The increasing reliance on centralized ride-sharing structures, and exposes users to risks such as system failures and privacy breaches. manipulation, single points of failure, and privacy violations. In addition, high commission fees imposed by such platforms reduce the net earnings of drivers and compromise fairness within the ecosystem. To address these inefficiencies, this project introduces a decentralized vehicle borrowing system and carpooling, based on Ethereum Compatible blockchain and smart contracts. The proposed platform eliminates intermediaries by allowing KYC-verified drivers, passengers, and vehicle owners to interact directly, thereby building trust and operational transparency. All ride postings, bookings, car borrowing transactions, and agreement verifications are recorded immutably through smart contracts. Identity proofs, vehicle documents are cryptographically signed through MetaMask and uploaded via a decentralized file system (IPFS), ensuring authenticity and wallet-to-user binding. For drivers who borrow cars, temporary verification is enabled after signing a smart-contract-based agreement linked to the vehicle's verified owner. To maintain decentralization without depending on an administrator, the system introduces a Global Dispute Center where only users who fulfill certain predefined conditions—having verified their identity—can participate in resolving concerns through a voting process. This decentralized decision-making process enhances fairness and trust. Additionally, a structured post-ride rating system builds mutual accountability and trust among participants, while integrated CO₂ tracking encourages environmentally conscious behavior. Together, these features help minimize traffic load, support conscious travel habits, and build a reliable, user-governed mobility system that is secure, transparent, and environmentally supportive—functioning entirely without any centralized authority or administrative oversight, thereby ensuring long-term sustainability. To address these limitations, this project proposes a blockchain-powered peer-to-peer carpooling and vehicle borrowing system that enables direct interaction between passengers, drivers, and vehicle owners without intermediaries. The platform utilizes smart contracts to automate agreements, MetaMask for secure authentication, and IPFS for decentralized storage of essential records. By shifting operational control to users, the system enhances transparency, fairness, and reliability in transactions. Conventional mobility services also face issues such as opaque processes, inefficient dispute handling, and limited mechanisms for conflict resolution. Drivers often lose a substantial portion of their income to service fees, while users lack trust in centralized decision-making systems. Furthermore, minimal emphasis is placed on promoting environmentally responsible travel practices. Motivated by the need for an open and community-driven mobility platform, this research aims to establish a distributed ecosystem that eliminates third-party dominance and ensures tamper-proof record keeping. The system incorporates KYC-based digital identity verification, smart contract-enforced agreements, decentralized dispute resolution through voting, and CO₂ emission tracking to encourage sustainable transportation. The scope of the project includes enabling secure ride booking, vehicle borrowing under verified ownership, and democratic dispute resolution among verified users. By leveraging distributed networks and digital wallets, the platform presents a scalable and sustainable alternative to centralized ride-sharing models.
We present a graph-theoretic and convex optimization framework for multi-path routing in decentralized exchange networks, together with its implementation and empirical evaluation on Ethereum mainnet. The framework models the market as a directed token multigraph whose arcs carry AMM exchange functions. Routing is decomposed into two implemented layers: candidate path generation via gas-aware marginal k-shortest-path enumeration, where edge scores embed expected execution cost directly into graph traversal with an explicit pool-simple constraint tracked during path construction, and continuous flow allocation over the selected candidates solved as a concave maximization over a simplex with a per-pool price-impact cap. Under standard concavity and monotonicity assumptions, the KKT conditions imply marginal-output equalization across active paths. The central technical contribution is an improving-path certificate: after solving the allocation on k=20 candidate paths, the KKT multiplier is used as a threshold to determine via a single shortest-path query whether any omitted pool-simple path could improve the current solution; in our implementation the certificate confirms sufficiency in the majority of epochs. Execution is protected by an on-chain slippage tolerance enforced at the smart-contract level. We evaluate the implemented engine against four production DEX aggregators on repeated WETH-USDT quote observations across six trade sizes on Ethereum mainnet: median shortfall is below 5 bps across all sizes and top-3 quote rank exceeds 57% of epochs.
