Blockchain Papers

Ștefania Loredana Niță, Marius Iulian Mihăilescu

Digital transformation has increased its proportion in the last few years and the Internet-on-Things (IoT) domain is not an exception, with more and more devices or sensors being connected to the Internet and transmitting different types of data. Usually, being part of more complex IT systems, it must be ensured that the IoT devices transmitting the data are authenticated components of the system before sending the data to a storage server. However, usually, IoT devices have limited computing power, therefore all of the work that they are doing should not be too expensive in terms of computations. This is the case for the authentication mechanism, too. Having this context, in this paper, we propose an authentication mechanism for IoT devices based on elliptic curves, which are known as having a low computational cost compared to other techniques used in cryptography that provide the same level of security. The proposed system includes a blockchain network that will verify the identity of the device which tries to connect within the system to send the data to the storage server, a process that will be made together with the storage server. Once the identity is valid, the blockchain records the transaction and the storage server initiates the data transmission process. Besides including a lightweight authentication mechanism, the proposed method has several other important properties due to it using the blockchain network. Compared to the related work that we analyzed, we show that the proposed authentication mechanism is secure against common attacks designed for IoT devices. The performance analysis shows that the authentication query made by the IoT device takes place in less than a second on both a MSP430F1611 microcontroller and a MICAz sensor.

Der‐Chen Huang, Ling-Chun Liu, Yong‐Yuan Deng, Chin‐Ling Chen

In recent years, due to the slowdown of the global economy and the instability of the stock market and real estate market, the art market has gradually become the third-largest investment market after the former two. As more and more funds flow into the art market, the two seemingly unrelated industries, art, and finance have increasingly close cooperation due to the growing prosperity of the art market. As a very important part of the process of art financialization, the development of art banks has also received extensive attention from all walks of life. In addition, blockchain, as a technology to jointly maintain reliable databases through trustlessness and decentralization, has grown rapidly in recent years, and is gradually applied in various fields. The advantages of blockchain technology are decentralization, anonymity, immutability, and traceability of stored information. The proposed scheme applies the characteristics of blockchain technology to Art Bank’s art rental system, and will have the following advantages: the use of Hyperledger technology, various art banks being merged into an alliance, and information among alliance members being shared, which is convenient for tenants to comprehensively query a single item. Using blockchain technology, in an environment where there is no central authority, under the premise of preventing the tampering of artwork-related information, ensures that the detailed information of the artwork is shared. Traditional leasing agreements can be compiled into smart contract leasing contracts to automatically run and manipulate data. The proposed protocol satisfies the following security requirements: identities’ mutual authentication, non-repudiation between every two parties, and other major security requirements based on blockchain. When a dispute arises, our proposed scheme also has an arbitration mechanism to clarify responsibilities.

Vlad Dıaconıța, Anda Belciu, Maria Georgiana Stoica

In this study, we explore the challenges and potential solutions to blockchain-based voting. As a first step, we present a comparison of the relevant platforms for implementing smart contracts in decentralized applications (dApps). We analyze the top platforms, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, their architecture, and which are more reliable for developing smart contracts. The goal is to find a technology that offers various facilities to the developer and multiple functionalities and performance in the development of smart contracts in a field that has seen an incredible pace of innovation. Based on the findings from our research, we propose a framework based on blockchain technology and smart contracts for university-level voting based on blockchains.

