The latest advances in the different Industry 4.0 technologies have enabled the automation and optimization of complex tasks of production processes thanks to their ability to monitor and track the state of physical elements like machinery, environmental sensors/actuators or industrial operators. This paper focuses on the latter and presents the design and evaluation of a system for monitoring industrial workers that provides a near real-time decentralized response system aimed at reacting and tracing events that affect operator personal safety and health. Such a monitoring system is based on the information collected from sensors encapsulated in IoT wearables that are used to measure both personal and environmental data. The communications architecture relies on LoRaWAN, an LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network) technology that offers good reliability in harsh communications environments and that provides relatively long distance communications with low-energy consumption. Specifically, each wearable sends the collected information (e.g., heart rate, altitude, external temperature, gas concentration, location) from the sensors to the nearest LoRaWAN gateway, which is transmitted to a pool of nodes where information is stored in a distributed manner. Such a decentralized system allows for providing information redundancy and guarantees its availability as long as there is an operative node. In addition, the proposed system is able to store and to process the collected data through smart contracts in a blockchain, which eliminate the need for a central backend and ensure the traceability and immutability of such data in order to share them with third parties (e.g., insurance companies or medical services).
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are also known as intelligent transportation systems. VANET ensures timely and accurate communications between vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) to improve road safety and enhance the efficiency of traffic flow. Due to its open wireless boundary and high mobility, VANET is vulnerable to malicious nodes that could gain access into the network and carry out serious medium access control (MAC) layer threats, such as denial of service (DoS) attacks, data modification attacks, impersonation attacks, Sybil attacks, and replay attacks. This could affect the network security and privacy, causing harm to the information exchange within the network by genuine nodes and increase fatal impacts on the road. Therefore, a novel secure trust-based architecture that utilizes blockchain technology has been proposed to increase security and privacy to mitigate the aforementioned MAC layer attacks. A series of experiment has been conducted using the Veins simulation tool to assess the performance of the proposed solution in the terms of packet delivery ratio (PDR), end-to-end delay, packet loss, transmission overhead, and computational cost.
Jae-Yun Kim, Jun-Mo Lee, Yeon-Jae Koo, Sang-Hyeon Park · 5 authors
As ethereum blockchain has become popular, the number of users and transactions has skyrocketed, causing an explosive increase of its data size. As a result, ordinary clients using PCs or smartphones cannot easily bootstrap as a full node, but rely on other full nodes such as the miners to run or verify transactions. This may affect the security of ethereum, so light bootstrapping techniques such as fast sync has been proposed to download only parts of full data, yet the space overhead is still too high. One of the biggest space overhead that cannot easily be reduced is caused by saving the state of all accounts in the block's state trie. Fortunately, we found that more than 90% of accounts are inactive and old transactions are hard to be manipulated. Based on these observations, this paper propose a novel optimization technique called ethanos that can reduce bootstrapping cost by sweeping inactive accounts periodically and by not downloading old transactions. If an inactive account becomes active, ethanos restore its state by running a restoration transaction. Also, ethanos gives incentives for archive nodes to maintain the old transactions for possible re-verification. We implemented ethanos by instrumenting the go-ethereum (geth) client and evaluated with the real 113 million transactions from 14 million accounts between 7M-th and 8M-th blocks in ethereum. Our experimental result shows that ethanos can reduce the size of the account state by half, which, if combined with removing old transactions, may reduce the storage size for bootstrapping to around 1GB. This would be reasonable enough for ordinary clients to bootstrap on their personal devices.
Sung Min Jang, Eojin Yi, Woo Chang Kim, Kwangwon Ahn
This paper studies the causal relationship between Bitcoin and other investment assets. We first test Granger causality and then calculate transfer entropy as an information-theoretic approach. Unlike the Granger causality test, we discover that transfer entropy clearly identifies causal interdependency between Bitcoin and other assets, including gold, stocks, and the U.S. dollar. However, for symbolic transfer entropy, the dynamic riseâfall pattern in return series shows an asymmetric information flow from other assets to Bitcoin. Our results imply that the Bitcoin market actively interacts with major asset markets, and its long-term equilibrium, as a nascent market, gradually synchronizes with that of other investment assets.
