This article analyses the main legal requirements in the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), general data protection regulation (GDPR) and the intersections between privacy laws, genomic data and smart contracts (such as fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The CCPA and GDPR laws impose several restrictions on the storing, accessing, processing and transferring of personal data. This has generated some challenges for lawyers, data processors and business enterprises engaged in blockchain offerings, especially as they pertain to high-risk data sets such as genomic data. The technical features of NFT, distributed storage and wallets to trace and govern genomic (DNA) data sets will allow data donors to establish digital ownership and control in line with privacy laws using ‘programmable privacy smart contracts’. To be legally compliant, the design of blockchain value propositions should include privacy-by-design capabilities in the smart contract coding language itself. This article describes three domains (privacy laws, genomics and NFTs) and begins to explore how data engineers can address the challenges of coding privacy laws, the legal requirements into smart contracts. This current approach focuses on NFTs and genomic data requirements which include the selection of genetic metadata borrowing from developing ERC specifications and their programming logic. Programmable privacy is a unique way to write and design computer code, which can automatically check the legal compliance of the smart contract in a trust-less and decentralised way. We exemplify the approach by describing the conceptual value proposition of Genobank.io, a privacy-preserving genomic data platform.
Robbie Morrison, Natasha C. H. L. Mazey, Stephen C. Wingreen
This paper reviews the recent case of The DAO “hack” in June 2016 and analyzes The DAO's response in its time of crisis, and its implications for corporate and IT governance. There was no human-led governance in The DAO. Instead, The DAO placed its trust in the smart contract they had built together on the blockchain, which became its governance mechanism. The events that follow allow us to see hitherto unobservable organizational behaviors that are unique to trustless organizations, and hence The DAO gives us a glimpse at a new species of corporate governance. This paper explores the implications of these ideas: we propose the emergence of a spectrum of organizations based on the alienation of trust, we consider the economic impact and legality of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), smart contracts, work and job design, and what happens when corporate governance is managed solely by IT governance.
Christof Ferreira Torres, Antonio Ken Iannillo, Arthur Gervais, Radu State
<div> <div> <p>Smart contracts are Turing-complete programs that are executed across a blockchain. Unlike traditional programs, once deployed, they cannot be modified. As smart contracts carry more value, they become more of an exciting target for attackers. Over the last years, they suffered from exploits costing millions of dollars due to simple programming mistakes. As a result, a variety of tools for detecting bugs have been proposed. Most of these tools rely on symbolic execution, which may yield false positives due to over-approximation. Recently, many fuzzers have been proposed to detect bugs in smart contracts. However, these tend to be more effective in finding shallow bugs and less effective in finding bugs that lie deep in the execution, therefore achieving low code coverage and many false negatives. An alternative that has proven to achieve good results in traditional programs is hybrid fuzzing, a combination of symbolic execution and fuzzing. In this work, we study hybrid fuzzing on smart contracts and present ConFuzzius, the first hybrid fuzzer for smart contracts. ConFuzzius uses evolutionary fuzzing to exercise shallow parts of a smart contract and constraint solving to generate inputs that satisfy complex conditions that prevent evolutionary fuzzing from exploring deeper parts. Moreover, ConFuzzius leverages dynamic data dependency analysis to efficiently generate sequences of transactions that are more likely to result in contract states in which bugs may be hidden. We evaluate the effectiveness of ConFuzzius by comparing it with state-of-the-art symbolic execution tools and fuzzers for smart contracts. Our evaluation on a curated dataset of 128 contracts and a dataset of 21K real-world contracts shows that our hybrid approach detects more bugs than state-of-the-art tools (up to 23%) and that it outperforms existing tools in terms of code coverage (up to 69%). We also demonstrate that data dependency analysis can boost bug detection up to 18%.</p> </div> </div>
Despite various countries getting hands-on technology such as blockchain for banking, transaction,<br> and multiple benefits, a developing country such as India must use these technologies because of<br> the advantages it provides in order to keep pace. In the age of digital currencies and new emerging<br> technologies, central banking is a fast-growing topic in the monetary economy. Cryptocurrencies,<br> blockchain, and distributed Ledger technologies appear to be feasible rivals to Fiat Currency<br> central bank. Blockchain technology's influence behind Cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies have<br> the ability to boost payments and operations by central banks and serve as a forum from which<br> central banks could Perhaps launch their own digital currencies. RBI Indian central bank is no less<br> important when it comes to technology that would pave the way for the new economy, enriched<br> with technology-centric growth momentum, by increasing support from India's reserve bank and<br> the Indian government for innovation and integrating technologies through regulatory sandboxes<br> and various other systems. This article illustrates distributed ledger technology in the Indian<br> context. The secondary data were obtained from various scholarly journals and websites. We have<br> analysed distributed ledger technology, India’s move towards learning new technologies, different<br> central banks distributed ledger project and examined blockchain technology in the Indian market<br> using the SWOC framework as a research case study.
