Banking is considered only one of many industries that could benefit from using blockchain technology. A promising area in blockchain technology is so-called smart contracts, which is automated, decentralized and programmable contract solutions. Smart contracts can control the transfer of currencies or assets between parties under given conditions. The thesis work shows how blockchain technology could be applied to real estate transactions and minimize the need for third party involvement. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the blockchain technology and its possible applications in the real estate market. The focus was on exploring the process of real estate transactions and problems that could be resolved by using smart contracts and blockchain technology. Witha qualitative research approach and a case study analysis, a proposition of a solution was made and discussed with its benefits and drawbacks. The goal was to in the process find the answers for the research questions such as: How can real estate transactions benefit from blockchain technology? What would it cost to store the necessary data on the main chain of Ethereum? How could blockchain technology be used for managing the transaction of the down payment? Even though a collaboration of systems and smart contracts could handle almost every aspect of a real estate transaction, there are still legal boundaries to it being legally enforceable. The blockchain technology could contribute to more efficient and transparent systems compared to traditional centralized solutions.
Blockchains have gained popularity due to their versatility and wide range of application. Blockchains are a decentralized data structure guaranteeing integrity and non-repudiation of data We use this to secure provenance meta-data. A blockchain can be seen as a distributed database, or a public ledger of transactions or digital events that have occurred and have been shared among participating parties. A consensus is required to verify each transaction. Blockchains are finding use in cryptocurrencies, academics, clinical trials, healthcare and agriculture. However, like other networks, we need to verify the robustness and availability of the blockchain networks. In this thesis, we leverage existing Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of Service [D/DoS] attacks as a tool to evaluate our proposed blockchain technology, Scrybe, for robustness. First, we check its performance in presence of Transmission Control Protocol [TCP]- based flooding attacks such as SYN Flooding and its variants. We also optimize TCP kernel parameters to improve the utility of syn cookies as a measure against SYN floods. Second, we evaluate malicious miner attempts to exclude client transactions by stalling the mining process and verify that consensus is reached as long as there is at least one honest miner in the network. The underlying algorithm of Scrybe is our novel Lightweight Mining [LWM] algorithm. Our technology guarantees the properties of data integrity and non-repudiation with minimal resource requirements. It introduces a way to mine new blocks in the blockchain, which is not a resource hungry Proof-of-Work [PoW] as required in many present-day cryptocurrency applications.
The phenomenon of isolated value in each blockchain system has become adistinct issue of the blockchain field. To address this problem, the demandof cross-chain intercommunication came up. In a narrow sense, cross-chainrefers to the process of asset interoperability between relatively independentblockchains. In this thesis, we mainly analyze the design principles, technicaldifficulties, and solutions of cross-chain intercommunication in this narrowsense. With the introduction of distributed ledger technology(DLT), we describethe interaction with other ledgers as the fundamental problem of currentblockchain technology.The implementation of cross-chain is mainly manifested as asset swap and assettransfer. So far, there are many existing application scenarios and projectsadopted from these manifestation. This paper will focus on these two implementations,illustrate their principles, locate the realization difficulties, andput forward corresponding possible solutions. Then we elaborated on eightpopular cross-chain projects underlying mechanism listed with three maincategories. A detailed comparison according to their interoperability level,consensus algorithm and application scenarios of the overall overview of 20cross-chain projects is presented as a table in the Appendix A.During the implementation process, we performed a simple atomic swap crosschainframework based on Hash Time Lock Contract between Bitshares andEthereum, then compare the performance with a wallet application presentby Ripple using Interledger Protocol. These two applications are representedthe two different use case of cross-chain realization.With limited number of projects to test out, our conclusion was reached aftera discussion with the relative merits of the two approaches. Interledger protocolhas a better solution from the aspects of the decentralization, scalability,and whether it supports traditional ledgers.
