In recent years, the increasing need for global coordination has attracted interest in the governance of global-scale commons. In the current context, we observe how online applications are ubiquitous, and how emerging technologies enable new capabilities while reshaping sectors. Thus, it is pertinent to ask: could blockchain technologies facilitate the extension and scaling up of cooperative practices and commons management in this global context? In order to address this question, we propose a focus on the most paradigmatic and widely successful examples of global cooperation: global digital commons. Examples of these are the digital resources maintained by large peer production communities, such as free/libre open source software and Wikipedia. Thus, this article identifies and analyzes the potentialities of blockchain to support the sustainability and management of global digital commons. Our approach draws on Elinor Ostrom’s classic principles for commons governance, although revisiting and adapting these to the more challenging scope of global digital commons. Thus, in this work we identify the affordances which blockchain provides (e.g., tokenization, formalization of rules, transparency or codification of trust) to support the effective management of this type of global commons. As part of our analysis, we provide numerous examples of existing blockchain projects using affordances in line with each principle, as well as potential integrations of such affordances in existing practices of peer production communities. Our analysis shows that, when considering the challenges of managing global commons (e.g., heterogeneity or scale), the potential of blockchain is particularly valuable to explore solutions that: distribute power, facilitate coordination, scale up governance, visibilize traditionally invisible work, monitor and track compliance with rules, define collective agreements, and enable cooperation across communities. These affordances and the subsequent analysis contribute to the emergent debate on blockchain-based forms of governance, first by providing analytical categories for further research, but also by providing a guide for experimentation with the development of blockchain tools to facilitate global cooperation.
Blockchain-based technologies are predicted as major disruptors for numerous business applications and processes, which bears huge implications for e-commerce. Given the ability of blockchain and related technologies to create so-called “trustless systems” with idiosyncratic properties, various business models and established processes that have emerged over the years to ensure trust, reliability and enforceability in business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) relations need to be questioned and potentially adjusted. Blockchain has the potential to shake the foundation of e-commerce by enabling exchange relations that are trustless and operate without dedicated intermediaries or even central authorities in the case of permissionless blockchains. Furthermore, the exchange of information and value between companies and consumers might change considerably by enabling unified access to immutable data along the entire supply chain. In this paper, a framework and 19 high-level research questions are developed to inspire researchers to closely investigate the potential impact of blockchain on e-commerce. The main categories include (a) technological, (b) legal and (c) organizational and quality issues as well as (d) consumer issues. This paper illustrates how blockchain potentially impacts different elements of e-commerce in these respective areas.
The blockchain technology is a prominent, reliable and secure technology which is getting into almost every industry. The fundamental essence of blockchain technology offers features like transparency, decentralization, immutability, resilience, disintermediation, collaboration, security and trust. In this paper, we have focused on
how the present banking industry, especially the KYC document verification process, can be impacted after using blockchain to store and track the records. The current day banking KYC processes are highly reliable on paper which is an outworn process. It is utmost essential today to have an upgraded KYC system, embedded with a reliable and trustable technology like blockchain, that could withstand frauds, and resolve the scalability and security issues. In the proposed system, the use of blockchain in KYC process restricts the presence of middlemen. This results in a reduction of fraudulent activities and errors that may occur when there are a lot of manual activities involved. Furthermore, the document verification process is only conducted only one time, no matter what is the number of financial institutions with which the customer is working with. This system provides more efficiency, reduction in costs, enhanced customer rendezvous and end-to-end transparency during the process of integrating the customer documents into the bank database.
