Ivan Puddu, Daniele Lain, Moritz Schneider, Elizaveta Tretiakova · 6 authors
We investigate identity lease, a new type of service in which users lease their identities to third parties by providing them with full or restricted access to their online accounts or credentials. We discuss how identity lease could be abused to subvert the digital society, facilitating the spread of fake news and subverting electronic voting by enabling the sale of votes. We show that the emergence of Trusted Execution Environments and anonymous cryptocurrencies, for the first time, allows the implementation of such a lease service while guaranteeing fairness, plausible deniability and anonymity, therefore shielding the users and account renters from prosecution. To show that such a service can be practically implemented, we build an example service that we call TEEvil leveraging Intel SGX and ZCash. Finally, we discuss defense mechanisms and challenges in the mitigation of identity lease services.
We have reviewed the potential impact of blockchain technology on the music industry by analyzing the views of academia and the industry experts. The music industry had rapid changes from the physical market to the digital market in the past decades. The consumers download and stream music online and mobile during the digital dominant market. While streaming music has been recently growing at a fast rate, fair distribution of revenue to the artists continues to be an issue. Some industry experts believe that the issue of fair distribution of revenue to the artist may be resolved using blockchain technology, while some are skeptical about the application or the duration of impact. The blockchain may enhance speedier payment using smart contracts, provide additional revenue and promote the music if excellent fan support is achieved. The positive impact on the music industry may only be possible if there are detailed consideration of the industry and careful understanding of the customers.
As the conjuncture of the energetic system in countries or different regions changes, renewable energy sources play a significant role. Thanks to them, it is possible to move from pollute fossil fuels to sustainable use of clean resources. It is widely acknowledged that the use of biomass waste promotes better environmental state and sustainable development because the waste that cannot be recycled is used for energy production. This article describes the usage of blockchain technology-based biomass systems that not only allows tracing the emergence of biomass, but also contributes to the development of sustainable energy. The research shows that a biomass blockchain enables simplification of biomass production process, thus saving resources and contributing to the expansion of forests and the development of common energy system.
Blockchain is a decentralized; peer-to-peer network based public, encrypted and immutable digital federated ledger system. This paper focuses on interplay of blockchain technology and intellectual property rights (IPRs). It explores the avenues where blockchain technology can be useful in processing of IP applications, maintaining IP records, licensing and smart contracts, enforcement and management of IP rights. Apart from the use of blockchain in IP management, other uses o f blockchain technology for various e-governance schemes initiated by government of India and state governments have also been highlighted.
For a couple of years, the cryptocurrency has made a splash in the world of economy, turning from virtual money into a huge market in its size and creating a new full-fledged ideology of money-crypto-economy. Cryptocurrency has a huge potential for development. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that uses encryption technology to transfer value over the Internet. But today cryptocurrency is trading that most meets the needs of modern society. This form of currency works independently of the banking system and can use in many countries as cash. The relevance of the study is whether cryptocurrency has a positive impact on the development of the economy. The purpose of this article is studying the impact of the process of introduction and use of cryptocurrencies in the economy of Kazakhstan. This process is intensively developing.The key issue for a deeper understanding of the role cryptocurrency is determining their economic nature. Research methods include the stage of cryptocurrency analysis affecting the financial sector, the dynamics of the cryptocurrency market and the overall analysis of assets. For analysis, we paid attention to five cryptocurrencies with the largest capitalization and a large amount of data. The analysis revealed the main factors affecting the market price of cryptocurrency and ways to eliminate them. In addition, the main problems of introducing cryptocurrencies in Kazakhstan, such as the process of regulation of the cryptocurrency market identified and prospects analyzed. A new form of cryptocurrency uses pro-posed.