Artjom Pugatsov, Can Umut Ileri, Jérémie Decouchant
The successive generations of consensus algorithms have progressively shifted the performance bottleneck of blockchains to the execution layer. While recent works address this by parallelizing transaction execution, they often overlook the critical role of transaction sequencing. Historically, transaction ordering was left to validator discretion, a practice prone to Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) attacks, or rigid fair-ordering protocols that limit validator revenue. In this work, we address the tension between validator revenue and order fairness using a dynamic optimization framework. We introduce a blockchain-independent model for transaction sequencing in a continuous setting where block executions can overlap. Within this framework, we propose an anytime genetic algorithm that utilizes gas prices, object sets, and predicted execution times to optimize schedules. We evaluate our approach with real-world datasets from Sui and Ethereum, and demonstrate that our algorithm increases validator profit by approximately 15% and accelerates congestion relief by up to 58%. Furthermore, we quantify the impact of fair-ordering constraints, showing they can reduce validator revenue by 50% to 60% during periods of high congestion. We provide the first evidence that enforcing strict fair ordering effectively nullifies the advantages of advanced sequencing.
Technical traders have long relied on visual analysis of candlestick charts to identify market patterns and predict price movements. While deep learning has achieved remarkable success in image classification, its application to financial chart images remains underexplored. This paper presents a systematic study comparing different visual representations for cryptocurrency regime prediction. We evaluate three image encoding methods (raw candlestick charts, Gramian Angular Fields, and multi-channel GAF), five chart component configurations, four neural network architectures (CNN, ResNet18, EfficientNet-B0, and Vision Transformer), and the impact of ImageNet transfer learning. Through eight controlled experiments on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and S&P 500 data spanning 2018-2024, we identify optimal configurations for visual regime classification. Our results show that a simple 4-layer CNN on raw candlestick charts achieves 0.892 AUC-ROC, outperforming larger pretrained models. Surprisingly, simpler representations (price-only charts, 128x128 resolution) consistently outperform more complex alternatives. We provide interpretability analysis using GradCAM and demonstrate that transfer learning improves performance by 4-16% despite the domain gap between natural images and financial charts.
ABSTRACT Forgery of academic and professional certificates remains a major concern across institutions. Traditional centralized systems are prone to manipulation and single points of failure. This work presents a blockchain-based certificate issuance and verification platform developed using Spring Boot and the Ethereum Sepolia test network. The system supports multiple organizations where issuers register and are approved by an administrator before generating certificates. Each certificate is assigned a unique identifier, and a SHA-256 hash of its data is stored on the blockchain through smart contracts. The platform also automates PDF certificate creation with embedded QR codes and sends them via email. Additional features include bulk certificate generation, revocation support, and public verification without requiring a blockchain wallet. Experimental observations indicate an average issuance time of around 4 seconds and verification within 1.5 seconds. Keywords: Blockchain, Ethereum, Smart Contracts, SHA-256, Certificate Verification, Spring Boot, Web3j, PDF Automation
Phishing attacks pose a significant security issue in Ethereum-based blockchain systems. Existing solutions, like TEGDetector, address these attacks by analysing how transactions evolve over time using Transaction Evolution Graphs (TEGs) constructed via time slicing, followed by a dynamic graph classifier that captures both spatial structure and temporal evolution with learned time coefficients. However, building and managing these graphs across multiple stages makes the overall approach complex and difficult to implement. In this work, we propose E2E-EmbedDetector, a lightweight end-to-end neural classification model that works directly with raw transaction data. The model learns embedding representations for important entities such as From, To, and ContractAddress, and also used two additional numeric features: transactional value and a derived input length. We train and evaluate the model on a balanced dataset of 50,000 Ethereum transaction using an 80/20 stratified split. The model achieves an accuracy of 95.63%, precision of 0.9265, recall of 0.9912, an F1 score of 0.9578, a ROC-AUC score of 0.9915 and a PR-AUC score of 0.9909. These results show that strong phishing can be achieved using a simpler and more practical tabular approach, without relying on complex temporal graph- based networks.