Jan 1, 2020·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Blockchain is an emerging exponential technology that disrupts the existing way of doing business. During the last 10 years its importance has been highlighted and many organizations worldwide have embraced it and developed innovative applications. Even though Blockchain has been adopted by many sectors, Universities are reluctant to propose new academic programs on this field at bachelor and postgraduate level and fail to efficiently educate students on Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Consequently, universities have failed to investigate the business, technical, legal and other aspects of this technology. As a result, we have the paradox where industry and economy would like to experiment and adopt Blockchain solutions but there is a lack of people with appropriate and adequate skills to work on these solutions. Obviously, this holds back the adoption and the widespread of this technology and currently there are problems in scaling up Blockchain technology. The goal of this paper is to explore the area of Blockchain education and training and propose the structure of a master program that can be used as a model. In doing so, we expand the body of knowledge and we shed light to an important area with limited available information and use cases.
Cryptocurrency development has continuous escalation in the past years and holds its presence significantly in open source development. Online collaborative software development platforms such as GitHub offer us an opportunity to observe developer effort, activity and software growth. Cryptocurrency has enabled various applications such as smart contracts, electronically decentralized payments, etc. Since, prices of each cryptocurrency are driven by many factors, we are interested in investigating how various characteristics of cryptocurrency's codebase development affect market capitalization price. Thus, we conduct a study on a panel dataset containing nearly a year of daily observations of development activity, popularity, and market capitalization for over two hundred open source cryptocurrencies.
Samuel Brülisauer, Anastasia Costantini, Gianluca Pastorelli
"Digitalisation and other advanced technologies are increasingly reshaping our economy, including social economy enterprises. Disruptive technologies can inspire the social economy and vice versa. Blockchain for instance carries an intrinsic decentralisation approach that could have many implications for services and generate a high social added value through traceability, fair pricing, commonly recognised and verified standards and democratization of access to services and products in all societies and areas." - Ms Ulla Engelmann, Head of Unit for Advanced Technologies, Social Economy and Clusters, European Commission, DG Grow In the first two decades of the new century digital technologies have started to reshape work, leisure, behaviour, health, education, money, governance, and other aspects of human life. As people and businesses start using digital appliances for all kinds of interaction, an increasing amount of communication and value exchange shifts to the digital realm. This megatrend holds many promises to spur innovation, generate efficiencies, and improve services, and in doing so boost more inclusive and sustainable growth. But these technologies also tend to disrupt traditional ways to organize our economy and society, entailing important consequences for people, organisations and markets, and raise important issues around jobs and skills, privacy, security. We use the term digital transformation to describe these social, cultural, and economic changes resulting from digital innovations, and identify four socio-technological areas in which people are particularly affected by this transformation: work and income goods and services, money and finance, and state and governance. Digital platforms and blockchains (and other distributed ledger technology) are two of the most impactful technologies. Because of the astonishing possibilities these technologies offer, observers regularly fathom that it is not only unfeasible but also undesirable to ‘stop’ the digital transformation. Rather, it is argued that digital technologies and their impacts must be actively managed and leveraged to ensure their alignment with people-centred development and sustainability. In this context, a growing number of social economy innovations aim to create an internet and digital appliances that put individual users and society first. Social economy enterprises and organizations are either based on participatory governance where users are ultimately in (partial) control over the platform/technology, or bound by a statutory purpose asserting the priority of social and environmental goals before financial returns. The digital social economy innovations discussed in this paper aim to realize this vision in the four areas undergoing digital transformation. Our analysis is informed by insights from the workshop organised by Diesis on “Blockchain, digital social innovation and social economy. The future is here!”, as well as case studies elaborated in close collaboration with various digital social economy enterprises. The study finds a vivid variety of digital social economy enterprises, and important potential for further applications of social economy principles in the digital realm. Yet the realization of this potential depends on whether these enterprises manage the critical challenge to achieve sustainable and user-centred growth. We therefore conclude with a discussion of this challenge and some recommendations for policy, organization and entrepreneurship.
