With the advent of every of new technology, we feel that we are at the dawn of a revolution. Blockchain, also commonly referred to as ‘Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)’ (synonym but not the same), is one of those technologies that have brought revolution in the field of technology. While blockchain technology might be considered as disruptive in various contexts, there is still a need to understand the term and to know the effective areas, particularly different industries (in broader sense), where the technology is applicable. The aim of this paper is to understand the term as defined by various researchers; investigate its effective application in various industries by reviewing different papers; and understand the success rate of blockchain in its various applications.
Recently, the world has seen the emergence of new phenomenal technology named crypto currency (Bitcoin) which is attracted to several international networkers across the globe. Yet, the Bitcoin was the online currency which is replaced the hard currency in a business online transaction and was accepted only by internet users so far. Though, this invisible currency was not allowed or even accepted in Arab world society because of religious circumstances or governmental consent. In this study, we tried to analyze the real challenges and necessitates that face the Bitcoin in the Arabian region. Therefore, the outcomes have been found that Islamic business rules somehow have restricted the using of the Bitcoin process in financial transactions. Furthermore, the lowest and highest service cost of internet represent the key consequences behind lessen of using Bitcoin. According to Google trends Data from 2013 to 2019, many Arabian-individuals did not know or even unfamiliar with the use of Bitcoin. Keywords: key words, Bitcoin; Arabic countries; Islamic; Internet services DOI : 10.7176/JESD/10-6-18 Publication date :March 31 st 2019
<p><span>Bitcoin uses elliptic curve cryptography for its keys and signatures, but the specific secp256k1 curve used is rather unusual. The ECDSA keys used to generate Bitcoin addresses and sign transactions are derived from some specific parameters. Due to this characteristic, several questions come up concerning Satoshi’s choice of this curve rather than that of the NIST standard secp256r1 curve. Former President Dan Brown’s address to Bitcoin users on the Bitcoin talk.org online forum concerning the use of secp256k1 in Bitcoin of SECG showed his surprise to see someone uses SECG secp256k1 instead of secp256r1 of NIST.</span><span>In this article, we will analyze the random secp256r1 curve and the Koblitz Secp256k1 curve (parameters, equation, automorphism…), by giving the strengths and weaknesses of each one of them, in order to justify the choice of Bitcoin’s creator, and then we will tackle the mining using the new graphic cards.</span></p>
Open access
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Abstract This study develops a review of Blockchain legal regulations in Ukraine. The authors analyze use of Blockchain technology in administration and provision of public services in modern Ukraine. It is stressed that the illegal status of Blockchain and cryptocurrency in Ukraine is a barrier to the full use of these instruments in all spheres of modern life in Ukraine. The caselaw in the field of cryptocurrency use is analyzed.
Open access
Ukrainian Legal and Forensic Studies
Legal Studies and Reforms
Legal, Health, Environmental and COVID-19 Challenges
This paper fits in the trend of discussing the efficiency of cryptocurrency markets. Since 2008, when Bitcoin appeared on the market, arbitrageurs from all over the world have been trying to find the gaps in the markets, which will let them earn risk-free money using financial operations. Although a lot of researchers are trying to figure out arbitrage opportunities, looking at different exchanges and using different cryptocurrencies, so far hardly anyone has looked at arbitrage opportunities with the use of FIAT currencies within the same or different exchanges. This paper examines such opportunities for three different exchanges, i.e. Kraken, Bitfinex and Bitstamp -exchanges that enable trading in USD and EUR against Bitcoin at the same time. The main empirical results suggest that there are significant arbitrage opportunities on these markets. In the paper, we also show the main constraints in FIAT currencies arbitrage on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Recently, the term blockchain has been on everyones lips due to the media hype which has emerged around the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Soon the blockchain paradigm has become an inspiration for additional applications next to cryptocurrencies. One type of such applications are smart contracts, i.e. programs which are executed on a blockchain network and move digital assets according to arbitrary pre-specified rules. Utilizing the combination of cryptographically secure mechanisms of a blockchain and the possibility to execute programs on a blockchain network results in promising use cases for the public and the private sector. In order to run smart contracts, a platform such as Ethereum can be used. In contrast to a public smart contract platform, a private version allows to configure some blockchain-specific parameters when setting up the system. Examples of these configuration parameters are the time passing between two consecutive blocks, the size of blocks, the hardware of the nodes running the blockchain software or simply the size of the network. However, how these and other parameters of a private Ethereum smart contract platform affect the performance of the system is still poorly understood. Moreover, it is not clear to which extent these parameters scale and which parameters represent the bottleneck of such systems. In order to tackle this problem, this thesis introduces a novel concept for measuring the performance and scalability of private Ethereum smart contract platforms. This concept is practically implemented in a framework which allows to automatically deploy differently configured private Ethereum smart contract platforms on the cloud for the purpose of gathering performance-related data. Based on the gathered data, various charts were created which visualize the effects on performance when changing a specific parameter. The results of the data analysis conducted show that the effect of variations in one parameter is highly dependent on the configuration of other parameters as well, especially when running the system near its limits. Nevertheless, a structure which depicts the bottlenecks of current private Ethereum smart contract platforms has been identified. Further research may be conducted in order to support additional Ethereum clients and APIs.
