Mueen Uddin, M. S. Memon, Irfana Memon, Imtiaz Ali · 7 authors
Background: Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are used as an efficient and effective technique for sharing patientâs health records among different hospitals and various other key stakeholders of the healthcare industry to achieve better diagnosis and treatment of patients globally. However, the existing EHR systems mostly lack in providing appropriate security, entrusted access control and handling privacy and secrecy issues and challenges in current hospital infrastructures. Objective: To solve this delicate problem, we propose a Blockchain-enabled Hyperledger Fabric Architecture for different EHR systems. Methodology: In our EHR blockchain system, Peer nodes from various organizations (stakeholders) create a ledger network, where channels are created to enable secure and private communication between different stakeholders on the ledger network. Individual patients and other stakeholders are identified and registered on the network by unique digital certificates issued by membership service provider (MSP) component of the fabric architecture. Results: We created and implemented different Chaincodes to handle the business logic for executing separate EHR transactions on the network. The proposed fabric architecture provides a secure, transparent and immutable mechanism to store, share and exchange EHRs in a peer-to-peer network of different healthcare stakeholders. It ensures interoperability, scalability and availability in adapting the existing EHRs for strengthening and providing an effective and secure method to integrate and manage patient records among medical institutions in the healthcare ecosystem.
Ayodeji Ajuwon, Ademola Adewuyi, Chigozie Regina Nwangele, Abiola Oyeronke Akintobi
Blockchain technology has emerged as a disruptive force in financial services, offering unprecedented transparency, security, and efficiency. This examines the transformative potential of blockchain, with a particular focus on the evolving role of smart contracts in lending processes. Traditional lending systems often suffer from inefficiencies, including lengthy approval times, high operational costs, and lack of transparency, which hinder financial inclusion and increase risks for both lenders and borrowers. Blockchainâs decentralized ledger technology addresses these challenges by enabling secure, immutable, and transparent record-keeping. Smart contractsâself-executing agreements coded onto blockchain platformsâautomate contract enforcement and reduce the need for intermediaries. In lending, smart contracts can streamline loan origination, automate repayment schedules, and enforce compliance with predefined terms without manual intervention. This automation decreases transaction costs, accelerates processing times, and mitigates counterparty risks, thereby enhancing overall lending efficiency. Additionally, blockchainâs tamper-proof nature fosters trust among participants by providing a single source of truth accessible to all stakeholders. The integration of blockchain and smart contracts also introduces novel possibilities for credit scoring and risk management by incorporating real-time data feeds and alternative data sources. This can expand lending access to underserved populations traditionally excluded due to lack of formal credit histories. However, challenges such as regulatory uncertainty, scalability constraints, and privacy concerns remain barriers to widespread adoption. This reviews recent advancements in blockchain-based lending platforms, explores use cases demonstrating smart contract applications, and discusses ongoing innovations aimed at overcoming implementation hurdles. It underscores the necessity of developing robust legal frameworks and interoperability standards to fully realize the benefits of smart contracts in lending. Ultimately, blockchain technology, coupled with smart contracts, holds significant promise for revolutionizing financial services by enabling more transparent, efficient, and inclusive lending ecosystems, paving the way for a future where lending is faster, fairer, and more accessible.
In the present era of digitalisation, maintaining tamper-resistant records at centralised nodes is becoming more and more difficult. Blockchain technology, which is considered as the backbone of cryptocurrency, is gaining immense popularity due to its decentralised approach to store and verify the data. Blockchain technology gives the freedom to develop a user-specific validation protocol, which helps to maintain tamper-resistant logs of all the activities, known as transactions, performed on a private/public network of blockchain. Because of blockchain components such as data privacy and security, not only the private sector is shifting its interest towards the technology, the public sector and government authorities are also looking forward to this technology. This manuscript targets to propose the use case model of blockchain technology by developing the smart contract and distributive ledger for entity market place. This framework contains all required processes, functions, and services for making a reliable platform for marketing new and old entities.
