This paper evaluates the scoring platforms for decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), examining their methodologies and highlighting their strengths and limitations. Using content analysis, we scrutinize the scoring methodologies of the Prime Rating, DAO Meter, and DeFi Safety platforms, evaluating code, documentation, security, team composition, governance, and regulatory compliance. We analyze the underlying assumptions and data sources relied upon by these platforms, using a content analysis approach. Our investigation furnishes valuable information for stakeholders, aiming to evaluate or enhance DAO scoring methodologies used by scholars and practitioners in the finance and blockchain fields. By contributing to a more rigorous understanding of DAO performance assessment, this paper supports informed decision making and promotes the development of a dependable and efficient scoring system for the decentralized financial ecosystem.
Purpose This paper reviews the extant research on Web3.0 published between 2003 and 2022. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a topic modeling procedure latent Dirichlet allocation to uncover the research themes and the key phrases associated with each theme. Findings This study uncovers seven research themes that have been featured in the existing research. In particular, the study highlights the interaction among the research themes that contribute to the understanding of a number of solutions, applications and use cases, such as metaverse and non-fungible tokens. Research limitations/implications Despite the relatively small data size of the study, the results remain significant as they contribute to a more profound comprehension of the relevant field and offer guidance for future research directions. The previous analysis revealed that the current Web3.0 technology is still encountering several challenges. Building upon the pioneering research in the field of blockchain, decentralized networks, smart contracts and algorithms, the study proposes an exploratory agenda for future research from an ecosystem approach, targeting to enhance the current state of affairs. Originality/value Although topics around Web3.0 have been discussed intensively among the crypto community and technological enthusiasts, there is limited research that provides a comprehensive description of all the related issues and an in-depth analysis of their real-world implications from an ecosystem perspective.
Pengcheng Fang, Zhenhua Zou, Xusheng Xiao, Zhuotao Liu
Embracing software-driven smart contracts to fulfill legal agreements is a promising direction for digital transformation in the legal sector. Existing solutions mostly consider smart contracts as simple add-ons, without leveraging the programmability of smart contracts to realize complex semantics of legal agreements. In this paper, we propose iSyn, the first end-to-end system that synthesizes smart contracts to fulfill the semantics of financial legal agreements, with minimal human interventions. The design of iSyn centers around a novel intermediate representation (SmartIR) that closes the gap between the natural language sentences and smart contract statements. Specifically, iSyn includes a synergistic pipeline that unifies multiple NLP-techniques to accurately construct SmartIR instances given legal agreements, and performs template-based synthesis based on the SmartIR instances to synthesize smart contracts. We also design a validation framework to verify the correctness and detect known vulnerabilities of the synthesized smart contracts.We evaluate iSyn using legal agreements centering around financial transactions. The results show that iSyn-synthesized smart contracts are syntactically similar and semantically correct (or within a few edits), compared with the “ground truth” smart contracts manually developed by inspecting the legal agreements.
Multi-party interaction scenarios usually involve interaction and collaboration between multiple participants, such as business negotiation, teamwork, etc. In multi-party interaction scenarios, trust mechanisms are needed to ensure the use of rights and the fulfillment of obligations. The use of blockchain and smart contracts to establish a decentralized trust mechanism is a solution. The development process of smart contracts may require experts in different fields to design them together, and it is difficult for non-experts to understand smart contract code. The traditional method of smart contract development is for the developer to manually write the smart contract code, which may lead to low development efficiency and the inability of the scene participants to understand the smart contract code. To address this challenge, we propose a reuse-oriented visual smart contract generator to efficiently develop complex multi-party interaction scenarios. This paper proposes a model based on BPMN that uses smart contracts to express the process of multi-party interaction so that the parties in various domains understand the business requirements. Then, a multi-layer reusable library is proposed and used to generate a visual solidity code. We also integrate code compilation, security checking, and deployment into the target blockchain environment for testing. The function of the tool is verified in the case of flight delay insurance, which shows that it can aid the automated development of smart contracts for multi-party interaction scenarios. At the same time, the feasibility of the tool is verified by five cases selected from the literature, which shows that it can aid the development of smart contracts to achieve a high degree of reusability.
