Abstract There has been burgeoning interest among legal scholars in recent years regarding the implications of blockchain technology for the law. Two thoughtful monographs that go beyond the hyped claims of enthusiasts and cynics are Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright’s Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code and Kevin Werbach’s Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. While the two books have different focal points, both contain a common Laurence-Lessig-inspired theme of ‘code as law’ in which decentralised blockchain networks are viewed as a regulatory ‘modality’ or ‘architecture’ with its own system of rules. However, as this article argues, blockchain is not outside the law or the existing legal system. Code necessarily interacts with other modes of regulation, namely the market, social norms and law, in constraining the operation of blockchain applications such as smart contracts. This argument also situates smart contracts in a relational analysis of real-world contracting practices.
Permission delegation in access control provides the subject with a second method to obtain object permissions in addition to permission granting. It is especially applicable when the owner and manager of the object are inconsistent. With the development of the Internet of Things, there are more and more scenes where object owners and managers are inconsistent, but the research on permission delegation in access control based on blockchain is not perfect. Therefore, once implemented in these blockchain-based access control algorithms, the permission delegation tends to have an unauthorized access. Based on the analysis of the causes for the unauthorized access vulnerability, this paper proposes a token-constrained permission delegation algorithm (TCPDA), which converts the access control policy corresponding to permissions into constraints for permission use, embeds the constraints in the permission token, and forms constraints on the transfer of tokens. Only subjects that meet the constraint conditions can receive tokens, thereby solving unauthorized access vulnerability caused by permission delegation. Since not all access control models can transform strategies into constraints and integrate them into blockchain tokens, this paper also proposes a permission delegation algorithm for decision-making entities to make desirable decisions. Finally, the security analysis shows that the two proposed schemes can overcome the unauthorized access vulnerability caused by permission delegation, and the algorithm performance is analyzed through experiments.
As a technology that can be traced back to the late 1990s in its structural fundamentals, ‘blockchain’ came into mainstream public discourse as of 2017. Previously discussed in the fringes of the technology-savvy circles, blockchain has now become a global phenomenon and indeed an industry that is rapidly growing and capturing a notable share of the public imagination along with academic discourse. Blockchain’s emergence in the realm of technology is essentially thanks to the invention of bitcoin as both a speculative asset and as a digital store of value. Many governments around the world have made public claims regarding their enthusiasm for adopting ‘blockchain’ in various ways; varying from Russia, Estonia, and Ukraine in Europe all the way to Venezuela in Latin America and even the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. This paper puts out the objective of achieving self-sovereign identities on the blockchain is a promise that has not yet manifested on the ground, albeit it disproportionately captures a significant share of the contemporary discourse on the three larger concepts of self-sovereignty, digital identity, and the blockchain. A key reason for the lack of manifestation of this promise is that there is little agreement as to what is actually meant by ‘self-sovereign identities’ —in stark comparison to the major consensus over the concepts of ‘blockchain’ or ‘cryptocurrencies’. In order to explore the genealogy of the core concept of ‘identity’, the theoretical genesis of ‘biopolitics’ is consulted, demonstrating that our contemporary technological epoch is best defined as an era of the emergence of ‘bio digital’ power. The paper ultimately argues that the reason for this disproportional share of discourse is created by certain actors to utilize the growing rhetoric on ‘blockchain’ and the libertarian notion of ‘self-sovereignty’ as façades to potentially pursue capitalist objectives. Keywords: blockchain, self-sovereignty, bitcoin, capitalism, digital identity, privacy, data, cryptocurrencies.
Open access
Bioeconomy and Sustainability Development
Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations
Flying Ad Hoc networks, (FANETs) in recent years, have actively been used in monitoring landscape, military and mapping terrains. However, with the advent of the emerging concept of smart cities and new business applications, these flying devices and drones have found a new use case in the medical and governance sector. But these networks suffer from the major problem of centralization. Although centralization does provide reliability and efficiency but also poses the threat of a single point of failure. Meanwhile, blockchain widely known for its decentralization is heavily researched and can be utilized in this case to offer a solution to the problem of centralization of FANETs. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a decentralized architecture of flying ad hoc nodes based on blockchain and using Practical byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) for consensus among nodes. By employing PBFT, the architecture is not only computationally efficient and fast. In addition, we have used a gossip protocol for passing messages among nodes. Lastly, we have simulated the working of our model and the experimental results show that the proposed method works with nearly constant throughput and latency while increasing the network size and approximately constant message overhead with increase transaction for given network size.