Keywords: Blockchain, KYC, Smart Contracts, Decentralization, Security
This paper has four chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction. The second chapter studies the transaction fees in the bitcoin system. The transaction fees and transaction volume in the bitcoin system increase whenever the network is congested and results from a simple VAR show that it is indeed the case. To account for the empirical findings, we build a model where users and miners together determine the transaction fee and transaction volume endogenously. Even though the fluctuating transaction fee mechanism in bitcoin introduces the extra cost of uncertainty to users, a back-of-envelope calculation shows that the cost of using the bitcoin network for transactions is still smaller than the cost of using the current conventional payment system with a fix transaction fee rate. The second chapter studies the time-varying price dispersion among different bitcoin exchanges. We identify the sources of price dispersion using a standard time-varying vector autoregression model with stochastic volatility. The results show that shocks to transaction fees and bitcoin price growth explain on average 20%, and sometimes more than 60%, of the variation of price dispersion. The third chapter studies the relationship between connections and returns in the bitcoin investor network. Using transaction data from the bitcoin blockchain, we reach three conclusions. First, on average, the annualized returns of connected addresses in the network are 20.75% above those of their unconnected peers. Second, returns also differ among those connected addresses. By dividing the connected ad- dresses into ten deciles based on their centrality, we find that addresses in the two most-connected deciles earn higher returns than the other connected addresses. Third, eigenvector centrality is more related than degree centrality to higher returns, implying that quality of connections matters.
Alexandre Siqueira, Arlindo Flavio Da Conceição, Vladimir Rocha
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), a Blockchain-based technology for digital\nidentity management, is a promising concept for handling health data. It could\nrepresent a step forward in empowering users, granting them control over their\ndata. This work conducts a systematic literature review to investigate\nstate-of-the-art measures based on SSI and Blockchain technologies for dealing\nwith electronic health records (EHRs), identifying gaps, and determining the\nkey questions for future research. As a result, this review shows a growing\ninterest in Blockchain methods to handle EHRs, but few works consider using the\nself-sovereign identity approaches. The results obtained in this work also\nsuggest that: Blockchain technologies provide a viable alternative to deliver\nEHR solutions such as patient monitoring, healthcare data trading, and\nprescription control; consolidated Blockchain technologies are the preferred\ncore components of most effective strategies; keeping raw health data off-chain\nhelps to create scalable solutions; health data standards make searching\nmedical records in Blockchain structures feasible; Smart Contracts are\nessential components of Blockchain-based EHR solutions; the concepts of data\nownership and Self-Sovereign Identity have been neither adequately defined nor\nemployed in the health context.\n
Electronic health record (EHR) is patient data that store health information in digital format. Patient-centred data enables an authorized user to access the data at any time, anywhere. E-healthcare provides increasing social benefits, health benefits and reduced medical errors. The most difficult aspect of improving the use of IT frameworks in healthcare is the security issues of the systems that store health information. In the health sector, Blockchain is a revolution that may bring considerable changes in offered health services. It solves the issue of adapting and building a health care system in the healthcare community, pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies. This paper presents a framework for securing healthcare data. Public Ledger, private ledger, smart contracts and context-based access control are the basic principles behind the proposed framework. This proposed model further provides interoperability, secure storage, and reliable access to patient's data.
The pros and cons regarding the use of cryptocurrency in supporting or - in the extreem – replacing conventional currency (fiat) is still going on. More than 2 decades of its born, still there are more government in the cons position than in favor of the use of cryptocurrency. This paper explored the cryptocurrency as to be one of many aspects in deciding whether it would be positioned as an illusion or to be a solution for a nation’s economy. This paper also portrait cryptocurrency from the accounting point of view. As the financial information provider, accounting is important for fundamental decisions in economy because of its nature to be conservative. The ultimate goal is that this could be one of many sources to help Indonesian government in deciding how to best deal with cryptocurrency.
Blockchain bonds are digital securities designed to address inefficiencies in the bond market. With global interest and recognition, digital securities represent a revolutionary phase in entrepreneurial and corporate finance. Blockchain applications in security issuance mark the beginning of a broad shift in public capital markets by significantly increasing efficiency and establishing relationships of trust between issuers and investors. In this paper we document the evolution of blockchain bond applications leading to recent bonds projected to have their full lifecycle on blockchain. We discuss the remaining challenges and risks associated with blockchain technology adoption.
The development of blockchain technology - an open distributed ledger of entries that records transactions in a permanent way without requiring third-party authentication (Marr, 2018) - and the subsequent appearance of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2010 ignited a wave of investor enthusiasm and extraordinary projections for its use and impact, especially in the emerging economies. This article reviews the early expectations for blockchain in emerging economies, examines its progress in the first decade of its use, identifies implementation obstacles unique to emerging economies, and projects its most likely impact in the next decade. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 is likely to affect the expansion of blockchain and cryptocurrencies throughout the world, including emerging economies. Some expect that blockchain will encompass sovereign currencies, with experiments in the future by China and Sweden (Canesin, 2020).