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Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Innovations and Analysis in Business and Education
Blockchain supports a variety of decentralized applications enabled by its immutable, decentralized, and trustless properties. However, there are no unifying criteria for blockchain architecture across the organizations and business models. This variance has created complex and diverse blockchain products. Costs in every economic exchange with partners are associated with two metrics: transaction costs due to market imperfections and agency costs due to conflict of interest and information asymmetry in an organization. To understand the effectiveness of economic activities by blockchain intervention and facilitate strategic alignment, we use transaction cost and agency cost as theoretical lenses to explore the impacts of blockchain, discuss the transformation of those costs, and support our arguments using a case study. Our study proposes that blockchain technology brings two more benefits, trust and transparency, to the existing Internet-based business services, and helps improve corporate governance. Smart contracts improve the execution time of transactions significantly and increase transaction volume rapidly. As the internet shifts hierarchies towards electronic markets, lack of trust between peers inhibits exchanges. Blockchain applications provide a framework for building trust between peers through its consent mechanism, which allows organizations to construct trust and operate in a more decentralized manner. Thus, by including blockchain in the current Internet infrastructure, the decision boundary of organization forms would extend outward. Finally, the transformation of costs in different stages of the blockchain transition, as described in our study, has important managerial implications for the organization structure and the role of third parties. Blockchain does not assume away transaction and agency costs but pushes the transformation of the two, forming a more efficient economic entity. This study contributes to the academia and the industry. We first add to the understanding of blockchain from the perspective of exchange technology. Second, we contribute to the prediction of organization boundaries. Third, the shift in the role of third parties supports the transaction cost theory in terms of controlling opportunism. Lastly, this study facilitates the development of blockchain business models and contributes to the practice.
Insurance is a big financial market with a high-risk high-gain margin. But the insurance system existing in the current scenario has a lot of dependencies both on the Insurance provider as well as the consumer. With its distributed ledger, smart contracts, and non-repudiation capabilities, blockchain is revolutionizing the way financial organizations do business, and the insurance industry is no exception. Through blockchain this system can be optimized to reduce costs and the middlemen dependency involved, by managing information in a smarter way. The main idea is to establish a peer to peer system of consensus for claiming insurance without the hassle of involving insurance surveyors or other non-involved parties.
Technologists have argued that cryptocurrencies and blockchains will revolutionize our lives. Many have suggested that blockchain is the single biggest technological innovation since the internet itself. It will “democratize finance” and “disintermediate big tech” among other societal improvements. Yet adoption of blockchain has been underwhelming, and it has largely failed to live up to these lofty expectations. One significant reason for this is that the digital assets that underpin blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ether are often not secure, as the industry has been rife with hacks and scams. The emerging market for Digital Asset Insurance may provide the necessary backstop to make the asset safe enough for broader adoption. This article provides an overview of the relevant technology, outlines the state of the digital asset insurance industry, and discusses how the insurance integral to the broader blockchain ecosystem.