Taotao Wang, Zibin Lin, Shengli Zhang, Long Shi · 6 authors

A decentralized identity system that can provide users with self-sovereign digital identities to facilitate complete control over their own data is paramount to Web 3.0. The account system on blockchain is an ideal archetype for realizing Web 3.0 decentralized identity. However, a disadvantage of such completely anonymous identity system is that users can create multiple accounts without authentication to obfuscate their activities on the blockchain. In particular, the current anonymous blockchain account system cannot accurately register the social relationships and interactions between real human users, given the amorphous mappings between users and blockchain identities. This work proposes zkBID, a zero-knowledge blockchain-account-based Web 3.0 decentralized identity scheme, to overcome endemic mistrust in blockchain account systems. zkBID links souls (blockchain accounts) to humans (users' personhood credentials) in a one-to-one manner to truly reflect the social relationships and interactions between humans on the blockchain. zkBID conceals the one-to-one relationships between blockchain accounts and users' personhood credentials for privacy protection using zero-knowledge proofs and linkable ring signatures. Thus, with zkBID, the users' blockchain accounts are credibly anonymous. Importantly, zkBID is fully decentralized: all user-related data are generated by users and verified by smart contracts on the blockchain. We implemented zkBID and built a blockchain test network for evaluation purposes. Our tests demonstrate the effectiveness of zkBID and suggest proper ways to configure zkBID system parameters.

Mohammad Nabiluzzaman Neloy, Md. Abdul Wahab, Sheikh Wasif, Abdulla All Noman · 8 authors

Abstract Traditional voting procedures are non‐remote, time‐consuming, and less secure. While the voter believes their vote was submitted successfully, the authority does not provide evidence that the vote was counted and tallied. In most cases, the anonymity of a voter is also not sure, as the voter's details are included in the ballot papers. Many voters consider this voting system untrustworthy and manipulative, discouraging them from voting, and consequently, an election loses a significant number of participants. Although the inclusion of electronic voting systems (EVS) has increased efficiency; however, it has raised concerns over security, legitimacy, and transparency. To mitigate these problems, blockchain technology has been leveraged and smart contract facilities with a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) to propose a remote voting system that makes the overall voting procedure transparent, semi‐decentralized, and secure. In addition, a system that aids in boosting the number of turnouts in an election through an incentivization policy for the voters have also developed. Through the proposed virtual campaigning feature, the authority can generate a decent amount of revenue, which downsizes the overall cost of an election. To reduce the associated cost of transactions using smart contracts, this system implements a hybrid storage system where only a few cardinal data are stored in the blockchain network.

Rabia Musheer Aziz, Rajul Mahto, Kartik Goel, Aryan Das · 6 authors

Recently, the Ethereum smart contracts have seen a surge in interest from the scientific community and new commercial uses. However, as online trade expands, other fraudulent practices—including phishing, bribery, and money laundering—emerge as significant challenges to trade security. This study is useful for reliably detecting fraudulent transactions; this work developed a deep learning model using a unique metaheuristic optimization strategy. The new optimization method to overcome the challenges, Optimized Genetic Algorithm-Cuckoo Search (GA-CS), is combined with deep learning. In this research, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used in the phase of exploration in the Cuckoo Search (CS) technique to address a deficiency in CS. A comprehensive experiment was conducted to appraise the efficiency and performance of the suggested strategies compared with those of various popular techniques, such as k-nearest neighbors (KNN), logistic regression (LR), multi-layer perceptron (MLP), XGBoost, light gradient boosting machine (LGBM), random forest (RF), and support vector classification (SVC), in terms of restricted features and we compared their performance and efficiency metrics to the suggested approach in detecting fraudulent behavior on Ethereum. The suggested technique and SVC models outperform the rest of the models, with the highest accuracy, while deep learning with the proposed optimization strategy outperforms the RF model, with slightly higher performance of 99.71% versus 98.33%.

Chaoyang Li, Hongxue Shen, Xiayang Shi, Hui Liang

Data security and user privacy are two main security concerns in the cold-chain logistics system (CCLS). Many security issues exist in traditional CCLS, destroying data security and user privacy. The digital signature can provide data verification and identity authentication based on the mathematical difficulty problem for logistics data sharing in CCLS. This paper first established a blockchain-enabled cold-chain logistics system (BCCLS) based on union blockchain technology, which can provide secure data sharing among different logistics nodes and guarantee logistics data security with the untampered blockchain ledger. Meanwhile, a lattice-based undeniable signature scheme is designed to strengthen the security of logistics data and user privacy against quantum attacks. This scheme is based on the lattice assumption, which can provide anti-quantum security for BCCLS in the future quantum computer age. It also establishes the undeniable mechanism that guarantees that the actual signer cannot deny a valid signature. Then, security proof shows that this undeniable signature scheme is correct and safe, and an efficiency comparison shows that it is more efficient than other schemes in similar literature. The performance evaluations of transaction throughput and latency show that the proposed BCCLS is efficient and practical. This work can improve the security and efficiency of logistics data management and promote the reform and development of the logistics industry.

