The goal of this paper is to establish the general framework of consensus equilibria for Mining-Pool Games in Blockchain Ecosystems, and with the explanation for the stability of in terms of the existence of consensus equilibria related to mining gap game's behaviors by using one new concept called consensus games in Blockchain Ecosystems, here, the Blockchain ecosystem mainly means the economic activities by taking into the account of three types of different factors which are expenses, reward mechanism and mining power for the work on blockschain by applying the key consensus called Proof of Work due to Nakamoto in 2008. In order to do so, we first give an outline how the general existence of consensus equilibria for Mining Pool Games is formulated, and then used to explain the stable for Gap Games for Bitcoin in the sense by the existence of consensus equilibria under the framework of Blockchain consensus, we then establish a general existence result for consensus equilibria of general mining gap games by using the profit functions for miners as the payoffs in game theory. As applications, the general existence results for consensus equilibria of Gap games are established, which not only help us to claim the existence for the general stability for Gap games under the general framework of Blockchain ecosystems, but also allow us to illustrate a number of different phenomenon on the study of mining-pool games with possible impacts due to miners's gap behaviors with scenarios embedded n Bitcoin economics. Our study on the explanation for the stability of mining gap game for Blockchain ecosystems shows that the concept of consensus equilibria may play a important role for the development of fundamental theory for consensus economics.
Bo Zhao, Yifan Liu, Xiang Li, Jiayue Li · 5 authors
The data layer devices in the Software Defined Network (SDN) play an important role in packet forwarding. However, whether the forwarding task can be efficiently completed by the node has not attracted enough attention. A method called TrustBlock is proposed in this paper, which introduces trust as a security attribute in SDN routing planning. Besides, in order to enhance the integrity and controllability of trust evaluation, the double-layer blockchain architecture is established. In the first layer, the behavior data of the node is recorded, and then the trust calculation is performed in the second layer. In the evaluation model, nodes' trust is calculated from three aspects: direct trust, indirect trust and historical trust. Firstly, from the perspective of security, blockchain is used to achieve identity authentication of nodes, after that, from the perspective of reliability, the forwarding status is used to calculate the trust value. Secondly, consensus algorithm is used to filter malicious recommendation trust value and prevent colluding attacks. Finally, the adaptive historical trust weight is designed to prevent the periodic attack. In this paper, the entropy method is used to determine the weight of each evaluation attribute, which can avoid the problem that the subjective judgment method is not adaptable to the weight setting. Simulation results show that the detection rate of the TrustBlock is up to 98.89%, which means this model can effectively identify the abnormal nodes in SDN. Moreover, it is attractive in terms of integrity and controllability.
Along with the socio-economic sphere, interest in Internet technologies in public-private partnerships, companies and institutions, organizations allows you to integrate blockchains into large infrastructure. This result can be achieved by giving the user access and changing internal database storage algorithms. The main feature of blockchain technology is that it is based on decentralization. In the case of using any means of protection, if it is possible to crack the database located on the server, then such a malfunction is not allowed in the blockchain. The article discusses the concepts of cryptocurrency, blockchain, and bitcoin, as well as the principles of their operation. Prospects for their development and large-scale impact on financial activities carried out via the Internet are presented. It also describes cryptocurrencies and the technologies and algorithms used in them.
Marina Afanasievna Lapina, Ekaterina Alexandrovna Pogrebinskaya, В. Н. Назаров, Petr Katys
The article is devoted to studying the current state of legal regulation of cryptocurrency circulation. Cryptocurrency has appeared relatively recently and immediately gained popularity among a certain part of users of modern financial services, as well as a misunderstanding or even complete rejection by others. In different states, the attitude to cryptocurrency also varies. Some countries, while allowing for the circulation of cryptocurrency, are developing its legal regulation, others have failed to find a better solution than to impose restrictions or even a complete ban.