Leeladhar Chourasiya, Mr. Anand Jawdekar, Mr. Sanjay Patsariya, Ms. Aparajita Biswal · 7 authors
The blistering development of the decentralized technologies is transforming the conceptual and functional limits of the contemporary digital ecosystems. One of such innovations is blockchain, which is being presented as a core infrastructure of facilitating autonomous, trustless, and self-organizing systems, which has also been emphasized in recent academic conversations. The paper will examine how blockchain will be used to lay the foundations of autonomous societies where governance, economic dealings and social interactions will be implemented in the absence of a centralized force. The suggested framework is based on decentralized ledger technology, smart contracts, consensus mechanism, in order to promote transparency, security, and accountability on digital communities. The paper highlights the role of blockchain platforms (especially Ethereum-style architectures) in the development of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that serve as building blocks to bigger social organizations. Identity management, decentralized models of governance, token-based economies, and trustless interactions are some of the critical components that are analyzed. Moreover, the paper also looks at how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and distributed storage systems can be integrated to make autonomous environments more scalable, adaptable, and make decisions. Issues concerning scalability, regulatory limitations, interoperability, and ethical aspects are also presented and possible solutions and future research areas specified. The results indicate that blockchain infrastructure has the capacity to reinvent the social structure and provide decentralized, robust, and participative digital economies. The article is a contribution to the existing literature on next-generation sociotechnical systems and a strategic roadmap of fully autonomous digital societies development.
LokNirikshan: A Blockchain-Inspired Election Transparency and Management System LokNirikshan is a comprehensive, blockchain-inspired digital platform designed to enhance transparency, integrity, and efficiency in modern election systems. Traditional voting mechanisms—both paper-based and electronic—often suffer from limitations such as lack of transparency, centralized control, slow processing, and susceptibility to data manipulation. These challenges reduce public trust in electoral outcomes and highlight the need for more secure and verifiable solutions. This work proposes a hybrid approach that integrates key blockchain principles—such as cryptographic hashing, Merkle tree-based verification, and audit trails—into a practical, scalable, and user-friendly web-based system. Instead of implementing a fully decentralized blockchain, which introduces complexity and performance constraints, LokNirikshan selectively adopts core concepts to achieve transparency and data integrity without compromising usability. The system supports the complete election lifecycle, including voter registration, constituency and booth assignment, political party onboarding, candidate nomination, election configuration, voting, result computation, and post-election verification. It incorporates role-based access control (RBAC) to manage different stakeholders such as voters, party representatives, party heads, and administrators, ensuring secure and structured interactions across the platform. A key innovation of the system lies in its verification layer, which utilizes Merkle trees to ensure data integrity. Election results are converted into cryptographic hashes and organized into a hierarchical structure, generating a root hash that acts as a tamper-evident reference. This allows independent verification of results without requiring access to the complete dataset, thereby promoting trust through transparency. Additionally, an open public verification portal enables users and observers to validate election outcomes in a decentralized manner. The platform is implemented using modern web technologies, with React and Vite for the frontend, Node.js and Express for backend services, and MongoDB for flexible data storage. Authentication and session management are handled using JSON Web Tokens (JWT), ensuring secure access control. The system also includes anomaly detection mechanisms to identify irregularities such as duplicate entries, missing records, and inconsistent data. Experimental evaluation was conducted using a simulated dataset of 500 voters across multiple constituencies. The system demonstrated high functional reliability, successfully executing all stages of the election process. Verification tests using Merkle proofs achieved 100% accuracy for valid records, while anomaly detection reached approximately 98% effectiveness. Performance analysis indicated efficient response times, with most operations completing within milliseconds. Despite its strengths, the system has certain limitations, including scalability constraints for large-scale elections, partial centralization, and basic identity verification mechanisms. Future enhancements may include full blockchain integration (e.g., Ethereum or Hyperledger), advanced cryptographic techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs, improved voter authentication, machine learning-based anomaly detection, and mobile accessibility. In conclusion, LokNirikshan demonstrates that a balanced integration of blockchain-inspired concepts with conventional web technologies can significantly improve the transparency and reliability of election systems. It provides a practical foundation for developing secure, verifiable, and scalable digital governance platforms, contributing to increased public trust in democratic processes.