Since 2018, the cryptocurrency trading landscape has evolved from a collection of spot markets (fiat for cryptocurrency) to a hybrid ecosystem featuring complex and popular derivatives products. In this paper we explore this new paradigm through a study of BitMEX, one of the first and most successful derivatives platforms for leveraged cryptocurrency trading. BitMEX trades on average over 3 billion dollars worth of volume per day, and allows users to go long or short Bitcoin with up to 100x leverage. We analyze the evolution of BitMEX products—both settled and perpetual offerings that have become the standard across other cryptocurrency derivatives platforms. We additionally utilize on-chain forensics, public liquidation events, and a site-wide chat room to describe the diverse ensemble of amateur and professional traders that forms this community. These traders range from wealthy agents running automated strategies, to individuals trading small, risky positions and focusing on very short time-frames. Finally, we discuss how derivative trading has impacted cryptocurrency asset prices, notably how it has led to dramatic price movements in the underlying spot markets.
Norbert Bodziony, Paweł Jemioło, Krzysztof Kluza, Marek R. Ogiela
In recent years, blockchains systems have seen massive adoption in retail and enterprise environments. Cryptocurrencies become more widely adopted, and many online businesses have decided to add the most popular ones, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, next to Visa or Mastercard payments. Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain-based systems, there is no possible way to revert confirmed transactions. It may result in losses caused by human error or poor design of the user interface. We created a cryptocurrency wallet with a full on-chain solution for aliasing accounts and tokens to improve user experience and avoid unnecessary errors. The aliasing system consists of a number of smart contracts deployed on top of the blockchain network that give the ability to register aliases to accounts and tokens and use them instead of opaque addresses. Our solution shows how performant modern blockchains are and presents a way of building fully decentralized applications that can compete with centralized ones in terms of performance.
Technological development has affected the global financial industry. The use of digital currency is increasingly gaining a place among the world’s population, so much so that there are 2486 types of digital currency on record. Scholars in Islamic finance as well as Fatwa institutions all over the world have delivered their religious decree concerning the digital currency; hence, most discussions about the use of the decree was only directed at Bitcoin as a medium of payment although some digital currencies have other functions, such as being utility and security tokens. Therefore, the decree concerning other digital currencies cannot apply the decree issued for Bitcoin only because each digital currency has a different conceptual framework. Hence, this study, which applied the qualitative approach and a descriptive research design, intended to analyse the classification of digital currencies according to their function and characteristics. The findings show that digital currency is classified into coins, currency, tokens, payment tokens, utility tokens and security or asset tokens. Coins function as a medium of payment and store of value that was developed using its own blockchain. Currency is a medium of exchange and can be exchanged with any form of money, including the crediting or debiting of an account. Tokens represent services, financial instruments or infrastructure that is developed using the blockchain technology of other digital currencies. Tokens are divided into three types according to their function, namely payment tokens, utility tokens and security or asset tokens. The classification of digital currencies provides a guideline for the public who wish to carry out transactions using digital currencies. It is important to ensure that transactions carried out in accordance with the syarak will help alleviate cases of fraud related to investment and sale of digital currencies.
Dulani Jayasuriya Daluwathumullagamage, Alexandra Sims
Blockchain is one of the primary digital technologies utilised in the finance industry with huge future potential. This study conducts a systematic literature review of a final sample of 407 prior literature from an initial set of 1979 records for the sample period of 2013–2020 with regard to blockchain adoption in banking. This review is further supplemented by a machine learning based textual analysis that identifies key themes, trends, divergences and gaps between academic and practitioner led industry literature. Moreover, the study highlights present, future use cases, adoption barriers and misconceptions of blockchains in banking, especially given COVID-19. Furthermore, this study identifies behavioural, social, economic, regulatory and managerial implications of blockchain based banking. In addition, our study identifies the cross-industry potential of blockchains via banking, thus, linking much disconnected prior literature. Finally, we develop a blockchain adoption framework and an adoption life cycle for banking. This study would be of interest to academics, bankers, regulators, investors, auditors and other stakeholders in financial markets.