The blockchain architecture is often envisioned as a potential mechanism for the automation microtransactions between interconnected IoT applications, as transactions could be directly enforced through the technical governance structure it provides. However, this chapter draws attention to the limitations of the blockchain architecture in providing tools for conflict management, which is here considered to be a vital for both governance and the legitimacy of the system. Although blockchain’s potential for conflict prevention is often emphasised, experiences from public blockchain networks such as Ethereum demonstrate that prevention is not sufficient but instead dispute resolution mechanisms are needed for addressing unpredictable events. To this end, alternative conflict management strategies have been developed for blockchain-related disputes. We assess these emergent redress mechanisms from the perspective of conflict management with specific attention to fairness of outcomes and due process rules. By making a distinction between systemic disputes and low intensity disputes we demonstrate how conflict management, governance and technological infrastructure converge on blockchain networks. This convergence, in turn, influences how fairness expectations and due process safeguards are formulated, causing concern for the fairness of emergent conflict management. The design of blockchain-based IoT applications should take into consideration the need for conflict management and particular attention should be paid to the fairness of such mechanisms, as these contribute to the fulfillment of fairness expectations, the legitimacy and predictability of governance structures and, in the end, feasibility of mainstream use.
Abstract The goal is to identify the characteristics of innovative business models that use blockchain technology. Through a qualitative and descriptive research, we sought, in the Crunshbase database, the companies that had in their activity description the word Blockchain, obtaining a total of 810 companies. The data obtained were tabulated in Excel spreadsheet and we carried out a collection of additional information on the websites of the organizations. The process of data analysis used the technique of document analysis and content analysis. The results allowed us to identify that most organizations' foundation date from 2014 and are located in North America. Regarding the area of expertise of these organizations, it can be observed that most of them belong to financial and technology areas. Moreover, 10 companies were already in operation before the creation of blockchain technology, pointing out the characteristic of a disruptive technology, which is the readjustment of established companies. Finally, we highlight the contributions related to the field, by identifying the main areas of business that use blockchain technology, as well as revealing important descriptions about these companies. In addition to contributions to the theory, by presenting empirical evidences of active business with this technology and its contributions to the various areas.
Speculation on Bitcoin, the evolution of money in the digital age, and the underlying blockchain technology are attracting growing interest. In the context of the Eurosystem, this briefing paper analyses the legal nature of privately issued virtual currencies (VCs), the implications of VCs for central bank’s monetary policy and monopoly of note issue, and the risks for the financial system at large. The paper also considers some of the proposals concerning central bank issued virtual currencies. This document was provided by Policy Department A at the request of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
The article states that the cooperative movement has become widespread in order to overcome the socio-economic problems of rural communities and restructuring of the social system at the end of XIX at the beginning of the XX centuries in various regions of Ukraine, which subsequently became the national socio-economic phenomenon. The formation of service cooperatives was carried out through the creation of agricultural partnerships and their associations in cooperative unions, federations and development centers. It was proved that the formation of a cooperative movement did not take place without the intervention of public authorities, which in addition to the adoption of relevant normative documents constantly tried to impose their party ideology to the citizens through collaboration with cooperative system. It was established that at the same time the cooperative institutions influenced on the political life of the country through the financing of parties and fulfilling the propaganda work among the population. It was determined that the spread of cooperation was due to the mass involving of cooperatives and their institutions to the cultural-educational, information-educational and upbringing work. In particular, the special attention was paid to the creation of cooperative circles, schools, libraries, carrying out of demonstrative shows and exhibitions, organization of hire stations of agricultural machinery and equipment. The expediency of taking into account the historical experience of the formation and development of cooperation as a social and economic phenomenon in the state in the current conditions of the reform of decentralization of power and the emergence of rural united territorial communities was summarized. It was noted that it is necessary to focus the attention on the main ideological and organizational principles of the revival and development of the Ukrainian cooperative movement, education of nationally conscious members of society, raising the cultural-educational and financial-economic level of the population for the successful development of rural areas of Ukraine.