Abstract This study presents a structured dataset of blockchain-registered artificial intelligence agents under the ERC-8004 standard on Ethereum. The dataset integrates on-chain identity records, minting transactions, transfer events, reputation summaries, and individual feedback records, together with resolved off-chain metadata where available. Data were collected from Ethereum mainnet using Web3 RPC queries and processed into tabular form to enable reproducible analysis. The dataset covers 10,000 agents within a defined block range and includes both event-level records and aggregated summaries. It enables empirical research on agent identity formation, reputation systems, service exposure, and early-stage decentralized AI ecosystems. This resource supports studies in blockchain analytics, decentralized trust infrastructure, and the emerging agentic economy.
Currently blockchain platforms are not capable of managing sufficient transactions per second. And the gas fees? They make most real world scenarios essentially infeasible. We built Ledgerlink Both these bottlenecks can be linked together, using Ethereum. smart contracts with Arbitrum’s Layer-2 rollup mechanism. Hashing coupled with cryptography and consensus engine (supports both). PoW and POS) eliminate changes in the data. L2 part provides throughput of the order of 10x that of mainnet. you, gas prices are less than 90% lower. Tech stack wise – Solidity. TypeScript, Express, and Next.js TypeScript, optimally backend with express, next as a whole. Frontend tailwind. Simulated load tests were carried out. Enterprise-grade volumes, which promote volumes, are. and can be accomplished without the latency and cost nightmares that you will normally. see on Layer-1. In the present paper we are going to walk through our architecture, the decisions that we made on the way (some good, some we’d) re- consider, and the benchmarking deliverables.
A novel blockchain-based smart contract framework is proposed and designed to mitigate financial product fraud by enhancing transparency, auditability, and trust in advisory processes. The framework introduces a unique dual-contract architecture that combines product and authorization smart contracts, along with a challenge-response verification protocol that ensures both product authenticity and advisor legitimacy. The system is implemented and tested on the Ethereum blockchain, demonstrating operational feasibility through real-world transaction simulations and a corresponding gas cost analysis. By leveraging immutability, the framework preserves data integrity, while cryptographic signatures enable privacy protection without exposing sensitive data on-chain. It is designed to support multi-institutional environments, allowing various financial institutions to issue products and authorize advisors under a unified, fraud-resistant platform. Experimental results confirm the system’s effectiveness in preventing common fraud scenarios, while maintaining low transaction costs and high security.
E. Sravanthi, Pabbathi Laxmiprasanna, Mulukutla Jahnavi, Kancharla Kritika Reddy
The increasing reliance on digital systems in law enforcement has emphasized the need for secure, transparent, and reliable mechanisms to manage crime evidence. In existing systems, evidence management is typically handled through centralized databases and manual record-keeping, where crime reports, officer details, and evidentiary materials are stored in a single controlled environment. This approach introduces critical challenges such as data tampering, unauthorized access, loss of sensitive information, and lack of transparency, which can weaken trust and complicate legal proceedings. Furthermore, storing evidence in physical formats or unsecured digital systems makes it difficult to ensure authenticity and maintain a proper Chain of Custody (CoC). These limitations highlight the necessity for a system that ensures data integrity, traceability, and secure verification. To overcome these issues, the proposed framework adopts a decentralized architecture using Blockchain technology and Smart Contracts to provide immutability, transparency, and enhanced security of evidence records. The system leverages Ethereum for decentralized data storage, Web3 for enabling interaction between the application and the blockchain network, and Django as the web framework for managing the user interface, file handling, and administrative functionalities. Authorized officers can securely upload, access, and manage evidence, while administrators can monitor and verify transactions in real time. Each evidence record is assigned a unique identifier and permanently stored on the blockchain, preventing unauthorized modification and ensuring a verifiable audit trail. Although the system does not utilize Machine Learning (ML) or Deep Learning (DL), it effectively employs smart contracts-based automation for secure evidence tracking, thereby improving accountability, legal reliability, and operational efficiency.
