In this paper, we first trace the evolution of cryptography from symmetric- and public-key primitives to the emerging paradigm of privacy computing. We systematically examine three pillars, namely, zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, and secure multi-party computation, by highlighting their models, algorithms, and performance frontiers. The second half narrows the lens to recent deployed systems. In particular, we introduce the Plonk zk-SNARK powering Ethereum layer-2 roll-ups, and present a state-of-the-art privacy-preserving Vickrey auction algorithm. These case studies illustrate how privacy-computing techniques are transitioning from theory to production-grade blockchain applications.
Elvira Albert, Samir Genaim, Daniel Kirchner, Enrique Martin-Martin
Abstract The efficiency and the security of smart contracts are their two fundamental properties, but might come at odds: the use of optimizers to enhance efficiency may introduce bugs and compromise security. Our focus is on (Ethereum Virtual Machine) block-optimizations , which enhance the efficiency of jump-free blocks of opcodes by eliminating, reordering and even changing the original opcodes. We reconcile efficiency and security by providing the verification technology to formally prove the correctness of block-optimizations on smart contracts using the Coq proof assistant. This amounts to the challenging problem of proving semantic equivalence of two blocks of instructions, which is realized by means of three novel Coq components: a symbolic execution engine which can execute an block and produce a symbolic state; a number of simplification lemmas which transform a symbolic state into an equivalent one; and a checker of symbolic states to compare the symbolic states produced for the two blocks under comparison. Artifact: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7863483
Karlo Angelo F. Cabugwang, Raphael Christen K. Enriquez, Bienvenido E. Villabroza, Christian Pulmano
There are cases of corruption and fraud within the Philippine government that have gone under the radar, often due to a lack of transparency and verifiability. The objective of this study is to prototype a blockchain network that can run a government process as a decentralized application such that it can enhance transparency and verifiability in the public sector. This can be accomplished by identifying a government process that would be converted into a decentralized application. One of these processes would be converted into a decentralized application. Afterwards, a blockchain framework should be identified — one which can create a public permissioned blockchain network. This framework can be used to design and implement the prototype blockchain network which the decentralized application can run on. The final prototype constitutes of smart contracts deployed on an Ethereum test network with a web frontend to easily interact with it. Mechanisms of the application that are deemed necessary to transparency and verifiability of the system are also identified. Finally, the variable cost of the system and possible limitation is explored in the paper. In this regard, the prototype offers a foundation with which other decentralized applications can follow and build upon. This is to promote transparency and verifiability within and among government processes.
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.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Several unique characteristics of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as distributed deployment and limited storage, make it challenging for standard centralized access control systems to enable access control in today’s large-scale IoT ecosystem. To solve these challenges, this study presents an IoT access control system called Ether-IoT based on the Ethereum Blockchain (BC) infrastructure with Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). Access Contract (AC), Cache Contract (CC), Device Contract (DC), and Policy Contract (PC) are the four central smart contracts (SCs) that are included in the proposed system. CC offers a way to save user characteristics in a local cache system to avoid delays during transactions between BC and IoT devices. AC is the fundamental program users typically need to run to build an access control technique. DC offers a means for storing the resource data created by devices and a method for querying that data. PC offers administrative settings to handle ABAC policies on users’ behalf. Ether-IoT, combined with ABAC and the BC, enables IoT access control management that is decentralized, fine-grained and dynamically scalable. This research gives a real-world case study to illustrate the suggested framework’s implementation. In the end, a simulation experiment is performed to evaluate the system’s performance. To ensure data integrity in dispersed systems, the results show that Ether-IoT can sustain high throughput in contexts with a large number of requests.
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.