Cynthia Yi Min Chee, Shantanu Pal, Lei Pan, Robin Doss
Since the proposal and conception of smart contracts in blockchain-based platforms, the ever-growing use of smart contracts also comes with increased vulnerability exploits, leading to attacks causing significant losses. Various improvements and implementations have been made to strengthen smart contract security, including developing scanning tools to detect vulnerabilities in smart contracts, both open-source and commercial. These tools were met with varying degrees of success, with some thriving well while others have since stagnated. In this paper, we conducted case studies on six of these tools, three of which are highly regarded and still used today, while the other three have either limited success or have been deprecated. We identified three short-term (6 months or less) and five medium-term (6 to 24 months) factors affecting the tools’ successes. Based on our analysis, we outlined a framework with these factors for potential developers to consider for increasing the success of their projects.
Corruption is widely spread and not easy to avoid. Blockchain-based smart contract technology enables the opportunity to develop transactions in such a way that corruption should not be possible. In this paper, we develop and evaluate an arrangement based on blockchain-based smart contracts to avoid and reduce corruption. Smart contracts are used for buying and selling goods, in which the public must agree that the goods arrived and are used to contribute to the creation of societal value. Only then will the supplier be paid. Al transaction data is stored in a blockchain and opened to the public to create transparency. In this way, the price of the good and the sellers can be inspected to avoid price manipulation and nepotism. The smart contract avoids the likelihood that corruption will happen, and it can be spotted if it happens.
We provide (1) an overview of various present and future applications of smart contracts across various industries including real estate, finance, and healthcare and (2) an assessment of the efficacy of smart contracts as a means of replacing or supplementing traditional contracts. Disclosed in this paper are (1) present and future applications of smart contracts and potential risks and downsides, and (2) legal considerations when using smart contracts to replace or supplement traditional contracts. Aspects of blockchain technologies can be applied to traditional contracts, in part or in whole, to reduce common challenges associated with contracts. Specifically, smart contracts can be integrated with or replace traditional contracts with the benefit of ensuring reciprocal obligations are enforced and aid in ensuring mutual consent, offer and acceptance, consideration and legal purpose.
The emergence of a decentralized peer-to-peer platforms that matches lending and borrowing without collateral requirements and bank lending channels allowed to develop the new market of alternative financial instruments. In this paper, we aim to analyze the origins and nature of alternative finance, consolidate, and categorize the theoretical foundation of the alternative finance market, determine the taxonomy of its instruments, and identify and critically analyze the strategies and legislative framework for the development and functioning of the alternative finance market in the Republic of Moldova. The theoretical and practical significance of this research lies in the development of an econometric model that examines the influence of various groups of factors (regulatory, social, economic development, information technology) on the per capita volume of the alternative finance market. The obtained data enabled the identification of priority areas and specific proposals for the development of conditions and the potential of alternative finance in the Republic of Moldova.
Marten Risius, Christoph F. Breidbach, Mathieu Chanson, Ruben von Krannichfeldt · 5 authors
Abstract Initial coin offerings (ICOs) and initial exchange offerings (IEOs) are distinct blockchain-based token offerings. Following multiple frauds associated with decentralized and unregulated ICOs, IEOs are emerging as a novel pathway that relies on centralized crypto exchange platforms acting as intermediaries. However, the question as to how this shift affects fundraising processes in what has traditionally been a decentralized environment remains unresolved. We here address this issue by empirically comparing the performance of ICOs and IEOs through the lens of signaling theory, focusing specifically on the impact of social media information across 305 token offerings (ICOs and IEOs). Our work introduces IEOs and explains how and why the volume and sentiment of social media signals may serve as predictors of fundraising performance. We furthermore find that the impact of these electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) media signals is reduced in the case of IEOs—in the presence of a central cryptocurrency exchange platform mediator. We delineate implications for investors, ventures, platform providers, and regulators alike.
Blockchain technology has emerged as a disruptive force in the world of digital transactions, with applications across a wide range of industries. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the potential applications of blockchain technology, including finance, healthcare, supply chain management, and voting. The paper discusses the benefits and challenges of using blockchain technology, as well as real-world case studies of its implementation. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research, exploring new applications and addressing the challenges associated with the use of blockchain technology.