Open access
Security, Politics, and Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation in Law
Digitalization and Economic Development in Agriculture
Different from the traditional healthcare field, Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MCPS) rely more on wireless wearable devices and medical applications to provide better medical services. The secure storage and sharing of medical data are facing great challenges. Blockchain technology with decentralization, security, credibility and tamper-proof is an effective way to solve this problem. However, capacity limitation is one of the main reasons affecting the improvement of blockchain performance. Certificateless aggregation signature schemes can greatly tackle the difficulty of blockchain expansion. In this paper, we describe a two-layer system model in which medical records are stored off-blockchain and shared on-blockchain. Furthermore, a multi-trapdoor hash function is proposed. Based on the proposed multi-trapdoor hash function, we present a certificateless aggregate signature scheme for blockchain-based MCPS. The purpose is to realize the authentication of related medical staffs, medical equipment, and medical apps, ensure the integrity of medical records, and support the secure storage and sharing of medical information. The proposed scheme is highly computationally efficient because it does not use bilinear maps and exponential operations. Many certificateless aggregate signature schemes without bilinear maps in Internet of things (IoT) have been proposed in recent years, but they are not applied to the medical field, and they do not consider the security requirements of medical data. The proposed scheme in this paper has high computing and storage efficiency, while meeting the security requirements in MCPS.
Traditional contracts are being replaced in an increasing number of instances by smart contracts that is, “decentralized agreements built in computer code and stored on a blockchain”, which are able to automatically execute the terms within the contract and control the relations between parties so that no further “explicit but redundant” negotiations are needed. This paper assesses current and evolving concerns regarding the adoption of blockchain technology in the areas of financial services, and corporate and public governance. The author evaluates the risks and benefits of the utilization of smart contracts and assesses their suitability (in terms of transparency, accountability, responsibility and fairness) for use in the public services’ “space”. It concludes that while the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, great care should be exercised in terms of design and use because this is still a developing area in terms of both the technology itself and the regulatory environment.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is experiencing explosive growth and has gained extensive attention from academia and industry in recent years. However, most of the existing IoT infrastructures are centralized, which may cause the issues of unscalability and single-point-of-failure. Consequently, decentralized IoT has been proposed by taking advantage of the emerging technology called blockchain. Voting systems are widely adopted in IoT, for example a leader election in wireless sensor networks. Self-tallying voting systems are alternatives to unsuitable, traditional centralized voting systems in decentralized IoT. Unfortunately, self-tallying voting systems inherently suffer from fairness issues, such as adaptive and abortive issues caused by malicious voters. To address these issues, in this article, we introduce a framework of the self-tallying voting system in decentralized IoT based on blockchain. We propose a concrete construction and prove that the proposed system satisfies all the security requirements, including fairness, dispute-freeness, and maximal ballot secrecy. We simulate the algorithms on a laptop, an Android phone, and a Raspberry Pi to test the time consumption and evaluate the gas cost of each algorithm in a private blockchain as well. The implementation results demonstrate the practicability of our system.
Christos Karapapas, Iakovos Pittaras, Nikos Fotiou, George C. Polyzos
Decentralized systems, such as distributed ledgers and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), are designed to offer more open and robust services. However, they also create opportunities for illegal activities. We demonstrate how these technologies can be used to launch a ransomware as a service campaign. We show that criminals can transact with affiliates and victims without having to reveal their identity. Furthermore, by exploiting the robustness and resilience to churn of IPFS, as well as the decentralized computing capabilities of Ethereum, criminals can remain offline during most procedures, with many privacy guarantees.
Christian F. Durach, Till Blesik, Maximilian von Düring, Markus Bick
Blockchains, a disruptive technology with potentially many applications in modern‐day supply chain (SC) transactions, have not been adequately reflected by theory. Researchers and business managers must understand where and when blockchains’ application may be expected and investigated. The present study clarifies the discussion about blockchain application areas (BAAs) in SC transactions and their relevance for businesses. This study combines the findings from three methodological approaches: an extant literature review, a Delphi study, and a survey of 151 German machinery and equipment sector business managers. The results further our understanding of blockchains’ business opportunities among SC transactions and verify and extend Iansiti and Lakhani’s ( Harvard Business Review 2017; 95: 118) blockchain adoption framework. Verified customer reviews and product quality certification are identified as the most relevant blockchain usages in SC transactions. Interestingly, we anticipate the least likely adoption of blockchains to occur for document‐signing processes despite arguments within the literature that suggest otherwise. Two newly identified BAAs—logistics and delivery systems—and token‐curated registries rank among the top four most relevant. The present study’s valuation of BAAs advances theory and will likely affect business strategies by indicating where, when, and why businesses should participate in blockchain networks.
Rowan van Pelt, Slinger Jansen, Djuri Baars, Sietse Overbeek
In this article, we introduce a blockchain governance framework that defines the governance of a blockchain as a combination of six dimensions and three layers. An evaluation through eight expert interviews confirms the perceived usefulness and operational feasibility of the presented framework. Furthermore, the framework, is demonstrated by an application in two case studies. The introduced blockchain governance framework establishes a shared understanding and discussion surrounding the topic of blockchain governance.
