Open Access

ARTICLE

A Low-Code Orchestration Middleware for Secure and Transparent IoT–Blockchain Integration

Jesús Rosa-Bilbao^*

UCASE Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Cadiz, Cádiz, Spain

* Corresponding Author: Jesús Rosa-Bilbao. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2026, 88(1), 83 https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2026.080490

Received 11 February 2026; Accepted 03 April 2026; Issue published 08 May 2026

Abstract

The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures with Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) remains challenging due to the reliance on complex, tightly coupled back-end systems or centralized oracle services that hinder scalability, maintainability, and trust. This paper introduces a lightweight middleware architecture based on a Low-Code Development Platform (LCDP) that enables flexible and secure IoT-to-blockchain orchestration. We develop a custom workflow extension for the n8n platform that supports direct interaction with smart contracts, thereby removing the need for third-party oracle intermediaries. The proposed system was evaluated in a real-world deployment involving a network of Netatmo environmental sensors and the Alastria consortium blockchain. Experimental results show that the middleware can process 12 concurrent sensor data streams with an average end-to-end latency of 37.4 s, a delay dominated by the blockchain consensus time rather than middleware overhead, while ensuring the generation of immutable and verifiable audit trails. These findings demonstrate that low-code orchestration can deliver an effective, scalable, and fault-tolerant alternative for integrating IoT infrastructures with blockchain in Industry 4.0 environments.

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Keywords

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