In this article, we discuss a data sharing and knowledge integration framework through autonomous agents with blockchain for implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR). This will enable us to augment existing blockchain-based EHR Systems. We discuss how major concerns in the health industry, i.e., trust, security and scalability, can be addressed by transitioning from existing models to convergence of the three technologies – blockchain, agent-based modeling, and knowledge graph in a decentralized ecosystem. Each autonomous agent is responsible for instantiating key processes, such as user authentication and authorization, smart contracts, and knowledge graph generation through data integration among the participating stakeholders in the network. We discuss a layered approach for the design of the proposed system leading to an enhanced, safer clinical decision-making system. This can pave the way toward more informed and engaged patients and citizens by delivering personalized healthcare.
Markets for unique digital property—digital equivalents of rare artworks, collectible trading cards, and other assets that gain value from scarcity—have exploded in the past few years. At root is the next iteration of blockchain technology, unique digital assets called non-fungible tokens. Unlike bitcoin, where one coin is the same as another, NFTs are unique, each with different attributes. An NFT that represented ownership of Boardwalk would be quite different from one that represented Baltic Avenue.\nNFTs have grown from a few early breakout successes to a rapidly developing market for unique digital treasures. The attraction to buyers is that, unlike digital assets like e-books or licensed movies, NFTs can be bought, sold, displayed, gifted, or even destroyed just like personal property. Yet law has not kept pace with demand for unique digital property. In particular, the rules designed for the 2000s internet focused on expanding intellectual property licenses and online contracts to the point that consumers are mere users, not owners, of digital assets. This “end of ownership” legal structure stands in stark contrast to the expectations of those who create, buy, sell, and invest in NFTs.\nThis article proposes a clear path for the evolution of the legal underpinnings of NFTs. It argues that NFTs are personal property, not contracts (despite the “smart contracts” popular nomenclature) or pure intellectual property licenses (despite the currently governing law of digital assets like e-books). Because transactions in NFTs are in the form of a sale, the law of sales of personal property should apply. And finally, the article notes that NFTs will serve as a powerful, grounding example of digital personal property, a legal form of ownership that is both sorely needed and has not yet been clearly established online. That example will ground others, and permit law to again characterize those who buy scarce and valuable digital assets as true owners rather than mere users.
For enthusiasts, distributed ledger technology (DLT) and smart contract technology (SCT) promise a future of frictionless interactions and decentralisation. In practice, however, it is widely acknowledged that this vision faces significant challenges. These include legal challenges, technological challenges, but also implementation challenges. The latter arise because delivering the DLT/SCT vision does not take place in a vacuum, but in a setting populated by existing market actors that operate on the basis of pre-existing technologies and absent an industry-wide layer of standards to support technological change and the vision of frictionless interactions. This article seeks to contribute to the literature interested in implementation challenges. Its aim is two-fold: to examine implementation challenges and to take stock of current market efforts to overcome them. In particular, this article focusses on the efforts of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and its initiatives to ‘standardise to digitise’. It will show that these initiatives can usefully be examined as an attempt to help the industry coordinate on a common foundational standards layer. However, this article also finds that the success of ISDA’s efforts is by no means certain. Nor are its efforts without raising some concerns.
Alex Roehrs, Cristiano André da Costa, Rodrigo da Rosa Righi, André Henrique Mayer · 7 authors
Blockchain technologies have evolved in recent years, as have the use of personal health record (PHR) data. Initially, only the financial domain benefited from Blockchain technologies. Due to efficient distribution format and data integrity security, however, these technologies have demonstrated potential in other areas, such as PHR data in the healthcare domain. Applying Blockchain to PHR data faces different challenges than applying it to financial transactions via crypto-currency. To propose and discuss an architectural model of a Blockchain platform named "OmniPHR Multi-Blockchain" to address key challenges associated with geographical distribution of PHR data. We analyzed the current literature to identify critical barriers faced when applying Blockchain technologies to distribute PHR data. We propose an architecture model and describe a prototype developed to evaluate and address these challenges. The OmniPHR Multi-Blockchain architecture yielded promising results for scenarios involving distributed PHR data. The project demonstrated a viable and beneficial alternative for processing geographically distributed PHR data with performance comparable with conventional methods. Blockchain's implementation tools have evolved, but the domain of healthcare still faces many challenges concerning distribution and interoperability. This study empirically demonstrates an alternative architecture that enables the distributed processing of PHR data via Blockchain technologies.
