Consider the following set-up for the plot of a possible future episode of the TV series Black Mirror: human brains can be connected directly to the net and MiningMind Inc. has developed a technology that merges a reward system with a cryptojacking engine that uses the human brain to mine cryptocurrency (or to carry out some other mining activity). Part of our brain will be committed to cryptographic calculations (mining), leaving the remaining part untouched for everyday operations, i.e., for our brain's normal daily activity. In this short paper, we briefly argue why this set-up might not be so far fetched after all, and explore the impact that such a technology could have on our lives and our society.
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are emerging as an attractive alternative to traditional blockchain architectures for distributed ledger technology. In particular, DAG ledgers with stochastic attachment mechanisms potentially offer many advantages over blockchain, including scalability and faster transaction speeds. However, the random nature of the attachment mechanism coupled with the requirement of protection against double-spending transactions might result in an unstable system in which not all transactions get eventually validated. Such transactions are said to be orphaned, and will never be validated. Our principal contribution is to propose a simple modification to the attachment mechanism for the Tangle (the IOTA DAG architecture). This modification ensures that all transactions are validated in finite time, and preserves essential features of the popular Monte Carlo selection algorithm. In order to demonstrate these results, we derive a fluid approximation for the Tangle (in the limit of infinite arrival rate) and prove that this fluid model exhibits the desired behavior. We also present simulations that validate the results for finite arrival rates.
ENGLISH: \n \nBitcoin is one of digital currencies by cryptography as the basic system with the highest price in digital marketplace until 2018, so it becomes one of digital asset used to invest and becomes one of the most popular investment tools in society. But this phenomenon still become polemic because it has no explicit regulations yet. So, this research objectives are to know the mechanism of Bitcoin investment in society and the legal expert opinion towards it. \n \nThis research used empirical juridical method with sociological juridical approach. The analytical method is descriptive and concluded in inductive way that explained the result from specific to general. \n \nThis research results are the Bitcoin investment mechanism in society divided into mining and trading activity. In Islamic views, the legal expert opines that mining activity is allowed to do because there are two kinds of akad did in it and has no element of maysîr at all. Whereas, if does not be incompatible with sharia principal, Bitcoin trading is allowed to do. In positive law views, these two types of investment activity still had no explicit regulation yet. Although it can to be associated with some regulations such as Civil Code, The Currency Law, Electronic Information and Transaction Law, and Bank of Indonesia Regulation, it still need to regulate explicitly and written in specific role, either in regulation or fatwa forms, so it gives the legal certainty to society. Hopefully, this research provides the suggestion to government to law the vacuum of norm of Bitcoin. \n \nINDONESIA: \n \nBitcoin merupakan salah satu mata uang digital yang berbasis program kriptografi dengan harga tertinggi hingga tahun 2018 sehingga menjadi salah satu aset digital untuk berinvestasi dan menjadi salah satu sarana investasi paling popular di masyarakat. Namun, fenomena tersebut masih menjadi polemik karena tidak dinaungi oleh payung hukum yang jelas. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui mekanisme investasi Bitcoin yang dilakukan serta pandangan pakar hukum terhadap fenomena tersebut. \n \nPenelitian ini menggunakan metode yuridis empiris, dengan pendekatan yuridis sosiologis. Analisis yang digunakan bersifat deskriptif dan disimpulkan secara induktif yaitu dengan menguraikan kasus yang bersifat khusus dan disimpulkan secara umum. \n \n \nHasil penelitian yang diperoleh adalah mekanisme investasi Bitcoin yang dilakukan dapat berupa mining, dan trading. Dalam perspektif Islam, pakar hukum berpendapat bahwa aktivitas mining boleh untuk dilakukan karena terdapat dua akad yang berbeda selama melakukan prosesnya, dan tidak mengandung unsur maysîr. Sedangkan, trading Bitcoin boleh untuk dilakukan selama tidak bertentangan dengan prinsip syariah. Secara hukum positif, kedua aktivitas tersebut belum memiliki payung hukum yang jelas. Meskipun dapat dikaitkan dengan beberapa peraturan, seperti KUH Perdata, Undang-Undang Mata Uang, Undang-Undang ITE, serta Peraturan Bank Indonesia, investasi Bitcoin perlu untuk diatur secara tertulis dalam peraturan khusus yang berbeda, baik dalam bentuk peraturan perundang-undangan ataupun fatwa. Sehingga akan memberikan kepastian hukum terhadap masyarakat. Dengan adanya penelitian ini diharapkan dapat memberikan masukan pada pemerintah untuk menyikapi kekosongan hukum Bitcoin.