Cryptocurrency becomes an integral part of modern financial markets all over the globe, meanwhile, in many states, there is no legal regulation of cryptocurrency. To elaborate legal framework legis...
The purpose of the study is to analyze the provisions of the novelties of the Russian legislation on digital financial assets and digital currency. The methodological basis was the method of comparative legal analysis, using which the authors identify general patterns and features of the legal status of Russian digital joint-stock companies and decentralized autonomous organizations widely discussed in foreign literature. The results of the study were conclusions about the significant differences between the above organizations. A company issuing digital shares, under Russian law, differs from an ordinary non-public joint stock company by limiting the circulation of digital shares within the framework of a digital platform. Unlike the decentralized autonomous organization, it has legal entity and governing bodies. It was also concluded that there is a significantly greater variety of rights of holders of foreign token-shares in comparison with the rights of shareholders of Russian digital joint stock companies. The novelty of the research is contained in the results of the analysis and doctrinal interpretation of the norms of Russian federal laws concerning digital shares. So, in particular, it was established that such are recognized at the same time as securities and digital rights. Such a legal structure appears to be unnecessarily complex. According to Russian law, digital shares differ from ordinary shares in the form of certification of shareholders ârights, while no differences have been revealed in the scope of shareholdersâ rights.
Blockchain technology is widely used in finance, digital asset trading and other fields because of its characteristics of decentralization, unforgeability and sharing. Blockchain has become one of the hot topics in fintech research, which affects the development of traditional financial formats. It is considered as the cornerstone of digital economy. This paper systematically analyzes the characteristics of blockchain technology, the impact of blockchain technology on the operation and management of traditional commercial banks, and prospects the application of blockchain technology in commercial banks.
Hugo Benedetti, Christian Caceres, Luis Ălvaro AbarzĂșa
Abstract Utility tokens are digital currencies that serve as the only accepted means of payment for services and products provided through a blockchain-based platform. They finance the development of their product or service, reward and incentivize early adopters and network promoters, align economic incentives between supply, demand, and the marketplace, and enhance network effects among all participants. Their tokenomic design consists of the rules and regulations governing a tokenâs issuance, distribution, allocation, and potential destruction. The chapter describes utility tokens, compares them with other types of cryptoassets, and discusses their value creation process and role in network economics. It also reviews common tokenomic designs, discusses different regulatory approaches, and provides examples of current utility token applications in decentralized applications such as decentralized finance and virtual reality platforms (metaverses).
Eric Alston, Wilson Law, Ilia Murtazashvili, Martin B. H. Weiss
Abstract Institutional economists have analyzed permissionless blockchains as a novel institutional building block for voluntary economic exchange and distributed governance, with their unique protocol features such as automated contract execution, high levels of network and process transparency, and uniquely distributed governance. But such institutional analysis needs to be complemented by polycentric analysis of how blockchains change. We characterize such change as resulting from internal sources and external sources. Internal sources include constitutional (protocol) design and collective-choice processes for updating protocols, which help coordinate network participants and users. External sources include competitive pressure from other cryptocurrency networks. By studying two leading networks, Bitcoin and Ethereum, we illustrate how conceptualizing blockchains as competing and constitutional polycentric enterprises clarifies their processes of change.
Fairness is an important trait of open, free markets. Ethereum is a platform meant to enable digital, decentralized markets. Though many researchers debate the market's fairness, there are few discussions around the fairness of automated markets, such as those hosted on Ethereum. In this paper, using pilot studies, we consider unfair factors caused by adding the program. Because CryptoKitties is one of the major blockchain-based games and has been in operation for an extended period of time, we focus on its market to examine fairness. As a result, we concluded that a gene determination algorithm in this game has little randomness, and a significant advantage to gain profit is given to players who know its bias over those who do not. We state incompleteness and impact of the algorithm and other factors. Besides, we suppose countermeasures to reduce CryptoKitties' unfairness as a market.