Agriculture is indispensable for every country. Farmers use pesticides in large quantities to increase productivity, thus causing serious damage to the agro-ecological environment. If consumers consume a large number of such vegetables, there can be an adverse effect on their health. Therefore, consumers shift from consuming general vegetables to organic vegetables. However, the price of organic vegetables is higher than that of general vegetables, and there are doubts about the authenticity of the production and marketing process. Unfortunately, production and sales records are often falsified. The blockchain may be able to guarantee the authenticity of organic vegetables because the blockchain is tamperproof and transparent. Therefore, we proposed an exercise environment for the production and marketing of organic vegetables by using Ethereum. This proposed system can ensure the authenticity of the production and sales record, it may increase the sales of organic vegetables and solve the problem of agricultural ecological environment pollution in the real world.
Nikos Fotiou, Iakovos Pittaras, Vasilios A. Siris, George C. Polyzos
In this work, we leverage advances in decentralized identifiers and permissioned blockchains to build a flexible user authentication and authorization mechanism that offers enhanced privacy, achieves fast revocation, and supports distributed "policy decision points" executed in mutually untrusted entities. The proposed solution can be applied in multi-tenant "IoT hubs" that interconnect diverse IoT silos and enable authorization of "guest" users, i.e., opportunistic users that have no trust relationship with the system, which has not encountered or known them before.
August Thio-ac, Erwin John Domingo, Ricca May Reyes, Nilo Arago · 6 authors
This paper presents the development of an online procurement system and the integration of blockchain technology. Various tools such as PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and jQuery were used in designing the graphical, programming logic, and blockchain aspect of the system. Every page and function will have their respective construction and result. In addition, the proposed system's flow of process and the methods on the testing and hosting of the site as well as the different web development languages used in every part of the development and design process were presented. The proposed system was successfully and functionally developed starting from the execution of procurement proper, to the placement of procured items or goods, and up to the signing of contracts by the winner and the procurer. Lastly, features were added such as user profiles of the bidder and procurer.
David Allessie, Martijn Janssen, Jolien Ubacht, Scott W. Cunningham · 5 authors
Blockchain technology has the potential to provide public services directly to the public. This challenges the need for public organizations, who traditionally provided these services. Much of the current work is focused on the technology, whereas the influence on public administration structure has gained less attention. The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of blockchain technology on the governance of public service provision. For this, we performed a case study of an EU-wide system that monitors the movement of excise goods under duty suspension. We developed two scenarios for blockchain technologyâs use based on a permissionless blockchain architecture on the one hand and a permissioned one on the other. The scenarios were evaluated based on their impact on transaction validation, data quality and governance. The findings show that blockchain technology alone cannot be an alternative for the current data quality controls, equal access assurances and adaptations to legislation conducted by public administrations. As such, governments will remain playing a key role in registration of documents and assets, however, the governance will likely change depending on the type of blockchain architecture.
Blockchain technologies enable new forms of data sharing in platforms. This raises questions around how they are jointly developed and managed in blockchain consortia and what role public agencies play in those efforts. Based on an analysis of prior work on data sharing in public-private partnerships and other blockchain projects, we analyze the case of the Cardossier. The Cardossier project and (later) association develops a platform to link the public and private actors in the Swiss car ecosystem. The participating car registration authority has the roles of an actor in interorganizational processes, supplier of data, source of trust, guarantor of data quality, user of data, and incentive for making goods public. We conclude that the public agencies have a very important role in blockchain consortia and propose that they should use this role actively as part of their efforts to create public value.