Artikel ini ingin menjawab permasalahan utama terkait pajak di daerah. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan normatif, dapat digambarkan bahwa era otonomi daerah, dikaitkan dengan pajak daerah melalui asas desentralisasi, pemerintah daerah diberikan kewenangan untuk memungut pajak daerah. Pajak tersebut dalam rangka meningkatkan pendapatan asli daerah dan menyelenggarakan serta membiayai pembangunan di daerah. Dasar hukum bagi pemerintah daerah untuk memungut pajak adalah Undang-Undang Pajak Daerah dan Retribusi Daerah. Selain itu, Pemerintah Daerah juga membentuk peraturan di daerah sebagai peraturan teknis dibidang pajak daerah dan retribusi daerah. Peraturan yang dibentuk di daerah disebut politik hukum, yang merupakan kebijakan hukum negara untuk mencapai tujuan nasionalnya dengan membentuk hukum untuk mengatur sesuatu hal yang berkaitan langsung dengan kepentingan nasional. Political Law of Regional Tax in Polewali Mandar District West Sulawesi This article aims to answer the main problems related to taxes in the region. This is a normative research, aiming to describe the regional autonomy era to be associated with regional taxes through decentralization principle, local governments are given the authority to collect regional taxes. The tax is used to increase local revenue and organize the finance development in the region. The legal basis for local governments to collect taxes is the Regional Tax Law and Regional Retribution. In addition, the Regional Government also established regulations in the region as technical regulations of regional taxes and regional retribution. Regulations established in the region are called legal politics, which are the state legal policies to achieve national goals by establishing laws to regulate issues related to national interests.
Directed Acylic Graphs (DAGs) are emerging as an attractive alternative to traditional blockchain architectures for distributed ledger technology (DLT). In particular DAG ledgers with stochastic attachment mechanisms potentially offer many advantages over blockchain, including scalability and faster transaction speeds. However, the random nature of the attachment mechanism coupled with the requirement of protection against double-spend transactions leaves open the possibility that not all transactions will be eventually validated. Such transactions are said to be orphaned, and will never be validated. Our principal contribution is to propose a simple modification to the attachment mechanism for the Tangle (the IOTA DAG architecture). This modification ensures that all transactions are validated in finite time, and preserves essential features of the popular Monte-Carlo selection algorithm. In order to demonstrate these results we derive a fluid approximation for the Tangle (in the limit of infinite arrival rate) and prove that this fluid model exhibits the desired behavior. We also present simulations which validate the results for finite arrival rates.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and a decentralized semi-anonymous peer-to-peer payment system in which the transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public massively replicated ledger called the blockchain. Bitcoin is currently considered as one of the most disruptive technologies. Bitcoin represents a paradox of opposing forces. On one hand, it is fundamentally social, allowing people to transact in a peer-to-peer manner to create and exchange value. On the other hand, Bitcoin's core design philosophy and user base contain strong anti-social elements and constraints, emphasizing anonymity, privacy, and subversion of traditional centralized financial systems. We believe that the success of Bitcoin, and the financial ecosystem built around it, will likely rely on achieving an optimal balance between these social and anti-social forces. To elucidate the role of these forces, we analyze the evolution of the entire Bitcoin transaction graph from its inception, and quantify the evolution of its key structural properties. We observe that despite its different nature, the Bitcoin transaction graph exhibits many universal dynamics typical of social networks. However, we also find that Bitcoin deviates in important ways due to anonymity-seeking behavioral patterns of its users. As a result, the network exhibits a two-orders-of-magnitude larger diameter, sparse treelike communities, and an overwhelming majority of transitional or intermediate accounts with incoming and outgoing edges but zero cumulative balances. These results illuminate the evolutionary dynamics of the most popular cryptocurrency, and provide us with initial understanding of social networks rooted in and driven by anti-social constraints.
