Blockchain Papers

Sabir Hussain Awan

No abstract is available for this record.

Chananun Supadulya, Kasidit Tansanguan, V. Sethaput, Wipat Wattanasiriwiroj · 5 authors

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to disrupt many financial service domains. Aiming to explore the use of DLT to enhance financial system efficiency and resiliency, the Bank of Thailand (BOT) launched the Project Inthanon and Project DLT scripless bond initiatives in 2018. Project Inthanon is a proof-of-concept for wholesale domestic and cross-border funds transfer using central bank digital currency. The Project DLT scripless bond is an initiative to increase efficiency for the saving bond registration and sales processes. With these two projects, the BOT aims to catalyze an industry-wide effort to innovate digitally by exploring and assessing the potentials and applications of DLT. In addition, the BOT focuses on cultivating people's way of thinking and redesigning work processes to accommodate decentralized settings. In this paper, we discuss the project design, key findings, and future considerations of both projects. In brief, we find that DLT demonstrates promise for enhancing the financial infrastructure by enabling digital value direct transfers among parties, along with immutable record keeping, and programmable automation using smart contracts. However, further explorations of technology capacity, governance arrangement, and regulatory issues are needed as a prerequisite before moving these proofs-of-concept into production.

Eka Purnama Harahap, Qurotul Aini, Reza Khaerul Anam

Crowdfunding sebagai program sosial di era teknologi ini merupakan terobosan baru untuk penggalangan dana kepada orang-orang yang membutuhkan atau untuk permodalan suatu project tertentu dengan cepat melalui media internet. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui manfaat dari kemajuan teknologi blockchain dengan konsep smart contract sebagai media transaksi dalam platform crowdfunding, serta bagaimana teknologi ini dapat menyelesaikan masalah kepercayaan masyarakat karena platform ini melibatkan transaksi menggunakan uang. Dengan diterapkannya teknologi blockchain pada platform crowdfunding diharapkan dapat memastikan keamanan data serta transparansi dalam setiap transaksinya, sehingga tidak ada pemalsuan suatu project untuk mendapatkan keuntungan pribadi.

Brian Wu, Bridget Wu

From the ancient Lydians, who invented coins as a payment type, to the first paper money in China, money and payments have been evolving for centuries. In 2008, an anonymous person or group using Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper titled, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System . Since then, Bitcoin (BTC) has ushered in a new era of decentralized digital currencies and blockchain technology. As a result, digital currencies have exploded in popularity in recent years. There are around 20,000 cryptos, with a total market value of nearly $1.2 trillion. As the original and most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin holds about 45% of the whole cryptocurrency market. The second-largest cryptocurrency is Ethereum, which holds a 16% market value. The price of Bitcoin has fluctuated over the years, but it has generally increased in the long term. In November 2021, Bitcoin reached its highest-ever price of $68,789.63.

Yazan Boshmaf, Charitha Elvitigala, Husam Al Jawaheri, Primal Wijesekera · 5 authors

Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies to carry out illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on 423K transactions involving 16K addresses, we show that: (1) Starting Sep 2014, the scheme goes through three phases over three years. At its peak, MMM circulated more than 150M dollars a day, after which it collapsed by the end of Jun 2016. (2) There is a high income inequality between MMM members, with the daily Gini index reaching more than 0.9. The scheme also exhibits a zero-sum investment model, in which one member's loss is another member's gain. The percentage of victims who never made any profit has grown from 0% to 41% in five months, during which the top-earning scammer has made 765K dollars in profit. (3) The scheme has a global reach with 80 different member countries but a highly-asymmetrical flow of money between them. While India and Indonesia have the largest pairwise flow in MMM, members in Indonesia have received 12x more money than they have sent to their counterparts in India.