П. С. Ложников, Alexey Е. Sulavko, Samal S. Zhumazhanova
The paper presents a study on the possibility of using distributed ledger technologies in managing various business processes based on electronic document management systems. In the finance and trade sphere, the type of distributed ledger technology, blockchain, is already presented as a real alternative to the existing infrastructure, however, the experience of developing and implementing such solutions in electronic document management systems is currently insufficient. The model of hybrid workflow proposed earlier by the authors of the article has a number of advantages over usual scheme of information exchange, and combines equal document protection in paper and digital form using cryptographic and biometric methods. The described distributed ledger-based hybrid workflow scheme also provides decentralized information storage, a fixed size of data blocks stored and transmitted by users, generation of cryptographic keys using biometric images of authorized users, and identification of subjects that performed various actions on document regardless of its type format. The authors also considered possible problems that might be encountered in the development and implementation of such an information interaction scheme.
Trust in a smart city is fundamental to its transparency, the participation of its people in governance, entrepreneurial initiatives, trade, commerce and hence the growth of its economy. A city gets smart by transforming itself to a digital city, and a digital city runs on data, analytics, internet of things, artificial intelligence and machine learning. This inevitable transformation creates the fundamental need for trust. How does data remain sacrosanct and verifiable? How do people trust institutions? How do institutions trust each other? How do devices trust each other? This article explores blockchain as an essential layer of trust in a smart city. It explains the technology by drawing real-life examples to the ‘memory game’ that operates in an ecosystem of ‘trust and consensus.’ The article provides further insight into institutions that can be governed on blockchain through ‘smart contracts’ in a sovereign and human independent manner. The use cases of blockchain have been corroborated with examples of successful blockchain implementation. The value for blockchain, in general, and smart cities, in particular, has been presented across four categories: (a) the network effect on trust on society, governments and industries; (b) empowering the individual and strengthening the economy; (c) the liquid economy and (d) the shareable economy. Given the current topology of technology innovations, there is no solution better than blockchain that embodies trust. It is a hope and expectation that this article will help smart city planners, developers, architects and thinkers implement blockchain as the embodiment of trust in smart cities that are increasingly becoming digital.
Patrick Ocheja, Brendan Flanagan, Hiroshi Ueda, Hiroaki Ogata
It is a common practice to issue a summary of a learner’s learning achievements in form of a transcript or certificate. However, detailed information on the depth of learning and how learning or teachings were conducted is not present in the transcript of scores. This work presents the first practical implementation of a new platform for keeping track of learning achievements beyond transcripts and certificates. This is achieved by maintaining digital hashes of learning activities and managing access rights through the use of smart contracts on the blockchain. The blockchain of learning logs (BOLL) is a platform that enable learners to move their learning records from one institution to another in a secure and verifiable format. This primarily solves the cold-start problem faced by learning data analytic platforms when trying to offer personalized experience to new learners. BOLL enables existing learning data analytic platforms to access the learning logs from other institutions with the permission of the learners and/or institution who originally have ownership of the logs. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate how learning records could be connected across institutions using BOLL. We present an overview of how the implementation has been carried out, discuss resource requirements, and compare the advantages BOLL has over other similar tools.
