Blockchain Papers

Morgan Ricks, John Crawford, Lev Menand

No abstract is available for this record.

Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Jason Potts

No abstract is available for this record.

Valeria Ferrari

No abstract is available for this record.

Saule T. Omarova

36 Yale Journal on Regulation 735 (2019).Fintech is the hottest topic in finance today. Recent advances in cryptography, data analytics, and artificial intelligence are visibly “disrupting” traditional methods of delivering financial services and conducting financial transactions. Less visibly, fintech is also changing the way we think about finance: The rise of fintech is gradually recasting our collective understanding of the financial system as simply another sphere of normatively neutral information technology and objective computer science. By making financial transactions faster, cheaper, and more easily accessible, fintech seems to promise a micro-level “win-win” solution to the financial system’s many ills.This Article challenges such narratives and presents an alternative account of fintech as a systemic, macro-level phenomenon. Grounding the analysis of evolving fintech trends in a broader institutional context, the Article exposes the normative and political significance of the current fintech moment. It argues that the arrival of fintech enables a potentially decisive shift in the underlying public-private balance of powers, competencies, and roles in the financial system.In developing this argument, the Article makes three principal scholarly contributions. First, it introduces the concept of the New Deal settlement in finance: a fundamental political arrangement, in force for nearly a century, pursuant to which profit-seeking private actors retain control over allocating capital and generating financial risks, while the sovereign public bears responsibility for maintaining systemic financial stability. Second, the Article advances a novel conceptual framework for understanding the deep-seated financial dynamics that have eroded the New Deal settlement in recent decades. In particular, it offers a working taxonomy of principal mechanisms that both (a) enable private market actors to continuously synthesize tradable financial assets and scale up trading activities, and (b) undermine the public’s ability to manage the resulting system-wide risks. Finally, the Article shows how and why specific fintech applications – cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technologies, digital crowdfunding, and robo-advising – are poised to amplify the effect of these destabilizing mechanisms, and thus potentially exacerbate the tensions and imbalances in today’s financial markets and the broader economy. It is this potential that renders fintech a public policy challenge of the highest order.

Jerry Li

Identifying and quantifying the drivers for adopting blockchain technologies are important for developing effective launch plan. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its derivatives have been used for this purpose. However, some of these models only use a few standardized, predetermined independent variables to collectively represent the drivers. Low predictive power of TAM leads to questions on whether this restriction may detrimentally constrain the exploration of other driving factors. Some other extended models with higher R2 are considered impractical and lack of theoretical foundations. This paper demonstrates that reasonable predictive power can be achieved even with simple, practically implementable model when research targets are sampled and segmented properly. By employing a more fundamental theory, this study has also included additional variable that would normally not be considered in TAM.

Zhi Li, Layne Liu, Ali Vatankhah Barenji, Waiming Wang

This paper proposes a cloud-based manufacturing knowledge sharing system for injection mould redesign (IMR) based on blockchain technology. In our proposed system, private cloud is used to store the IMR knowledge, and blockchain provides standards and protocols for implementing the system as well as ensuring the security in a trustless environment. K-Nearest Neighbors is used for retrieving the blockchain-based document knowledge. The proposed system not only can facilitate injection mould redesign, but also provide a mechanism for knowledge owners to share their own assets securely.

P. Robin Hiesinger

Self-organization is a fundamental principle of the development and function of living systems. Decentralized self-assembly of neurons that act as autonomous agents leads to complicated neural netw...