We approach this paper with a shared investment in historical and contemporary representations of trans and gender non-conforming people, and our individual research in the archives of early US Gender Clinics. Together, we consider what is at stakeâor what might be possibleâwhen we connect legacies of photography used as diagnostic tools in gender clinics with snapshots of early, community-based gatherings, and the presence of trans people in contemporary art. From the archives of Robert J. Stoller and photos of Casa Susanna, to the collaborative photography of Zackary Drucker and Amos Mac, and the biometric data art-theory experiments of Zach Blas, we engage a series of image-based projects, which animate underlying questions and socio-political debates about the politics of visuality, and visibilityâs impact on trans and gender non-conforming people. Moreover, we argue that rhetorical strategies of proofâfrom conditions verified in clinics to shared existence through photographyâare tethered to, and thus trapped by, the logics and discipline of legibility and re-institutionalization.
SimĂłn FernĂĄndez-VĂĄzquez, Rafael Rosillo, David de la Fuente, Paolo Priore
Blockchain is currently one of the most important topics in both the academia and industry world, mainly due to the possible effects that the continuing application of this new technology could have. The adoption of this technology by FinTech companies constitutes the next step towards the expansion of blockchain and its sustainability. The paper conducts a mapping study on the research topics, limitations, gaps and future trends of blockchain in FinTech companies. A total of 49 papers from a scientific database (Web of Science Core Collection) have been analyzed. The results show a deep focus in challenges such as security, scalability, legal and regulatory, privacy or latency, with proposed solutions still to be far from being effective. A vast majority of the research is focused into finance and banking sector, obviating other industries that could play a crucial role in the further expansion of blockchain. This study can contribute to researchers as a starting point for their investigation, as well as a source for recommendations on future investigation directions regarding blockchain in the FinTech sector.
Distributed ledger technology offers numerous desirable attributes to\napplications in the enterprise context. However, with distributed data and\ndecentralized computation on a shared platform, privacy and confidentiality\nchallenges arise. Any design for an enterprise system needs to carefully cater\nfor use case specific privacy and confidentiality needs. With the goal to\nfacilitate the design of enterprise solutions, this paper aims to provide a\nguide to navigate and aid in decisions around common requirements and\nmechanisms that prevent the leakage of private and confidential information. To\nfurther contextualize key concepts, the design guide is then applied to three\nenterprise DLT protocols: Hyperledger Fabric, Corda, and Quorum.\n
The rise of blockchain has resulted in discussions on (new) governance models with multiple actors collaborating. Incidents and problems occurred due to flaws in blockchain protocols, smart contracts and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Often it is unclear how decisions are made concerning evolvement of blockchain applications. In this paper, we identify and analyze potential challenges regarding governance of blockchain initiatives in various types of decentralized networks using literature and case study research. The governance challenges are classified based on a framework consisting of different layers (infrastructure, application, company and institution/country) and stages (design, operate, evolve/crisis). The results show that in various stages and layers, different challenges occur. Furthermore, blockchain applications governance and blockchain infrastructure governance were found to be entangled adding to the challenge. Our research shows a specific need for further research into governance models for DAO applications on permissionless blockchains, linked to the products and services offered whereas in permissioned blockchains and other type of applications, existing governance models might often be feasible. For developing new governance models, we recommend learning from the lessons from the open source community.
Michael Dubrovsky, Marshall Ball, Bogdan Penkovsky
Most cryptocurrencies rely on Proof-of-Work (PoW) "mining" for resistance to Sybil and double-spending attacks, as well as a mechanism for currency issuance. Hashcash PoW has successfully secured the Bitcoin network since its inception, however, as the network has expanded to take on additional value storage and transaction volume, Bitcoin PoW's heavy reliance on electricity has created scalability issues, environmental concerns, and systemic risks. Mining efforts have concentrated in areas with low electricity costs, creating single points of failure. Although PoW security properties rely on imposing a trivially verifiable economic cost on miners, there is no fundamental reason for it to consist primarily of electricity cost. The authors propose a novel PoW algorithm, Optical Proof of Work (oPoW), to eliminate energy as the primary cost of mining. Proposed algorithm imposes economic difficulty on the miners, however, the cost is concentrated in hardware (capital expense-CAPEX) rather than electricity (operating expenses-OPEX). The oPoW scheme involves minimal modifications to Hashcash-like PoW schemes, inheriting safety/security properties from such schemes. Rapid growth and improvement in silicon photonics over the last two decades has led to the commercialization of silicon photonic co-processors (integrated circuits that use photons instead of electrons to perform specialized computing tasks) for low-energy deep learning. oPoW is optimized for this technology such that miners are incentivized to use specialized, energy-efficient photonics for computation. Beyond providing energy savings, oPoW has the potential to improve network scalability, enable decentralized mining outside of low electricity cost areas, and democratize issuance. Due to the CAPEX dominance of mining costs, oPoW hashrate will be significantly less sensitive to underlying coin price declines.