For the automotive industry, promoting more value-adding services in usage stage is a long-standing challenge for global manufacturers. As many cars have an unknown history, it is proven difficult, if not impossible, to prevent scams and frauds when offering car services. As an emerging technology, blockchain is characterized by high immutability, transparency, security, and traceability. Such characteristics make blockchain a highly promising empowering technology to maintain mutual trust among stakeholders in vehicle product-service system (PSS). This paper presents a blockchain-based PSS framework, which is intended to address the trust issue vehicle PSS.
Lawrence Henesey, Y. Lizneva, Robert Philipp, Christopher Meyer · 5 authors
Ports are vital to the global economy, as up to 90% of goods are transferred through seaports. With increasing vessel sizes, cargo volumes and higher demand for supply-chain optimization, seaports are required to be more efficient and competitive. In the present study, a proposed solution incorporating IoT and Blockchain is considered into automating many of the activities in the load planning process, which is then evaluated via simulation. Real data is collected concerning different types of cargo for RoPax vessels with the intended goal of reducing planning time in a seaport. The results contribute as one piece of the mosaic on the avenue towards becoming a “Smart Port”, which deploys various digitalization technologies in order to become a fully automated port. The suggested approach to be integrated, builds upon IoT sensors in combination with the lightweight version of a Blockchain to improve balance indicators on a trim of a vessel. A developed simulation tool was used for evaluating a number of scenarios, with each scenario run set to 2500 times. The simulation results indicate an improvement of 50-160% from the current load planning operations for RoPax vessels.
Blockchain technology has had a substantial impact across multiple disciplines, creating new methods for storing and processing data with improved transparency, immutability, and reproducibility. These developments come at a time when the reproducibility of many scientific findings has been called into question, including computational studies. Here we present a computational chemistry simulation run directly on a blockchain virtual machine, using a harmonic potential to model the vibration of carbon monoxide. The results demonstrate for the first time that computational science calculations are feasible entirely within a blockchain environment and that they can be used to increase transparency and accessibility across the computational sciences.
Open access
Machine Learning in Materials Science
Innovative Microfluidic and Catalytic Techniques Innovation
The article is devoted to the review of Blockchain technology capabilities. The article presents the main advantages and disadvantages of this technology that arise in the implementation of this decentralized system. The main threats of this technology, which slow down its implementation in modern society, are also considered. In addition, the problems of network scaling and 51% attack are considered.
One of the major directions in IT development is the emergence of Blockchain technology, which is rooted in the concept of distributive ledger technology (DLT). Blockchain is based on the use of a cryptographically protected chain of transaction blocks containing information. Blockchain technology becomes relevant in economic exchange as it lowers costs and adds efficiency to transactions` implementation. The key quality of blockchain is that it ensures the authenticity of digital data; trust in the traditional legal relationship has been replaced by digital verification of data in blocks. Verification of digital data by tracing transaction blocks is identical to a hard copy ledger: blocks function as bookkeeping inputs of a digital manager. The blocks are functionally equal to sheets of paper, used by all participants to enter their transaction and sign it. In doing so, they grant authorization to all previous paper transactions. The foregoing process continues as long as there is space on paper available. When the sheet is filled, it is secured with a stamp and new transactions are recorded on a new sheet of paper which, once filled, is linked to the previous paper (secured with the signature and a stamp on the margin between the first and second paper). A functionally identical activity occurs in the framework of blockchain technology. As the important phenomenon, blockchain raises legal issues that have to be addressed in the process of its implementation. Currently, the legal regulation of blockchain is at the stage of developing customs, which are likely to be translated into standards relevant to this technology. Standards are a discretionary regulatory framework in the form of private law regulation; in essence, it is a software-driven expression of traditional contracts, translated into programming languages. The relevant doctrine labels this process as "legal engineering". An example of this development is the legal regime of "Smart Contracts". These contracts constitute the next stage in the development of blockchain deployment; they are based on a cryptographic process enabling the execution of contracts once the preconditions contained in the program code are satisfied. The emerging legal regulation of blockchain will not rule out the existing legal norms; rather, they will operate simultaneously and complementarily.
A new tool for achieving a sustainable business climate in mining is DLT communication and blockchain data recording. The introduction of DLT will help increase confidence among participants mining executives, employees, regulators and suppliers. The factors that interdict the implementation of DLT are classified. Each of them has been analyzed and models for data exchange among roles have been proposed for illustration. The example is for measurement of the energy consumed and the material mined for an open pit. A scheme for the introduction of correction in case of measurement unaccuracy has been developed.