Yazan Boshmaf, Charitha Elvitigala, Husam Al Jawaheri, Primal Wijesekera · 5 authors

Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to carry out various illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on 423K transactions involving 16K addresses, we show that: (1) Starting Sep 2014, the scheme goes through three phases over three years. At its peak, MMM circulated more than 150M dollars a day, after which it collapsed by the end of Jun 2016. (2) There is a high income inequality among MMM members, with the daily Gini index reaching more than 0.9. The scheme also exhibits a zero-sum investment model, in which one member's loss is another member's gain. The percentage of victims who never made any profit has grown from 0% to 41% in five months, during which the top-earning scammer has made 765K dollars in profit. (3) The scheme has a global reach with 80 different member countries, but a highly-asymmetrical flow of money between them. While India and Indonesia have the largest pairwise flow in MMM, members in Indonesia have received 12x more money than they have sent to their counterparts in India.

Vladimir Puzyrev

This study attempts to analyze patterns in cryptocurrency markets using a special type of deep neural networks, namely a convolutional autoencoder. The method extracts the dominant features of market behavior and classifies the 40 studied cryptocurrencies into several classes for twelve 6-month periods starting from 15th May 2013. Transitions from one class to another with time are related to the maturement of cryptocurrencies. In speculative cryptocurrency markets, these findings have potential implications for investment and trading strategies.

Pavel V. Sukharev, Dmitry S. Silnov, Maxim O. Shishkin

In terms of cryptocurrency, mining is a process of creating a new transaction block to add it to the blockchain. The cryptocurrency protocol should ensure the reliability of new transaction blocks. One of the popular mining protocols is the Proof-of-Work protocol, which requires the miner to perform a certain work to verify its right to add a new block into the blockchain. To perform this work, high-performance hardware is used, such as GPU. On the program level, hardware needs special computing framework, for example, CUDA or OpenCL. In this article, we discuss Ethereum cryptocurrency mining using the OpenCL standard. The Ethereum cryptocurrency is the most popular cryptocurrency with GPU-based mining. There are several open-source implementations of the Ethereum cryptocurrency miners. The host-part of the OpenCL-miner is considered, which makes the research results independent of the mining algorithm and allows using the results of the research in the mining of other cryptocurrencies. During the research, we have found the problems, which lead to mining productivity loss, and we are looking for the ways to resolve these problems and thus increase mining performance. As part of solving these problems, we have developed the algorithm for the functioning of the miner and proposed the methodology of determining the optimal size of OpenCL work, which allows to reduce the impact of problems found and achieve maximum mining productivity using OpenCL framework.

S. S. Matveevskii

A project on the use of distributed registry technology to improve funding for start-ups in Japan has been considered. The project is based on the application of distributed registry technology, smart contracts, a big database of start-ups credit risk (in Japan CRDS), a local investment fund, a unified marketing and trading platform. The model of investor behavior (taking into account risk and profitability) has made it possible to show, that with growing investor confidence (individuals and households) and a certain level of profitability of startups, investing in startups will be more preferable, than a bank deposit. The features of the project have been highlighted and a conclusion has been made, that under certain conditions, the adduced scheme for financing start-ups can be used in Russia, for example, by the Industry Development Fund.

V. V. Godin, А. Е. Терехова

The main ideas and properties of blockchain have been examined: architecture, models of blockchain use, in particular, decentralized autonomous organizations and applications, private blockchain – systems and blockchain – services. Blockchain infrastructure in implementation has been analyzed: reality and myths. An attention has been paid to current trends of blockchain usage in business and society in terms of opportunities, threats and risks. The areas of blockchain implementation have been presented, such as government, business, financial organizations, cryptocurrency and ICO, smart contracts and current trends of using blockchain technology.

Ajay Kumar Shrestha, Julita Vassileva

Currently, there is no universal method to track who shared what, with whom, when and for what purposes in a verifiable way to create an individual incentive for data owners. A platform that allows data owners to control, delete, and get rewards from sharing their data would be an important enabler of user data-sharing. We propose a usable blockchain- and smart contracts-based framework that allows users to store research data locally and share without losing control and ownership of it. We have created smart contracts for building automatic verification of the conditions for data access that also naturally supports building up a verifiable record of the provenance, incentives for users to share their data and accountability of access. The paper presents a review of the existing work of research data sharing, the proposed blockchain-based framework and an evaluation of the framework by measuring the transaction cost for smart contracts deployment. The results show that nodes responded quickly in all tested cases with a befitting transaction cost.

