BookChain: Library-Free Book Sharing Based on Blockchain Technology

Modern bookcrossing leverages the mobile networks to help readers share books via convenient connection, and thus expedites the dissemination of information. However, the lack of traceability has significantly hindered the wide adoption of mobile bookcrossing, leading to loss of books. Meanwhile, the managerial inefficiency of current mobile bookcrossing systems becomes another obstacle for advancing the book circulation. To overcome these problems, we propose to leverage the promising blockchain technology with the merits of its immutability and cryptographic smart contract. In this paper, we present BookChain, a traceable and efficient blockchain-based innercampus book sharing system. BookChain stores the complete sharing data of an interested book permanently on blockchain, such that every reader can trace the borrowing history, which reduces the potential for loss of book. BookChain also introduces the use of smart contract to automate the circulation of books with minimal human intervention, resulting in the improvement of efficiency. The experimental results show the effectiveness and low-cost of the proposed system under high concurrent users.