We present a model/executable specification of smart contract execution in Coq. Our formalization allows for inter-contract communication and generalizes existing work by allowing modelling of both depth-first execution blockchains (like Ethereum) and breadth-first execution blockchains (like Tezos). We represent smart contracts programs in Coq's functional language Gallina, enabling easier reasoning about functional correctness of concrete contracts than other approaches. In particular we develop a Congress contract in this style. This contract -- a simplified version of the infamous DAO -- is interesting because of its very dynamic communication pattern with other contracts. We give a high-level partial specification of the Congress's behavior, related to reentrancy, and prove that the Congress satisfies it for all possible smart contract execution orders.
Blockchain is a core technology to manage the value of cryptocurrencies, or to record trails of important business trades. The Smart Contract on blockchain is expected to improve security on blockchain system with automated operation, but it cannot be the solution when the application service required to operate tightly related blockchain ledgers as service business logic. This paper proposed the method to extend the functionality of traditional Smart Contract on blockchain, and introduced the prototype system, named 'ConnectionChain'.
Automated tasks play an important role in both consumer and industrial IoT environments. In many scenarios, the IoT tasks are performed given certain conditions. To facilitate the tasks, it is necessary to delegate a third party to listen to events that trigger the conditions and issue commands to the IoT resources accordingly. However, without restriction, the third party may be over-privileged and able to control the resources unconditionally. We define the third party's permission to act under some conditions as a conditional action. We propose PPCA, a privacy-preserving service that allows users to create conditional actions in a decentralized platform using smart contracts. PPCA can guarantee strict privilege at the third party that holds conditional actions. By generalizing a variety of conditions into simple forms of conditional logic, the conditions can be verified in a privacy-preserving manner. We build a prototype of PPCA on Ethereum. The performance shows the feasibility of PPCA in IoT environments.
The issue of whether contracts promote innovation and sustainability is an important but overlooked aspect for achieving energy and environmental targets, as well as for creating smart and sustainable cities. In this article, based on the principle/agent problem and Holmström and Milgromâs work on optimal contracts it is argued that the current general conditions of architectural and engineering consulting agreements in Sweden (ABK 09)âa standard type of contract often used in developer/consultant relationsâmay not incentivize choices that support the long-term goals of society. Furthermore, although this exploratory study specifically analyses a Swedish standard contract, the question of how contractual incentive structures can optimize real-world performance is a general one, and thus the articleâs findings have general applicability. This exploratory study also points to further research into how contractual structures impact climate-neutral buildings. In this way, Swedish consultants who use ABK 09 are incentivized to include low-risk, well-proven, and widely used technologies in order to minimize risks for themselves. This study contributes to resolving this dilemma by suggesting how ABK 09 could be restructured to change the balance between incentives and risk and incentivize innovation and sustainability. As mentioned above, the current study operates at a theoretical level. It discusses six possible changes that would better align the contract with the societal goals of innovation and sustainability.