Cryptocurrency is playing an increasingly important role in reshaping the financial system due to its growing popular appeal and mechant acceptance. While many people are making investments in Cryptocurrency, the dynamical features, uncertainty, the predictability of Cryptocurrency are still mostly unknown, which dramatically risk the investments. It is a matter to try to understand the factors that infiuence the value formation. In this study, we use advanced artificial intelligence frameworks of fully connected Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network to analyse the price dynamics of Bitcoin, Etherum, and Ripple. We find that ANN tends to rely more on long-term history while LSTM tends to rely more on short-term dynamics, which indicate the efficiency of LSTM to utilise useful information hidden in historical memory is stronger than ANN. However, given enough historical information ANN can achieve a similar accuracy, compared with LSTM. This study provides a unique demonstration that Cryptocurrency market price is predictable. However, the explanation of the predictability could vary depending on the nature of the involved machine-learning model.
In September 2018 the authors released a report funded by the Law Foundation entitled “Regulation of Cryptocurrencies in New Zealand”. This article includes the report’s recommendations as well as background on the implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain to society and the law.
Cryptocurrencies, in particular bitcoin, have captured the public’s attention. It is hard to find a person who has not heard about bitcoin, albeit blockchain, the technology that the creators of bitcoin devised, is still a mystery to most. Blockchain, however, is just one form of distributed ledger technology (DLT). For the sake of simplicity, the term blockchain is used in this article.
Simon Pearson, David May, Georgios Leontidis, Mark Swainson · 10 authors
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), such as blockchain, has the potential to transform supply chains. It can provide a cryptographically secure and immutable record of transactions and associated metadata (origin, contracts, process steps, environmental variations, microbial records, etc.) linked across whole supply chains. The ability to trace food items within and along a supply chain is legally required by all actors within the chain. It is critical to food safety, underpins trust and global food trade. However, current food traceability systems are not linked between all actors within the supply chain. Key metadata on the age and process history of a food is rarely transferred when a product is bought and sold through multiple steps within the chain. Herein, we examine the potential of massively scalable DLT to securely link the entire food supply chain, from producer to end user. Under such a paradigm, should a food safety or quality issue ever arise, authorized end users could instantly and accurately trace the origin and history of any particular food item. This novel and unparalleled technology could help underpin trust for the safety of all food, a critical component of global food security. In this paper, we investigate the (i) data requirements to develop DLT technology across whole supply chains, (ii) key challenges and barriers to optimizing the complete system, and (iii) potential impacts on production efficiency, legal compliance, access to global food markets and the safety of food. Our conclusion is that while DLT has the potential to transform food systems, this can only be fully realized through the global development and agreement on suitable data standards and governance. In addition, key technical issues need to be resolved including challenges with DLT scalability, privacy and data architectures.
The article presents the results of a study of the theoretical foundations of the Blockchain technology. The analysis of the organization structure of its units and the principles of the system. Algorithms of smart contracts are considered and their advantages and disadvantages are analyzed. The purpose of the study is that based on the analysis of the theoretical foundations of building systems using blockchain technology and introducing them into various areas, to propose a system model using smart contracts on the Etherium platform for use in the workflow system in institutions of higher education. Convenient web interfaces for managing the creation of a contract and a module for the interaction of smart contracts with a Web application have been developed. The management of an institution of higher education, namely, a department, faculty or institute, involves the correct and timely preparation of various documentation, in which the documentation on student learning outcomes holds a special place. On its basis various financial and reporting documents are being prepared. To this end, institutions of higher education are introducing workflow system and office automation systems to manage the processing of documents, as well as to organize control over the implementation of these processes. The paper proposes the introduction of a blockchain system on the Ethereum platform using smart contracts written in the Solidity language. Solidity is a tool that is used to create machine-level code that can be run on an Ethereum Virtual Machine. Solidity allows you to create and execute a smart contract without requiring centralized or trusted parties. The use of such technologies makes it possible to significantly reduce the number of paper-based information carriers and, to a significant extent, further automate the existing the workflow system in institutions of higher education. The proposed system is a part of the workflow system of institutions of higher education, which is designed to automate the process of passing documents related to taking into account and submitting to the dean's office of the faculty or the institute the results of the final controls on academic disciplines or the results of retake of tests and exams. This process requires a large number of documents on paper. The proposed system is deployed in the local computer network of the Educational and Scientific Institute of Information Technologies and Mechatronics of Poltava National Technical Yuri Kondratyuk University and is being tested. The results allow us to draw conclusions about the reduction in the number of paper documents; time to obtain permits. In addition, the level of reliability and protection of information transmitted to the administration of the faculty or institute for further processing has increased. In the future, it is planned to introduce the proposed system for document flow automation for all institutes and faculties of the Poltava National Technical Yuri Kondratyuk University.