We are entering a new monetary era. Central banks around the worldâ spurred by the development of privately controlled digital currencies as well as competition from other central banksâhave been studying, building, and, in some cases, issuing central bank digital currency (âCBDCâ). Although digital fiat currency is one of the hottest topics in macroeconomics and central banking today, the discussion has largely overlooked the most straightforward and appealing strategy for implementing a U.S. dollar-based CBDC: expanding access to bank accounts that the Federal Reserve already offers to a small, favored set of clients. These accounts consist of entries in a digital ledgerâlike other digital currenciesâand are extremely desirable, offering high interest, instant payments, and full government backing with no limit. But U.S. law restricts these accounts to an exclusive clientele consisting primarily of banks. Privileged access to these accounts creates a striking asymmetry at the core of our monetary framework: government-issued physical currency is available to all, but government-issued digital currency (in the form of central bank accounts) is not. This dichotomy is unwarranted. Congress should authorize the Federal Reserve to give everyoneâindividuals, businesses, and institutionsâthe option to maintain accounts at the central bank. We call these accounts FedAccounts. Unlike the CBDC approaches currently under discussion, which would use complicated and inefficient distributed ledger technology and be walled off from the existing system of money and payments, FedAccounts would be seamlessly interoperable with the mainstream payment system, relying on technologies that the Federal Reserve has used for decades.
In der Anfangszeit der Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) waren die hauptsĂ€chlichen Betrachtungswinkel die der Disruption des Bank- und Finanzwesens. Mit dem Aufkommen des Systems Ethereum im Jahr 2015, hat die Auseinandersetzung mit der Anwendung von Blockchain in weiteren Branchen, an Bedeutung gewonnen. Eine davon ist die Logistik und das Supply Chain Management (SCM). Gerade in Deutschland spielt der Logistiksektor eine groĂe Rolle, nach der BeschĂ€ftigtenzahl ist er die drittgröĂte Branche und erzielt einen Umsatz von rund 258 Milliarden Euro. Im Beitrag werden konkrete Anwendungsfelder identifiziert und gezeigt welche potentiellen Vorteile sich dort, durch den Einsatz von DLT, erzielen lassen. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der EinschĂ€tzung der Technologie hinsichtlich ihrer Sicherheitseigenschaften. Im Beitrag wird den Fragen nachgegangen, ob Datensicherheit mithilfe von DLT verbessert werden kann und auf welchem Wege.
In pursuing its declared mission "to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure with a safe, secure and compliant payment system that empowers billions of people," Diem encounters apparent resistance from various social fields and politics. On the one hand, many critics recognise dangers to state currency sovereignty and the stability of the financial system; on the other hand, they fear negative developments regarding money laundering and the financing of terrorism. In addition, there are considerable concerns about an ever deeper erosion of privacy, consumer and data protection, which reaches a new dimension by linking such world currencies with already existing social networks governed and controlled by private entities. Under these circumstances, the chance of success of the Diem project clearly depends on the extent to which the aforementioned concerns can be dispelled and whether public trust can be established. Together with an overview of the developments of the Diem project since the inception of the underlying idea, the authors highlight the actors and their respective roles in an infrastructure primarily run and operated on distributed ledger technology (DLT), with computer nodes distributed across different jurisdictions. Moreover, it is argued that the level of control by end users over their digital representations and online footprints remains untested in the context of a worldwide digital financial infrastructure as proposed by Diem. The paper further elaborates and puts data protection and privacy of end users under scrutiny, outlining the need for a self-sovereign identity (SSI) management system in order to address the risks associated with correlation and profiling of individuals concerning their behaviour in payment systems.
