Blockchain Papers

Abderahman Rejeb, Karim Rejeb, Steve Simske, Horst Treiblmaier

The emergence of blockchain technology has sparked significant attention from the supply chain management (SCM) and logistics communities. In this paper, we present the results from a thorough bibliometric review that analytically and objectively identifies the intellectual structure of this field, the seminal papers, and the most influential scholars. We employ a knowledge domain visualization technique to generate insights that go beyond other review studies on blockchain research within logistics and SCM. The analysis starts with selecting a total of 628 papers from Scopus and the Web of Science that were published during 2016–2020. The bibliometric analysis output demonstrates that the number of blockchain papers has rapidly increased since 2017. The most productive researchers are from the USA, China, and India. The top academic institutions contributing to the literature are also identified. Based on network analyses, we found that the literature concentrates mainly on the conceptualization of blockchain; its potentials for supply chain sustainability; its adoption triggers and barriers; and its role in supporting supply chain agility, trust, protection of intellectual property, and food/perishable supply chains. Besides systematically mapping the literature, we identify several research gaps and propose numerous actionable research directions for the future. This study enriches the extant blockchain literature, provides a timely snapshot of the current state of research, and examines the knowledge structure of blockchain research in logistics and SCM with the help of evidence-based scientometric methods.

Jinjin Zhang, Xin Li, Yong‐Hong Kuo, Yan Chen

This paper considers an online retailer and his or her manufacturer, both facing financial constraints and wishing to get loans from their e-commerce platform-backed finance company. Based on shared transaction data and monitored sales accounts, a tripartite loan contract is proposed to coordinate three parties’ actions in this supply chain financing problem. We prove that the proposed loan contract aligns the decentralized decision-makings of each party and duplicates the optimal channel performance under a fully integrated decision-making framework. A case study is then conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed loan contract. The result shows that the proposed loan contract outperforms wholesale-price contracts, where coordination does not take place, and buyback contracts, where coordination happens between the retailer and the manufacturer only. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis reveals that profit allocations among the lender, the retailer, and the manufacturer resulted from the proposed loan contract are more balanced when the cost-to-retail ratio or risk premium is high.

Anil Donmez, Alexander Karaivanov

Abstract We study the economic determinants of transaction fees in the Ethereum blockchain. We estimate an empirical model based on queueing theory and analyze the factors determining the “gas price” (transaction cost per unit of service, “gas”). Using block‐ and transaction‐level data from the Ethereum blockchain, we show that changes in service demand significantly affect the gas price—when there is high block utilization, per‐unit fees increase on average, with strong nonlinear effect above 90% utilization. The transaction type is another important factor—larger fraction of regular transactions (direct transfers between users) is associated with higher gas price.

Asif Irshad Khan, Abdullah Alghamdi, Fawaz Alsolami, Yoosef B. Abushark · 9 authors

The blockchain technology plays a significant role in the present era of information technology. In the last few years, this technology has been used effectively in several domains. It has already made significant differences in human life, as well as is intended to have noticeable impact in many other domains in the forthcoming years. The rapid growth in blockchain technology has created numerous new possibilities for use, especially for healthcare applications. The digital healthcare services require highly effective security methodologies that can integrate data security with the available management strategies. To test and understand this goal of security management in Saudi Arabian perspective, the authors performed a numerical analysis and simulation through a multi criteria decision making approach in this study. The authors adopted the fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for evaluating the effectiveness and then applied the fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) technique to simulate the validation of results. For eliciting highly corroborative and conclusive results, the study referred to a real time project of diabetes patients’ management application of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The results discussed in this paper are scientifically proven and validated through various analysis approaches. Hence the present study can be a credible basis for other similar endeavours being undertaken in the domain of blockchain research.

Vikram Bali, Pawan Soni, Tejaswi Khanna, Shivam Gupta · 6 authors

Blockchain technology has garnered attention from stakeholders in many domains, including healthcare, governance and supply chain management. In the context of healthcare, traceability of pharmaceutical drugs in a transparent yet secure manner can be made faster and efficient with blockchain. This paper presents a blockchain based solution for traceability known as PharmaChain. The traceability is achieved with application design and algorithms which are proposed in the work. The proposed application can be developed using hyperledger fabric deployed on dockers. The chain codes are written in javascript. The pharmaceutical blockchain proposed in this work consists of manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and consumer. The right for registering a drug into the blockchain is granted to the manufacturers only and the ownership transfer of the drug is stored. This paper highlights the traceability of ownership transfer of the drug and validates its origin.