Blockchain emerges as a novel distributed digital ledger with consensus of a majority scheme for economic transaction. Recently, major implementations across different sectors that includes the education projects, technology projects, smart contracts, and supply chain management systems. In addition, any other digital data that needs to executed, stored, verified and continually update among participating parties with security, privacy, trust, and transparency without a central authority having control can be relying on Blockchain technology. Blockchain could be new revolution in information technology. This research aimed to conduct an overview of Blockchain attributes and its applications and challenges that encounter during the implementation. Our objective is exploring number of common Blockchain technology applications to highlight of how transparency, anonymity, tamper resistant, and secure decentrality helps to get rid security breaches compromising the current model, in which third parties collect and control massive amounts of critical data. In contrast, number of factor observed as issues that affect deploying Blockchain technology such as majority attack, fork problems, scale, and others issues. The future works must be concerned the proposed solutions in many real world verity environments and explore the characteristics, benefits, and evaluation their effectiveness.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
M. Leitner, Daniel Buschmann, Tiago Capela Lourenço, I. Coninx · 5 authors
“Our house is on fire”, climate activist Greta Thunberg declared to the participants of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020. In 2019, our house was indeed on fire. Large-scale forest fires in Australia, the Amazon, and the Arctic showed how short-term actions of disaster risk reduction and relief need to be considered along with long-term measures of climate change adaptation. Climate-induced extreme weather events are currently increasing and intensifying, thereby leading to new forms of disaster risk. In order to sustainably extinguish this metaphorical fire, separated strategies are no longer enough. Responding to short term climate risks without considering the long-term climate trends, and vice-versa, is no longer an acceptable course of action, as it separates (knowledge and financial) resources that should belong together. However, integrated approaches to DRR and CCA can provide opportunities for building resilience. By collecting the hands-on experience from twenty-eight CCA and DRR experts across Europe, this guidance addresses the challenges and positive results from such integrated approaches in order to synthesise actionable policy advice for institutional actors across various governance levels.We provide twenty recommendations in five areas: 1) safeguarding sound governance, 2) ensuring effective financing, 3) seizing opportunities for cooperation, 4) sharing new forms of communication, and 5) enhancing knowledge management.Each recommendation (for details, see Annex 7.2) was developed with the aim to:•Formulate a precise advice of what needs to happen.•Introduce the relevance and limitations of the chosen approach.•Showcase a possible way forward to apply such approach.•Explain which institutions are addressed and how they can benefit.•Provide an example of how the recommendation can work in practice.Area 1: Safeguarding sound governanceChallenge: Separated decision-making processes and knowledge communities with different languages reduce the possibility of quickly joining resources in extreme events preparedness, when extreme events occur, and to plan for the long term when no emergency assistance is being deployed.Recommendation: Implementation of a comprehensive Climate Risk Management (CRM) approach with broad stakeholder involvement at and across different risk governance levels.New ways of including “local reasons for concern” into national policy-making are needed to implement target-oriented and ambitious adaptation and risk reduction solutions. Consequently, national governments should establish a national climate-risk council, to foster putting of CRM into action (see 4.1.1).Challenge: Separated user and stakeholder engagement processes and taxonomies applied by knowledge and policy communities creates difficulties in establishing proper research and practice communication channels, even if the target agents are common.Recommendation: Engage stakeholders at different scales that have an interest in both the decision-making process and outcomes.Robust decision-making that increases resilience to climate risks is embedded within social, economic and cultural landscapes. It is critical to engage all concerned actors in order to recognise the needs of all. Community resilience projects are good examples (see 4.1.2).Challenge: By focusing mainly on public policy and decision-making CCA and DRR communities often neglect private actors that can provide substantial contributions in case of disasters and planning for the long term.Recommendation: Develop a stronger focus on self-safeguards or individual prevention and preparedness.Successful societal implementation of adaptation to climate change and risk management requires substantial contributions by private actors. Here, public administrations lead in coordinating and paving the way. This means a need for new formats for cross-sectoral collaboration which require a strong mandate and considerable national support (see 4.1.3).Challenge: By failing to capture local knowledge in the preparedness and planning phases many CCA and DRR strategies miss out on valuable data, lessons and experiences that can enhance climate action.Recommendation: Implement integrated, participatory designed strategies and plans at the municipal level that deal with climate-induced disasters.This process relies on mobilising local knowledge and ownership, but also on sound climate data. The local scale requires an enabling environment at national level that explicitly addresses aspects of the authority of local governments to plan for and carry out essential integrated actions (see 4.1.4).Area 2: Ensuring effective financingChallenge: New funding and insuring methods are needed to address climate risks and adaptation not previously covered by classical risk sharing schemes.Recommendation: Create