Open access
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The paper examines the concept of tokenizing assets on public permissionless blockchains such as Ethereum, Algorand or Avalanche. It starts with an overview of the core principles and components of public blockchains, such as the ownership attribution and efficient transaction processing. The paper argues that tokenization could simplify and streamline back-office operations, enable new interactions between issuers, financial firms and investors, and allow novel service models in digital asset issuance and management. The paper then examines the functions and potential usage of tokens, comparing and contrasting traditional and digital assets. It also discusses the mechanisms for token issuance and potential issues that may arise from tokenizing existing assets. The challenges and advantages of digital assets for implementing traditional asset functions such as dividend payments, shareholder voting, and shareholder communications are also discussed. Finally, the paper covers the usage of tokenized assets and the potential effects of smart contract services on existing financial service providers. The paper suggests several best practices and requirements for token issuance, including a token registry, standards for backed or asset-linked tokens, and a failsafe reconciliation process if the blockchain fails.
Urbanization has led to increasing fish consumption, resulting in high demand for fish and fish products. Challenges in this sector, include fraudulent fish supply, overfishing, unscientific handling, quality concerns, etc. Blockchain-based systems in the seafood sector could provide traceability access to the seafood for the consumers and authorities to know if the seafood consumed/sold is legal, ethical, hygienic, economic, etc. Blockchain platforms like Ethereum promote secure digital collaboration of the actors across the supply chain eliminating the intermediaries. The literature documents a very limited number of blockchains that operate in the fisheries sector. Pacifical Atato is designed to promote and develop yellowfin tuna supply chains of Pacific island nations. Project Provenance Limited seeks to bring an end to the unsustainable fishing practices. Tuna distribution through transparent, novel chains is the goal of TraSeable solutions. Treum explored the investments to develop the supply chains of fisheries in the South Pacific. IBM’s Food Trust traces food supplies, including farmed shrimp from India, and is affiliated with retailers like Walmart, Nestle, etc. OpenSC is a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) project that ensures ethical product sourcing and uses QR (Quick Response) code scanning and RFID (Radio Frequency Technology) to track fish.
As the growing interest of investment on Cryptocurrencies and the huge volatility of their price, a need for scientific model to predict the future price is growing.In this context, the paper uses linear regression and LSTM model to predict the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum.The result shows that the prediction made by Linear Regression shows less errors but greater lag compared with the prediction made by LSTM method.The lag problem is considered to generate from lack of peripheral information other than previous prices.The prediction implies that the prices of Cryptocurrencies are theoretically predictable, and shows a direction of further research, such as the use of mixed-LSTM model.The methods provided in this paper can be used in development of better models and further investments.
With the transition to Industry 4.0 factories have achieved significant gains in production with respect to quality, reliability, flexibility, and utilization of resources.Nonetheless, there are open challenges that shall be addressed when it comes to traceability of defects and automation actions that are interrelated with both optimization and security aspects along the production chain.Current industrial solutions use a centralized client-server architecture; however, if the central authority is undermined, the system can fail.In this regard, one of the most promising technologies is blockchain, as it is a decentralized technology based on a peer-to-peer network instead of a client-server model.In this paper, we propose a blockchain framework based on Ethereum platform, which is applied in three different production lines namely for antenna manufacturing, microelectronics, and elevators.Initially, we have three different private Ethereum networks, for each factory, with the Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism.We have developed smart contracts for defect detection as well as firmware update for production equipment.As shown through experiments, the developed smart contracts have certain advantages compared to existing practises in terms of traceability and cyber-security.Furthermore, we have developed a blockchain API that connects the proposed framework with an industrial middleware platform and the overall OPTIMAI Industry 4.0 ecosystem.Experiments for each production line showcase the potential of our approach and it gains in terms of security, storage, traceability, and transparency.
B. Bhavya Likhitha, Chahat Raj, Mir Salim Ul Islam
Cryptocurrency has emerged as a revolutionary innovation that has been replacing traditional finances and enthralling the worldwide technology landscape. This has gained a lot of popularity worldwide for its potential to enable peer-to-peer transactions and offer opportunities for investment and novelty. Nevertheless, it gives rise to issues concerning regulatory adherence, instability, and security apprehensions, turning them into a topic of continuous evaluation and investigation within the fields of finance and technology. This research paper presents a comprehensive exploration of the historical evolution of “Ethereum” as one of the leading blockchain platforms, with a primary focus on price prediction using a long-short-term memory (LSTM) machine learning model. The study includes various critical aspects of Ethereum, starting from its historical evolution to its potential future scope in scaling solutions and payments, and also covering the insights of Ethereum’s tokenomics, utility, and beyond. In addition, the methodology involves using the LSTM model to analyze data from Ethereum. The accuracy of price predictions is assessed by evaluating error metrics and further improved by visualizing the data through graphs that show indicators. This paper gives an in-depth perspective for anyone who is seeking a holistic understanding of cryptocurrencies, mainly concentrated on Ethereum, and also provides valuable guidance to investors, developers, and enthusiasts, encouraging them to make knowledgeable decisions in the ever-changing blockchain ecosystem.