Jiang Duan, Chen Zhang, Yu Gong, Steve Brown · 5 authors
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one out of 10 people get sick from eating contaminated food. Complex food production process and globalization make food supply chain more delicate. Many technologies have been investigated in recent years to address food insecurity and achieve efficiency in dealing with food recalls. One of the most promising technologies is Blockchain, which has already been used successfully in financial aspects, such as bitcoin, and it is attracting interests from food supply chain organizations. As blockchain has characteristics, such as decentralization, security, immutability, smart contract, it is therefore expected to improve sustainable food supply chain management and food traceability. This paper applies a content-analysis based literature review in blockchain adoption within food supply chain. We propose four benefits. Blockchain can help to improve food traceability, information transparency, and recall efficiency; it can also be combined with Internet of things (IoT) to achieve better efficiency. We also propose five potential challenges, including lack of deeper understanding of blockchain, technology difficulties, raw data manipulation, difficulties of getting all stakeholders on board, and the deficiency of regulations.
Nowadays, unlike depleting fossil fuel resources, the integration of different types of renewable energy, as distributed generation sources, into power systems is accelerated and the technological development in this area is evolving at a frantic pace. Thus, inappropriate use of them will be irrecoverably detrimental. The power industry will reach a turning point in the pervasiveness of these infinite energy sources by three factors. Climate changes due to greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere; increased demand for energy consumption all over the world, especially after the genesis of Bitcoin and base cryptocurrencies; and establishing a comprehensive perspective for the future of renewable energy. The increase in the pervasiveness of renewable energy sources in small-scale brings up new challenges for the power system operators to manage an abundant number of small-scale generation sources, called microsources. The current structure of banking systems is unable to handle such massive and high-frequency transactions. Thus the incorporation of cryptocurrencies is inevitable. In addition, by utilization of IoT-enabled devices, a large body of data will be produced must be securely transferred, stored, processed, and managed in order to boost the observability, controllability, and the level of autonomy of the smart power systems. Then the appropriate controlling measures must be performed through control signals in order to serve the loads in a stable, uninterruptible, reliable, and secure way. The data acquires from IoT devices must be analyzed using artificial intelligence methods such as big data techniques, data mining, machine learning, etc. with a scant delay or almost real-time. These measures are the controversial issues of modern power systems, which are yet a matter of debate. This study delves into the aforementioned challenges and opportunities, and the corresponding solutions for the incorporation of IoT and blockchain in power systems, particularly in the distribution level and residential section, are addressed. In the last section, the role of IoT in smart buildings and smart homes, especially for energy hubs schemes and the management of residential electric vehicle supply equipment is concisely discussed.
Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Benjamin Livshits, Arthur Gervais
Credit allows a lender to loan out surplus capital to a borrower. In the traditional economy, credit bears the risk that the borrower may default on its debt, the lender hence requires upfront collateral from the borrower, plus interest fee payments. Due to the atomicity of blockchain transactions, lenders can offer flash loans, i.e., loans that are only valid within one transaction and must be repaid by the end of that transaction. This concept has lead to a number of interesting attack possibilities, some of which were exploited in February 2020. This paper is the first to explore the implication of transaction atomicity and flash loans for the nascent decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. We show quantitatively how transaction atomicity increases the arbitrage revenue. We moreover analyze two existing attacks with ROIs beyond 500k%. We formulate finding the attack parameters as an optimization problem over the state of the underlying Ethereum blockchain and the state of the DeFi ecosystem. We show how malicious adversaries can efficiently maximize an attack profit and hence damage the DeFi ecosystem further. Specifically, we present how two previously executed attacks can be "boosted" to result in a profit of 829.5k USD and 1.1M USD, respectively, which is a boost of 2.37x and 1.73x, respectively.
Skill verification is a central problem in workforce hiring. Companies and academia often face the difficulty of ascertaining the skills of an applicant since the certifications of the skills claimed by a candidate are generally not immediately verifiable and costly to test. Blockchains have been proposed in the literature for skill verification and tamper-proof information storage in a decentralized manner. However, most of these approaches deal with storing the certificates issued by traditional universities on the blockchain. Among the few techniques that consider the certification procedure itself, questions like (a) scalability with limited staff, (b) uniformity of grades over multiple evaluators, or (c) honest effort extraction from the evaluators are usually not addressed. We propose a blockchain-based platform named SkillCheck, which considers the questions above, and ensure several desirable properties. The platform incentivizes effort in grading via payments with tokens which it generates from the payments of the users of the platform, e.g., the recruiters and test-takers. We provide a detailed description of the design of the platform along with the provable properties of the algorithm.