Abstract Modern technologies and new management concepts - industrial and product platforms - allows create new products and services, changes one of the oldest occupations of mankind, almost biblical, - fishing and fish farming. Due to the rapid development of IT technologies and business in the last decade, the development of platforms has been observed - network business structures engaged in the collection and analysis of heterogeneous information for users. The most important platforms for aquaculture are industrial and product. The newest concept of innovative economy – blockchain, - must be also used in modern industrial aquaculture. We propose the product platform based on an industrial platform, - software and hardware complex for fishes and crustaceans farming using Computer Vision technologies and modern automation systems integrated into a network industrial complex. The environmental parameters for optimizing the growth rate of aquatic organisms or their taste are subsequently distributed (license/sales) among users of their product platform. Platform users could collect fishes and crustaceans into the trading pools and sell them to large retailers for special prices. Product platform helps preserve, repopulate endangered species of fish and crustaceans and also reduces ecological impact of fisheries and extensive aquaculture.
Our energy scenario is nowadays shaped by progressive electrification of energy final use. In this context, electricity networks are seeing a growing multitude of distributed assets entering from the edges of the grid and acquiring new ICT capabilities that were limited before to a restricted number of major players. Particularly, assets like Photovoltaic Inverter (PvI), Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers, wind turbines controllers, programmable loads, storage systems, and other Distributed Energy Resources (DER) are now able to communicate through different technologies and make conscious choices under human-decisions or even independently. This is leading to a decentralization of the system's view by increasing single actor independence. Notwithstanding, a problem arises when current centrally-managed electricity networks struggle to coordinate massive amounts of new figures and adapt to this new decentralized paradigm. Therefore, a decentralized coordination-and-control framework will ensure better integration of s and new figures as prosumers, while allowing higher exploitation of their potential compared to centrally managed systems. This article seeks in Blockchains the enabling technology for designing and supporting such a grid infrastructure. It develops a first framework to address this need by envisioning a grid-system based on the direct participation of nowadays-used embedded-energy-devices within a decentralized platform hosting specific coordination procedures. The platform was developed in an experimental research campaign performed at ABB Laboratories basing on embedded-devices currently designed as control-connectivity boards for smart-inverters. Therefore this article introduces the background theory and reasons behind this proposed system. The intent here is not to give all the specific details of the implementation, but introduce the supporting reason, high-level design, and required characteristic of the Blockchain-based platform for coordinating grid operations. Blockchain technology is seen here as the appropriate technology to enable the realization of a multi-actor energy-management system and enable distributed coordination in power grids.
The aim of the article is to study the theoretical and applied bases of using blockchain technology in the national accounting system. The article proves that digitalization, as one of the main trends in the development of the national economy, causes a change in business models, approaches to organizing, carrying out and managing a business and also modifies the communication channels between enterprises and partners, regulators and consumers. These changes lead to the need for modernization of accounting as a system for collecting, processing and storing information on enterprises' activities. The author identifies blockchain technology as a prospect instrument for the modernization of an accounting system; blockchain technology is defined as a distributed database of all transactions carried out by enterprises. The article outlines the priority areas of using this technology in accounting (international settlements; accounting of the asset flow within an enterprise; real-time transaction accounting, etc.). The advantages of using blockchain technology in accounting are transparency, security, reliability, speed, saving time and resources, decentralization, increased trust between system participants, improved workflow, advanced training of accountants and auditors. The author concludes that, despite the high requirements for technical support and modernization of enterprises in the context of the digitalization of the national economy, blockchain technology should become one of the priority areas for the development of the accounting system.
Abstract International trade is an important aspect of business. Exchanging goods on a global scale allows states to produce and export goods that they are more efficient in and import the ones that they are not. As a result, countries reduce the cost of production, price of commodities, and expand their markets. Even so, international trade is a complex process that is facilitated by different financial, socio-political, and technological factors. The blockchain technology has revolutionized international trade and has the potential to continue doing so as this smart technology is still at its infancy. This paper analyzes the role and impacts of the blockchain in international trade, including the technology’s benefits, problems and challenges, and recommendations for improving its usefulness. The work finds that blockchain plays a significant role in international trade with numerous benefits. However, a few challenges should be addressed to ensure organizations in international trade benefits fully from blockchain technology.
Rustam Pirmagomedov, Aleksandr Ometov, Dmitri Moltchanov, Xi Lu · 9 authors
Wireless traffic produced by modern mobile devices displays high temporal and spatial dynamics as users spontaneously engage in collective applications where a significant portion of generated data remains localized. As a result, conventional service provisioning approaches may no longer be sufficient in beyond fifth generation (B5G) systems. The challenge of increased dynamics on the access networks can be mitigated with moving cells. However, the deployment time of these temporary serving entities may lag behind the service demand lifetime. Another viable solution to offload excessive cellular traffic is to rely upon locally available radio resources offered by user devices via direct mmWave-based mesh interworking. An important challenge in such systems is related to the incentivization of users to partake in collaborative resource sharing. To leverage multi-hop mesh capabilities, we propose the use of emerging blockchain technology that offers cryptographically-strong accounting while maintaining the anonymity of the participants. With system-level evaluations, we demonstrate that the utilization of mobile blockchain methods allows for a non-incremental improvement in the offloading gains. This demonstrates the potential of the outlined proposal for becoming a successful mechanism in the emerging B5G systems.