I Gusti Made Teddy Pradana, Taufik Djatna, Irman Hermadi, Indah Yuliasih
Coffee is a crucial agricultural commodity in developing nations like Indonesia; so it is important to implement a trustworthy traceability system for the product. However, there are no established guidelines for developing a blockchain-based traceability system that the coffee industry can adopt. Therefore, this study aims to present a Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) framework and a blockchain-based traceability system prototype for Indonesian coffee. The study process involved a literature review, field observations, and the creation of the proposed frameworks and prototypes using an integrated rapid prototyping method. The proposed DBE framework has three layers: business, digital, and infrastructure, while the prototype has use case diagrams and a model of functional, technological, and transaction flows. The system was validated through deployment tests such as recording-tracking coffee data using Ethereum smart contracts and interplanetary file system. The interconnectivity was verified through a mobile-based user interface design that includes registration and login pages, a main page, a transaction confirmation page, and a traceability page. It was discovered that the proposed framework and prototype have a high potential for real-world implementation due to their ability to effectively address the challenges and promote a positive business community culture while being supported by the mapped DBE layers. Further study is recommended to test and enhance the proposed framework and prototypes and examine the relationship between system development and technology adoption. Moreover, managerial insights were provided to the coffee business community, policymakers, and developers for the successful development of Indonesian coffee DBE with the blockchain-based traceability system.
Ta-Cheng Chang, Wei-Ying Nie, Hsuan-Ling Chang, Kuang‐Chieh Yen
We examine how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) influences realized variance dependency and tail-risk synchronization across major cryptocurrencies. Using 5-min high-frequency returns to construct realized variance and signed jump variance measures, we document that global and Western EPU (the US, UK, France) significantly strengthen both variance dependency (VD) and signed jump variance dependency (SJVD) among the top 15 cryptocurrencies, whereas Asian EPUs exhibit weaker and less consistent effects. The sensitivity of SJVD is particularly pronounced, reflecting the asymmetric transmission of tail risk during uncertainty shocks. These findings remain robust after controlling for Bitcoin’s realized volatility and hold in post-COVID subsample analysis. Our results suggest that cryptocurrency markets exhibit greater systemic interconnectedness and heightened tail-risk co-movements during periods of elevated policy uncertainty, with important implications for risk management and financial stability monitoring.
To abate global carbon emissions, there has been an unprecedented push for carbon transparency in the manufacturing industry. However, with products becoming increasingly complex, they contain sub-assemblies with components that have sub-components supplied by different manufacturers. This creates a multi-tier supply chain that complicates the propagation of sustainability information necessary to compute the product's carbon emission due to the lack of oversight and potential loss of information from manufacturers in the multi-tier supply chain. Blockchain technology, characterized by its immutability, visibility, and traceability, is a promising medium to propagate sustainability information. Despite the fact that many papers have proposed a system that is viable for products with a multi-tier supply chain in the literature, we have not seen its proof-of-concept yet. This work first proposes a blockchain-enabled system that enables the propagation of environmental sustainability information in a multi-tier supply chain. This paper describes the architecture of the proposed blockchain system and the data structure of each block in the blockchain. Based on the defined architecture, we implemented the proposed blockchain system with Ethereum and tested it using the pseudo-multi-tier supply chain of a torchlight.
Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution to secure and decentralized platforms. However, blockchain technology has high computational requirements, latency, and low throughput, particularly for single or multi-query processing. Lightweight blockchain has emerged as a solution to overcome these problems. It addresses performance and efficiency issues and can provide convenience in the query process. This paper proposed a novel high-performance data structure for multi-query processing based on a lightweight blockchain, namely Multi-State Merkle Patricia Trie (MSMPT). MSMPT combines Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) based indexing and linked-list storage to achieve high performance. MPT has been used on the Ethereum network with a Key-Value database approach. The key field in this proposal is used as crucial user data. The value field is changed to the head of the linked list, and the following data elements will store a summary of the data based on the specified category. In this paper, a blockchain simulator was built to discover the performance of the proposed systems. This simulator will simulate creating blocks in a blockchain network using existing and modified blockchain data structures. The blocks created will be compared using the query process from the conventional and proposed systems. The experimental findings demonstrate that MSMPT outperforms existing blockchain-based data structures by requiring only about one millisecond in query processing performance and less than 500 bytes of additional storage. The MSMPT provides a promising solution for efficient and scalable data management in lightweight blockchain, particularly for multi-query processing.
Scholarship management is a crucial aspect of higher education systems, aimed at supporting deserving students and reducing financial barriers. However, traditional scholarship management processes often suffer from challenges such as a lack of transparency, inefficient communication, and difficulty tracking and verifying scholarship applications. Recently, Blockchain technology has emerged as a potential solution to address these issues, offering a decentralized, transparent, and secure framework for scholarship management. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution to address the challenges faced in scholarship management. However, existing literature lacks comprehensive solutions in critical areas such as scholarship management, storage facilities, payment systems, monitoring and auditing, and experimental validation. This research introduces an innovative smart scholarship management system leveraging Blockchain technology to overcome these limitations. The research presents an Ethereum-based implementation utilizing Solidity for backend smart contracts and ReactJS for the front end. Experimental evaluation validates the transaction execution gas costs and deployment cost.
The emerging combination of Internet of Things (IoT) and aerospace integration aided by satellite and 6G communication techniques has stimulated the Internet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), i.e., Internet of Drones (IoD). To accommodate and share the enormous real-time UAV data, cloud-based IoD is an inevitable choice to lower the heavy burden of mobile UAVs. Nevertheless, how to protect highly sensitive UAV data in such a honest-but-curious, open and distributed environment with resource-limited UAVs is a significant challenge. Although our previous work (PATLDAC) in SPNCE’21 devises a cloud-based UAV data access control scheme with policy privacy protection, limited access time and user traceability, it incurs inflexible and centralized cloud data storage and access as well as untrustworthy metadata in untrusted cloud environment for data access and user tracing. To this end, we further propose a blockchain-based privacy-aware data access control (BPADAC) scheme for distributed and secure UAV data sharing in cloud-based IoD. Based on fine-grained, traceable and privacy-preserving UAV data access characteristic of our previous work, we extend it by leveraging blockchain and Distributed Hash Table (DHT) for distributed and trustful UAV data access and storage, together with reliable and limited access mechanism to guarantee cloud UAV data sharing service provision. We also design public and undeniable user tracing mechanism to prevent user key abuse with traitor denial. Finally, we present formal security analysis and prototype the system leveraging the smart contracts of Ethereum blockchain for performance evaluation to show the feasibility of BPADAC.
Robert Muliawan Jaya, Valentino Dhamma Rakkhitta, Pranata Sembiring, Ivan Sebastian Edbert · 5 authors
Blockchain is a data storage technique in the form of blocks where the hash system and blocks that cannot be manipulated make blockchain suitable for storing important data. One of them is drug data, where currently in drug data, data manipulation often occurs which leads to drug counterfeiting. From previous research, blockchain in the medical world has been applied in storing patient history by utilizing smart contracts. Goals of blockchain application, drug data from manufacturers can be directly viewed and purchased by buyers. The research more towards innovation, blockchain as a database for storing drug data. Ethereum blockchain can be implemented and stored data can be well integrated with Smart Contract. The existence of smart contracts that support and facilitate transactions between producers and buyers. To maintain data security, system will be implementing access permissions in smart contracts to maintain data integrity and security. Eventually maintaining privacy, decentralization, transparency, and authentication in drug data and every drug transaction can be implemented properly.