C.H. Wu, Yung Po Tsang, C.K.M. Lee, Wai-Ki Ching

Pallet management as a backbone of logistics and supply chain activities is essential to supply chain parties, while a number of regulations, standards and operational constraints are considered in daily operations. In recent years, pallet pooling has been unconventionally advocated to manage pallets in a closed-loop system to enhance the sustainability and operational effectiveness, but pitfalls in terms of service reliability, quality compliance and pallet limitation when using a single service provider may occur. Therefore, this study incorporates a decentralisation mechanism into the pallet management to formulate a technological eco-system for pallet pooling, namely Pallet as a Service (PalletaaS), raised by the foundation of consortium blockchain and Internet of things (IoT). Consortium blockchain is regarded as the blockchain 3.0 to facilitate more industrial applications, except cryptocurrency, and the synergy of integrating a consortium blockchain and IoT is thus investigated. The corresponding layered architecture is proposed to structure the system deployment in the industry, in which the location-inventory-routing problem for pallet pooling is formulated. To demonstrate the values of this study, a case analysis to illustrate the human-computer interaction and pallet pooling operations is conducted. Overall, this study standardises the decentralised pallet management in the closed-loop mechanism, resulting in a constructive impact to sustainable development in the logistics industry.

Nikola Kostić, Tomaz Sedej

SYNOPSIS Blockchain technology is increasingly emerging as an important organizational phenomenon, especially for collaboration across firm boundaries. Over the past three decades, accounting scholars have shown significant interest in management accounting and control mechanisms that are used by actors to sustain inter-organizational relationships. We outline fundamental technical features and limitations of permissioned blockchain technology and analytically propose blockchain as an empirical concept with implications for management accounting practices that underpin inter-organizational collaboration, trust, control, and information exchange. Particular focus of the analysis is on the interplay between the technical capabilities of blockchain technology and inter-organizational management control procedures. Based on this analysis, we develop a series of propositions that theorize how these procedures affect the way in which blockchain is enacted in IORs, and how they are affected by blockchain in turn. The paper concludes with a research agenda for accounting scholars and offers directions for further research.

Sumit Kumar Rana, Hee‐Cheol Kim, Subhendu Kumar Pani, Sanjeev Rana · 7 authors

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, all aspects of the industrial domain are being affected by emerging technologies. Digitalization of every process is taking place or under process. One of the most important components common to every domain is the supply chain process. Organizations employ a digital supply chain to track the delivery of their products or materials. The digital supply chain is still suffering from a few issues such as no provenance, less transparency, and a trust issue. Blockchain technology, one of the emerging technologies, can be integrated with the supply chain to deal with the existing issues and to improve its performance. In this paper, a model is proposed to integrate blockchain technology with the supply chain to improve performance. The proposed model uses the combination of the Ethereum blockchain and the interplanetary file system to maintain the traceability, transparency, and trustworthiness of the supply chain.

Xiongfei Zhao, Yain‐Whar Si

As the core technology behind Bitcoin, Blockchain’s decentralize, tamper-proof, and traceable features make it the preferred platform for organizational innovation. In current Bit-coin, block reward is halved every four years, and transaction fees are expected to become the majority of miner revenues around 2140. When transaction fee dominates mining rewards, strategic deviations such as Selfish Mining, Undercutting, and Mining Gap could threaten the integrity and security of the Blockchain. In this paper, we propose a set of Dynamic Transaction Storage (DTS) strategies for maintaining a sustainable Blockchain under transaction-fee regime. Through the systematic simulation, we demonstrate that block incentive volatility can be reduced by applying DTS strategies, and thus avoid strategic deviations. With DTS, public Blockchains such as Bitcoin become sustainable when the mining reward is solely based on transaction fee.

Yang Lu, Jun Zhang, Xiutian Shi

No abstract is available for this record.

Ciwei Dong, Chenyi Chen, Xiutian Shi, C.T. Ng

No abstract is available for this record.