Alaa Abid Muslam Abid Ali, Manar Joundy Hazar, Mohamed Mabrouk, Mounir Zrigui

Blockchain technology provides a novel method for storing information, performing tasks and functions, and establishing trust between participating nodes. Despite the fact that blockchain technology has received significant attention in a variety of application contexts over the last few years, the issue of privacy and security remains the primary focus of blockchain discussions. In Blockchain, the cryptographic hash function is used to secure message blocks and connect blocks in a chain. In summary, each block in the blockchain contains its own block hash as well as a hash of the block before it. This enables them to create a crypto-graphically secure linear chain of blocks. With blockchain technology, there is a new way to store information, carry out tasks and functions, and build trust between the nodes that are taking part. Hash algorithms can be used to make blockchain integration safe, and many of them can solve problems with data integrity and security that arise when using blockchain technology. But they can also have problems with time, lack of resources, and using too much memory. In this study, an algorithm to create a hash based on a chaos key using logistic maps and lightweight cryptography is proposed (hamming bird 2). Hash outputs are tested in terms of time and hardness to guess using cryptanalysis tools. The proposed algorithm has been tested using cryptanalysis site based brute force attacks. The result show that the modified hash cannot identified by site using all cryptanalysis setting that prove the strong of hash generated against attacks.

Sultan Basudan

The essential characteristics of blockchain, such as immutability and auditability, are leading to its increasing incorporation into society. The Internet of Things (IoT) aims to create a decentralized framework for IoT and enhance security. The processing of transactions for different IoT applications poses challenges for the convergence of IoT and blockchain due to varying performance requirements. In addition, it is important to note that the dispersed IoT systems membership may change when an IoT device adds or departs from it. As the system becomes dynamic, it presents new difficulties for managing devices. Accordingly, a dynamic application block generation (DABG) scheme for blockchain-enabled IoT with dynamic device management and conditional traceability is proposed. To begin, it is necessary to construct a framework for an IoT system based on a consortium blockchain. This framework should consist of structures for dynamic application transactions and blocks, as well as a consensus mechanism. Miners are presented in distinct ways to adaptively process urgent and routine application transactions. A protocol based on group signature, known as DABG, is proposed for this framework. It is possible to achieve nonframeability, traceability, and anonymity by the use of the group signature. The suggested method may quickly validate transactions, manage devices in a dynamic manner, enable conditional traceability while maintaining data security, and keep users privacy intact. This is made possible by merging time-bound keys in the group signatures and node in the blockchain. Extensive testing has shown that the strategy in question has the potential to achieve very high levels of effectiveness.

Стукало Богдан

У даній роботі розроблено вебзастосунок на блокчейні Ethereum, який надає можливість користувачам обмінювати криптовалюти, відображає статистику актуальних цін для криптовалюти та має інтеграцію функціоналу відстеження поточного газу в мережі Ethereum для проведення транзакцій. Для досягнення цієї мети були поставлені відповідні завдання, які були успішно виконані. В процесі розробки проведено дослідження наявних систем та технологій, що дозволяють обмінювати криптовалюти, для отримання глибшого розуміння їх принципів та функціоналу. Досліджено та обрано для впровадження алгоритм проведення обміну криптовалют, який забезпечує безпечну передачу активів між користувачами. Також реалізовано використання смарт-контракту, який відповідає алгоритму обміну криптовалют та забезпечує автоматизовану обробку транзакцій. Розроблено інтерфейс вебзастосунку, який дозволяє користувачам обмінювати криптовалюти. Також реалізовані необхідні операції для взаємодії з мережею Ethereum, зокрема для роботи з DEX, забезпечуючи можливість виконання транзакцій, доступ до контрактів та отримання актуальної інформації про токени на блокчейні Ethereum. Ключові слова : криптовалюта, обмін криптовалюти, вебзастосунок, API, ETHEREUM, смарт-контракт, блокчейн.