We present Fission, a new permissionless blockchain that achieves scalability in both terms of system throughput and transaction confirmation time, while at the same time, retaining blockchain's core values of equality and decentralization. Fission overcomes the system throughput bottleneck by employing a novel Eager-Lazy pipeling model that achieves very high system throughputs via block pipelining, an adaptive partitioning mechanism that auto-scales to transaction volumes, and a provably secure energy-efficient consensus protocol to ensure security and robustness. Fission applies a hybrid network which consists of a relay network, and a peer-to-peer network. The goal of the relay network is to minimize the transaction confirmation time by minimizing the information propagation latency. To optimize the performance on the relay network in the presence of churn, dynamic network topologies, and network heterogeneity, we propose an ultra-fast game-theoretic relay selection algorithm that achieves near-optimal performance in a fully distributed manner. Fission's peer-to-peer network complements the relay network and provides a very high data availability via enabling users to contribute their storage and bandwidth for information dissemination (with incentive). We propose a distributed online data retrieval strategy that optimally offloads the relay network without degrading the system performance. By re-innovating all the core elements of the blockchain technology - computation, networking, and storage - in a holistic manner, Fission aims to achieve the best balance among scalability, security and decentralization.
Hira Salah ud din Khan, Zhiqiang Ma, Mohammed Abubakari Sadick, Abdul‐Aziz Ibn Musah
This study aims to investigate how a Psychological contract breach can mediate the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and job attitudes and how political skill and work ethic can influence the negative association between perceptions of organizational politics and job attitudes. A systematic sampling method was used with a sampling size of 310 faculty members of public sector universities of Pakistan. Data were analyzed by using partial least squares structural equations modeling PLS-SEM to test the hypotheses by Smart PLS software. The findings revealed that the perception of politics is significantly and negatively related to job attitudes and indirectly through psychological contract breach. Moreover, the results indicated a significant moderating effect of work ethic on the relationship between the perception of politics and job attitudes. However, political skill did not moderate the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and job attitudes. Moreover, research implications and limitations are elucidated.
Introduction: \nThe study work focuses on designing a smart contract language (named "Lazo") for the Bazo blockchain. The Bazo blockchain is a research blockchain to test different mechanisms and algorithms. In the current version, a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm and a virtual machine to execute Bazo intermediate language(opcodes) are integrated. However, writing smart contracts in Bazo opcodes is time \nconsuming and error-prone. The goal of this study work is to design a high-level language which is easier to read and write smart contracts. \n \nProcedure / Result: \nBefore designing Lazo, 24 existing smart contract languages are collected and roughly analyzed to identify the key characteristics of a language for the blockchain. Thereafter, three popular and well elaborated languages, namely Solidity, Vyper and Scilla, were analyzed in great detail. Their supported features, syntax and contract examples were also documented. With the acquired knowledge about smart contracts, Lazo language was designed in an agile manner. \n \nResult: \nAs a result, Lazo is designed to be a statically typed, imperative and non-turing complete programming language. All language features are documented with illustrative code snippets. The Lazo grammar is also written in ANTLR and \nverified with Java. Furthermore, contract examples from Solidity are translated to Lazo in order to prove that the real-world use cases can be programmed with Lazo \nas well. \n \nIn a follow-up thesis, a compiler could be developed to compile Lazo programs into Bazo virtual machine instructions.
Purwono Purwono, Alfian Ma’arif, Wahyu Rahmaniar, Qazi Mazhar ul Haq · 6 authors
Blockchain technology has a promising future in a number of industries and enterprises. Formerly connected to virtual currency like Bitcoin, blockchain has evolved into a versatile technology with many applications. In the upcoming years, it is predicted that blockchain will revolutionize a variety of industries, including banking, supply chain management, healthcare, voting systems, and more. The future of blockchain technology depends critically on its ability to increase security and transparency. By providing a decentralized and unchangeable record, eliminating the need for middlemen, and boosting participant confidence, blockchain promotes secure and traceable transactions. This transparency has the potential to transform whole industries by reducing fraud, streamlining processes, and increasing output. Blockchain also has the power to change financial systems. Blockchain-based smart contracts facilitate faster, more efficient transactions by automating and enforcing contractual agreements without the need for middlemen. By enabling speedier cross-border transactions, reducing costs, and boosting financial inclusion, tokenization and blockchain-based digital currencies have the potential to overturn conventional banking institutions. Blockchain’s key attributes, including decentralization, transparency, immutability, and security, make it a desirable choice for a range of organizations. Cross-border payments, trade finance, and smart contracts are just a few of the financial sector processes that blockchain technology has the potential to enhance and automate, lowering costs and increasing productivity. Additionally, the tamper-resistance of blockchain technology can boost transaction security and reliability, allowing for a wider use in traditional financial institutions. Outside of the financial industry, blockchain technology has a lot of promise, particularly in industries like supply chain management, healthcare, energy, intellectual property, and governance. By enabling transparent and traceable transactions, blockchain may improve supply chain efficiency, ensure product authenticity, and boost customer trust. By facilitating the secure exchange of patient data and research data, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology can enhance data security, interoperability, and privacy in the healthcare sector. A more decentralized and sustainable energy ecosystem may be supported by blockchain technology through peer-to-peer energy exchange, grid management, and monitoring of renewable energy certificates in the energy sector. Additionally, blockchain technology has the potential to transform decentralized governance structures, voting procedures, intellectual property rights, and digital identity management. By allowing people to own and manage their digital identities, blockchain can enhance privacy and reduce identity theft. Blockchain-based voting systems can offer transparency, security, and verifiability, thereby increasing voter turnout and public trust in democratic institutions. Blockchain can also enable the secure and transparent management of intellectual property rights, fostering author credit and just compensation.