Yota Passia, Roupas, Panayotis

Introduction
\n
\nWhile the continuous flow of events – within the complexity and dynamic systems theory – seems to be a given, we still cannot tell the exact nature of future events, prior to their emergence. This research aims to establish a code for the city as a semantic system that models cities and monitors their sociospatial metabolism. In setting the general schema for its ontology, the research disregards the difference between the observable and the nonobservable as well as the anthropocentrism this distinction implies (DeLanda 2013). In this context the city is composed of both the actual and the virtual, the “city as is” and the “city as it could be”, respectively. As they both inform and enhance the city’s identity, its production is to be explained through a process ontology format without the need for a designing author.
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\nSuch an autopoietic system Humberto Matura and Fransisco Varela classified as a ‘machine’ which is ‘organized as a network of processes of production of components, continuously realizing the network of processes that produced them’ (Maturana and Varela 1980) thus able to process information over time. As this information is both actual and virtual, the concept of a code is introduced as a mediator mechanism. The material agency of this productive process, key to Deleuzian ontology, is described as a bifold process which constantly informs itself, including a “convergent phase of selection” and a “divergent phase of design” (Spuybroek 2008: 189).
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\nFor the convergence phase – one to inhabit the virtual domain – a code of Design Patterns (Passia, 2016) is organized by gathering information that is relevant and providing its topological structure, one that concentrates on the relations instead of the components. A movement towards quality, order and organization. In the divergent phase – one to inhabit the actual domain – an affective mechanisms’ index (Roupas, 2016) is organized to guide the actualization as the code germinates and transforms into actual spatial structures with geometric and qualitative properties. (Spuybroek 2008: 189) A movement towards quantity, matter and structure.
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\nConvergent phase: the code’s organization
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\nTo propose a framework for the code’s organization, we introduce Christopher Alexander’s (Alexander et all. 1977) 253 Design Patterns as the code’s elementary units. Each Design Pattern is a diagram that describes form through a set of rules or criteria, expressing a relation amongst a particular context, a particular system of forces that is repeated within the context, and a spatial configuration that allows these forces to balance. Design Patterns’ internal structure, already quite fluid and dynamic, is essential for the code to simulate two important processes: the process of representation – that is to gather and store information about the city – and the process of self-organization – that is to develop organized structure and adapt it to cope with the changing fields of information (Cilliers 1998).
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\nIn that respect, Design Patterns are introduced onto a surface in space as assemblages pointing to modes of information transmission (Wilden 2011: 220). On that surface they are free to assemble and reassemble anew, as they use their ability to communicate at different spaces, levels and scales. Through a two part population-thinking process their regularities and tendencies are documented and protocols of interconnected networks of communication are established. (image 01) These two parts of the populationthinking process agree with Henri Bergson’s distinction between difference in kind and difference in degree (Bergson 2014: 23). Mapping their difference in kind describes the city’s dimensions as Design Patterns’ assemblages while mapping their difference in degree defines its dimensional gradients as degrees of Design Patterns.
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\nAs Design Patterns start populating this autonomous surface, the manifold gets activated and energized. At the end of the first part of the process, the manifold will have four spaces of possibilities pointing them as the city’s four dimensions, each inhabited by specific Design Patterns:
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\ninteriority vs. exteriority 
\nintegration vs. separation 
\nconcentration vs. decentralization 
\nsimilarity vs. heterogeneity
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\nAfter the second part, each dimensional space will be organized according to four varying degrees of intensity called dimensional types, where the same Design Patterns will be employed to produce the full array of all degrees. (image 02)
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\nThrough this bifold process, we have defined a number of attractors for the city’s code: its four dimensions as the genera of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation, and also the intensive boundaries of their internal variation. Through the attractors, it is possible to explain the city’s identity in relation to networked patterns of communication between its elementary units, themselves consisting of degrees of intensity (Passia, 2016).
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\nDivergent phase: the code’s structure
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\nEntering the divergent phase and while the code maintains in full its topological organization, it transforms its structure to become formative by replacing its elementary units. To allow for the material structures to remain open and thus able to create variations of oneself, an affective mechanisms’ index is created, a map of the affective capacity of spatial objects at different scales, from design objects to buildings and urban configurations. Those spatial structures are theorized as assemblages, that is systems composed of interacting parts. And since all assemblages are parts of larger assemblages, their components’ ability to engage is contingent. (Meillassoux 2012:10)
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\nIn order to analyze and produce spatial assemblages of that kind, we point to their more stable characteristic: which is their ability to affect and to be affected. (Deleuze & Guattari 1987:xvi) In mapping the assemblages’ affective ability, spatial objects are analyzed in two axes. (Delanda 2006: 13) The first axis focuses on the relations that the assemblage’s material and expressive components develop in order to enter the assemblages. The second axis records the processes known as A-signifying signs or A-signs, (Guattari 1995: 54) which are the triggering mechanisms able to stabilize or destabilize the assemblage and thus allow its parts to assemble anew. These mechanisms are introduced as intensities that transform the object beyond meaning, beyond fixed or known cognitive procedures. They belong to a molecular level which is populated by modulations, movements, speeds, rhythms and spasms. (Lazzarato & Melitopoulos 2012: 240) As a-signs cannot be isolated from matter, we thus point to affects as the result of the a-signs’ capacity to trigger the selection of one action possibility – affordance – among many.
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\nTo that end, approximately 100 a-signs have been mapped via the analysis of numerous contemporary spatial objects of various scales, including works of art and installations. In that respect an affective mechanisms’ index is created (image 03), one where all the a-signs are listed as an index of techniques that could enhance the affective capacity of the final design object. Each a-sign is now connected with the list of affects it triggers and which thoroughly defines it. And vice versa, as the same affect can be triggered by different a-signs, the design object is allowed to lie in a perpetual state of becoming. Through the affective mechanisms index we are now able to analyze and direct the design objects’s final form while at the same time establishing the mechanism to measure its continuous transformation.
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\nTo define spatial objects, A-signs are categorized in terms of their aesthetic power to affect and to be affected and are placed onto the respective dimensional areas of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation. On the basis of the general categories of form, structure and surface, different part’s degree of contingency are evaluated and measured. (image 03) By replacing Design Patterns with A-signs we introduce affects as material information that is immanent in the spatial object while at the same time they confer no meaning; they only convey some information without semantic content. The affects’ ability to merge with the material world without mediation allows them to avoid the realm of representation. With this codification we are able to control the final form of the design object while at the same time establishing the mechanism to measure its continuous transformation.
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\nConclusions
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\nHaving the same code with different components – Design Patterns and A-signs – we are able to construct a machine that connects the convergent phase of selection with the divergent phase of design. Through this bifold process, we have defined a number of attractors for the city: its four dimensions as the genera of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation, and also the intensive boundaries of their internal variation. Through the attractors, it is possible to explain the city’s identity in relation to networked patterns of communication between its elements, themselves consisting of degrees of factors. At the same time, through the a-signs we have actively connected the convergent and divergent phase. In the code we organize for the city, the elements and the relationships exist in the same continuum thus effectively bridging the gap between the actual and the virtual city. The code we have organized for the city resembles Deleuze’s abstract machine : ‘a map of relations between forces, a map of destiny, or intensity, which proceeds by primary non-localizable relations and at every moment passes through every point, ‘or rather in every relation from one point to another’