Collins Izuchukwu Okafor, Love Allen Chijioke Ahakonye, Dong‐Seong Kim, Jae Min Lee
Vehicular-to-Everything (V2X) communications promise unprecedented safety and efficiency gains but remain vulnerable to confidentiality breaches such as eavesdropping, traffic analysis, and man-in-the-middle attacks. We propose ConfidSPEC-V2X, a focused hybrid framework that integrates continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD), a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL), and an Ethereum-based permissioned blockchainPureChainpublic-key infrastructure (PKI) to deliver information-theoretic secrecy, dynamic traffic obfuscation, and tamper-proof key management. In the quantum module, CV-QKD transceivers embedded in On-Board Units (OBUs) and Roadside Units (RSUs) establish symmetric keys resilient to passive interception and capable of immediate eavesdropping detection. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) module employs multi-agent DRL agents at RSUs to learn optimal dummy-traffic injection policies that obfuscate real V2X message patterns against statistical inference. The blockchain module leverages PureChain smart contracts to register, rotate, and timestamp vehicle public keys, ensuring that any man-in-the-middle attempt to forge or replay keys is invalidated. We implement and evaluate ConfidSPEC-V2X within an OMNeT++/Veins simulation under realistic urban mobility scenarios, measuring the quantum bit error rate, key generation throughput, obfuscation entropy, and key management latency. Results demonstrate that our framework achieves robust confidentiality protection with minimal performance overhead.
This research presents a blockchain-enabled freelancing platform that integrates smart contract-based escrow, decentralized identity, and intelligent freelancer matching to promote trust, transparency, and automation in digital labor markets. The system uses an Ethereum-compatible smart contract called Freelance Escrow, which manages the funding of projects securely, restricts interactions between employers and freelancers to a few specific roles, and automates the release of payments based on the verifiable completion of work. A Python-based blockchain interface developed using Web3.py is used to deploy contracts, sign transactions, and retrieve the current states, while a Streamlit front end provides authentication for user, project, and wallet operations. The platform includes a TF-IDF similarity model that matches freelancers to projects based on relevant skills and semantic similarity, as well as a structured database using SQLite, in which all users, profiles, and project metadata are stored. Comprehensive analysis reveals that the application has strengths in automation, transparency, and enforcement of workflow, while addressing privacy concerns around private key handling, file path inconsistencies, and Web3 library compatibility. The research demonstrates a working end-to-end architecture for decentralized freelance contracting and establishes a foundation for building further secure, scalable, and trust-preserving digital marketplaces.
Shaoyu Li, Chaoyu Zhang, Hexuan Yu, Y. Thomas Hou · 5 authors
Autonomous AI agents live or die by the API tokens they consume: without paid inference capacity they cannot reason, act, or delegate. Compute-token cost has become the binding resource of the emerging agent economy, yet it is non-transferable: it is account-bound, vendor-specific, and absent from on-chain ledgers. Existing payment rails such as x402 move fiat-backed value between agents, but they do not represent the quantity agents actually burn. As a result, agents can transport purchasing power but cannot quote, escrow, or settle workflows in a unit aligned with compute cost. We present ClawCoin, a tokenized, compute-cost-indexed unit of account and settlement asset for decentralized agent economies. ClawCoin combines four layers: a robust basket index over standardized prices; an oracle publishing signed fresh attestations; a NAV-based mint/redeem vault with coverage thresholds and rate limits; and an on-chain settlement layer for multi-hop delegations. We implement a prototype on an Ethereum-compatible L2 and evaluate it using a multi-agent simulator and the OpenClaw testbed. Across single-agent, multi-agent, workflow, and procurement experiments, ClawCoin stabilizes execution capacity under cost shocks, reduces cross-agent quote dispersion, eliminates partial settlements, and sustains cooperative market dynamics that fiat-denominated baselines cannot. These results suggest that compute-indexed units of account can improve decentralized agent coordination.