Ahmad Shauqi Bin Haji Mohamad Zubir, Nur Aishah, Azwadi Ali, Safiek Mokhlis · 5 authors
As the society is becoming more digitised day by day, we are being constantly introduced with advanced smart technologies that transpire changes in our lives. The blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came in at the appropriate time which has provided pathways and security for many vulnerable internet-connected devices as the technology uses distributed verification of transactions. Due to their unique features, cryptocurrencies carry value on their own and now can be used for trading and transactions. In many established markets, transactions and trading in cryptocurencies have been growing and many have seen them as potential assets and investment option. Nevertheless, in many other countries, cryptocurrencies are not very popular and due to lack of awareness, many of their citizens are yet to own any cryptocurrencies. This study assessed the awareness of cryptocurrencies among selected Malaysian public and tested certain determinants and found almost three quarter of the respondents were aware of them but none is owning even one digital currency. Among the determinants, age group, ethnicity and occupation status were found to have influenced respondents’ awareness about cryptocurrencies. If it is an interest of the government to promote the use of cryptocurrencies, necessary exposure campaigns as well as guarantee of control and security should be made a priority.
Abstract Blockchain technology has become an ubiquitous phenomenon. While the topic originated in computer science, the business and economics literature was comparatively slow to pick up on it. To better understand the academic basis, current developments and future research avenues of the discourse, 9672 cited references of 467 blockchain and cryptocurrency articles from the fields of business and economics are gathered from the Web of Science Core Collection and are analyzed. Five major strands of research are identified through factor analysis. They are reviewed and their interrelation is mapped using social network analysis. Research on (I) market efficiency and economics and (II) asset pricing and valuation is relatively mature and focuses on cryptocurrencies, while research on (III) the principles and applications of blockchain technology, (IV) transactions and anonymity and (V) monetary theory and policy lacks maturity. Potential paths for future research are pointed out and in conclusion, it is assessed that this young field of research still leaves plenty of room for manoeuvre. A scientific place next to Nakamoto (2008) is still available for existing, emerging and new research streams.
The tokenization of assets deployed to distributed ledger technology is increasingly cited to revolutionize financial services by allowing traditionally illiquid assets to be bought and sold on primary and secondary markets increasing asset liquidity, transparency and reducing transaction completion time. To realize these benefits it is important the token is transferrable, that is, portable from one distributed ledger to another. In this paper we survey current interoperability architectures and smart contract languages, identifying factors affecting the portability of tokenized assets. We propose a portability maturity model that can be used to help assess the current state of technology and supporting market infrastructure.
‘‘Cryptocurrency trading was one of the most exciting jobs of 2017’’. ‘‘Bit- coin’’,‘‘Blockchain’’, ‘‘Bitcoin Trading’’ were the most searched words in Google during 2017. High return on investment has attracted many people towards this crypto market. Existing research has shown that the trading price is completely based on speculation, and its trading volume is highly impacted by news media. This paper discusses the existing work to evaluate the sentiment and price of the cryptocurrency, the issues with the current trading models. It builds possible solutions to understand better the semantic orientation of text by comparing different machine learning techniques and predicts Bitcoin trading price based on Twitter feed sentiment and additional Bitcoin metrics. We observe that the statistical machine learning model was able to better predict the sentiment of Twitter tweet feed compared to the advanced BERT model. Using Twitter feed sentiment and additional Bitcoin metrics, we were able to improve the prediction of bitcoin price compared to only using bitcoin’s previous day closing pricing.
Clara Schneidewind, Ilya Grishchenko, Markus Scherer, Matteo Maffei
Ethereum has emerged as the most popular smart contract development platform, with hundreds of thousands of contracts stored on the blockchain and covering a variety of application scenarios, such as auctions, trading platforms, and so on. Given their financial nature, security vulnerabilities may lead to catastrophic consequences and, even worse, they can be hardly fixed as data stored on the blockchain, including the smart contract code itself, are immutable. An automated security analysis of these contracts is thus of utmost interest, but at the same time technically challenging for a variety of reasons, such as the specific transaction-oriented programming mechanisms, which feature a subtle semantics, and the fact that the blockchain data which the contract under analysis interacts with, including the code of callers and callees, are not statically known. In this work, we present eThor, the first sound and automated static analyzer for EVM bytecode, which is based on an abstraction of the EVM bytecode semantics based on Horn clauses. In particular, our static analysis supports reachability properties, which we show to be sufficient for capturing interesting security properties for smart contracts (e.g., single-entrancy) as well as contract-specific functional properties. Our analysis is proven sound against a complete semantics of EVM bytecode and an experimental large-scale evaluation on real-world contracts demonstrates that eThor is practical and outperforms the state-of-the-art static analyzers: specifically, eThor is the only one to provide soundness guarantees, terminates on 95% of a representative set of real-world contracts, and achieves an F-measure (which combines sensitivity and specificity) of 89%.