Property transfer is one of the use cases that involves a lot of intermediaries to put trust in the system.In the present scenario, property transactions are carried out on paper, giving rise to countless conflicts.Maintaining accurate records of land ownership and transfers is a very difficult task, made even more challenging by fraudulent or incomplete registries that can be extremely hard to trace back through history.The integrity of these records is crucial, but ensuring their accuracy is a complex undertaking.Blockchain can be utilized to overcome these predicaments faced in land dealings.The transparent nature of blockchain makes it possible to securely track the transfer of ownership from one individual to another reliably.Blockchain's immutable, auditable, and traceable features makes it a suitable solution for this use case.IPFS is a decentralized protocol and peer-to-peer network that facilitates the storage and sharing of data in a distributed file system.It's designed to enable efficient and secure sharing of files across a network of computers without relying on a central server.A solution of decentralized application or DAPP on Ethereum Blockchain is proposed through this work, which will be a one stop platform for buying, selling, or registering land.A systematic approach is used, right from the registration of the land inspector/buyer/seller to the registration of lands, making it available to sell, etc.
The use of digital currency or cryptocurrencies has been common since 2018. However, its use as an investment instrument is different from the conventional currency recognized by the state, this is because a cryptocurrency appeared by a number of organizations/companies and its value does not depend on the economic condition of a country, but on the status of a company/issuer of a digital currency. Difficulty predicting liability and growth creates computational needs to determine which digital currencies are suitable for investment, so in this study, 11 digital currencies are used to try out. Experiment with AHP calculations to get the best digital currency to use as an investment tool. This calculation translates into IOT Coin against other famous digital currencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
In March 2021, we witnessed a surge in Bitcoin price. The cause seemed to be a tweet by Elon Musk. Are other blockchains as sensitive to social media as Bitcoin? And more precisely, could Ethereum's popularity be explained using social media data? This work aims to explore the determinants of Ethereum's popularity. We use both data from Etherscan to retrieve the relevant historic Ethereum factors, and Twitter data. Our sample consists of data ranging from 2015 to 2022. We use Ordinary Least Squares to assess the relationship between these factors (Ethereum characteristics and Twitter data) and Ethereum's popularity. Our findings show that Ethereum's popularity - translated here by the number of daily new addresses - is related to the following elements: the Ether (ETH) price, the transaction fees, and the polarity of tweets related to Ethereum. The results could have multiple practical implications, for both researchers and practitioners. First of all, we believe that it will enable readers to better understand the technology Ethereum and its stake. Secondly, it will help the community to identify pointers for the anticipation or explanation of the popularity of existing or future platforms. And finally, the results could help in understanding the factors facilitating the design of future platforms.
Handan Kunkcu, Kerim Koç, Aslı Pelin Gürgün, Houljakbe Houlteurbe Dagou
As an emerging but embryonic way of contract administration, smart contracts can play a prominent role in managing construction projects in an effective manner. However, there are still some barriers preventing the implementation of them in the life cycles of construction projects. This study investigates operational barriers against the adoption of smart contracts in construction projects and explores the challenges in this process. Operational barriers against smart contract implementation are identified through a comprehensive literature review and a focus group discussion is performed to refine the identified barriers. These barriers are evaluated through fuzzy analytical hierarchy process analysis. Finally, a framework is proposed for the adoption of smart contracts effectively in construction projects. 20 operational barriers were attained based on four main barrier categories: technical, financial, security/technological, and time. The results show that financial and technical aspects establish the most significant categories hindering the adoption of smart contracts, while expensive and clunky drafting and registration process, and cost of upskilling are the most significant barriers. Overall, the proposed framework might be useful for practitioners and project managers, who decide to use smart contracts in managing construction projects. The motive behind understanding critical operational barriers is to assist construction practitioners in automating contract execution processes. This study provides a basis for recommending the necessary strategies for the use of smart contracts in the industry to researchers in the construction management field.
Marco Schletz, Axel Constant, Angel Hsu, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx · 6 authors
The Regenerative Finance (ReFi) movement aims to fundamentally transform the governance of global common pool resources (CPRs), such as the atmosphere, which are being degraded despite international efforts. The ReFi movement seeks to achieve this by utilizing digital monitoring, reporting, and verification (D-MRV); tokenization of assets; and decentralized governance approaches. However, there is currently a lack of a clear path forward to create and implement models that actually drive the “Re-” in ReFi beyond perpetuating the existing extractive economics and toward actual regeneration. In addition, ReFi suffers from growing pains, lacking a common interoperability framework and definition for determining what a ReFi project is and how the individual components align toward the grand ambition. This paper provides a definition of the ReFi stack of interconnected components and examines how it can address limitations in climate change accounting, finance and markets, and governance. The authors also examine the theory of regenerative economics and CPRs to encourage further discussions and advancements in the ReFi space. The crucial question remains if and how ReFi can drive a change in paradigm toward the effective regeneration of global CPRs.