Fazeel Ahmed Khan, Adamu Abubakar Ibrahim, Marwan Mahmoud, Mahmoud Ahmad Al‐Khasawneh · 5 authors
The emergence of Blockchain have revolutionize the decentralization in distributed architecture. The advances in the consensus mechanism techniques and the development of different variants of consensus algorithms gives a huge impact on its progress. These technologies allow to have a distributed peer-to-peer network in which each external entity can be able to interact with other entities without any trusted intermediary in a verifiable manner. The existing consensus algorithms are mostly concerned with public blockchain having focused on public ledgers in general. The consortium blockchain is least focused as compared with other variants of blockchain (public and private) showing the need to address this vacuum. In this paper, we proposed a consensus algorithm named Rift for consortium blockchain which works on the principle of trust mechanism for achieving consensus in a blockchain. The consensus is achieved by distributed nodes in a consortium blockchain which were controlled by consortium members to decentralize the arbitration by voting and trust metrics. In this paper, we elaborate the comprehensive idea of Rift and discuss the working model for this algorithm. We also perform simulation on the proposed algorithm and determine the performance variables to evaluate the effectiveness of Rift. The evaluated results show the improvement in the performance which is the objective requirement for the evaluation.
The arrival and capabilities of Blockchain is set to change the traditional supply chain activities. The tracking all types of transaction more transparently and securely using Blockchain motivate us to explore the opportunities Blockchain offers across the supply chain. This paper explores opportunities for use of Blockchain technology in supply chains. Particularly, examine whether Blockchain technology makes a good fit for use in an Australian manufacturer supply chain. Blockchain allows us to have permissioned or permission-less distributed ledgers where stakeholders can interact with each other. It details how Blockchain works and the mechanism of hash algorithms which allows for greater security of information. Case study focuses on the supply chain management and looks at the intricacies of an Australian manufacturers supply chain. We present a summary of opportunities for using Blockchain technology in supply chains in an Australian manufacturing case study. The summary is proposed in using private Blockchain in the case study. The opportunities using Blockchain technology has the potential to bring greater transparency, validity across the supply chain, and improvement of communication between stakeholders involved.
The article establishes that sustainable territorial development is impossible without the partnership of public authorities and business. It is noted that Public Private Partnership (PPP) is an institutional and organizational alliance between authorities and business for the purpose of realization of socially significant projects in various spheres of activity. It is revealed that this transfer of business is part of the powers, responsibilities and risks associated with the implementation of investment projects that have traditionally been implemented through budget financing. The attention was paid to the forms of public private partnership. The current state of realization of local public private partnership projects is analysed, actual problems have been identified and directions of financing of development of territories have been clarified. It is proved that the partnership between the authorities and the private sector is aimed at increasing the efficiency of the implementation of infrastructure projects at the local level, solving important issues of local importance and meeting the needs and interests of the territorial community in obtaining quality services. There are listed spheres and sectors of application public private partnership. There are mentioned advantages of the use of public private partnership. The statistical data and the dynamics of realization of projects implemented on the basis of public private partnership are presented. An example of the use of public private partnership, as an instrument for the development of territories, is presented. Attention is paid to the institutional environment of the implementation of public private partnership projects. The expediency of harmonization of concession legislation with the legislation on public private partnership and implementation of best international experience in legal regulation in Ukraine is substantiated. The necessity of development of public private partnership as an instrument of development of territories in the conditions of realization of the decentralization of power relations reform is pointed out.
Block chain is a decentralized infrastructure that is widely used in emerging digital cryptocurrencies and has received attention and research as Bitcoin has gradually become accepted. Block chain technology is the underlying technology of Bitcoin. Its decentralization, block data cannot be tampered with, and it is trusted, which makes its application in various fields gradually gaining attention. With the deepening of the phenomenon of globalization and division of labor, the supply chain of modern enterprises began to appear fragmentary, complex, decentralized, and other phenomena, which brought great challenges to the supply chain management. First of all, it gives a basic overview of the block chain technology, explains its composition, basic framework and technical characteristics, then analyzes the problems in the current supply chain management, and finally points out that the block chain technology solves the above-mentioned supply chain management problems. The purpose is to help the block chain technology in the field of supply chain related research.