Oliver Bischoff, Stefan Seuring

Purpose Blockchain technology is provoking significant disruptions, thereby affecting supply chain management. This study endeavoured to advance research regarding blockchain-based supply chain traceability by identifying the opportunities and limitations that accompany the adoption of public blockchains. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to contribute to contemporary supply chain research by an assessment of blockchain technology and its linkages to traceability. Design/methodology/approach This paper is conceptual. The authors summarised the relevant literature on the concepts of supply chain traceability, conceptualised key elements exclusive to the public blockchain and highlighted opportunities and limitations in implementing traceability using blockchains. Findings Incompatibilities were identified between general traceability and the public blockchain. However, when embracing the blockchain's privacy model, the blockchains can support information exchange in supply chains where vulnerability towards third parties, the confidentiality of information, or the privacy of participants are concerns. Furthermore, the public blockchain can support areas of supply chains where institutional interest is lacking. Originality/value This is one of the first papers in an international supply chain management journal to critically analyse the intersection of specific blockchain characteristics and supply chain traceability requirements. The authors thereby add to the discussion of designs for a disintermediated, peer-to-peer models and guide researchers and practitioners alike in exploring the application of disruptive change from blockchain technologies. By setting focus on the privacy model, the paper identifies the potential application and future research approaches to exploit the elementary strength of the blockchain.

Urshila Ravindran, Pragya Bhardwaj, P. Raghu Vamsi

Blockchain is a trusted distributed ledger shared across the business processes. Blockchain technology focuses on automating tasks in a distributed environment. Proving as one of the effective platforms, it helps in mapping the physical commodities to the digital ledger. A digital ledger is like an electronic register for storing the transactions that are taking place among various commodities. The physical commodities include suppliers, manufacturers, exporters, consumers and distributors wherein the distributor plays a major role in determining the product standards. To this end, this paper presents a Blockchain design for securing Supply Chain Management (SCM) in Coffee Retailer Network (CRN). The proposed design made with the view that it further be implemented with smart contracts to establish a private or consortium Blockchain application for the asset tracking processes in the coffee retailer network. The proposed model can bring transparency, sustainability and efficiency in asset tracking.

Nir Kshetri

Shirking, cheating, and other misbehaviors are pervasive in many developing countries, increasing the costs of economic exchanges. Blockchain-based solutions may address these problems and help developing world-based economic actors to engage in exchange relationships.

Simon Wong, John-Kun-Woon Yeung, Yui‐yip Lau, Joseph C. H. So

Knowing the challenges of keeping and manipulating more and more immutable transaction records in a blockchain network of various supply chain parties and the opportunities of leveraging sophisticated analyses on the big data generated from these records, design of a robust blockchain architecture based on a cloud infrastructure is proposed. This paper presents this technical design with consideration of the technical sustainability in terms of scalability and big data processing and analytics. A case study was used to illustrate how the technical sustainability is achieved by applying the proposed technical design to the real-time detection of the maritime risk management. This case also illustrates how machine learning mechanism helps to reduce maritime risk by guiding a cargo ship to adjust to the planned or safe route from a detour to a danger zone. This paper also discusses the implications for further research direction.

Beatriz Abdul‐Jalbar, Roberto Dorta‐Guerra, José M. Gutiérrez, Joaquı́n Sicilia

Trade credit is a crucial source of capital particularly for small businesses with limited financing opportunities. Inventory models considering trade credit financing have been widely studied. However, while there is extensive research on the single-vendor single-buyer inventory model allowing delays in payments, the systems where the vendor supplies to more than one buyer have received less attention. In this paper, we analyze a two-echelon inventory system where a single vendor supplies an item to two buyers who face a constant deterministic demand. The vendor produces the items at a finite rate and offers the buyers a delay payment period. That is, the buyers can delay the payment for the purchased items until the end of the credit period. Therefore, during such a period, the buyers sell the items and use the sales revenue to earn interest. At the end of the credit period, the buyers should pay the purchasing cost to the vendor for which external funding may be necessary. It is widely accepted that, in general, centralized policies reduce the total cost of the supply chain. Therefore, we first deal with an integrated model assuming that the vendor and the buyers make decisions jointly. However, in some cases, the buyers are not willing to collaborate, and the management of the supply chain has to be carried out in a decentralized manner. Hence, we also address the problem under a non-cooperative setting. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate both models. Additionally, we perform a computational experiment to compare both strategies, and a sensitivity analysis of the parameters is also carried out. From the results, we derived that, in general, it was more profitable to follow the integrated policy excepting when the replenishment costs for the buyers were high. Finally, in order to validate the computational results, a statistical analysis is performed.