Mansour Davoudi, Mina Ghavipour, Morteza Sargolzaei-Javan, Saber Dinparast
<title>Abstract</title> This study focuses on analyzing four of the most significant cryptocurrencies in the field of decentralized storage, including Filecoin, Arweave, Storj, and Siacoin. Our method consists of three main components: Network Analysis, Textual Analysis, and Market Analysis. Network Analysis involves identifying relevant entities associated with the target cryptocurrencies to construct a network of entities. During this component, the embeddings of each entity are then extracted using node2vec which are fed into a convolutional neural network. In the second component, Textual Analysis, we first employ the T5 summarization model to encapsulate the content of related news articles. Subsequently, by utilizing the FinBert model the sentiment of news articles and tweets associated with the identified entities are extracted. We then use transformer encoders to process the resulting feature vectors. Ultimately, similar to the Textual component, by leveraging the transformer encoders the financial market information of target cryptocurrencies is evaluated during the Market Analysis component. As the final step, the outputs of these components are combined to predict the price trend of the target cryptocurrencies within a specified time frame. The proposed model’s accuracy in forecasting the future price trend of Filecoin, Storj, Arweave, and Siacoin is 76%, 83%, 61%, and 74% respectively.
Diego Cagigas, Judith Clifton, Daniel Díaz‐Fuentes, Marcos Fernández Gutiérrez · 5 authors
The adoption of a new technology such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in government is a complex process with numerous potential benefits, but also costs and risks. Early pilots introducing DLT into the public sector show that its potential impact will likely vary depending on the context, including, the type of public service. Even within the same public service, the impact of DLT might be distinct for each of the stakeholders involved (the government, civil servants and citizens, among others). As the public sector is diverse, it is critical to get a proper analysis and understanding of the process of introduction of this technology, which encompasses the different dimensions that play a role in the process. This paper presents an original and multi-dimensional evaluation framework to analyze and compare the benefits, costs and risks of the introduction of DLT in the public sector. It considers a comprehensive set of factors, identified and extracted after conducting a systematic review of the literature, representing potential benefits, costs and risks of DLT in the public sector. These are categorized into four separate dimensions: technological, socio-economic, organizational-cultural, and institutional (legal and political). This evaluation framework has been designed to be used by policy-makers interested in analyzing and comparing the benefits and risks of the introduction of DLT in real-world applications of this technology in the public sector.
Farouq Ahmad Faleh Alazzam, Ali Jabbar Salih, Maher Ali Mohd Amoush, Fadiah Sami Al. Khasawneh
Purpose: This study aimed to assess the extent of the use and the safety of dealing withBitcoin through blockchain technology. Method/approach: Bitcoin model applied for electronic contracts. The method of functional-cost analysis for technical and economic analysis of system development for NFT creation is used in work. Theoretical framework: Bitcoin is a currency that depends on modern technological techniques with many advantages because they are used to send and receive money over the Internet and can be used in legitimate and illegal businesses. Therefore, quick international measures must be taken to regulate them legally through unified international conventions that regulate the ways of legal dealing with them. Results and Conclusions: International laws must govern and regulate the use of Bitcoin, as it is a currency traded over the Internet and can be used in legitimate and illegal businesses. And that the smart contract, which is executable code that runs on top of the blockchain to facilitate, execute and enforce an agreement between untrusted parties without the involvement of a trusted third party, can be used, especially since the International legislation lacks a legal regulation of virtual currencies. Research implications: The findings indicated the importance of stipulating special laws that regulate the use of Bitcoin. Originality/value: This work can provide possible solutions to reduce the risks of using Bitcoin, such as stipulating laws and regulations to regulate their use internationally.
In this paper, we propose a smart contract broker to improve the reusability of smart contracts in a blockchain environment. The current blockchain platform lacks a standard approach to sharing and managing smart contracts, which makes it difficult for developers to reuse them and leads to efficiency issues. The proposed smart contract broker uses tags to identify and organize smart contracts, and it provides an environment for comparing and reusing smart contracts. This improves the reusability of smart contracts and efficiency. The proposed smart contract broker can be applied as a reference model that increases the flexibility and reusability of smart contract management in a blockchain environment.
Fernando Richter Vidal, Naghmeh Ivaki, Nuno Laranjeiro
Supplementary Material refers to the paper "Vulnerability Detection for Smart Contracts: A Systematic Literature Review" and contains the following information: a) DataAnalysis.xls - An Excel file created for analysis (i.e., tables and graphics).