In this paper, they speak of the evidence protection system (EPS) that is a new approach to problem resolution involving contemporary legal and investigative procedures. The EPS uses the blockchain technology called Ethereum to ensure that under all the stages of the evidences life-cycle they are secured, authentic and comprehensive. Using timestamps, smart contracts, and cryptography sequencing, the system creates an evidence management platform, which is easy to read, decentralized, and cannot be hacked. The EPS stores evidence as a record that is not mutable through the use of distributed ledger technologies and digital timestamps. This is what makes it be safer than the centralized systems. smart contracts even the playing field of security and transparency by providing automation of functions such as chain of custody and access control. The integrity of data can be checked in two ways, encryption, and hashing, and keep the actual data safe. overall: the EPS provides the full solution to the issues of processing the evidence in legal environment of the current times, which is why confidence in the efficiency and credibility of evidence that is stored grows.
Ethereum's EIP-1559 fee mechanism was designed under the assumption of homogeneous, myopic agents responding to a single congestion signal. We examine how this assumption interacts with the heterogeneous demand structure of real-world Ethereum users. Analyzing 62,142 confirmed transactions from seven operational firms across seven industries (January--March 2026), we document significant intraday gas-fee variation: fees peak at hour~12 UTC (7\,AM ET, $\hatβ_{12}=\$0.054$ above the U.S.\ evening baseline, $p<0.001$) and are associated with periods of elevated speculative-arbitrage activity. Operational firms exhibit heterogeneous scheduling responses moderated by transaction deferrability and gas intensity. Residual cost floors, i.e. the gap between observed expenditure and the counterfactual under perfect off-peak scheduling, range from 40.7\% to 92.5\% of actual expenditure, and persist even during the lowest-cost hours ($h\in\{20,21,22,23\}$ UTC, 3--6\,PM ET). We introduce an On-Chain Scheduling Matrix that maps firms to four scheduling regimes as a practical framework for managing gas-fee exposure under the current mechanism.
This study presents a structured dataset of blockchain-registered artificial intelligence agents under the ERC-8004 standard on Ethereum. The dataset integrates on-chain identity records, minting transactions, transfer events, reputation summaries, and individual feedback records, together with resolved off-chain metadata where available. Data were collected from Ethereum mainnet using Web3 RPC queries and processed into tabular form to enable reproducible analysis. The dataset covers 10,000 agents within a defined block range and includes both event-level records and aggregated summaries. It enables empirical research on agent identity formation, reputation systems, service exposure, and early-stage decentralized AI ecosystems. This resource supports studies in blockchain analytics, decentralized trust infrastructure, and the emerging agentic economy.
Introduction The proliferation of dApps is increasing the attack surface for exploitable vulnerabilities in smart contracts, and thus there is a need for verifiable detection methodologies. Methods In this work, we propose a machine learning framework with blockchain integration for explainable and note that “explainable” implies “verifiable” smart contract vulnerability detection. The SmartBugs-curated data was systematically pre-processed with metadata filtering, feature correlation analysis and encoding for model evaluation. Four ensemble learning methods, Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost were tested under identical experimental settings for comparison. Results The Random Forest classifier initially achieved the best balance in terms of stability and performance with an accuracy of 87.67%, successfully detecting important vulnerability classes such as re-entrancy, unchecked low-level calls, etc. To enhance the applicability of our blockchain-based machine learning framework for vulnerable smart contract analysis we extend it from the initial 143-contract dataset SmartBugs-Curated to evaluate it on on large-scale set, namely, SmartBugs-Wild which contains 47,398 real-world Ethereum contracts. Based on 29 static contract-level features, unsupervised clustering (k = 4, silhouette score = 0.3735) identifies discrete structural archetypes present in the dataset. Ensemble classifiers (such as XGBoost, CatBoost, Random Forest and LightGBM) can get excellent discriminative performance on these cluster labels: LightGBM achieves 99% accuracy and 0.98918 macro-F1. Discussion The additional results show that the approach scales, is robust and leads to stable models, even if interpretable. After injecting SHAP-based explainability, the interpretability and predictive power of CatBoost became similar to those of Random Forest. In order to guarantee end-to-end trust and traceability of our optimised classifier, this was linked to a blockchain oracle that independently store the outcomes as well as confidence scores for predictions directly onto an Ethereum-compatible ledger through a Vulnerability Registry smart contract. This integration provides the data is immutable, auditable and transparent in reporting.