Mathieu N Galtier, Camille Marini

Machine learning is promising, but it often needs to process vast amounts of sensitive data which raises concerns about privacy. In this white-paper, we introduce Substra, a distributed framework for privacy-preserving, traceable and collaborative Machine Learning. Substra gathers data providers and algorithm designers into a network of nodes that can train models on demand but under advanced permission regimes. To guarantee data privacy, Substra implements distributed learning: the data never leave their nodes; only algorithms, predictive models and non-sensitive metadata are exchanged on the network. The computations are orchestrated by a Distributed Ledger Technology which guarantees traceability and authenticity of information without needing to trust a third party. Although originally developed for Healthcare applications, Substra is not data, algorithm or programming language specific. It supports many types of computation plans including parallel computation plan commonly used in Federated Learning. With appropriate guidelines, it can be deployed for numerous Machine Learning use-cases with data or algorithm providers where trust is limited.

Thabo J. Gopane

The objective of this paper is to conduct a conceptual assessment of blockchain technology applications to universities. The paper will first address two related questions namely, the concept of smart university, and the architecture of blockchain technology. This paper contributes towards the topical debate of whether the claimed blockchain technological transformation is a hype, reality, revolution, or just an ordinary computing upgrade. It follows that if blockchain is a significant technological advancement then it can only be ignored at own’s peril. This research should benefit innovation policy decisions in the academia for out-of-the box thinking regarding internal control systems and product offering for smart universities.

Shafeeq Ahmad, Ajay Kumar Bharti

Apart from the good utilization of the blockchain, there are different challenges that are there at the blockchain system. The problem is that despite several advantages of a blockchain, the current blockchain networks cannot support at large scale application system. Some of the major problems that blockchain technology suffering from are scalability, privacy, and interoperability. The major issue of blockchain technology is scalability. The problem of scalability means that the capacity to process a transaction on a blockchain is very limited and slow. If we think about financial transactions and we compare the ethereum blockchain or the Bitcoin blockchain to the financial transactions provided by Visa MasterCard or any other centralized company, then we would see a difference between them. The difference is that ten to fifteen transactions per second are performed by blockchain-based decentralized cryptocurrency systems in comparison to several thousand transactions per second by a centralized credit-card system.

Harshavardhan Reddy B, Aravind Reddy Y, Sashi Rekha K

As the population of the world is growing at a rapid pace. By 2050, projections show that there will be 9.2 billion people on the planet that needs to be feed. Farmers need more sustainable and productive ways to be employed to seize a prominent place in the market with compelling profits. One effective way to do that is by using Blockchain to eliminate the middleman and scaling the product effectively. A Blockchain is a distributed and immutable ledger that holds a permanent record of transactional data. It operates as a decentralised database managed by the peers in the network eliminating the middleman. Blockchain helps the farmers to secure more profits, achieving them at least 30% more than what they are earning by currently followed conventional techniques. Especially in the Indian market, the price gap is high between producer and retailer due to the intervention of a middleman. Blockchain not only increases the profits but also ensures the authenticity of the product in real time, providing the customers and peers more information about the product as it is easier to trace the details of the product back and forth through the chain. This also enhances and regulates the price variations providing farmers with the best price they can expect for their product. This will gradually increase the involvement of more people and drives more investors towards the agriculture industry, funding more agriculture-based businesses increasing food production that can be able to feed the massive population sooner.

Γεώργιος Σπαθούλας, Nikos Giachoudis, Georgios-Paraskevas Damiris, Georgios Theodoridis

Internet of Things is one of the most significant latest developments in computer science. It is common for modern computing infrastructures to partially consist of numerous low power devices that are characterized by high diversity in both hardware and software. Existing security models, approaches and solutions are not able to sufficiently protect such systems. In this paper we propose the use of lightweight agents installed at multiple internet of things (IoT) installations (e.g., smart-homes), in order to collaboratively detect distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks conducted by the use of IoT devices botnets. Specifically, agents exchange outbound traffic information in order to identify possible victims of DDoS attacks. This information exchange is governed by a blockchain smart contract, that ensures the integrity of both the procedure and the information. A simulation of the operation of the proposed methodology has been conducted in order to evaluate both its detection efficiency and its resilience against malicious agents that aim to falsify results.