Jihyeon Oh, Myeonghyun Kim, Yohan Park, Youngho Park

In a rapidly evolving metaverse, where the physical and virtual realms naturally merge, users are actively participating in interactive experiences, content creation, and content trading, transcending spatial and temporal constraints. However, with the spread of the metaverse, security concerns have been raised about privacy and the integrity of digital transactions. Several studies have thus focused on enhancing the security and privacy in metaverse. However, there is still a lack of security research on content trading between metaverse platforms. Therefore, this paper proposes a secure content trading system for cross-platform interactions within the metaverse. Leveraging the blockchain technology, the proposed system delivers an ecosystem that ensures secure content management, data integrity, and verifiable transactions. We use smart contracts that enable reliable and automated purchase methods, empowering users and building their trust. In addition, we incorporate searchable encryption to further enhance the user experience within the metaverse by allowing avatars to seamlessly search for and obtain the desired content across different metaverse platforms. The security of the proposed scheme is comprehensively assessed via vulnerability analyses, including BAN logic and Scyther, to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities in various content trading scenarios. The security and performance of the proposed system are compared with those of the related schemes. Result reveals that the proposed scheme is robust and can be applied to content trading systems in dynamic and ever-expanding metaverse environments.

T. T. Tram Ngo, The Anh Dang, V. Vuong Huynh, Tam Le

Although blockchain is an emerging technology, it has been applied in a lot of domains by leveraging its features. Traditional identity management systems have many issues regarding security and privacy of personal data. Blockchain has the potential to mitigate and avoid such issues by creating trust among the parties involved in the system while reducing reliance on third-party authorities. The first blockchain-based identity management solutions were launched in 2016. Since then, due to high demand, numerous primary and experimental studies and intatives have been carried out to provide solutions to this research topic. Along with that, there are also a lot of secondary studies to overview the current state of research on this topic. However, the number of systematic research articles is still limited and each research has it limitation. Through this study, we provide a novel systematic literature including categorization of studies into predefined categories (domain, research type, place of publication), analysis of publication frequency, co-authorship, number of papers citing each paper of all studied papers. Comparing to other systematic literature mapping studies, our paper provides a more comprehensive view of the studied articles. In particular, we analyze the number of citations, which no study has ever done. In this research, we studied 361 papers published from January 2009 to April 2022 in four big databases (IEEE Explore, ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, Springer Link), the largest number of articles studied compared to previous researches. The obtained results show that most of the articles under validation research type (providing solution and implementing that solution but not in real-world scenarios) propose solutions/systems, models/schemes and architectures to address general problems. We also find that the majority of authors works alone or collaborate in a separate group and co-work in only one paper. This shows that there is no long term collaboration in blockchain-based IdM identity management, and thus subsequent publications presenting real-world blockchain-based identity management products do not exist.

Alexandre Moreaux, Mihai Mitrea

With the current day complexification of image manipulation technologies (ranging from colour editing or aspect ratio modifications to AI generated fake news), myriad of numerical representations can be connected to a same semantic visual content. Thus, ensuring trust and authenticity for tracking near-duplicated visual content (i.e., semantically identical yet digitally different contents) becomes challenging from both methodological and technical points of view. Addressing these challenges requires the synergistic combination of methodological solutions stemming from different research fields, while current solutions are heterogeneous and lack interoperability. In this paper, we bring forth an automatic full lifecycle management workflow for visual content assets represented on blockchains. The workflow is supported by a novel architecture seamlessly integrating near-duplicated content detection, Smart Contract automation, and token brokerage. The architecture leverages a load balancing framework and near-duplicated content detection to grant properties natively featured by blockchains (security, trust, and transparency) to the authentication of assets in environments where the same semantic content has various digital representations. Subsequently minted blockchain assets can then be used contingently with other state-of-the-art tools, ensuring interoperability with blockchain working standards. The effectiveness of this workflow is demonstrated through open-source example implementations for the Ethereum and Tezos frameworks, illustrating the benefits this process brings to automatic asset generation and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) management.