Myroslava OLIEVSKA

Introduction. Reconstitution of human capital and education and science financing is a strategic factor in sustainable development of region, a significant element in strengthening the competitiveness of our enterprises, a prerequisite for rising incomes and improving living standards of the population. Purpose. The article aims is to determine the directions of the regional policy of Ukraine for the development of human capital and education financing on the basis of foreign countries experience in the conditions of the development of decentralization processes. Results. The main tendencies of education financing in Ukraine have been investigated. The experience of foreign countries development of decentralization processes in the organization of the financing of education has been systematized. On the basis of the conducted research, we have proposed directions of the region policy in the field of education financing of in Ukraine depending on the budget capacity.

Stanese Ioana Tatiana, CĂRĂUȘ Mădălina, Ungureanu Mihai Aristotel

The article approaches important aspects regarding the regional development process in Romania in direct correlation with the European Union views and directives in this field. This paper argues that regionalization implies a new reorganization of Romania in view of a balanced development and to increase the absorption of European Funds, which
\nconsequently engages regional development, the development of local communities and the decentralization of public administration. Furthermore, in this paper we present the 
\nconsistency issue concerning the request for territorial-
\nadministrative development in Romania, as it originates from the strategic documents, namely the "National Plan of 
\nGovernance 2017-2020" and the "Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy for Strengthening the Public Administration 2014-2020", and we highlight a number of 
\nshortcomings of this process.

Faiza Loukil, Chirine Ghédira, Khouloud Boukadi, Aïcha Nabila Benharkat

No abstract is available for this record.

David Berger

No abstract is available for this record.

Elizaveta Gromova

The article is devoted to the study of legal nature of smart contracts. Smart contracts definitions are analyzed, the data in the project of the Federal law «About digital financial assets» № 419059-7 (passed by the Gosudarstvennaya Duma in the first reading 20.05.2018), and in the technical, legal and economic literature, and outlines the main approaches to defining the legal nature thereof. The author comes to the conclusion that nowadays smart contracts should be qualified as technical means of contract performance, and that the statutory rules applicable to electronic contracts cannot apply to smart contracts.