This study examines dynamic interdependencies and risk transmission among major cryptocurrencies and traditional financial assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, U.S. equities, and gold, over the period 2017–2024. Particular attention is given to the structural shift associated with the 2024 U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval, which marked a significant milestone in the institutionalization of cryptocurrency markets. Using daily data, the analysis distinguishes volatility-driven co-movement from structural spillover effects across markets. Dependence structures are modeled using tail-sensitive Student-t copulas applied to GARCH-filtered returns to capture nonlinear and extreme co-movements, while a vector autoregressive framework combined with generalized impulse response functions and Diebold–Yilmaz connectedness measures is employed to evaluate order-invariant shock transmission dynamics across pre- and post-ETF regimes. The results reveal three main findings. First, cryptocurrencies display strong internal dependence and short-horizon contagion, with Bitcoin consistently acting as the dominant transmitter of shocks to Ethereum over an approximately three-day transmission window. Second, linkages between cryptocurrencies and equity markets remain moderate and largely regime-dependent rather than indicative of persistent structural spillovers. Third, gold remains weakly connected throughout the sample, maintaining its role as a diversification asset. Portfolio analysis further indicates that including Bitcoin can reduce portfolio variance by 4–7% and Value-at-Risk by up to 5%, although economic gains are sensitive to transaction costs. Overall, the findings suggest that cryptocurrencies function as a partially segmented asset class, offering conditional diversification benefits despite increasing institutional adoption.
Héritier Kayembe Mpiana, Eugene mukendi Mbuyi, Jean Didier Mwambanzambi Batubenga, Pierre Motumbe Kasengedia
This paper proposes the design and evaluation of a secure electronic payment system based on the Ethereum blockchain, applied to the payment of academic fees. The objective is to enhance transparency, security, and automation of financial transactions within higher education institutions. The methodology relies on developing a prototype using smart contracts, tested on Ethereum testnets. Experimental results show that the system reduces processing times and improves transaction traceability [1]. The integration of Layer 2 solutions and stablecoins also helps reduce transaction costs and improve scalability. However, challenges remain, particularly regarding regulation and user accessibility. As a decentralized and programmable platform, Ethereum represents a major innovation capable of transforming traditional payment systems. The emergence of Ethereum-based academic fee payment systems is part of an accelerated digital transformation and the search for alternatives to conventional financial infrastructures. Since the introduction of Bitcoin, the global financial system has undergone a profound shift, marked by the adoption of decentralized technologies [3]. This study required an in-depth technical understanding of the Ethereum blockchain, along with critical, economic, and regulatory analyses [5].
Detecting vulnerabilities in smart contracts is a critical challenge for blockchain security, as flaws such as reentrancy, timestamp dependence, and infinite loops have resulted in severe financial losses in decentralized systems. Accurate and interpretable detection of these vulnerabilities remains challenging due to the complex semantics of smart contract code. In this study, we propose a multimodal hybrid recurrent framework for smart contract vulnerability detection that integrates sequential and structural code representations. The framework introduces a Selective Subpattern Activation (SSA) mechanism, which highlights vulnerability-indicative code subpatterns during the pattern extraction phase and provides interpretable insights into model predictions. Pattern-based features enhanced by SSA are processed using a Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (BiGRU), while structural features derived from control and data flow representations are modeled using a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) network. The proposed approach is evaluated on a publicly available Ethereum smart contract dataset using five independent experimental runs, with results reported as averages. The results show that the framework achieves an accuracy of 92.16% and an F1 score of 88.83% for reentrancy vulnerability detection, achieving higher performance compared to baseline deep learning and graph-based models. Ablation experiments are performed to demonstrate the contribution of the SSA mechanism to both detection performance and interpretability.