Mayank Raikwar, Shuang Wu, Kristian Gjøsteen

No abstract is available for this record.

Chandran Remya

The Merkle trees are a type of structure that provides for the efficient and secure authentication of vast amounts of data and is a key component of blockchain technology. This is used in distribution systems to ensure that data is authenticated effectively. This technology is used by Ethereum and Bitcoin. It is incredibly efficient because it uses hashes instead than whole files. The Merkle tree is an essential component of blockchain technology. It’s an arithmetic data structure made up of hashes of various data blocks that serves as a summary of all transactions in a block. It also enables well-organized and secure content verification in large amounts of data. It also aids in validating the data’s consistency and content. Merkle Trees are used by Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Lin You, Chunjie Guo, Gengran Hu

No abstract is available for this record.

Pierpaolo Loreti, Lorenzo Bracciale, Emanuele Raso, Giuseppe Bianchi · 6 authors

In the past few years, blockchain technology has emerged in numerous smart grid applications, enabling the construction of systems without the need for a trusted third party. Blockchain offers transparency, traceability, and accountability, which lets various energy management system functionalities be executed through smart contracts, such as monitoring, consumption analysis, and intelligent energy adaptation. Nevertheless, revealing sensitive energy consumption information could render users vulnerable to digital and physical assaults. This paper presents a novel method for achieving a dual balance between privacy and transparency, as well as accountability and verifiability. This equilibrium requires the incorporation of cryptographic tools like Secure Multiparty Computation and Verifiable Secret Sharing within the distributed components of a multi-channel blockchain and its associated smart contracts. We corroborate the suggested architecture throughout the entire process of a Demand Response scenario, from the collection of energy data to the ultimate reward. To address our proposal’s constraints, we present countermeasures against accidental crashes and Byzantine behavior while ensuring that the solution remains appropriate for low-performance IoT devices.

Polepaka Sanjeeva, M. Sai Sathwik, G. Sai Prasad, G. Praneeth Reddy · 6 authors

A decentralized and automated online voting system refers to an electronic voting method that leverages Blockchain technology to guarantee both transparency and security. It removes the need for intermediaries, making it more efficient and cost-effective than traditional voting methods. Aim of the paper is to develop an online voting system using Blockchain technology for secure and transparent voting. The proposed approach involves developing a decentralized voting system using Ethereum Blockchain technology. Smart contracts are used to manage the voting process and ensure its integrity. The datasets used in this paper will consist of mock voting data to simulate a real-world scenario. The results and discussions include an analysis of the system’s performance in terms of security, scalability, and usability. Future enhancements include integrating biometric authentication for enhanced security and accessibility.

Alexandru-Cristian Careja, Nicolae Ţăpuş

In recent years, the development of blockchain technology has brought a wide spectrum of potential application scenarios from finance to healthcare, IoT, management and many more. This is because the blockchain, a distributed digital ledger, acts as an environment of trust and transparency. The subject of digital identity is getting more and more attention as it represents more than just replacing physical documents (e.g. ID cards, driver's license) with digital data. It would enable the digitalization and automation of the process of identification as well as protect people against identity theft and fraud. This paper proposes and implements a model for digital identity that relies on blockchain technology and cryptography to ensure the privacy, validity and integrity of personal user data. These are obtained with the help of cryptographic signatures, which are the digital representation of physical signatures or stamps. A set of trusted authorities are in charge of issuing cryptographic signatures and storing them on the blockchain. Through issued cryptographic signatures, the authorities account for the digital identity of the users, similar to how public institutions issue identity documents for their citizens which prove their identity. Using digital identity in multi-participant decision support systems improves the decision-making process through trust, anonymity and interoperability.