Matheus V. X. Ferreira, S. Matthew Weinberg

Proof-of-Stake blockchains based on a longest-chain consensus protocol are an attractive energy-friendly alternative to the Proof-of-Work paradigm. However, formal barriers to "getting the incentives right" were recently discovered, driven by the desire to use the blockchain itself as a source of pseudorandomness \cite{brown2019formal}. We consider instead a longest-chain Proof-of-Stake protocol with perfect, trusted, external randomness (e.g. a randomness beacon). We produce two main results. First, we show that a strategic miner can strictly outperform an honest miner with just $32.5\%$ of the total stake. Note that a miner of this size {\em cannot} outperform an honest miner in the Proof-of-Work model. This establishes that even with access to a perfect randomness beacon, incentives in Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake longest-chain protocols are fundamentally different. Second, we prove that a strategic miner cannot outperform an honest miner with $30.8\%$ of the total stake. This means that, while not quite as secure as the Proof-of-Work regime, desirable incentive properties of Proof-of-Work longest-chain protocols can be approximately recovered via Proof-of-Stake with a perfect randomness beacon. The space of possible strategies in a Proof-of-Stake mining game is {\em significantly} richer than in a Proof-of-Work game. Our main technical contribution is a characterization of potentially optimal strategies for a strategic miner, and in particular, a proof that the corresponding infinite-state MDP admits an optimal strategy that is positive recurrent.

Nick Große, Tan Guerpinar, Michael Henke

Globalization, digitalization and disruptions recently driven by the Covid19 pandemic are affecting today's supply chains and thus are challenging companies in maintaining their businesses. Resulting uncertainties lead to potential over- and undercapacities and therefore to economic inefficiencies in companies. Engaging in intercompany networks can be a way to circumvent inefficiencies by sharing resources via electronic markets. Here, negotiation mechanisms can be used to allocate the exchanged goods tailored to the needs and payment conditions of the network participants. Ensuring trust and enabling cooperation between the participants in such a virtual ecosystem is a major challenge and essential for raising its potentials. Lacks of trust within the single transaction phases impede the negotiation process and in worst case the maintaining of the network. For this reason, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and their inherent consensus-building functionalities as well as abilities to utilize smart contracts deserve closer investigation. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature review of DLT functionalities coping with behavioral uncertainties, with a closer view on the context of supply chain. The paper examines, to what extend the integration of DLT provides a beneficial contribution to solving trust problems occurring in intercompany negotiations.

Omar Boutkhoum, Mohamed Hanine, Mohamed Nabil, Fatima El Barakaz · 7 authors

Blockchain technology has received wide attention during recent years, and has huge potential to transform and improve supply chain management. However, its implementation in the SSCM (Sustainable Supply Chain Management) strategy is sophisticated, and the challenges are not explored very well, especially in the Moroccan context. To this end, the chief objective of the current endeavor is to investigate the barriers that hinder the adoption of blockchain technology in SSCM from the Moroccan industry and service sectors’ perspective. Based on a comprehensive literature search and the use of experts’ viewpoints, the barriers affecting the successful implementation of blockchain are classified into three categories called TEO: technological and system, environmental, and intra-organizational dimensions. In this context, a fuzzy group decision-making framework is organized by combining DEMATEL (Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) and IFAHP (Intuitionistic Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process). The IFAHP technique helps to determine the importance/priorities of barriers affecting blockchain adoption, while the DEMATEL technique forms the cause–effect interconnections between these barriers and classifies them concerning the degree of importance and relationships. The results reveal that ‘government policy and support’ and ‘challenges in integrating sustainable practices and blockchain technology through SCM’ are significant adoption barriers of blockchain in Moroccan SSCM. The proposed solution can support industrial decision makers to form flexible short- and long-term decision-making strategies to efficiently manage a sustainable supply chain.

Honglu Wang, Min Zhang, Hao Ying, Xiande Zhao

Blockchain is a ground-breaking technology that is transforming supply chain management. This study aims to empirically investigate the impacts of blockchain technology on consumer behavior. We conduct this research in collaboration with a Chinese e-commerce company that has introduced a blockchain platform for tracing. We use a multimethod design by combining natural experiment- and case study methods. First, we collected data from four industries (i.e. milk powder, seafood, alcohol and nutrition) to conduct the experiment, and the findings reveal that the firms that adopted the blockchain tracing system have an increase in product sales and a decrease in product returns compared to those that did not. Second, we conducted a multiple case study with four cases from the four industries. The findings reveal that the adoption of a blockchain tracing system improves supply chain transparency and process management, which then enhances consumer service and trust. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence that adopting blockchain technology can improve firms’ marketing performance. The findings also reveal how the adoption of blockchain technology affects consumer behavior.