Neuroscience and managerial-sciences have witnessed tremendous advance since turn of this Century. Making neuronal-directed neurostrategy-based judgements is a complex management action. Hominids share designed structural sphere and project stimulus on neurostrategy-based judgement processes. Neuroscience, along with cognito-management, has made unprecedented insights into human brain and nature. Fissures amongst judiciousness-based scrutiny adopt proxies and anthropological comportment in shepherding behavioural exploration on neurostrategy-based judgement making. Business actors, models and axioms of management tend to focus on either competences of business âactorsâ or resources of organisation. Actorâs neurostrategy-based judgement dynamics has extended from behaviourist approach to cognitive that focuses on processes prior to response. âDeciding to Decideâ, âPreferring to Preferâ, âDeciding to Preferâ and âPreferring to Decideâ are four âbordered boundariesâ where business actor has to arrive at an optimal neurostrategy-based judgement. Managers (âActorsâ) contract high uncertainty, ambiguity, time pressure and emotional stress. Neural mechanisms of neurostrategy-based judgement making require integration of evidence over time until a response threshold is reached. Cognito-management investigates neurostrategy-based judgement making by using âcognito-tactical monikersâ (CTM) to investigate how brain behaves in circuit of higher cognitive functions. This has transitioned from mapping confined effects to evolving extrapolative models that assimilate data scattered across brain structures. In a progressively complex management milieu, managers struggle between tactical arrangements and precise methods to gauge degree of accomplishment of predetermined goals. Neurostrategy-based judgement-oriented planning assists as âcatalystâ in terms of cognitive behaviours. There is need to understand neurobiological âdriversâ for investigating underlying neurocomputational formulation mechanisms of neurostrategy-based judgement processes that underlie neurostrategy-based judgement making. These are skills to meet new age challenges. In this, scope is to understand how managerial traits mapping divulge behavioural insight. The factual lateral lies on analysis of available verifiable, reliable and significant information, filtering and sieving of available information and accessing expressive information. This is supplemented by actions of neuron cells to further process interactive-oriented actions.
Managersâ generally count on heuristics in an air of improbability. In real world, encountered with multifaceted choice circumstances, managerial judgements surface from complex, complicated, cognitively demanding and intertwined set of data and information. Perceptive procedures are principal âdriversâ to calculate diverse optimal alternatives to grasp a judgement. Skin owns power-driven chattels (âskin conductanceâ) that transform on relatively short time gauge of minutes allied to psycho-neurostrategy-based judgemental techniques. As a representation for neural action, transdisciplinary âskin-conductance driverâ aid merger of all neurostrategy-based judgement-related aspects. This âdriverâ noise for âagent-orientedâ sculpting and psycho-managerial investigation efforts. Imaging tools have motivated neuromanagerial âskin-conductance driverâ of internal order of neurostrategy-based judgement making. âSkin-conductance driverâ exhibits potential for fundamental changes in how âSmart Managersâ contemplate, perceive and archetype judgement. Through âskin-conductance driverâ, skin absorbs data, recognises and edges problematical âbusiness climateâ towards suitable responses. âSmart Managersâ decide on judgements that represent âconflicting principlesâ. Question is how âSmart Managersâ makes judgements in a climate of vicissitudes in skin conductance. How judgements are carried out in skin of âSmart Managersâ? Curiosity is on possibilities, philosophies, behaviours and stratagems that âSmart Managersâ uses to make judgements. How do portions of âSmart Managersâ skin administer judgement crafting, synchronise and engross in tactical explanation while deciding? There are unsolved problems in âskin geometryâ where neuromanagement seeks to explain âbehaviour shapesâ (coherent âskin geometryâ) towards neurostrategy-based judgement crafting? This experimental paper aims at exploring prospects and challenges in significant role of âneuronicsâ in prototyping managerial neurostrategy-based judgements. Points of focus are on driving âinformation-agentsâ and âinformation-elementsâ. What neuronal-strategic choices underpin neurostrategy-based judgements? Does systemic analysis reveal neuronal factors that contribute to explain effective mapping of neurostrategy-based judgements? In a quasi-experiment, a set of Managers were chosen and subject to information based neurostrategy-based judgement mapping. Results indicate that âinformation-agentsâ and âinformation-elementsâ do have a positive influence on neurostrategy-based judgement edifice of neurostrategy-based judgement prototyping. This paper attempts to analyse approaches to behavioural thinking in neuroscientific philosophy of biology experiments. CTM techniques explain neural basis of neurostrategy-based judgement making and endeavours to reconnoiter âskin-geometryâ phenomenon to screen theoretic contexts and empirical methods for appreciating heterogeneity of neurostrategy-based judgement circuit. Objective is to screen theoretic and empirical contexts in neuro-dermatological âskin geometryâ framework of âneurostrategy-based judgement circuitâ. Methodology includes data collection was via single-phase process. For clinical tests, one (01) volunteer respondent (single-subject; N = 01) was chosen. Purpose is to assess that âskin geometryâ have stimulus on managersâ choice. Focus is on comparing neuro-dermatological observations to replicate philosophy of biology in research. Results demonstrate indications for spontaneous counterfactual replication in province of high-level reasoning. Major finding is that manager attempts to address a neuro-dermatological circuit using âskin geometryâ medium. Paper discusses findings and future directions to guide biology in neurostrategy-based judgement neuroscience via neuronal apparatus. Research offers âGolden Anchorageâ of neuro-locking of skin and neurostrategy-based judgement making dynamics to appreciate how âSmart Managersâ make judgements to neurostrategy-based judgemental questions.