Dirk Andreas Zetzsche, Linn Anker-SĂžrensen, Maria Lucia Passador, Andreas Wehrli
Financial law and regulation have, to date, assumed that regulated activities and functions are concentrated in a single legal entity responsible and accountable for operations and compliance. Even with regard to financial market infrastructure where the regulatory perspective acknowledges the need for interoperability of many entities as a system, each entity is subject to its own rules and regulations, and can thus meet its own compliance requirements independent of other system participants. The entity-focused regulatory paradigm is under pressure in the world of DLT-based payment arrangements where some ledgers, and thus the performance of the services as such, are distributed. DLT arrangements could provide an alternative to the traditional reliance on a mutually trusted central entity to transfer funds and enable the creation of new foundational infrastructures by distributing technical functions or linking existing systems. As such, we identify and outline concepts for use cases where DLT is potentially improving the efficiency of cross-border payments, namely a Best Execution DLT, a DLT application for a Network of Central Banks, a DLT as an AML/KYC utility, as well as DLT arrangements for an Identity Platform, a Small Payments Platform and, finally, an Interoperability Platform connecting multiple closed-loop and proprietary banking systems. Despite the wide-ranging interest in DLT-based payment systems, research so far has focused on technical concepts and lacked legal details. This article seeks to fill this gap by providing an initial analysis of the legal challenges related to DLT-based payment systems. From a legal perspective, the distribution of functions in DLTs comes with new risks created from the joint performance of services and functions as main characteristic of a distributed ledger, and the need for additional agreements, ongoing coordination across, and governance arrangements among the nodes. Further, in a cross-border context, multiple regulators and courts of various countries (asking for compliance with their own set of rules and regular reporting) will be involved. All of these must decide whether for compliance with any single rule they look at the DLT as a whole (herein called âthe ledger perspectiveâ) or each individual node (that is each institution participating in the DLT, herein called âthe node perspectiveâ). Moreover, financial and private law must provide for risk allocation, liability, responsibility and accountability for all legal obligations related to each function and activity. This article examines the extent to which the ledger perspective or the node perspective should prevail against the backdrop of a range of DLT use cases, resulting in policy recommendations for regulators. In this article, we propose the adoption of what we call an enabling approach for payment systems: ledger operators must specify in a Plan of Operations subject to regulatory approval to which rights and obligations the ledger perspective applies; in the absence of such a stipulation, rules apply based on the node perspective. However, for systemic risk controls, AML/CFT, data protection and governance, as well as DLT governance, we propose a reversed default rule in which the ledger perspective prevails in the absence of rules stipulating that the node perspective applies. Finally, in private law matters, we propose protecting consumers and SME clients through a standardised payment services contract structure, without mandating details.
For several years now, blockchains and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have enjoyed widespread interest in their applicability in various use cases in the energy sector and beyond. However, this rapid growth has also raised concerns about the cryptocurrencyâs massive energy consumption, not yet accounting for the energy needs of other DLTs. Electronic waste has also been a recent issue with specialized computers entering the market for Bitcoin mining that have no further use after being replaced by newer models. While exact data on the environmental impact of DLT solutions is not yet available and promising technological developments might solve some of the energy-related problems, a closer look at sustainability criteria as core design principles for DLT solutions is needed. This article offers a heuristic approach that helps to evaluate DLT projects regarding their environmental externalities and assists in moving away from energy-intensive DLT design practices.
Digitalization is driven by the fast emergence and adoption of digital technologies (DTs), the questioning of societal conventions and the adjustment of organizational routines. DTs play a visible role in our daily lives, both on an organizational and indeed on an individual level. Despite extensive efforts in research and industry, questions remain unanswered, be they about theoretical underpinnings or their respective influence on practical use. This lack of a thorough understanding limits the scientific discourse and denies practical users the full value of DTs. To fill in this research gap, the cumulative doctoral thesis contains within these pages comprises five research articles which examine the two DTs that are the Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed ledger technology (DLT). Upon examining each of these technologies in their own right, the subsequent sections of this dissertation will shed light on the convergence of these DTs, their implementation, and their adoption. The thesis covers questions of research as well as challenges in practice. It is thus relevant to researchers and practitioners alike. The IoT connects physical objects with the