Nur Firas Nazim, Nabiha Mohd RAZIS, Mohammad Hatta
Blockchain technology has been a buzzword globally especially among financial industrial players. It can be observed that most developed countries had begun to legalise the implementation of blockchain technology including European Union as well as the member states of G20 in order to secure their leading position in supporting the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Be that as it may, scholars admitted that Malaysia had been a bit desolated primarily in terms of its legalisation on the blockchain’s adoption in the country despite various initiatives that had been taken initially. Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the behavioural intention to adopt blockchain technology specifically among bankers in Malaysia Islamic financial system. A combination of theories, mainly the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 1 (UTAUT 1) as well as Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) Framework had been chosen to be used in the study. This research implemented the quantitative method in which more than 200 questionnaires were distributed to 12 domestic banks in Malaysia through both self-administered method and online survey. Multiple regression analysis was applied to further verify the hypothesis made. Based on this study, it had been proven that effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating condition are the only factors that affect the behavioural intention to adopt blockchain technology with effort expectancy being the most significant factor among all. However, the results had also proven that the non-factors of the variables strengthened the fact that Malaysia is still at the primitive stage in respect to blockchain adoption. Thus, it signifies the importance for the industry to begin adopting instead of attempting by considering the best initiatives recommended in accordance to Malaysia’s mould in which the banks could opt to start working on the institution voluntary regulation whereas for the government, perhaps they could commence a consortium which consists of Islamic financial institutions in the country to develop their experience before implementing on their own. It is hopeful that the initiatives could help to secure the position of Malaysia as the world Islamic financial hub in the coming years.
Die Einführung der Blockchain-Technologie hat das Interesse von Akteuren und Wissenschaftlern in der Architektur-, Ingenieur- und Konstruktionsbranche geweckt. Die Herausforderungen, mit denen diese Branche konfrontiert ist, können teilweise durch die Verwendung des unveränderlichen Ledgers der Blockchain bewältigt werden, der ein sehr hohes Maß an Vertrauen in die Daten bietet. Diese Arbeit zielt darauf ab, die Lücke zwischen der theoretischen Forschung und den technischen Implementierungen im Kontext des Facility Managements zu schließen. Das vorgestellte Softwaresystem dient als Proof-of-Concept für die Änderungsverfolgung und -verwaltung im Facility Management, das eine dezentrale Architektur verwendet. Es speichert die bei den Facility-Management-Prozessen anfallenden Daten in einem Peer-to-Peer-Dateisystem und den Herkunftsnachweis der Daten in der Blockchain. Darüber hinaus werden die Daten mit BIM-Elementen verknüpft, die Teil des Gebäudemodells sind. Ein Smart Contract wird verwendet, um die Business-Logik zu kodieren und Prüfungen auf die Gültigkeit der Daten durchzuführen. Das Ledger der Blockchain speichert die historischen Daten dauerhaft und unveränderlich und ermöglicht so die Nachvollziehbarkeit der Daten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen die Vorteile eines solchen Blockchain-basierten Systems, das eine dezentrale Architektur im Rahmen des Facility Managements nutzt.