The trend of cryptocurrencies has stirred interest in the underlying technology that qualifies cryptocurrencies as a secure structure with speedy, timely and cheap transactions. The aforementioned technology, the blockchain, in brief terms is a decentralized ledger technology that attains an immutable characteristic through consensus and timestamp mechanics. The model also sets the stage for transparency in transactions, which renders the technology applicable to a myriad of scenarios that involve financial instruments. This research puts forth an argumentative approach to the applicability of blockchain technology and specifically studies the prospect of utilizing smart contracts. This approach probes the feasibility of introducing smart contracts to everyday financial transactions and settlements. An opposing perspective, by taking a devil's advocate standpoint, invokes the impractical or implausible aspects of implementing the blockchain in certain scenarios. Difficulty in auditing is a prominent example among those impracticalities. Research methodology is qualitative in nature and takes the form of exploratory research by examining existing literature on the topic.
Clara Schneidewind, Ilya Grishchenko, M. Schérer, Matteo Maffei
Ethereum has emerged as the most popular smart contract development platform,\nwith hundreds of thousands of contracts stored on the blockchain and covering a\nvariety of application scenarios, such as auctions, trading platforms, and so\non. Given their financial nature, security vulnerabilities may lead to\ncatastrophic consequences and, even worse, they can be hardly fixed as data\nstored on the blockchain, including the smart contract code itself, are\nimmutable. An automated security analysis of these contracts is thus of utmost\ninterest, but at the same time technically challenging for a variety of\nreasons, such as the specific transaction-oriented programming mechanisms,\nwhich feature a subtle semantics, and the fact that the blockchain data which\nthe contract under analysis interacts with, including the code of callers and\ncallees, are not statically known.\n In this work, we present eThor, the first sound and automated static analyzer\nfor EVM bytecode, which is based on an abstraction of the EVM bytecode\nsemantics based on Horn clauses. In particular, our static analysis supports\nreachability properties, which we show to be sufficient for capturing\ninteresting security properties for smart contracts (e.g., single-entrancy) as\nwell as contract-specific functional properties. Our analysis is proven sound\nagainst a complete semantics of EVM bytecode and an experimental large-scale\nevaluation on real-world contracts demonstrates that eThor is practical and\noutperforms the state-of-the-art static analyzers: specifically, eThor is the\nonly one to provide soundness guarantees, terminates on 95% of a representative\nset of real-world contracts, and achieves an F-measure (which combines\nsensitivity and specificity) of 89%.\n
Kerolly Kedma Felix do Nascimento, Fábio Sandro dos Santos, Jader da Silva Jale, Tiago A. E. Ferreira
Os mercados financeiros são sistemas complexos em que os negociadores interagem usando as mais variadas estratégias. Técnicas computacionais que usam agentes inteligentes podem auxiliar na tomada de decisão com o objetivo de maximizar os ganhos. Neste sentido, o objetivo deste artigo é observar o comportamento dos agentes financeiros participantes de mercados simulados e inferir sobre os ganhos destes agentes. Por meio do algoritmo Particle Swarm Optimization, utilizamos dois grupos distintos de agente inteligentes: um grupo utiliza um grau de crença na previsão dos ativos para o dia seguinte e o outro grupo não utiliza, em que ambos interagem entre si buscando maximizar seus ganhos. Foi realizada uma pesquisa exploratória, com análise de natureza quantitativa sobre os dados. Os resultados mostraram que o grupo que usa a previsão é mais homogêneo, apresentando maiores ganhos de riqueza média, com concentrações de capital e de ações adquiridos variando de acordo com a série histórica de preços utilizada (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litcoin ou Ripple). Diante disso, o procedimento implementado pode ser aperfeiçoado e utilizado para o desenvolvimento de ambientes que visem a melhor compreensão dos mercados financeiros e auxiliem os agentes participantes dos mercados na definição de estratégias de negociação que possibilitem a minimização de perdas financeiras.