Akash Madhusudan, Mahdi Sedaghat, Samarth Tiwari, Kelong Cong · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Mohammed Mujeer Ulla, Deepak S. Sakkari

Blockchain is a technology that enables decentralized digital currencies like bitcoin, ethereum, and ripple. It is widely used in many areas such as healthcare, defense, and industrial domains like internet of things for tracking sensor data and detecting duplicate sensor data. Bitcoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies due to its market value and use as a medium of exchange. The trustless secure money exchanges have made bitcoins appealing to people. However, the loose possession of bitcoin keys can lead to monetary loss and a decrease in bitcoin users. In this article, we provide an extensive analysis of major privacy and security issues in the Bitcoin blockchain. First, we discuss the security issues in bitcoin, and second, we discuss countermeasures for these bitcoin threats. Third, we provide an added level of security using elliptic curve cryptography on bitcoin multi-signature accounts. Our research helps bitcoin users understand the risks involved in using non-multi-signature accounts compared to multi-signature accounts. The use of elliptic curve cryptography on bitcoin multi-signature accounts also helps to avoid unnecessary expenses such as bitcoin currency rewards to miners.

Thibauld Feneuil, Matthieu Rivain

No abstract is available for this record.

Dalia Elwi, Osama Abu-Elnasr, A. S. Tolba, Samir Elmougy

Blockchain is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that allows users to exchange values directly without a need for trusted third parties. Bitcoin is one of the most popular digital cryptocurrencies that is based on blockchain technology. However, it faces scalability problems including transaction throughput, latency, and starvation. Bitcoin transaction throughput is very low compared to traditional payment methods. Additionally, many Bitcoin transactions suffer from delays and starvation as miners prefer transactions with higher fees. More of the current research focuses on how to enhance Bitcoin scalability by improving the performance of consensus techniques, dividing the network into smaller ones with different parts of the blockchain, or completely changing the blockchain data structure. Unfortunately, engaging in this problem usually affects either decentralization or security; this is called the blockchain trilemma. This paper proposes the Cooperative Mining System (CMS), which depends on enhanced proof of work consensus algorithm. This proposed system increases transaction throughput and eliminates transaction latency and starvation without affecting decentralization and security. In CMS for each epoch, miners cooperated to create one super-block that contains more transactions than the traditional Bitcoin block. Whereas miners create their traditional blocks simultaneously, broadcast them, wait to receive other miners’ blocks, and lastly create a super-block that contains all the transactions of the gathered blocks. The Simulation results of the CMS and Bitcoin system using different case scenarios show a significant improvement in CMS compared to the current Bitcoin system. The CMS greatly increases the transaction throughput and eliminates transaction latency and starvation.

Марчук Олександр

У кваліфікаційній роботі бакалавра було проведено аналіз архітектури криптовалют та особливостей використання цифрового підпису в криптовалютах. Було розглянуто основні принципи криптовалют, зокрема децентралізацію, роль журналу транзакцій та принципи консенсусу, такі як proof of work та proof of stake. Також було досліджено застосування криптографії в криптовалютах, зокрема генерацію приватних та публічних ключів, еліптичну криптографію та хеш-функції. Було проведено аналіз основних алгоритмів цифрового підпису. Були розглянуті алгоритми RSA, DSA, ECDSA та EdDSA. Досліджено структуру та безпеку цих алгоритмів, а також механізми, на яких вони ґрунтуються. Виявлено, що EdDSA є простішим у реалізації та розумінні порівняно з ECDSA, при цьому забезпечуючи подібний рівень безпеки. Було реалізовано програму для використання цифрових підписів з використанням обговорених алгоритмів. Було описано процес реалізації програми, вибір та підключення необхідних бібліотек, а також розроблено інтерфейси та функціонал для роботи з цифровим підписом. Ключові слова : цифрові підписи, еліптичні криві, еліптичні криві Едвардса, криптовалюта, JAVA.