Sovereign Climate Insurance Funds with application of index-based insurance and Distributed Ledger Technology.Yield-based approaches to the insurance of climate-related risks (especially in agriculture) have many drawbacks such as fraud detection and risk modelling. Index-based solutions are a better option and should be worked towards. Sovereign Climate Insurance Funds can cover climate-related risks and provide financial protection and support to affected regions and small farmers (see 4.2.1).Challenge: New risk transference methods are needed to address climate risks and adaptation not previously covered by classical market-based financial debt instruments.Recommendation: Develop risk transfer and data collection via a European Risk Transfer Mechanism.EU-institutions need to provide a funding framework, highlighting international priorities in aligning CCA and DRR funding. A Distributed-Ledger-Technology-based platform with the main aim of transferring risk from Sovereign Insurance Funds to the financial market, collecting, processing and storing climate-related data, is warranted. This includes new mechanisms of debt financing, such as climate insurance and risk transfer (see 4.2.2).Challenge: Current market and policy terminologies are not fit-for-purpose for upcoming transaction of financial assets associated with climate action.Recommendation: Implement an EU Green Taxonomy with CCA and DRR components.An EU taxonomy of green projects with a combination of CCA and DDR indicators and metrics can be useful to support national initiatives in mainstreaming protection against climate change and disasters and improving the effectiveness of climate finance. The incorporation of such indicators into the EU Green Bond Standard identifies climate-proof projects and green financial instruments (see 4.2.3).Challenge: Current forecasting methods focus on what the weather ‘will be’ rather than what the weather ‘will cause’ leaving room for improvements in early warning systems and preparedness mechanisms.Recommendation: Pursue forecast-based financing to anticipate disasters and reduce human suffering and losses.Although there are funds for long-term DRR as well as for emergency response, funds for anticipatory action are still lacking. The integration of physical parameters and anticipatory weather information into applied action to reduce disaster risk, offers an opportunity for impact-oriented, forecast-based financing (see 4.2.4).Challenge: Existing financial and debt financing mechanisms in the area of CCA and DRR are still not up-to-speed with climate funding needs at local-to-national scales.Recommendation: Elaborate self-financing and crisis financing mechanisms with application of Distributed Ledger Technologies.There is a disparity between DRR and CCA finance on different levels, especially regarding the improved management of climate-related risks and resilience of the financial system to non-financial threats. National Distributed-Ledger-Technology-based platforms for accumulation of savings and climate-related crisis financing can facilitate this process (see 4.2.5).Area 3: Seizing opportunities for cooperationChallenge: Cross-country governance mechanisms for climate and disaster risk management are lacking or do not share common practices.Recommendation: Develop a strong transnational and interregional collaboration between CCA and DRR with a joint focus on current and future risks.Climate and disaster risks often become politically charged and rife with conflicts. Mainstreaming of CCA and DRR into existing or new transnational and interregional working groups on risks or geographic areas of mutual concern is a promising way to prevent such tensions from rising (see 4.3.1).Challenge: Effective communication and collaboration across CCA and DRR knowledge communities is hindered by separated taxonomies and networking mechanisms between groups of actors.Recommendation: Use Social Network Analysis for stocktaking of stakeholders and to enhance interactions.Often, particularly for cross-sectoral interaction formats, there is limited information on the reasons why actors have certain roles in their network or interact in certain ways, which can highlight obstacles to effective collaboration. Social Network Analysis helps to identify relevant stakeholders for such formats, learning about them, their network and its properties, and making use of this information to strengthen their interactions and encourage aligned resilience solutions (see 4.3.2).Challenge: Joint emergency and preparedness exercises that include both communities are lacking, which reduces learning opportunities.Recommendation: Organise joint emergency exercises to strengthen collaboration on various levels.There are many models to prepare action for climate-induced disaster risks, but the actual event may differ significantly from the modelled version. Joint emergency exercises help to explore climate risks, exchange knowledge and jointly prepare for weather anomalies. In addition, national governments need to test their early warning systems and joint disaster prevention models in reality, p
Open access
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that gained widespread popularity since the emergence of cryptocurrencies. The potential uses of Blockchain surpassed digital currency into a wider space that includes the Internet of Things (IoT), security applications and smart embedded systems, among others. As the number of Blockchain users increases, several drawbacks start to emerge, since Blockchains consume excessive amounts of energy to store and manipulate data. Furthermore, the limited scalability nature of Blockchains due to their massive storage requirements might become an issue. To improve the overall performance, several challenges in the current Blockchain structure should be tackled. This paper presents a hybrid system architecture that combines the distributed nature of Blockchains with the centralized feature of servers. Users will connect to servers via personal Blockchains, while servers will share a chain of Blockchains to ensure integrity and security. This will significantly decrease the storage requirements of end-users and enhance the scalability of networks. Businesses will highly benefit from this proposed structure, since it creates a reliable scalable business model.