2008 yılında temelleri atılmış olan Kiripto para kavramı, 2017 yılı Aralık ayı itibari ile 19.060 ABD dolarına ulaşmış ve tanınırlığını arttırmıştır. Bitcoin ve sayıları 2700’ü bulan diğer kripto paralar hızlı kazanç elde etmek isteyen yatırımcıların dikkatini çekmeyi başarmıştır. Bu kapsamda kripto paraların fiyatının nasıl ve ne yönde değişeceği birçok kesim tarafından araştırma konusu olmuştur. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Bitcoin, Ethereum, IOTA ve Ripple gibi farklı altyapısal özellikleri olan kripto paraların gelecek fiyatını geçmişte gerçekleşen fiyatlardan hareketle tahmin etmektir. Çalışmada Deng Ju-Long tarafından 1980’li yıllarda ortaya atılan gri sistem teorisi ile fiyat tahminlemesi yapılmıştır. Çalışmada kullanılan geçmiş fiyatlar 11 günlük süreci kapsamaktadır. Literatüre göre kısa sayılabilecek bu süre modelin diğer modellere görece üstünlüğünü göstermektedir. Elde edilen sonuçlara göre GM(1,1) model ve Rolling-GM(1,1) model sonuçlarının birbirine çok yakın hata oranlarıyla tahmin yaptıkları ve yapılan tahminlere ait hata oranlarının çok düşük olduğu görülmüştür.
The increase of the number of electric vehicles leads to serious valley imbalance in the power grid. In order to achieve peak cutting and valley filling, according to the energy storage characteristics of electric vehicles, this paper proposes an electric vehicle group (EVG) energy trading method based on smart contract and double auction matching mechanism, and constructs the electric energy transaction process of the electric vehicle and electric vehicle in the electric vehicle group under the unbalanced load of the power grid. Through deploying the double auction matching algorithm to the smart contract, the automatic execution of matching transaction and automatic clearing of transaction cost are realized, which saves the economic cost of manual matching mode. In addition, the multi-stage quotation method proposed greatly improves the number of transactions. The simulation experiment based on Monte Carlo simulation shows that the power transaction method can not only effectively alleviate the valley problem of power grid load, achieve the effect of reducing and raising Valley, but also can improve the transaction efficiency.
The author considers fiscal incentives of regional authorities in the system of federal intergovernmental relations. The aim of the study is to determine how the debt burden of Russian regions affects regional fiscal policy in the context of federal co-financing of expenditure obligations. The work employed the methods of grouping, one-dimensional cluster analysis, correlation analysis, and regression by generalized method of moments (system-GMM). The study found that the increase in the regional debt burden relates to a decrease in the level of local fiscal decentralization. Intensive debt financing of regional expenditures in 2013–2015 also reduces the willingness to regionally co-finance federal priorities. The author concludes that high debt burden reduces the fiscal incentives of regional authorities to co-finance federal initiatives and creates the risk of underfunding of national projects.
In this paper, we propose a technique for rebalancing link weights in decentralized credit networks. Credit networks are peer-to-peer trust-based networks that enable fast and inexpensive cross-currency transactions compared to traditional bank wire transfers, which has led to their increasing popularity and use. Although researchers have studied security of transactions and privacy of users of such networks, and have invested significant efforts into designing efficient routing algorithms for credit networks, comparatively little work has been done in the area of {replenishing} credit links of users in the network. Replenishing links at regular intervals in a credit network is important to keep users solvent, the network viable with enough liquidity, and to prevent transaction failures. This is achieved by a process called {rebalancing} that enables a poorly funded user to create incoming as well as outgoing credit links. We propose a system where a user with zero or no link weights can create incoming links with existing, trusted users in the network, in a procedure we call {balance transfer}, followed by creating outgoing links to existing or new users that would like to join the network, a process we call {bailout}. Both these processes together constitute our proposed rebalancing mechanism. Our techniques would also serve to make the network more competitive by offering users lower rates of interest, and enable users to earn routing fees-based revenue by participating in high throughput transaction paths.