Abdirahman Gulled, Jakaria Hossain

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrencyand worldwide decentralizedpayment system. The network is conducted through peer-to-peertransactionsand these transactions are verified by using cryptography technology. Blockchain technology keeps the records of public distributed ledger. Bitcoins are created as a rewardfor the public who are interested to earn it known as ‘mining’.This currency can be converted into other currencies, services and products. Lately, Bitcoin has been emerging as the well-known digital currency and getting popularity all over the world for quick transition. Moreover, this cryptocurrency will be a potential financial asset for investors because of its profitable returns. The researchers perceived that there is a significant impact of Bitcoin upon traditional transaction system which influenced us to conduct this study. The purpose of this research is to remark the ways how Bitcoin challenges the traditional transaction systemand to assess the future planning structure for traditional financial institutions to compete with digital currency. Bitcoin is the profitable platform for the miners and the investors, but little bit threat for the traditional bankers and the governments. Therefore, the attitudes and ideas of people (related with Bitcoin dealings) from different background have been assessed and analyzed for this research. The authors conducted questionnaires among the people who are acquainted with both Bitcoin and traditional transaction system and tried to find out solution of research question. We used a qualitative research methodology where we conducted semi-structured interviews. The data has been analyzed based upon the interviewees’ perspective. While preparing this research paper the authors examined the previous research in this field. In addition, there are lots of scope for further research regarding Bitcoin issue, as well as the opportunities and threats for the other financial institutions. The researchers explained the suggestions for further research which might be the guidelines for the traditional financial institutions. We faced some limitations and problems from different aspects to accomplish this research paper. The researchers came to the conclusion that Bitcoin is a challengeable instrument for the traditional transaction system. However, this cryptocurrency has some unavoidable risk and the questionable image which often used to support criminal activities. As because there is no governing authority, clearing house or central bank's involvement; thus, it bears uncertainty for the Bitcoin stockholders. In this study, we have been able to deepen the knowledge and found the solution how Bitcoin affects the traditional transaction system.

Aleksandar Đorđević, Dordevic, Aleksandar

During the history there have been different examples of incorporating technology into economics. Some of them include SWIFT, e-banking, mobile payments, and many more. Technology had to be commercialized and put into service of facilitating economic processes. International finances underwent the process of development too. With the globalization process national economies became more interconnected and dependent from each other. Individuals demanded a faster and more convenient way to make international payments. Internet trade is on the rise, social media rule the contemporary world, and then appears the inception of so-called crypto currencies. The most famous is Bitcoin. Where lays its place in the economic science? It looks like that Bitcoin is going towards decentralization of the monetary system known by now. The goal of this paper is to raise the awareness of the changes happening in economy and in economic science.

Nur Rizqi Febriandika, Raditya Sukmana

No abstract is available for this record.

Ying Chen, Simon Trimborn, Jiejie Zhang

No abstract is available for this record.

Andrew LR, Douglas AO

Bitcoin is a decentralized, pseudonymous, virtual currency which has been linked to many nefarious activities, such as money laundering, ransomware demands, and the purchase of contraband goods and services. Although it has many redeeming features such as low transaction costs, no charge-backs, and service to the world’s 2.5 billion unbanked, the public has become aware of Bitcoin through spectacular news stories of corruption and criminal activities. Techniques to investigate Bitcoin and to identify its users are therefore required to enforce laws and protect the public. This paper discusses what Bitcoin is and how it works, and explores various investigative methodologies to perform Bitcoin network analysis, transactional analysis, and wallet analysis. Finally, this paper discusses emerging issues and suggests areas for improvement with the goal of gaining general acceptance of investigative techniques for admissibility as scientific evidence in courtroom testimony.

Abba Garba, Zhi Guan, Anran Li, Zhong Chen

No abstract is available for this record.

Надежда Филипова

Over the last years, the blockchain technology has attracted the attention of both business users and IT specialists. In essence, blockchain or a chain of blocks is a distributed and decentralized database replicated across the multiple nodes of a network. Until recently blockchain has been associated mainly with cryptocurrencies, but nowadays it is revealing its serious potential as a means of replacing the business models that facilitate the operations of business organisations and the communication between them. The utilisation of the advantages provided by blockchain, however, requires their appropriate interpretations within the framework of business processes. With reference to this, the article analyses some of the main concepts and mechanisms of this technology. Special attention is paid to the interrelation of blockchain and distributed ledger (DLT) technologies, hashing of transactions and data management through consensus as well as the so called “smart contracts”. A parallel is made between the capabilities of public and private blockchain. Based on this, the study defines the fundamental blockchain characteristics and the advantages resulting from them. It is suggested that the blockchain technology offers a solution to the primary problem of trust between people in the context of global communication and ensures better transparency, reliability and security of data and business processes. In addition, the author outlines certain potential technical and business risk that have to be taken into consideration in the process of data transfer with reference to blockchain.