Blockchain technology has become extremely popular, during the last decade, mainly due to the successful application in the cryptocurrency domain. Following the explosion of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, blockchain solutions are being deployed in almost every aspect of transactional operations as a means to safely exchange digital assets between non-trusted parties. At the heart of every blockchain deployment is the consensus protocol, which maintains the consistency of the blockchain upon satisfying incoming transactions. Although many consensus protocols have been recently introduced, the most prevalent is Proof-of- Work, which scales the blockchain globally by converting the consensus problem to a competition based on cryptographic hash functions; a process called “mining”. The Proof-of- Work consensus protocol employs memory-hard algorithms in order to counteract ASIC or FPGA mining that may compromise the decentralization and democratization of the blockchain. Unfortunately, this leads to increased power consumption and scalability challenges since numerous processing units such as GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs, are required to satisfy the ever-increasing operational requirements of blockchain deployments. In this paper, we perform an in-depth performance analysis and characterization of the most common memory-hard PoW algorithms running on NVIDIA GPUs. Motivated by our experimental findings, we apply a series of optimizations on Ethash algorithm, the consensus protocol of the Ethereum blockchain. The implemented optimizations accelerate performance by 14% and improve energy efficiency by 10% when executing on three NVIDIA GPUs. As a result, the optimized Ethash algorithm outperformed its fastest commercial implementation.
Due to the mobility of nodes, lack of infrastructure and limited computing and storage resources in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), this scheme uses the self-certification public key, combined with the interactive zero-knowledge proof and KEA+ key exchange method in the GPS identity authentication protocol, uses four interactions to complete the two-way identity authentication and key exchange of both parties, and which security is analyzed subsequently. The scheme effectively reduces the leakage of the claimant's secret knowledge in the identity authentication process, and enhances the reliability of the identity authentication and key exchange process.
Kalpanasonika R, Sayasri S M, Vinothini A, Suga Priya H
The accusative of this paper is to predict the bitcoin price accurately by taking various parameters into consideration which affects the bitcoin value. Here multi-layer perceptron algorithms under deep learning are used to predict the price of crypto-currency. Many researchers have analysed the crypto-currency features in many ways such as, market price prediction, the impact of cryptocurrency in real life. It has the ability to make long-term prediction of the exchange price in crypto-currencies particularly in US dollar, based on historical trends. The bitcoin cost prediction is done based on the data set which consists of 13 features relating to the crypto-currency price recorded daily over the period of particular range.
Blockchain, arguably the most discussed and promising of FinTech trends, has incredible potential to transform legal technology. Infamous as the technology behind cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology (DLT) has developed far beyond these origins and may prove far more valuable than the currency it supports. As a form of DLT, blockchain allows for secure decentralisation of peer-to-peer, irreversible exchanges, providing a transparent and irrevocable record as these occur. The technology is already used across the legal industry and a plethora of opportunities to extend its application bubble beneath the surface, under development, waiting to break into the current market.
Blockchain technology has worked over the years and is being successfully applied in finance industry. The characteristics of decentralization, openness, immutability and security provide a natural solution to the distributed autonomy management for diverse energy sources and the transaction between a wide range of participants in the energy power industry. This paper introduces the current development status and the research on the application of blockchain technology in this industry in China from the aspects of demand response, point-to-point transaction and distributed energy resource. Existed problems and suggestions are concluded for the future studies.
In recent years, blockchain technology has been developing rapidly in social economy. As blockchain technology has many excellent properties, it is used for the transaction of Bitcoin at first. With the rise of Bitcoin, the connection between blockchain technology and financial market will be closer more integrative. And then more and more financial institutions have recognized the importance of blockchain technology and started to try to use this technology in financial operations, such as R3CEV, Hyperledger and Qiwi. Many financial institutions have started trying to apply blockchain technology into financial transactions in order to decrease transaction costs and increase operational efficiencies, especially in financial note, cross-border payment and asset-backed securitization. It can be seen that blockchain technology will have widely application prospects in financial fields in the future.