Nadia Fabrizio, Elisa Rossi, Andréa Martini, Dimitar Anastasovski · 7 authors

Invoice discounting is a market with a double-digit potential growth rate in Europe and worldwide in the next years. The main benefit of invoice discounting is the acceleration of cash flow from customers to suppliers: suppliers get advance payments from the bank, rather than waiting for the customers to pay. Hence, thanks to the quick availability of capital, businesses can invest in expansion and growth. More specifically, one of the most relevant problems today is how to provide better and faster invoice discounting services while preventing the double spending and maintaining the risk low. The blockchain frameworks have the potential to provide the right solution and thus to revolutionize the invoice discounting process. The benefits for suppliers, customers and financial institutions are related to the increased transparency added to the whole discounting process and the following risk reduction for the banks due to the capability to enhance the entire process and to reduce the double spending. In our paper, we introduce a blockchain-based invoice discounting system, called Distributed Ledger Invoice, and we propose a novel assessment method for evaluating currently available blockchain solutions for the invoice discounting scenario. Moreover, we also discuss two main issues regarding the information accessibility and the interoperability. In particular, since blockchain is still an emerging technology interoperability is a key factor for the blockchain adoption in inter-banking processes, where different blockchains solutions might be used. In this work we propose a decoupling layer, based on the Attribute-Based Access Control language, to unify the access control to reserved information across heterogeneous blockchains.

Mathieu Galtier, Camille Marini

Machine learning is promising, but it often needs to process vast amounts of\nsensitive data which raises concerns about privacy. In this white-paper, we\nintroduce Substra, a distributed framework for privacy-preserving, traceable\nand collaborative Machine Learning. Substra gathers data providers and\nalgorithm designers into a network of nodes that can train models on demand but\nunder advanced permission regimes. To guarantee data privacy, Substra\nimplements distributed learning: the data never leave their nodes; only\nalgorithms, predictive models and non-sensitive metadata are exchanged on the\nnetwork. The computations are orchestrated by a Distributed Ledger Technology\nwhich guarantees traceability and authenticity of information without needing\nto trust a third party. Although originally developed for Healthcare\napplications, Substra is not data, algorithm or programming language specific.\nIt supports many types of computation plans including parallel computation plan\ncommonly used in Federated Learning. With appropriate guidelines, it can be\ndeployed for numerous Machine Learning use-cases with data or algorithm\nproviders where trust is limited.\n

Jessica Schmeiss, Katharina Hoelzle, Robin P. G. Tech

The paradox of openness is inherent to all platform ecosystems—the tension in enabling maximum openness to create joint innovation while guaranteeing value capturing for all actors. Governance mechanisms to solve this paradox are embedded into the technical architecture of the platform, addressing the dimensions of access, control, and incentives. Blockchain technology offers unique ways to design novel governance mechanisms through the standardization of interactions. However, the design of such an architecture requires careful consideration of the cost associated with it.

Ariana Polyviou, Pantelis Velanas, John Soldatos

Blockchain technology was initially employed as the public transaction ledger for cryptocurrencies. However, beyond cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology has been recently considered for a plethora of other applications as it encapsulates unique properties including decentralization, security, transparency and anti-tampering. Such properties are particularly advantageous for variety of prominent issues experienced in the financial sector. As a result, blockchain technology holds the potential to revolutionize the financial industry by altering the way in which different services are conducted in the financial industry. In this paper, we outline five different financial industry use cases that are expected to be radically transformed by the use of blockchain technology.

