Blockchain technology for society 4.0: a comprehensive review of key applications, requirement analysis, research trends, challenges and future avenues

Society 4.0 brings new information technology to mass audience accompanied by economic and social developments in the 21st century. The enablers of Society 4.0 such as Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT) significantly influence current human activities with more efficient information management. Blockchain technology takes a step forward towards innovation and has numerous uses yet to be discovered in developing a smart society. The objective is to extensively review existing literature for the implementation of a smart society to identify different research lacunas. IoT enables real-time data collection by allowing computing systems, humans, and objects to connect for practical purposes and economic gains that call for the highest levels of security, data privacy, authentication, and attack resistance. Blockchain can be a viable solution to satisfy these requirements as it maintains an immutable network transactions log. Applications in volatile, uncertain, and complicated business contexts benefit from the unification of Blockchain with AI in terms of security and efficiency. We conduct a systematic review with explorative analysis to outline the significance of Blockchain integrated with different enablers of Society 4.0 along with different applications. Bibliometric analysis confirms the significance of the integration of Blockchain technology for current and future human activities as an integral part of Society 4.0. This review will provide a lucid research summary for all applications proposed and implemented to fully realize the concept of Society 4.0 using Blockchain technology. This article also enumerates future research avenues for the deployment of the next-generation Blockchain-based Society 4.0 applications.