Historically, the means of payment has evolved from time to time. The current phenomenon is Bitcoin, claimed by its users as a means of future payments, that have been the major attention of many people, from people in business to students. The research question in this study was how the existence of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange is, and how its existence as a medium of exchange is viewed based on the maqāṣid al-syar 'īyah. This used the literature research method and the maqāṣidī approach by applying the tarjih maslahat method. The existence of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange is considered valid because of the 'urf recognition. However, it requires a legal status from the government because it is related to al-maslahat al-mmāmmah, the mafsadat (damage) value of Bitcoin is higher than its maslahat (benefit) value. Hence, it is concluded that Bitcoin is valid as a medium of exchange. Still, its use must be limited due to the mafsadat (harm) probability that is more dominant at the ḍarūriyyāt (primary needs) level, following the principle of "rejecting the harm is prioritized than realizing the benefit."
 Abstrak: Berdasarkan sejarah, alat pembayaran dari masa ke masa telah mengalami evolusi, pada saat ini terdapat sebuah fenomena yaitu fenomena Bitcoin yang diklaim oleh para penggunanya sebagai alat pembayaran masa depan yang telah banyak menyita perhatian orang mulai dari kalangan pengusaha hingga mahasiswa. Bitcoin memiliki beberapa kelebihan jika dibandingkan dengan alat pembayaran yang biasa digunakan, di antaranya yaitu sifatnya yang desentralisasi sehingga tidak ada pengendali pusat yang akan ikut campur di dalamnya. Sedangkan pada kebiasaannya, alat pembayaran di suatu wilayah berada di bawah pengawasan pemerintah karena alat pembayaran tergolong kepada kebutuhan primer yang menyangkut kesejahteraan umum. Pertanyaan penelitian dalam skripsi ini adalah bagaimana eksistensi Bitcoin sebagai alat tukar dan bagaimana keberadaan Bitcoin sebagai alat tukar berdasarkan maqāṣid al-syar‘īyah. Dalam penelitian ini penulis menggunakan metode penelitian kepustakaan dan pendekatan maqāṣidī dengan menerapkan metode tarjih maslahat. Keberadaan Bitoin sebagai alat tukar dianggap sah karena terdapat pengakuan secara ‘urf. Akan tetapi status sah tersebut perlu mendapatkan pengesahan pemerintah karena terkait dengan al- maslahat al-‘āmmah, nilai mafsadat pada Bitcoin lebih dominan jika dibandingkan dengan nilai maslahatnya. Dari paparan di atas disimpulkan bahwa keberadaan Bitcoin sah sebagai alat tukar, namun penggunaannya merupakan sesuatu yang harus dibatasi karena probabilitas mafsadatnya lebih dominan yang berada pada tingkat ḍarūriyyāt.. Hal ini sesuai dengan kaidah “menolak mafsadat di dahulukan dari pada mewujudkan maslahat.”
 Keyword: Eksistensi, Bitcoin, Maqāṣid al-Syar‘īyah.
This paper intends to review the need of cryptocurrency on the European and International market. Why cryptocurrency is bad and good at the same time for the international financial market is one of the main issues of this paper. Where are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin going to and why cryptocurrencies are necessary on today’s market. Although there is no sure thing on crypto, on the long term, the market keeps going up and there is much interest in this direction.