In this article, we discuss the potential of blockchain technology in addressing the documentation of users’ land rights in the informal land rental market. Blockchain technology is a peer-to-peer protocol that can be leveraged to keep track of transactions over the internet. Publicised for its use in the bitcoin revolution, the technology provides transparency and traceability that can be used in the management of land rights. When it comes to the formalisation of land rights, blockchain technology promises to authenticate owners and other users of land, and provides a fixed ledger of land use rights transactions. At present, blockchain technology is being explored as a proof of concept in several countries to track land titles (state to individual). We extend the idea to capture the granting of land use rights (individual to individual) making use of the decentralisation, peer-to-peer nature of blockchain technology. While the technology is not a panacea to all land administration challenges, it can offer an effective means to manage land transactions, provide digital documentation to actors in the informal land rental market and reduce inefficiency in land systems. However, the uptake of the technology in land administration is limited by human related factors. These limitations include, but are not limited to, the accuracy of data being entered into the system, the ability of the system to facilitate data preservation, pre-existing institutional and legal pillars, and the digital divide across communities. Part of overcoming these barriers requires the political will of governments to invest in digital technologies and develop institutional capacities to overcome current limitations to bring land management into the industry 4.0 era.
Cryptocurrency is a new form of digital asset based on a network distributed across a large number of computers. The main objective of this work is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the Islamic cryptocurrency markets returns. In this methodology, we identify a group of Islamic cryptocurrencies consisting of the X8X, Hellogold and OneGram. This paper uses the Newey-West standard errors regression to estimate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Islamic cryptocurrencies returns. The empirical results show that COVID-19 total deaths have a negative effect on respectively the X8X cryptocurrency, HelloGold, and OneGram cryptocurrencies. In the same way, the COVID-19 total confirmed cases growth has a negative effect on respectively the X8X cryptocurrency, and OneGram cryptocurrencies. This study contributes to the literature by identifying the impact of COVID-19 on the Islamic cryptocurrency markets.
Blockchain technology has been a phenomenal discovery since its use on Bitcoin, a crypto currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto. Featuring decentralization, it allows Bitcoin to escape the interference of third parties and governments. Departing from Keynesian Theory, this study used a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach. The econometric quantitative approach uses the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) modeling to predict the impact of Bitcoin investment on Indonesia's transaction of capital. A qualitative approach is used to analyze the LOFT effects of Bitcoin on Indonesia's economic resilience. Unlike previous studies, this study attempts to provide an explanation from the standpoint of national resilience, especially in the field of economic resilience. VECM analysis found that Bitcoin had a significant positive effect on Indonesia's transaction of capital in both the short and long terms Even though the magnitude of the influence of bitcoin is relatively small, it needs to watch out for macro performance through capital transactions. Qualitative data indicate that there is a change of Bitcoin function in Indonesia, from a payment method, into an instrument of investment. The finding explains that Bitcoin has the potential to weaken the resilience of the Indonesian economy through a reduction in the balance of payments, while Blockchain can be the main foundation of the financial industry revolution in Indonesia.
The Bank of Canada has undertaken a multi-phase experimental project, called Jasper, to critically examine the value proposition of distributed ledger technology in the financial system.Unlike most technologies blockchain is not value free: it attempts to organize the world with a different conception of trust.We describe our journey, collaboration with other central banks and financial institutions, our findings and outstanding questions.Bio: Dinesh Shah is a director of Fintech research at the Bank of Canada.He leads a team that focuses on research on e-money and fintech.His research interest includes the analysis of emerging and potentially disruptive technologies with wide applications to financial market infrastructure and the financial system.He also drives the five phases of Project Jasper, which was the first project globally that involves a collaboration between a central bank and commercial banks to build a proof-of-concept interbank payment system with distributed ledgers.He joined the Bank of Canada in 2009 as an Enterprise Architect, then became a technical researcher focusing on research and analysis developments in e-money and payment systems and their impact on the Bank of Canada's mandate.