Roben Castagna Lunardi, Regio A. Michelin, Charles V. Neu, Henry C. Nunes · 6 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming our physical world into a complex and dynamic system of connected devices on an unprecedented scale. Connecting everyday physical objects is creating new business models, improving processes and reducing costs and risks. Recently, blockchain technology has received a lot of attention from the community as a possible solution to overcome security issues in IoT. However, traditional blockchains (such as the ones used in Bitcoin and Ethereum) are not well suited to the resource-constrained nature of IoT devices and also with the large volume of information that is expected to be generated from typical IoT deployments. To overcome these issues, several researchers have presented lightweight instances of blockchains tailored for IoT. For example, proposing novel data structures based on blocks with decoupled and appendable data. However, these researchers did not discuss how the consensus algorithm would impact their solutions, i.e., the decision of which consensus algorithm would be better suited was left as an open issue. In this paper, we improved an appendable-block blockchain framework to support different consensus algorithms through a modular design. We evaluated the performance of this improved version in different emulated scenarios and studied the impact of varying the number of devices and transactions and employing different consensus algorithms. Even adopting different consensus algorithms, results indicate that the latency to append a new block is less than 161ms (in the more demanding scenario) and the delay for processing a new transaction is less than 7ms, suggesting that our improved version of the appendable-block blockchain is efficient and scalable, and thus well suited for IoT scenarios.
Cryptocurrency is a recent and popular topic that attracts the interest of investors and fund managers. Beyond the market discipline, researchers question the interaction between cryptocurrecies and macroeconomic variables. This study we focus on how the changes in gold and oil prices effect the daily price movements of different cryptocurrencies. The daily database includes prices of the cryptocurrencies of Bitcoin, Tether, Ethereum Litecon and EOS for the period between August 1, 2017 and April 3, 2019. Initially the stationarity of the series is tested by The existence of the cointegration relationship between the series is tested by The presence of causality relationships between the series is investigated with the Dolado and Ltkepohl (1996) causality test. The paper explains the details of the empirical findings.
Blockchain systems (more precisely Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs)) represent a different digital ecosystem compared with traditional computer systems. One major difference are the performance and scalability factors which will be discussed and analytically investigated in this paper. In doing so, we provide guidance for defining a research agenda focusing on the investigation of the crucial role of scalability for blockchain systems. System performance -- measured in terms of (1) consensus response time (blockchain network latency or time to convergence/agreement); (2) number of transactions per second or throughput, and (3) computing (and power) resources consumed -- can be understood by considering the design dimensions of a blockchain system, namely: (i) the type of blockchain system needed from a requirements perspective which in turn determines; (ii) the complexity of the consensus protocol used; (iii) the topography of the traffic flow on the network; (iv) the performance and complexity of the domain-specific language that implements smart contracts; and (v) by the anticipated growth in size and complexity of the distributed ledger itself.