The integration of sensors and internet to the supply chain has created a new window in the supply chain management called as virtual supply chain which bears the features such as real-time tracking and monitoring of goods flow in the physical supply chain. The food supply chain is one of the delicate supply chains due to perishability, which can be due to various physical and biological factors, also the stringent safety and sustainability requirements of the product. The use of sensors and IT technology enables real-time data collection of the changes that take place in the food supply chain. The paper presents the integration of blockchain to the current virtual supply chain thus eliminating or changing the roles of intermediaries in the virtual supply chain and facilitating transparency, integrity, and authenticity of the data in the food supply chain.
As Supply Chain Management has continuously evolved, it has during recent times been exposed to the opportunities and threats that follow globalization. Firms have the possibility of getting their products/services to customers worldwide by outsourcing processes. This possibility has even turned mandatory for numerous firms in order to be competitive. However, such decisions can expose the Supply Chain to various risks. Because of lack of data and Supply Chain Structures, decision-makers need to distinguish advantages vs. disadvantages between centralized, decentralized or even outsourced structures. The purpose of this study has been, based on gathered data from a case company, to determine what Supply Chain structure to opt for when it comes to purchasing. This master thesis has performed a literature review on the science of Data Mining to enrich the quality of a quantitative part based on databases of the case company. The study also reviews Supply Chain Management strategies and how to select an appropriate distribution channel design - allowing for a framework about selecting an appropriate network design and another framework summarizing current literature’s contribution on the question of centralization versus decentralization based on Finance, Performance or Information. These three pillars are the aspects used as reference of analysis in various literature and could therefore be compared with empirics. The selection framework was filled in by key individuals at the case company and was associated with qualitative contributions from interviews about strengths and weaknesses of three scenarios involving centralization, decentralization or outsourcing. With obtained data, it was possible to identify all strengths and weaknesses of each scenario and discuss differences to select the best possible option. The findings were summarized into a framework where one can clearly see pros and cons of each scenario, thus providing a concise summary of implications following centralization, decentralization and outsourcing respectively. The results of the distribution network pointed towards a decentralization of the purchasing function as a more cost-efficient strategy, but these results must be questioned because of the current setting-bias with the spreading of the COVID-19 virus and its economic consequences. However, when all arguments were grouped into the final summarizing figure, it was concluded that the outsourcing strategy is the most advantageous. This thesis has thus permitted the extension of a framework that identifies the best distribution network design and summarized the implications of centralizing, decentralizing or outsourcing purchasing.