The United Republic of Tanzania explicitly recognizes the human right to water and sanitation in its constitution. However, full implementation of this right has been complicated by Tanzania’s ongoing decentralization process for water governance, which has created a significant public financing gap for cash-strapped rural water schemes. Under the framework of the progressive realization of the human right to water, this thesis examines the potential for digital credit financing to bridge the public financing gap for rural water schemes in Tanzania. The thesis utilizes (1) country-wide data on digital financial inclusion and rural water access and (2) two case studies of digital credit financing in the rural water sector to explore the viability of a digital credit financing model. This thesis challenges sector-wide intuition on a “cost-recovery” model for rural water financing, instead arguing in favor of a “cost-reduction” model that prioritizes the use of debt financing for cost-reducing asset improvements, such as low-maintenance solar pump technology. It further finds that the weak regulation of the digital credit industry creates a major risk of predatory lending toward financially-illiterate consumers and outlines clear delineations of responsibility for various government agencies in regulating lending terms and providing technical assistance for rural water schemes. Finally, the thesis explores opportunities for cross-subsidization to ensure that the improved financial sustainability of water schemes does not come at the cost of equitable access to water for the rural poor.
Ethereum is a unique offshoot of blockchain technologies that incorporates the use of what are called smart contracts or DApps -- small-sized programs that orchestrate financial transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. With this fairly new paradigm in blockchain, however, comes a host of security concerns and a track record that reveals a history of losses in the range of millions of dollars. Since Ethereum is a decentralized entity, these concerns are not allayed as they are in typical financial institutions. For example, there is no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to back the investors of these contracts from financial loss as there is with bank depositors. Furthermore, there is also no Better Business Bureau (BBB) or Consumer Reports organization to offer any sort of ratings on these contracts. However, there exists a well-known method for verifying a program's integrity; a method called symbolic execution. Such an examination promises to give not only a perspective on the security of Ethereum, but also highlight areas where security experts may need to target to more quickly improve upon the security of this blockchain. This paper proposes a solution to ensuring security and increasing end user confidence -- a digital registry of smart contracts that have security flaws in them. A rating system for contracts is proposed and the capabilities one has with knowledge of these vulnerabilities is examined. This research attempts to give a picture of the current state of security of Ethereum Smart Contracts by employing symbolic analysis on a portion of the Smart Contracts up until approximately the 8.4 millionth block. Vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts may be prevalent and, if they are, a registry for enumerating which ones are can be built and potentially used to easily enumerate them.
Generally, to make a campaign,startup, or any innovative idea successful requires some amount of donation. Fundraising or let us say Crowdfunding is an efficient way to raise money for your ideas, campaigns, startups etc. There are a lot of platforms available online and they provide space for setting up your own campaign so that you can gets funds for your campaign. people can go and contribute to any idea they like and get benefit from the pledge that you make. Certainly, there are lot of drawbacks to this model. There is no transparency and no assurance that your money is being put to the right use, there are charges to use the platform and many other issues. We try to over come these issues by making a fundraising platform using smart contract in solidity. This will be more secure as it uses Ethereum blockchain to make all the transactions and all the transactions are ethereum based. Not only this but the contributors have the right to vote for a transaction and only when a minimum consensus is achieved the requested transaction can be made.Contributors can have their own pool of contributors which can be achieved by multi-signature wallet.By creating a multisigned wallet , there will be two factor authentication mechanism to access funds, which are related more to security concerns. This not only enables a transparent transaction but also develops trust in the users of the platform. This not only resolves major drawbacks faced in the current live non blockchain based platforms like Kickstarter but also brings in more efficient platform to serve the purpose.”