When a user registers a digital service, the service provider often asks for the user's personal information, such as name, phone number and so on. With the digital services gradually becoming an indispensable part of our lives, the abuse and misappropriation of personal information have caused people's attention to the protection of it. At present, The technical schemes for personal information protection mainly focus on preventing information leakage. We provide protection in a different way: propose a traceable method for personal information registration based on blockchain, which can distinguish the service provider obtained the information legally or illegally, by storing the personal information transaction records on the blockchain. The proposed method includes both direct and third-party personal information transaction scenarios. In different scenarios, the user will send the encrypted personal information data or authorization file to the service provider. After the transaction record is confirmed to be on the blockchain, the certification center will assist the service provider to decrypt the personal information. With this method, users can clearly understand which personal information has been delivered to which service providers. Moreover, the user's personal information data involving privacy are not stored on or transmitted through the blockchain. Hence, there is no additional risk of information disclosure, so as to achieve the purpose of personal information protection. Additionally, we analyze the proposed method using Kailar logic, and conduct a transaction performance simulation using NS-3. It shows that our method has properties of privacy, reliability, and accountability, and can meet the transaction performance requirements under the practical application scene.
Wan Nurhidayat Wan Muhamad, Noor Afiza, Muslihah Wook, Khairul Khalil · 7 authors
Intelligence data are among the critical elements used as a reference for risk-assessment and decision-making regarding national security. The intelligence data are shared among intelligence agencies in the intelligence community in improving the efficiency of their services. Centralised data with central authority is highly exposed to being an easy target of attackers. Leaked or unauthorised access of the intelligence data to a non-intelligence community will bring severe effect to a state. Blockchain as immutable and high-security technology is capable of providing cryptographic data in a decentralised environment and potentially can be applied for data sharing among the intelligence community. However, the acceptance and readiness of users on blockchain usage in the intelligence community are yet to be systematically studied. Considering the statement, this paper proposed an evaluation method to study the acceptance of blockchain technology by integrating a reliable acceptance model for blockchain technology implementation in the intelligence community. The acceptance model consisted of constructs from the Technology Acceptance Model 3 (TAM 3) and Technology Readiness Index 2 (TRI 2) and was analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). In this study, the result indicates that TAM 3 and TRI 2.0 integration model could contribute to determining the acceptance level in developing blockchain-based intelligence data sharing for the intelligence community.
The security of operation and maintenance phase in systems that share long-life cycles like weapon systems is of great importance. Even if the system passes the security evaluation at the development stage before release, it can be adversely affected by the penetration of counterfeit components (parts) during the operation and maintenance phase. Such security issues are concatenated with data related to supply chain, accordingly, system parts need to fulfill the traceability on a fundamental basis. In addition to traceability, supply chains should also meet the data security standards of availability, integrity and confidentiality in the long run. Also, even without trusted third party, these data should be available to users. In this paper, we, therefore, propose a framework that utilizes blockchain and key escrow encryption system in a bid to optimize the security of supply chains for long-lifecycle systems and provide better measures to improve services for global business survivability.
In today’s fourth industrial revolution, various blockchain technologies are being actively researched. A blockchain is a peer-to-peer data-sharing structure lacking central control. If a user wishes to access stored data, she/he must employ a private key to prove ownership of the data and create a transaction. If the private key is lost, blockchain data cannot be accessed. To solve such a problem, public blockchain users can recover the key using a wallet program. However, key recovery in a permissioned blockchain (PBC) has been but little studied. The PBC server is Honest-but-Curious (HBC), and should not be able to learn anything of the user; the server should simply recover and store the key. The server must also be resistant to malicious attacks. Therefore, key recovery in a PBC must satisfy various security requirements. Here, we present a password-protected secret sharing (PPSS) key recovery system, protected by a secure password from a malicious key storage server of a PBC. We describe existing key recovery schemes and our PPSS scheme.
Blockchain technology establishes an ecosystem in IoT that is creditworthy among the participants for high-security requirements. However, there has not been comprehensive researches done on the blockchain in IoT nor its application potential in Project management. The objectives of this research are to investigate the role of blockchain in IoT and to identify prospective applications of blockchain technology in project management. Both IoT and project management require the secured data transmission and effective yet efficient data management. The blockchain-based technology can be applied in the areas of IoT and project management because it can provide immutability, transparency between users in a complex system. This research needs to be extended to build a prototype open-source blockchain-based project management application.
Open access
Advanced Research in Systems and Signal Processing