Gamification is a set of processes that enables to solve problems by applying the characteristics of game elements. One of the significant characteristics of Gamification is ‘engaging-users.’ In Game context, Gamification techniques involves attracting players, then sustaining the players. Interaction with the players starts as soon as users enters the game like introducing players to the game and tasks. Tasks engage players and provides them with sense of fulfilment while points and rewards help with satisfaction with the game. Likewise, Gamification has been applied to various non-game contexts in various social media in order to attract maximum visitors. While Cryptocurrency Rewarding Model, that rewards users in digital currency or cryptocurrency for the time spent in social media aims for similar results. It is involved in not only attracting visitors but also engaging the visitors, so they spend more time in social media. \n \nThe purpose of this thesis is to analyze how gamification and cryptocurrency rewarding model can be applied in social media using the blockchain technology. While giving rewards to players in gaming context is usually heard of. This research analyses rewarding visitors with cryptocurrencies for their time spend on social media. The thesis further explains how user’s engagement is influenced with the help of ‘gamification’ and ‘cryptocurrency rewarding model.’ The research is carried out by distributing questionnaires to a certain group of Business and IT students in Turku. Conducting an online survey and sending out questionnaires using online resources deemed to be the most appropriate form of collecting data due to novel coronavirus pandemic.
This essay is based on a presentation made on January 24, 2020 at the invitation of the Texas Journal of International Law and the Strauss Center for National Security at the University of Texas. That presentation focused on the two questions mentioned in the title of this essay – Do Blockchain Technologies Make Us Safer? And Do Cryptocurrencies Necessarily Make Us Less Safe? The essay presents answers to the two questions: “yes” and “probably yes.” This essay begins with some level-setting on different types of blockchain technologies and of cryptocurrencies, and gives some background materials on global and national responses to certain cryptocurrencies, such as El Petro sponsored by Venezuela’s PDVSA and Facebook’s Libra.
This talk will explain the bitcoin algorithm from the distributed computing perspective, precisely define the underlying double-payment problem, and present a much simpler alternative to solve the problem without relying on consensus and consuming so much energy. Rachid Guerraoui is professor in Computer Science at EPFL where he leads the Distributed Computing Laboratory. He worked in the past with École des Mines de Paris, CEA Saclay, HP Labs in Palo Alto and MIT. He has been elected ACM Fellow and Professor of the College de France. He was awarded a Senior ERC Grant and a Google Focused Award.
Developing Countries in Africa in general and Zambia in particular, have seen a rapid rise in use of mobile payment platforms. This has not only revolutionized access to finance for the poor but also allowed them access to other financial products such as savings or insurance. With a growing number of mobile money providers in Zambia, there is need for a solution that would enable integration of the mobile money provider’s systems using a central clearinghouse for purposes of clearing and settlement to achieve mobile money interoperability. In this study, we first reviewed the technical landscape and features of mobile payment systems in Zambia and then assessed the feasibility of using blockchain technology in proposing a settlement and clearing system that would facilitate mobile money interoperability. A prototype system was then designed in which amounts being interchanged between providers are managed as assets on a permissioned blockchain. The system runs a distributed shared ledger, which provides non-repudiation, data privacy and data origin authentication, by leveraging the consistency features of blockchain technology.
Businesses whose work hours, work durations & also more compliance records must be trustworthy and verifiable have great difficulties maintaining more accurate & also safe timekeeping. This article looks at a novel approach for smart contract & also blockchain technology integration protection of timekeeping data. Changing from more conventional, centralized time-tracking systems to a distributed ledger creates a safe framework that logs time inputs as unchangeable transactions, therefore preventing any retroactive changes or more unauthorized additions. While smart contracts provide automation of activities like clock-ins, clock-outs & more compliance alerts, every input is validated & also documented with cryptographic certainty. This guarantees real-time policy compliance and eliminates errors in hand-made monitoring. Clear audit trail, real-time notifications for errors or transgressions, and tamper-evident recordkeeping define the main characteristics of the recommended solution. These elements taken together provide a mechanism wherein auditors, managers, and employees may trust the data free from middlemen's intervention. Extended data integrity, increased organizational trust, greater transparency in payroll and compliance procedures, and fewer incidence of fraud or human error define the projected benefits. From manufacturing to logistics, remote work, healthcare, legal compliance management, the approach is versatile and scalable across numerous sectors. This work integrates trust into the infrastructure via blockchain and smart contract automation therefore establishing a progressive base for future timekeeping systems