The adoption of blockchain technology is taking place at a fast pace. Security features inherent in blockchain make it resistant to attack, but they do not make it immune, and blockchain security risks do exists. This paper details the associated risks and concerns of the blockchain. We explore relevant standards and regulations related to blockchain and survey and analyze 38 blockchain incidents to determine the root cause to provide a view of the most frequent vulnerabilities exploited. The paper reviews six of these 38 incidents in greater detail. The selection is made by choosing incidents with the most frequent root cause. In the review of the incidents, the paper details what happened and why and aims to address what could have been done to mitigate the attack. The paper concludes with a recommendation on a framework to reduce cyber security risks when using blockchain technologies.
Blockchain technology has enjoyed a massive adoption in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Following the success, many people have started to explore the possibility of implementing blockchain technology in different fields. We propose smart stamp duty, a system which can revolutionize the way stamp duty is managed and paid. The smart stamp duty offers significant improvements on the convenience when paying stamp duty. At the same time, the blockchain technology also provides the auditability of the transaction data. Smart stamp duty enables the expansion of the existing electronic stamp duty application to retail level as well as allows the taxpayers to pay the stamp duty of their electronic documents. Our proposed system also enables the taxpayers to print their electronic documents without losing the paid electronic-based stamps.
Changes in the world market of the operations in all companies are constant. The survival on the market of each company depends on the level of flexibility to adapt to all the changes that occur. In addition to the changes, what is important to the environment in which businesses operate and gain their competitive advantage is globalization. The world becomes a "global village" where there are no obstacles in communicating between people who are from two different world sides. There are no barriers to competition, even if they are not physically located on the same market. There are countless opportunities to increase competitiveness and profitability. In the last two decades, globalization has been attracted special attention by scientists, based on its great influence on the development of global finance and financial markets, the expansion of knowledge through improved communication conditions, the expansion of multinational firms and the decentralization of economic activities within and between firms, the development of global oligopolies and the reduction barriers to trade and investment. Globalization requires the transformation of human identity in terms of the knowledge and skills it possesses. Apart from the necessity of applying and changing the knowledge and skills of people working within a particular organization, changes in the domain of the organization and management itself should be made. Globalization and modern organizational structures are assumed to have the use of information communication technologies, the independence between individual units that can be spatially dislocated, the structure is often non-hierarchical and the only thing that is certain is that all units act in accordance with the same goal. Such organizations have the structure of networks or neurons - they are all interconnected with everyone. Physical distance here practically does not exist because of the development of Internet and multimedia conferences that facilitate business and reduce the time needed for work and labor costs. In order for a company to be successful, besides selecting the best form of organizing business processes, it has to be known how to use business information, both internally and externally. Company has to be aware that the implementation of new technological developments directly affects the ability to use large amounts of information. For this reason, modern companies are continually reorganizing their business in line with technology development. Information and communication technologies enable the creation of the infrastructure needed to manage business knowledge and which is a precondition for the creation of the learning organization. It enables employee’s knowledge to circulate more easily through the organization, to upgrade his knowledge and to deliver positive business results.Keeping that in mind, the changes in the world economy and its impact on business and management in the whole world, any scientific dealing with these topics and the essential consideration of the causes and consequences of the same and their trends and trends that are still expected in our everyday life and business is of great importance for all managers and future managers who, through good information and understanding of modern processes, will be able to make regular, efficient and effective decisions on daily basis, successfully manage people and achieve their goals.
Mawuko Dza, Evan Kyeremeh ., Simon S. K. Dzandu ., Samuel Afran .
