutable framework to manage and verify identities. By distributing credentials of users or nodes such as their identities and passwords across a network of validator nodes, the integration of blockchain into our proposed solution mitigates the risks associated with traditional centralised authentication systems, especially a single point of failure. A critical aspect of our proposed protocol is the consensus mechanism employed during the identity verification stage. To determine whether an authentication request from a node is successful or not, a consensus must be reached among all validator nodes. This collective decision-making process ensures that no single entity can approve or deny an authentication attempt. The integrity and trustworthiness of the proposed system is enhanced as a result. By requiring agreement among all validator nodes, our proposed protocol reduces the risk of malicious behaviour, which further strengthens the overall security of the authentication process. Moreover, immutability, another important property of blockchain, allows for transparency, where all authentication-related transactions can be audited and tracked. Any changes to already recorded information are not possible due to blockchain's application of a cryptographic hash function. This, therefore, provides an enhanced trust and accountability. Our proposed decentralised authentication protocol offers several advantages over traditional centralised authentication systems and other decentralised schemes. Traditional systems, such as those based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) relies on a single server [27], which can potentially be exposed to vulnerabilities such as data breaches and single points of failure. In contrast, our proposed protocol uses a decentralised architecture that distributes authentication and identity-related data across multiple validator nodes. This eliminates single points of failure. Furthermore, the consensus mechanism employed by the blockchain ensures that authentication decisions are made collectively by all validator nodes, which increases trust in the system. When comparing the proposed protocol with other decentralised systems [14; 24] designed to also work in private environments, our protocol appears to be computationally less expensive while still offering trust and accountability. Overall, to position our proposed blockchain-based decentralised authentication protocol, it is necessary to acknowledge the diversity of methods that have emerged in this field. While many existing studies focus on securing authentication data in IoT and VANET environments, our protocol was specifically designed for closed environments, where only a limited number of trusted nodes would participate in an authentication process. This allows us to optimise both the performance and security of the authentication process. Moreover, our proposed protocol utilises a consensus mechanism to emphasise the decentralisation aspect of the authentication. We believe that a critical aspect of achieving true decentralisation in authentication is the consensus mechanism employed as a part of blockchain technology. In our design, we integrated a consensus mechanism such as proof of work or proof of stake, which enabled multiple nodes to participate in validating authentication credentials and transactions. This decentralisation scheme not only improves security by eliminating single points of failure, but it also incorporates trust among users, since no single entity has total control over the authentication process. Next, we compare our proposed protocol with cluster-based approaches [11; 12; 13]. The design of our protocol intentionally focuses on a decentralised architecture that operates without needing to have clusters or cluster heads.