Remko van Hoek

Purpose There is great interest in blockchain in the supply chain yet there is little empirical research to support the consideration of the technology. Ferdows (2018) calls for research aimed at learning from pioneers in the field and Gartner points out that the interest in blockchain holds similarities to the interest surrounding RFID 15 years ago. As a result, there may be opportunities to leverage insights from RFID research to inform the consideration of blockchain. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the Reyes et al. (2016) framework for the implementation of RFID may inform the consideration of blockchain in the supply chain. Design/methodology/approach A two-stage approach is used to explore RFID implementation considerations from the Reyes et al. (2016) RFID implementation framework, using an initial exploration of managers interested in blockchain using a focus group and a survey and to more in depth explore three case companies pioneering blockchain. Findings Several RFID implementation considerations can inform the consideration of blockchain but there are also differences in considering blockchain. A framework is developed that details considerations found to be relevant by implementation stage. Originality/value This paper adds to the limited amount of empirical research on blockchain in the supply chain and advances research beyond the consideration of use cases into the exploration of actual implementation of blockchain in the supply chain. The decision framework developed both leverages and nuances findings from RFID research and can inform managerial decision making. It also adds to research a multi-stage approach to implementation and uncovers rich opportunity to further learn from pioneers.

Marius Zoican, Sorin Zoican

Distributed securities exchanges may become de facto fragmented if they span geographical regions with asymmetric computer infrastructure. First, we build an economic model of a decentralized exchange with two miner clusters, standing in for compact areas of economic activity (e.g., cities). "Local" miners in the area with relatively higher trading activity only join a decentralized exchange if they enjoy a large speed advantage over "long-distance" competitors. This is due to a transfer of economic value across miners, specifically from high- to low-activity clusters. Second, we estimate the speed advantage of "local" over "long-distance" miners in a series of Monte Carlo experiments over a two-cluster, unstructured peer-to-peer network simulated in C. We find that the speed advantage increases in the level of infrastructure asymmetry between clusters. Cross-region DEX blockchains are feasible as long as the asymmetry levels in trading activity and infrastructure availability across regions are positively correlated.

Alina Myalo, Nikita Glukhov

Since 2013, Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) have allowed companies to attract financing with the help of cryptocurrencies. Statistics of ICO shows that the ICO market is increasing and demand for funds continues to grow with claims of over $ 15 billion raised in the first half of 2018. The increasing volumes of investment in ICO projects as an alternative method to venture capital or IPO are caused by, for example, the possibility of reselling the received tokens at a higher price after the launch of the project or obtaining the company’s services at lower prices. While the importance of the topic is growing, there is the absence of fundamental works emphasizing the determinants of an ICO’s success. The scientific novelty of the forthcoming research consists in the formation of the model evaluation of ICO success. Using econometric analysis based on data for 1392 projects, we show that the volatility of the main cryptocurrencies has a significant impact on the success of ICO. The constraints of the platform for Smart Contacts (ERC-20) and dependence on the Ethereum volatility overcome all other factors. Our data contributes to existing literature and shows the insignificance e of the sector of the project, almost all location region and fl of infl e of quality of the team. This result may be explained by the uncertainty of the investor about the project (weak signals), absence of the regulation and legal framework. This result is beneficial for owners of companies since it is an argument for decreasing costs for marketing.

Yuling Chen, Jinyi Guo, Changlou Li, Wei Ren

In the big data era, data are envisioned as critical resources with various values, e.g., business intelligence, management efficiency, and financial evaluations. Data sharing is always mandatory for value exchanges and profit promotion. Currently, certain big data markets have been created for facilitating data dissemination and coordinating data transaction, but we have to assume that such centralized management of data sharing must be trustworthy for data privacy and sharing fairness, which very likely imposes limitations such as joining admission, sharing efficiency, and extra costly commissions. To avoid these weaknesses, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based fair data exchange scheme, called FaDe. FaDe can enable de-centralized data sharing in an autonomous manner, especially guaranteeing trade fairness, sharing efficiency, data privacy, and exchanging automation. A fairness protocol based on bit commitment is proposed. An algorithm based on blockchain script architecture for a smart contract, e.g., by a bitcoin virtual machine, is also proposed and implemented. Extensive analysis justifies that the proposed scheme can guarantee data exchanging without a trusted third party fairly, efficiently, and automatically.