The paper probes corruption in public procurement in Ghana. The research, which focused on Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) across the country, revealed widespread corruption in the public service of Ghana. Notable procurement related corrupt practices unraveled included influence peddling, inflating contract sums, payment for non-existing contracts, deliberate contract splitting, multiple payments for contracts, use of phantom vendors and misapplication of public funds. The study further noted that some principal officers such as Coordinating Directors, Finance Officers, Budget and Planning officers, Engineers, Internal Auditors, Stores and Procurement officers, as well as government representatives misappropriate funds meant for development projects in their catchment areas, while staff looked on unconcerned. The research also discovered how Internal and external auditors ostensibly “train” principal officers on how to conceal corrupt practices in return for money and other rewards. The study is significant because the concept of decentralization was introduced to enable MMDAs to effectively and efficiently manage resources for the development of their communities. The concept has been defeated as some public servants connive with external auditors and other stakeholders to amass wealth at the expense of the generality of the people. A worrying phenomenon is the culture of silence by employees who are witnesses to most of these corrupt practices. Indeed, our findings show that most public servants are nonchalant about the act of corruption perpetuated by colleague workers. Essentially, some employees see nothing wrong with their principal officers and other colleagues indulging in acts of corruption, their reason being that they might do same when they assume similar positions in future. With this revelation, the onus is on government not to only adopt a combative strategy in dealing with the incidence of corruption. Rather, it is recommended that a blend of combative and the moral suasion strategies be adopted if the fight against corruption is to achieve desired results.
De forma acadêmica e construtiva, sem pretender esgotar o assunto, o presente artigo tem como objetivo realizar um estudo jurídico e econômico do bitcoin, que é a espécie de moeda virtual mais utilizada no mundo, mediante as ferramentas metodológicas da Análise Econômica do Direito, demonstrando como o uso de bitcoins nas transações realizadas pela sociedade empresária em recuperação pode reduzir os custos de transação e contribuir para uma recuperação judicial menos custosa, mais célere e mais eficiente, colaborando, ainda, para que a recuperação judicial cumpra os seus objetivos previstos no art. 47 da Lei n. 11.101/05, quais sejam, viabilizar a superação da situação de crise econômico-financeira do devedor, a manutenção da fonte produtora, bem como do emprego dos trabalhadores e dos interesses dos credores, promovendo, assim, a preservação da empresa e da sociedade empresária, sua função social e o estímulo à atividade econômica.Palavras-chave: Bitcoins. Análise Econômica do Direito. Custos de transação. Abstract In an academic and constructive way, without intending to exhaust the subject, this research aims to carry out a legal and economic study of bitcoin, which is the most used virtual currency in the world, through the methodological tools of Economic Analysis of Law , demonstrating how the use of bitcoins in transactions carried out by the recovering company can reduce transaction costs and contribute to a less costly, faster and more efficient judicial recovery, also helping to ensure judicial recovery meets its objectives Art. 47 of Law no. 11.101 / 05, which is to make it possible to overcome the economic and financial crisis of the debtor, the maintenance of the source, as well as the employment of workers and the interests of creditors, thus promoting the preservation of the company, its social function and stimulating economic activity. Keywords: Bitcoins. Economic Analysis of Law. Transaction costs.
Cryptocurrency mining in the browser has the potential to provide a new pay-as-you-go monetisation mechanism for consuming digital media over the Web. However, browser mining has recently received strong criticism due to illegitimate use of mining scripts in several popular websites (a practice called cryptojacking). Here we provide the first feasibility study of browser mining as a legitimate means of monetisation in terms of revenue, user consent and user experience within a specially built website. Our results compare browser mining to display advertisement and indicate browser mining provides a preferable user experience to advertising when the hash rate is user-adjustable. Furthermore, over 60% of participants would select browser mining over advertisement if they were invested in the ecosystem by obtaining half of the mined cryptocurrency. Our estimations show that browser mining currently generates revenue at a rate 46 times less than advertisement, however we would expect that gap to decrease as we observed a significant drop in mining difficulty after our tested cryptocurrency implemented ASIC-resistant mining measures. Overall, based on our results we find browser mining to be a legitimate alternative to display advertisement and conclude by discussing its current limitations and potential applications.

 El objetivo del presente artículo fue realizar un diagnóstico de los factores organizacionales presentes en el Gobierno Autónomo Descentralizado Municipal del cantón Manta, para la implementación del Plan de Fortalecimiento Institucional. La investigación es de alcance descriptivo y se aplicó un cuestionario de 15 preguntas cerradas-dicotómicas a una muestra estratificada de un total de 96 encuestados. El 95 % manifestó no conocer en detalle lo que es un Plan de Fortalecimiento Institucional, aun así, lo consideran relevante como herramienta de Gestión Estratégica. El 31% menciona que no existe una adecuada comunicación entre las autoridades, servidores y trabajadores públicos, asimismo el 43 % considera que no hay una gestión eficiente. Entre las recomendaciones se destacan elaborar un código de ética, automatizar los procesos, capacitación, definir los estándares de calidad, crear indicadores e instrumentos para el monitoreo y mejora continua. Asimismo, crear espacios para un mayor acercamiento servidores y ciudadanos.