The authors proposed hardware accelerator for the proof-of-work (PoW) operation in IOTA cryptocurrency. IOTA allows making secure and authenticated quantum resistant channels between IoT devices for communication and micropayments with no fees. Hardware acceleration reduces transaction time and increases throughput. In the article authors consider a basic theory of IOTA operations, generating and signing transaction with Winternitz one-time signatures. The authors describe operation principle of a new ternary hash function Curl. Winternitz one-time signatures and ternary hash function make IOTA quantum resistant. The core of IOTA is called Tangle and unlike Blockchain has Directed Acyclic Graph structure. There are no miners in the Tangle and IoT devices themselves maintain network operation, which leads to unlimited scalability and absence of fees. To add new transaction to the Tangle, IoT devices need to perform PoW operation for spam and Sybil attack protection — iteratively calculate Curl hash function for the IOTA transaction and change nonce field of the transaction until obtained result doesn’t satisfy given criteria, which is some amount of consecutive zero ternary values at the end of transaction hash. The software implementation of Curl hash function is very slow, the PoW operation on embedded devices can last up to 50 minutes, so the hardware acceleration of PoW operation is relevant task. In the proposed work authors created hardware accelerator for IOTA PoW operation. The structure and operation principle of accelerator is described. The proof-of-concept implementations was launched on DE10-nano board, based on Intel programmable logic chip. The proposed PoW hardware accelerator has parameterizable structure. It is possible manually set the number of PoW computing units by changing parameter value. In such parameterizable system one PoW computing unit is master and all remaining PoW units are slaves. Master PoW unit absorbs IOTA transaction, except nonce part, to midstate register utilizing sponge-like approach. Then all POW computing units (master and slaves) preload own state registers from midstate, randomly change personal nonces and start iterative search of valid nonce. When one of PoW computing units finds a valid nonce, PoW operation ends, nonce stored to destination buffer in SDRAM and interrupt is generated for ARM CPU. Final implementation of IOTA PoW hardware accelerator for DE10-nano board contains 11 PoW computing units, delivers 13.2 MH/s hash rate and gives x1000 speedup, compared to software implementation from IOTA developers, for only 30% of 5CSEBA6U23I7 programmable logic chip resources at 100 MHz clock frequency. The average PoW computation time in such implementation is 0.8 second.Ref. 14, img. 6.
Weaknesses in investor control over their investments and in warehousing systemic risk in modern Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) are the result of a combination of market failures and of structural flaws deeply ingrained in modern financial markets. Yet the utility of complex FMI comprising long custodial chains and large global Central Counterparties (CCPs) for the operation of modern markets is not seriously disputed. The change in the technology paradigm with the introduction of DLT systems for securities and derivatives FMI can increase investor control, the efficiency of risk management and, to some extent, augment the distribution of systemic risk. It can thus create a more diverse and resilient financial ecosystem. This cross-disciplinary paper identifies a multitude of reasons that favour a paradigm shift in FMI technology. It also sketches a comprehensive blockchain-based framework for the development of permission-based platforms for derivatives clearing and settlement and the handling of liquidity shortages within DLT systems. Arguably, the impact of technological change should lead to a reduction of industry rents for the benefit of end investors and of the end users of finance (entrepreneurs and businesses) enhancing market welfare. Therefore, the use of blockchain technology in FMI can transform the structure and future direction of the financial services industry as a whole.