digital world through sensors, networking capabilities, and digital logic. To a large extent, the IoT builds on smart things, the term âsmartâ commonly being used to describe the features and capabilities of such things. However, a clear understanding of smartness as one of the key concepts of the IoT has not been defined as of yet. The subsequent thesis addresses this knowledge gap by proposing the concept of a âsmart actionâ and deriving from it a general definition of smartness (research article #1). DLTs are distributed and physically decentralized databases which store information in a tamper-resistant way. For a decade, research on DLT was technology-driven, but nowadays it faces the challenge that technological progress was largely unaware of regulatory boundaries. After all, establishing rules and conventions of compliance is essential for the practical use of DLT. That is why this thesis conceptualizes how DLT could be designed to comply with the GDPR (research article #2). The IoT, much like DLT, are DTs that affect systems at the data layer. With a firmer grasp of the mutual influence of these DTs, DLT could serve as a storage for data generated by smart things of the IoT. The effects and interdependencies resulting from such a convergence of both DTs are, however, still unknown. To resolve this problem, research article #3 is an attempt to identify certain design principles for the development of a DLT-based IoT system. Although the convergence in question offers multiple opportunities for a variety of organizations, many of them have to date struggled to gain value from digitalization and successfully embed DTs in their processes. With regard to the implementation of DTs, research article #4 then provides a success model for process digitalization projects by highlighting factors that drive the success of such implementation projects. Throwing a glance at the users reveals that products and services based on DTs are often hard to comprehend and suffer from lacking adoption. As such a novel technological concept at the intersection of the IoT and DLT, a self-sovereign identity enables users to manage their digital identities in a privacy-preserving manner. To explain and predict its use, research article #5 investigates the effect of information privacy on the adoption of a self-sovereign identity.
Anokye Acheampong Amponsah, Adebayo Felix, Benjamin Asubam
Ever since the first generation of blockchain technology became very successful and the FinTech enormously benefited from it with the advent of cryptocurrency, the second and third generations championed by Ethereum and Hyperledger have explored the extension of blockchain in other domains like IoT, supply chain management, healthcare, business, privacy, and data management. A field as huge as the insurance industry has been underrepresented in literature. Therefore, this paper presents how investments in blockchain technology can profit the insurance industry. We discuss the basics of blockchain technology, popular platforms in use today, and provide a simple theoretical explanation of the insurance sub-processes which blockchain can mutate positively. We also discuss hurdles to be crossed to fully implement blockchain solutions in the insurance domain.
Joseph Vogl's new book, Capital and Ressentiment (2021/2022), traces an epistemic shift from knowledge to information driven by the convergence of financialization and the platform economy. As a variable that is determined less by semantic content than by difference to existing expectations, information invites indifference to other distinctions, such as those between fact and fiction, claim and proof. The circulation of information takes the form of opinion markets wherein the production of reality itself is at stake. In this extract, taken from the book's final chapter, âThe cunning of ressentiment-driven reasonâ, Vogl analyses populist ressentiment as both structural affect of and vital resource for information capitalism, laying out the resulting reconfiguration of the social.
Jan 1, 2021·Proceedings of the Fist International Conference on Advanced Scientific Innovation in Science, Engineering and Technology, ICASISET 2020, 16-17 May 2020, Chennai, India
Blockchain is a simple and powerful platform for creating and deploying smart contracts .Its main aim is to remove the barriers in the deployment of blockchain especially for the financial sector. It provides the privacy and control required by them. It is called as smart contract because these are
Jan 1, 2021·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Mohammad Saidur Rahman, Ibrahim Khalil, Abdelaziz Bouras
We propose a smart contract workflow verification framework for blockchain-based supply chain management systems. The proposed framework introduces a Petri-Net-based formalism to model smart contract workflow in a supply-chain context. Smart contracts are deployed in the blockchain nodes and executed automatically if a predefined condition is met. As deployment and execution of smart contracts require payment, it is necessary to ensure smart contract logic before the deployment to avoid unnecessary execution costs. Multiple business rules should be followed in a predefined order and criteria to complete a complex supply chain process. Therefore, a set of smart contracts representing digital business rules should also be executed in a predefined order and criteria. To verify the soundness of smart contract-based blockchain systems, the modeling of smart contract execution is required. The proposed Petri-Net model for smart contracts ensures smart contract workflow correctness before execution in a blockchain-based system. We conduct multiple experiments to evaluate the performance of our proposed framework.