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik, insb. im Dienstleistungsbereich, Nürnberg, Germany, Philipp Klinger, Freimut Bodendorf
Cross-organizational business processes involving multiple participants are choreographed, thus rely on mutual trust of collaborators or need to be coordinated by a central instance.Using Smart Contracts, business processes can be executed without a mutually trusted and centralized orchestrating authority.Former Blockchain-based execution framework proposals focus on orchestration diagrams as a basis for execution.Contrary, this work focuses on BPMN process collaboration diagrams as implementation basis and makes additional transformation steps obsolete.With the herein proposed framework for execution of cross-organizational process collaborations, another approach for the implementation and execution of interorganizational processes on a Blockchain is presented, including a voting mechanism for process deployment as well as a subscription service to facilitate process handovers between participants more efficiently.The framework is exemplified and evaluated with a use case from a large German industrial manufacturing company.
Ioana Marcu, George Suciu, Cristina Bălăceanu, Alexandru Vulpe · 5 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has met requirements for security and reliability in domains like automotive industry, food industry, as well as precision agriculture. Furthermore, System of Systems (SoS) expands the use of local clouds for the evolution of integration and communication technologies. SoS devices need to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities including service-oriented management and different QoS characteristics monitoring. Smart applications depend on information quality since they are driven by processes which require communication robustness and enough bandwidth. Interconnectivity and interoperability facilities among different smart devices can be achieved using Arrowhead Framework technology via its core systems and services. Arrowhead Framework is targeting smart IoT devices with wide applicability areas including smart building, smart energy, smart cities, smart agriculture, etc. The advantages of Arrowhead Framework can be underlined by parameters such as transmission speed, latency, security, etc. This paper presents a survey of Arrowhead Framework in IoT/SoS dedicated architectures for smart cities and smart agriculture developed around smart cities, aiming to outline its significant impact on the global performances. The advantages of Arrowhead Framework technology are emphasized by analysis of several smart cities use-cases and a novel architecture for a telemetry system that will enable the use of Arrowhead technology in smart agriculture area is introduced and detailed by authors.
Blockchain and smart contract technologies were recently introduced. Due to their short histories, many issues have emerged but are not solved yet. In this article, we summarize the currently concentrated issues under developing with regards to smart contracts: vulnerability and cost optimization. We introduce other issues never considered but essential for successful commercialization of the smart contract technology. Also, we verify that the optimized code of smart contracts can significantly save transactions costs. Finally, we address that the cost-optimized design is affected by the platform type of blockchain systems. So, the vulnerability and cost analysis of smart contracts must consider the blockchain platform to be deployed.
This thesis investigates blockchain technology and whether its mutually cooperative topology and commons-based peer production practices have implications for society because, instead of the traditional top-down, centralised model of governance, blockchains represent an alternative way of collaborating. Much of the literature anticipates the vast potential of the permanent and publicly auditable nature of the propagated values of blockchains. Indeed, writers have supposed that the smart contract capabilities of the technology may prove revolutionary for areas beyond that of the economic domain targeted by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which is the first successful use-case of a blockchain. However, few advanced use cases beyond that economic realm have materialised; this research demonstrates such usecases. This thesis asks four research questions. The first asks whether blockchains can help reduce energy consumption. The second asks whether blockchains can help digitise the informal sector. The third asks whether blockchains can help counter fake news. The final question asks whether blockchains can help address criticisms of humanitarian aid. Those topics are four amongst many urgent problems currently facing humankind, and therefore, the overarching research question of this thesis becomes whether blockchains can help humanity. This work advances the supposed potential of blockchains proposed by current literature by using design science research to create software artefacts that propose solutions for incentivising energy efficiency, fighting financial fraud, providing digital provenance and adding trust to humanitarian aid reporting. By demonstrating blockchain-based software solutions in those four topic areas, this thesis concludes that blockchains can help humanity. However, if they are to help society address some of its problems, blockchains have significant technological and organisational barriers to overcome. Furthermore, the idea that blockchains can help humanity is a form of techno-determinism and this research concludes that it is impossible to solve every issue by diversifying technical operations; humankind must also change political, economic, and cultural goals, too. Nevertheless, this thesis has implications for regulators, despite the barriers and false solutionism offered by technology because, rather than the trusted lawmakers and experts that nations used to look up to as oracles of truth, now it may be possible to look to blockchains, instead.