The purpose of this paper is to present the potential advantages of using blockchain technology in the field of international trade. Blockchain, known as one of the disruptive technologies of the moment, will bring important changes to the process of specific foreign trade operations. In this paper, there are presented elements specific to the blockchain technology, its underlying principles, but also the areas in which this technology can be applied. Referring to the academic literature and various online sources, we identified blockchain-based applications in the international trade field (logistics and financial scope) and we highlighted the potential benefits of this technology.
Abstract This paper critically examines the intersection and interactions between conventional law produced and enforced by national legal systems (ie the ‘code of law’) and the internal rules of blockchain systems, which take the form of executable software code and cryptographic algorithms operating across a distributed computing network (‘code as law’). In so doing, it seeks to identify whether, and to what extent, ‘regulation by blockchain’ will successfully avoid governance by conventional law. It identifies three different ways in which the code of law is likely to interact with code as law, based primarily on the intended motives and purposes of those engaged in activities in developing, maintaining or undertaking transactions upon the network. It argues that these different classes of case are likely to generate different kinds of dynamic interaction between the blockchain code and conventional legal systems, and critically examines the normative foundations of these emerging and anticipated interactions.
Farmers need to be efficient and dedicate a lot of time in order to sustain the quality of their animals which are in their care. The most convenient and good quality - price ratio should be chosen for the feed of animals. Blockchain is used in a virtual space to store and share information over a network of users. This is done using the open source Hyperledger Fabric platform. The transactions can be viewed by all the other users in real time. These transactions are stored as JSONs inside CouchDB NoSQL database which supports queries on a large volume of data. When using this technology, the farmer can know with whom the supplier for animal feed collaborated with. The history of the transactions are not saved in just one place. In this way, it is more difficult to hack and provide implausible information. An e-learning platform was created where the farm's user can post information, respectively new blocks about the animal's birth, vaccinations, medicines, including the location of the livestock. The same e-learning platform is accessible from the mobile phone. By using the blockchain technology, anyone, including the client from the shop can know a lot about the origin of the products. Fake origins of food are much more difficult to hide. Fraud is also limited. The system monitored the traceability of dairy products inside a Romanian farm. Data about fodder provider and quality, cow productive performances and health and dairy products process were obtained and analyzed by students who will become specialists at all the levels of the food chain. Blockchain is the technology which in case of a dairy products contamination, the origin of the farm is traced in just a couple of seconds. In this way just a batch of dairy products is removed from distribution, leading to the reduction of food waste.
Geoengineering is a proposed response to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Conventionally it consists of two strands: Solar Radiation Management (SRM), which is fast-acting, incomplete but inexpensive, and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), which is slower acting, more expensive, and comprehensive. Pairing SRM and CDR offers a contractually complete solution for future emissions if effectively-scaled and coordinated. SRM offsets warming, while CDR takes effect.We suggest coordination using a blockchain, i.e. smart contracts and a distributed ledger. Specifically, we integrate CDR futures with time and volume-matched SRM orders, to address emissions contractually before release. This provides an economically and environmentally proportionate solution to CO2 emissions at the wellhead, with robust contractual transparency, and minimal overhead cost. Our proposal offers a ‘polluter pays’ implementation of Long & Shepherds SRM ‘bridge’ concept. This ‘polluter geoengineers’ approach mandates and verifies emissions-linked payments with minimal friction, delay, or cost. Finally, we compare alternative market designs against this proposal, finding that this proposal offers several advantages. We conclude that blockchain implementation of the ‘polluter geoengineers’ approach is attractive and feasible for larger wellhead contracts. We also identify a handful of advantages and disadvantages that merit further study.