Shreekanth M. Prabhu, K. N. Balasubramanya Murthy, Subramanyam Natarajan
The idea of Balanced Development is to ensure equitable distribution of necessities of life and creation of productive remunerative employment across society. Balanced development is a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth and shared prosperity. To facilitate this challenging task, we have proposed an Ontology-based Tantra Social Information Management Framework that can help set goals, design and evaluate interventions, define and monitor relevant metrics in an ongoing basis. Tantra Framework represents social information using ideas from Zachman Framework and concepts from Unified Foundational Ontology. Tantra Framework inter-operates with well-regarded models. Balanced Scorecard is used to define development objectives. Bartels’ Theory of Separations is used to identify barriers to access, consumption and profitable participation. Theory of Change process is used to arrive at right intervention. Distributed Ledgers are proposed to handle Change Management. A Social Information Management Process is proposed to keep the framework populated, complete and current. Tantra Framework can lead to broader Digital Governance Framework with strong cognizance of Social dimension. The paper explains how Tantra Framework can be used to realize Economic Development in Indian context.
Zero-knowledge and multi-prover systems are both central notions in classical and quantum complexity theory. There is, however, little research in quantum multi-prover zero-knowledge systems. This paper studies complexity-theoretical aspects of the quantum multi-prover zero-knowledge systems. This paper has two results: 1.QMIP* systems with honest zero-knowledge can be converted into general zero-knowledge systems without any assumptions. 2.QMIP* has computational quantum zero-knowledge systems if a natural computational conjecture holds. One of the main tools is a test (called the GHZ test) that uses GHZ states shared by the provers, which prevents the verifier's attack in the above two results. Another main tool is what we call the Local Hamiltonian based Interactive protocol (LHI protocol). The LHI protocol makes previous research for Local Hamiltonians applicable to check the history state of interactive proofs, and we then apply Broadbent et al.'s zero-knowledge protocol for QMA \cite{BJSW} to quantum multi-prover systems in order to obtain the second result.
International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering (A UGC Approved and indexed with DOI, ICI and Approved, DPI Digital Library) is one of the leading and growing open access, peer-reviewed, monthly, and scientific research journal for scientists, engineers, research scholars, and academicians, which gains a foothold in Asia and opens to the world, aims to publish original, theoretical and practical advances in Computer Science,Information Technology, Engineering (Software, Mechanical, Civil, Electronics & Electrical), and all interdisciplinary streams of Computing Sciences. It intends to disseminate original, scientific, theoretical or applied research in the field of Computer Sciences and allied fields. It provides a platform for publishing results and research with a strong empirical component. It aims to bridge the significant gap between research and practice by promoting the publication of original, novel, industry-relevant research.
ABSTRACT The Ethereum block chain as a decentralized platform is so successful that many applications deployed on it. However, for the inherent transparency properties and the lack of privacy, deploying a financial application on top of it is always a challenge. In this paper, we tackle this challenge and propose an anonymous sealed-bid auction protocol based on time-released encryption atop Consortium Block chain. We adopt a strict digital certificate-based identity mechanism of the consortium block chain to permit legitimate participants, and utilize the blind signature based on elliptic curve technology to allowing anonymous participation. Moreover, a timed release public key encryption algorithm is adopted to encrypt bids and prevent auctioneer from colluding with bidders. This is completely different from the method (zero-knowledge proof) used in other papers to prevent collusion between auctioneer and bidder. We provide a specific analysis of our protocol, which shows that our protocol meets anonymity and applicability. KEYWORDS Consortium Block chain, Smart Contract, Sealed-Bid Auction, Time-Released Encryption, Blind signature
In the past decades, the blockchain technology has attracted tremendous attention from both academia and industry. The popularity of blockchain networks was originated from a crypto-currency to serve as a decentralized and tamperproof transaction data ledger. Nowadays, blockchain as the key framework in the decentralized public data-ledger, has been applied to a wide range of scenarios far beyond crypto-currencies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), healthcare, and insurance. This survey aims to fill the gap between the large number of studies on blockchain network, where game theory emerges as an analytical tool, and the lack of a comprehensive survey on the game theoretical approaches applied in blockchain related issues. In this paper, we review game models proposed to address common issues in the blockchain network. The issues include security issues, e.g., selfish mining, majority attack and Denial of Service (DoS) attack, issues regard mining management, e.g., computational power allocation, reward allocation, and pool selection, as well as issues regarding blockchain economic and energy trading. Additionally, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of these selected game models and solutions. Finally, we highlight important challenges and future research directions of applying game theoretical approaches to incentive mechanism design, and the combination of blockchain with other technologies.