Smart contracts play a vital role in the Ethereum ecosystem. Due to the prevalence of kinds of security issues in smart contracts, the smart contract verification is urgently needed, which is the process of matching a smart contract's source code to its on-chain bytecode for gaining mutual trust between smart contract developers and users. Although smart contract verification services are embedded in both popular Ethereum browsers (e.g., Etherscan and Blockscout) and official platforms (i.e., Sourcify), and gain great popularity in the ecosystem, their security and trustworthiness remain unclear. To fill the void, we present the first comprehensive security analysis of smart contract verification services in the wild. By diving into the detailed workflow of existing verifiers, we have summarized the key security properties that should be met, and observed eight types of vulnerabilities that can break the verification. Further, we propose a series of detection and exploitation methods to reveal the presence of vulnerabilities in the most popular services, and uncover 19 exploitable vulnerabilities in total. All the studied smart contract verification services can be abused to help spread malicious smart contracts, and we have already observed the presence of using this kind of tricks for scamming by attackers. It is hence urgent for our community to take actions to detect and mitigate security issues related to smart contract verification, a key component of the Ethereum smart contract ecosystem.
In this dissertation, we address the problem of vagueness in traditional legal contracts by presenting novel methodologies that aid in the paradigm shift from traditional legal contracts to smart contracts. We discuss key enabling technologies that assist in converting the traditional natural language legal contract, which is full of vague words, phrases, and sentences to the blockchain-based precise smart contract, including metrics evaluation during our conversion experiment. To address the challenge of this contract-transformation process, we propose four novel proof-of-concept approaches that take vagueness and different possible interpretations into significant consideration, where we experiment with popular vendors' existing vague legal contracts. We show through experiments that our proposed methodologies are able to study the degree of vagueness in every interpretation and demonstrate which vendor's translated-smart contract can be more accurate, optimized, and have a lesser degree of vagueness. We also incorporated the method of fuzzy logic inside the blockchain-based smart contract, to successfully model the semantics of linguistic expressions. Our experiments and results show that the smart contract with the higher degrees of truth can be very complex technically but more accurate at the same time. By using fuzzy logic inside a smart contract, it becomes easier to solve the problem of contractual ambiguities as well as expedite the process of claiming compensation when implemented in a blockchain-based smart contract.
The paper discusses one of the most promising and widespread digital innovations in FinTech, the so-called smart contracts, which have the potential to increase the financial stability of the economy and entrepreneurship based on the digital modernization of other industries, including digital law. Methods. Based on the IMD statistics, a profile of the development of smart contracts in the Russian Federation in 2021 has been compiled. A factor analysis of the development of smart contracts in the Russian Federation in 2013–2021 has been carried out using the regression analysis method. Results. A forecast has been made and alternative scenarios for the development of smart contracts in Russia have been identified. It is proved that in Russia the current (as of 2021) level of development of smart contracts is moderate. A set of practical recommendations has been proposed to improve it. Conclusions. The key conclusion based on the results of the study is that the basis of the organization of smart contracts is the use of machine code and security protocols. The most common technology for securing smart contracts is blockchain. The results of modeling, forecasting and the proposed authors’ recommendations have identified significant prospects for the development of smart contracts in the financial sector in Russia.
A growing economy creates cryptocurrency virtual money residing in cyberspace. Cryptocurrency Is an online payment tool that uses an open source peer-to-peer payment network. There are many problems faced by users, where Cryptocurrencies are said to include money or a commodity. This phenomenon really makes users feel uncomfortable, feel at a loss, therefore the government must immediately provide an evaluation of the use of Cryptocurrency as a means of obtaining transactions. more attention, especially from the government so that the community gets their rights and obligations in muamalah. This paper aims to discuss how to use Cryptocurrency transactions from the Perspective of the DSN-MUI Fatwa and Law No. 7 of 2011. This research is classified as normative research, using a statutory approach and a conceptual approach. The results of the discussion show that Cryptocurrency is linked in the DSN MUI fatwa No.28/DSN-MUI/III/2002 regarding al-sharf that in the provisions of the fatwa the conditions for exchanging Cryptocurrency digital money are prohibited because of the element of speculation. In Article 2 paragraph (1) of Law Number 7 of 2011 concerning Cryptocurrency, it does not meet the requirements as a type of currency in Indonesia. Judging from the six criteria of money, Cryptocurrency only meets the criteria of portability and visibility.