Sachin Kamble, Angappa Gunasekaran, Nachiappan Subramanian, Abhijeet Ghadge · 6 authors

Abstract The study investigates the relationship between the information and communication-enabled supply chain integration (SCI) and sustainable supply chain performance (SSCP). Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical evidence on the impact of blockchain technologies (BT) on the SSCP. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to assess the relationship between BT and SSCP. More specifically, the study was conducted to examine the direct influence of BT on SCI and SSCP and the interactive effect of BT and SCI on SSCP. Based on the dynamic capability theoretical lens, the present study conceptualizes the use of BT as a specific IT resource to collaborate and reconfigure the ties with the upstream and downstream supply chain members to achieve SSCP. The results of the study support the hypothesis stating that BT positively influences the SSCP. The results recognize the role of SCI as a significant mediating variable between the BT and SSCP. The result indicates the strong influence of SCI with full mediation effect on the relationship between the BT and SSCP.

Moritz Berneis, Devis Bartsch, Herwig Winkler

The most successful applications of Blockchain Technology are still in the area of crypto-currencies, although both scientists and practitioners have discovered the potential of Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management. There is a significant theoretical literature on Blockchain Technology, but there exists a lack of published case studies and concrete examples. This paper discusses whether this shortcoming is due to insufficient added value of the technology and identifies other possible reasons. Furthermore, this paper introduces Blockchain Technology, describes the origins of Bitcoin, the structure and core properties of the Blockchain, and examines smart contracts. A comprehensive and structured literature analysis identifies concepts for the use of Blockchain Technology in logistics in terms of economic benefits. Additionally, a cluster analysis regarding the topics of the relevant literature was conducted. One finding of the study is that Blockchain Technology is particularly worthwhile for goods with a high value. Moreover, if the trade volume of the respective goods is low, the advantages of BCT are maximized. At the same time, the demand for transparency and immutability of data must be more important than the protection of sensitive data. In addition to concrete use cases of Blockchains, an exemplary logistics process will be presented within the Luxury Supply Chain, showing the advantages of Blockchain Technology for each individual process step.

Serkan Alacam, Asli Sencer

In the global trucking industry, vertical collaboration between shippers and carriers is attained by intermediaries, called brokers. Brokers organize carriers for a shipper in accordance with its quality and price requirements, and support carriers to collaborate horizontally by sharing a large distribution order from a shipper. Brokers also act as trustees, preventing the passing of private information of any party to the others. Despite these benefits, intermediaries in the trucking industry are involved in several sustainability problems, including high costs, high levels of carbon emissions, high percentages of empty miles, low-capacity utilizations, and driver shortages. Several studies have acknowledged the importance of improving collaboration to address these problems. Obviously, the major concern of brokers is not collaboration, but rather to optimize their own gains. This paper investigates the potential of blockchain technology to improve collaboration in the trucking industry, by eliminating brokers while preserving their responsibilities as organizers and trustees. This paper extends the transportation control tower concept from the logistics literature, and presents a system architecture for its implementation through smart contracts on a blockchain network. In the proposed system, the scalability and privacy of trucking operations are ensured through integration with privacy-preserving off-chain computation and storage solutions (running outside of the blockchain). The potential of this design artifact for fostering collaboration in the trucking industry was evaluated by both blockchain technology experts and trucking industry professionals.

Manuel M. T. Chakravarty, Nikos Karayannidis, Aggelos Kiayias, Michael Peyton Jones · 5 authors

Custom currencies (ERC-20) on Ethereum are wildly popular, but they are second class to the primary currency Ether. Custom currencies are more complex and more expensive to handle than the primary currency as their accounting is not natively performed by the underlying ledger, but instead in user-defined contract code. Furthermore, and quite importantly, transaction fees can only be paid in Ether. In this paper, we focus on being able to pay transaction fees in custom currencies. We achieve this by way of a mechanism permitting short term liabilities to pay transaction fees in conjunction with offers of custom currencies to compensate for those liabilities. This enables block producers to accept custom currencies in exchange for settling liabilities of transactions that they process. We present formal ledger rules to handle liabilities together with the concept of babel fees to pay transaction fees in custom currencies. We also discuss how clients can determine what fees they have to pay, and we present a solution to the knapsack problem variant that block producers have to solve in the presence of babel fees to optimise their profits.