Felix Fritsch, Jeff Emmett, Emaline Friedman, Rok Kranjc · 7 authors
The re-emergence of commoning over the last decades is not incidental, but rather indicative of a large-scale transition to a more “generative” organization of society that is oriented toward the planet’s global carrying capacity. Digital commons governance frameworks are of particular importance for a new global paradigm of cooperation, one that can scale the organization of communities around common goals and resources to unprecedented levels of size, complexity and granularity. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) such as blockchain have lately given new impetus to the emergence of a new generation of authentic “sharing economy,” protected from capture by thorough distribution of power over infrastructure, that spans not only digital but also physical production of common value. The exploration of the frontiers of DLT-based commoning at the heart of this article considers three exemplary cases for this new generation of commons-oriented community frameworks: the Commons Stack, Holochain and the Commons Engine, and the Economic Space Agency. While these projects differ in their scope as well as in their relation to physical common-pool resources (CPRs), they all share the task of redefining markets so as to be more conducive to the production and sustainment of common value(s). After introducing each of them with regards to their specificities and commonalities, we analyze their capacity to foster commons-oriented economies and “money for the commons” that limit speculation, emphasize use-value over exchange-value, favor equity in human relations, and promote responsibility for the preservation of natural habitats. Our findings highlight the strengths of DLTs for a federated scaling of CPR governance frameworks that accommodates rather than obliterates cultural differences and creates webs of fractal belonging among nested communities.
Objective: creating the corporate governance structure and legal regulation mechanism of blockchain protocols.Methods: dialectical approach to cognition of social phenomena, allowing to analyze them in historical development and functioning in the context of the totality of objective and subjective factors, which predetermined the following research methods: formal-logical, comparative-legal, and sociological.Results: Blockchain technology was born out of a Cypherpunk vision for regulation without sacrificing privacy. This vision feeds a call by some in the blockchain technology ecosystem to view computer code as the only law applicable to blockchain protocols, transactions conducted on the protocols, and DAOs. The code of certain protocols, such as the Bitcoin blockchain and Ethereum, currently embody their Cypherpunk cultural origins, placing a premium on privacy and governance mechanisms that preserve privacy. But that code can change. In fact, laws enacted and enforced by governments may act as the stimuli for such change. Indeed, such stimuli, for better or worse, are already in play, with coders ceasing work for fear of legal repercussions. Adopting a contract-based governance system in which the rules and expectations are clearly defined empowers blockchain protocol communities to preserve as much of their cultures and visions as possible. Adopting these contracts also requires blockchain communities to engage in open, active, and thoughtful conversation about their collective culture and vision. Further, basing blockchain governance structures in contracts that loosely resemble corporate governance structures allows such communities to tap into centuries of scholarship and experimentation in a functionally equivalent governance arena. Scientific novelty: the work proves that the biggest cultural impact of (un)corporate crypto-governance may be on the culture of traditional corporations. Indeed, one significant lesson of a corporate governance model for off-chain governance may be a sharpened recognition that “code as law” is a subsystem of regulatory norms within the greater legal system. Viewed through systems analysis, the result is a two-way recognition of the interconnected roles of code and law in limiting behavior within the blockchain ecosystem. In other words, the code informs the law and its application to a blockchain ecosystem. Meanwhile, law informs behavior and activities undertaken through the code. The result is that the intersection of code and law can impact our understanding of how to apply the law in more traditional scenarios as well.Practical significance: the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in scientific, pedagogical and law enforcement activities when considering issues related to (un)corporate crypto-governance.
Abdulloh Hamid, Anis Fittria, Ubbadul Adzkiya, Santi Andriyani
The emergence of bitcoin as a means of transaction and investment in the virtual world is intriguing to be studied. Many countries in the world have different perspectives upon the law of bitcoin itself. In Indonesia, the regulation on electronic money is in Indonesian Bank Regulation Number 20/6/PBI/2018 and MUI Fatwa Number 116/DSN-MUI/IX/2017. However, both have not specifically regulated bitcoin. As something new, bitcoin is necessary to be studied in the perspective of Islamic law. The research is a literature study utilizing content analysis to approach the data. The findings of the results are that bitcoin as a means of transaction is permissible (mubah) since there is a similar handover (taqabudh)--that there is a bitcoin to handover, there is no gambling (maisir), speculation (gharar), haram, riba, and false, and that the transactions is on a willingness basis (antharodin) of the both parties. Second, bitcoin as a means of transaction is haram if there is an uncertainty which is close to gharah and maisir, bitcoin as an investment tool has more damages than benefits.