Shehu M. Sarkintudu, Huda Ibrahim, Alawiyah Abd Wahab

Blockchain platform has given information system scholars research opportunities in understanding dynamics of convergence of technology and social context. The information system research issues are complex and require taxonomies to understand the similarities and uniqueness among objects. Developing taxonomies is a complex process that needs systematic approach. This paper is a research-in-progress. We proposed taxonomy for Blockchain platform using existing method of developing taxonomies in information systems. With the unprecedented growth led to several companies to develop the varieties of Blockchain platforms. The complexity in the implementation and understanding the technical protocols leading to difficulty face by researchers and practitioners to access their full potentials. To bridge the gap, we proposed a taxonomy of Blockchains distributed ledger platforms in order to provide a mechanism for researchers and practitioners to understand the phenomenon. Final of taxonomy contains five (5) dimensions with fifteen (15) characteristics. Our analysis discovered Blockchain platforms are designed with specific goals, which prescribe its features, i.e FinTech Blockchain platforms for financial domain.

Noureddine Lasla, Mohamed Younis, Wassim Znaïdi, Dhafer Ben Arbia

Cooperative Intelligent Transportation System (C- ITS) enables inter-networking of vehicles for alerts exchanging in order to improve road safety. While this technology is about to enter the market in the upcoming years, critical questions related to the communication security continue to be challenging research concerns. Current solutions to secure inter-vehicle communication depend mainly on the use of digital certificates for authentication. However, such an approach imposes significant overhead on vehicles since it is computationally demanding and requires validation of the certificate within a limited period. In addition, relying on a central node for deciding on issuing and revoking certificates introduces a single point of failure and could even risk the safety of motorists. In this paper, we propose the use of Blockchain to keep track of the certificate of each vehicle (valid or revoked) in distributed and immutable records. In essence we replace certificate verification with a lightweight blockchain-based authentication approach. In addition, we propose a fully distributed vehicle admission/revocation scheme. We show that our scheme could alleviate the computation overhead and enhance the response time while improving the overall system security.

Zheng Wen-juan

Research on Chinese civil society has tended to focus on the relationship between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the state. Such work has underestimated the complexity of the emerging institutional environment where Chinese NGOs are often caught between the state, the market, and a constrained civil society. How do civil society organizations and their respective nonprofit sectors emerge, what forms do they take? More specifically, how do organizational forms and strategies reflect political and market structures at the time? Chinese nonprofit sectors re-emerged in the late 1990s, and their relationships with the state have been contentious. The rapid transformation of the nonprofit sectors provides a unique opportunity to look at the emergence of a new organizational field. Using strategic action fields (SAFs) theory, I examine how organizations within the field of nonprofit organizations attempted to establish and defend their positions vis-à-vis the state and market. I conducted comparative case studies of two leading China's NGOs –Civil Society Center (CSC) in the city of Guangzhou and Excellence Promoter (EP) in the city of Shanghai. I traced the histories and current development of CSC and EP and their connected organizations and used ethnographic, interview, and survey data to triangulate the emerging urban nonprofit sectors in the context of an authoritarian state. I argue that, in different periods, the nonprofit organizational fields of Guangzhou and Shanghai reflected political and market structures at the time. In the early 2000s, Guangzhou’s nonprofit organizations were grassroots-driven, and a State Avoidance Autonomous field arose as large organizations decentralized into smaller organizations to decrease state scrutiny and intervention. In contrast, in Shanghai, where the state promoted nonprofit organizations as an extension of governmental programs, a State Alliance Social Market Field developed. This State Alliance Social Market Field prioritized business values and practices to guide organizational strategies rather than the ethical commitments that had been the center of the State Avoidance Autonomous field. By partnering with government, EP was able to rapidly expand while its Guangzhou counterpart, CSC, remained small and marginal. Powerful e-commerce companies such as Tencent, however, have been changing the rules and norms that used to govern the field. They entered the nonprofit field through the creation of a new fundraising platform that opened up alternative resources for Chinese NGOs. The involvement of the market through corporate foundations and new technologies has provided alternative funding for grassroots NGOs under the attack from the state. My study contributes to nonprofit studies and China studies by providing insight into how NGOs interact with different state and market players and the consequences of such interactions on organizational strategies.

Ruinian Li, Yinhao Xiao, Cheng Zhang, Tianyi Song · 5 authors

Privacy in online applications has drawn tremendous attention in recent years. With the development of cloud-based applications, protecting users' privacy while guaranteeing the expected service from the server has become a significant issue. This paper surveyed the most popular cryptographic algorithms in privacy-preserving online applications to provide a tutorial-like introduction to researchers in this area. Specifically, this paper focuses on introduction to homomorphic encryption, secret sharing, secure multi-party computation and zero-knowledge proof.