 
 Palabras clave: Planificación, Fortalecimiento, Gobierno, Política pública y regulación
 
 ABSTRACT
 The objective of this article was to make a diagnosis of the organizational factors present in the autonomous decentralized municipal government of the Manta canton, for the implementation of the Institutional Strengthening Plan. The research is descriptive in scope and a questionnaire of 15 closed-dichotomous questions was applied to a stratified sample of a total of 96 respondents. 95% said they did not know in detail what an Institutional Strengthening Plan is, even though they consider it relevant as a Strategic Management tool. 31% mentions that there is no adequate communication between authorities, servants and public workers, and 43% consider that there is no efficient management. Among the recommendations, it is important to elaborate a code of ethics, automate processes, training, define quality standards, create indicators and instruments for monitoring and continuous improvement. Also create spaces for a closer approach to servers and citizens.
 
 Key words: Planning, Strengthening, Government, Public policy and regulation
Thanks to its decentralized structure and immutability, blockchain technology has the potential to address relevant security and privacy challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, by hosting and executing smart contracts, blockchain allows secure, flexible, and traceable message communication between IoT devices. The unique characteristics of IoT systems, such as heterogeneity and pervasiveness, however, pose challenges in designing smart contracts for such systems. In this paper, we study these challenges and propose a design approach for smart contracts used in IoT systems. The main goal of our design model is to enhance the development of IoT smart contracts based on the inherent pervasive attributes of IoT systems. In particular, the design model allows the smart contracts to encapsulate functionalities such as contractlevel communication between IoT devices, access to data-sources within contracts, and interoperability of heterogeneous IoT smart contracts. The essence of our approach is structuring the design of IoT smart contracts as self-contained software services, inspired by the microservice architecture model. The flexibility, scalability and modularity of this model make it an efficient approach for developing pervasive IoT smart contracts.
Blockchain has emerged into one of the most promising technologies for the future. Its most successful implementation in the form of cryptocurrency has shifted many existing paradigms where financial instruments were limited by locations or jurisdictions. While blockchain is touted to offer many significant and promising features on the other hand it also increases the difficulty level in the taxation area as well as digital forensics. We investigated the issues and explores the real-world situation and how taxation and digital forensics can cope with these technology challenges.
With the recent rise of cryptocurrencies' popularity, the security and management of crypto-tokens have become critical. We have witnessed many attacks on users and providers, which have resulted in significant financial losses. To remedy these issues, several wallet solutions have been proposed. However, these solutions often lack either essential security features, usability, or do not allow users to customize their spending rules. In this paper, we propose SmartOTPs, a smart-contract wallet framework that gives a flexible, usable, and secure way of managing crypto-tokens in a self-sovereign fashion. The proposed framework consists of four components (i.e., an authenticator, a client, a hardware wallet, and a smart contract), and it provides 2-factor authentication (2FA) performed in two stages of interaction with the blockchain. To the best of our knowledge, our framework is the first one that utilizes one-time passwords (OTPs) in the setting of the public blockchain. In SmartOTPs, the OTPs are aggregated by a Merkle tree and hash chains whereby for each authentication only a short OTP (e.g., 16B-long) is transferred from the authenticator to the client. Such a novel setting enables us to make a fully air-gapped authenticator by utilizing small QR codes or a few mnemonic words, while additionally offering resilience against quantum cryptanalysis. We have made a proof-of-concept based on the Ethereum platform. Our cost analysis shows that the average cost of a transfer operation is comparable to existing 2FA solutions using smart contracts with multi-signatures.
a rise in the standard of living of the population, subject to an increase in social spending and a significant share of the public sector; the field of education, especially primary and secondary education, through the delegation of educational functions to the local level and their financial support, as well as the active participation of the local community in the financing, management and control of these institutions; the health sector, which, given the inadequate management and low level of tax decentralization, will be characterized by a deterioration in the availability and quality of medical services for the rural population; improvement of local infrastructure due to the ability of communities to independently control costs, which will reduce the cost of work and maximize local needs. The prospects for the development of rural settlements in Ukraine due to the influence of financial decentralization implementation are substantiated.