Blockchain Papers

Chul‐Jin Kim

No abstract is available for this record.

Jamil Civitarese

No abstract is available for this record.

Hua Song, Ence Zhou, Bingfeng Pi, Jun Sun · 6 authors

Battery swapping is a solution of electric vehicle (EV) battery refueling. For EV owners, the battery information and transaction’s correctness, openness, traceability and immutability is difficult to get guarantee in traditional centralized system. The trust lacking between EV owners and swapping station is caused, and becomes a big challenge to EV’s rapid development. An objective mechanism based on decentralized blockchain system is proposed to manage battery swapping and solve the trust lacking issue. With this solution, both battery’s life-cycle information and all operations histories are permanently saved in blockchain network. All key logics are driven by smart contracts, the battery price calculation and the digital currency exchange between EV owners and station are realized by smart contracts automatically and accurately. A primary prototype based on Ethereum is analyzed and implemented to illustrate the feasibility of managing battery swapping and refueling based on blockchain system to solve the trust lacking issue.

Yasar Kaya

In this paper, the price fluctuations of Bitcoin under speculative environment is studied. It has been seen that the market trend points out an existence of a speculative bubble. Over the course of the period from 2014 to 2018, the trend in price movements of bitcoin has proved to be strongly speculative. In that regard, investors might be curious about what drivers might be instrumental in these speculative price changes. After reviewing of NPV, it was seen that NPV is not applicable to the case of cryptocurrencies due to their nature and lack of free cash flows to base the asset valuation to some fundamental facts. Later, LPPL model is reviewed, however, that also proved to be insufficient since it does not reflect the investor speculations and inform much about price dynamics regarding behavioral finance principles. Then, some papers from the past price fluctuations of bitcoin (for the period from 2010 to 2013) was reviewed and three key variables were determined which might explain price movements. Public interest towards Bitcoin as interest-driven, regulatory and political news about cryptocurrencies as event-driven and VIX as overall investor approach to Bitcoin market have been taken. After running regressions, the only significant variable happened to be public interest and popularity of Bitcoin. Although, for some cases, VIX variable also explain price fluctuations for some intervals, in none of the cases event-driven variable has long- terms effect on price fluctuations under speculative environment. Lastly, a robustness test is also handled considering the “weekend effect” and it has been seen public interest variable again proved to be a significant price determinant.

Michał R. Hoffman, Luis Ibáñez, Huw Fryer, Elena Simperl

No abstract is available for this record.

Sinclair Davidson, Mikayla Novak, Jason Potts

No abstract is available for this record.

Campbell R. Harvey, Christine Moorman, Marc Toledo

No abstract is available for this record.

Jianfu Wang

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) creates a decentralized system for trust and transaction validation using executable smart contracts to update information across a distributed database. This type of ecosystem can be applied to Commodity Trade Finance to alleviate critical issues of information asymmetry and the cost of transacting which are the leading causes of the Trade Finance Gap (ie. the lack of supply of capital to meet total trade finance demand). The possibility of scaling up such ecosystems with a number of Institutional Investors and micro small medium enterprises (MSME) would be advantageous, however, it brings up its own set of challenges including the stability of the system design. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a powerful method to assess the financial ecosystem dynamics. DLT ecosystems model well under ABM, as the agents present a clearly defined taxonomy. In this study, we use ABM to assess the Aquifer Institute Platform - a DLT-based Commodity Trade Finance system, in which a growing number of participating parties is closely related to the circulation of utility tokens and transaction flows. We study the system dynamics of the platform and propose an appropriate setup for different transaction loads.

Valentina Nakić

Global energy consumption is expected to increase over the course of this century. Continued generation with the current energy mix is expected to further threaten climate tipping points. In order to meet emissions reduction targets, there has been a global push by governments to increase their share of renewable energy sources (RESs). Adoption has grown across scales, in addition to demand for new market models which allow for more flexible energy distribution. Liberalization of energy markets has expanded the number of actors involved, further contributing to the complexity of the issue. Adapting management systems and market models to better incorporate distributed energy sources poses a unique challenge to current energy system actors. \nInformation and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly explored as a means of increasing efficiency and enabling more dynamic markets. Among these is distributed ledger technology (DLT), a decentralised, immutable, and cryptographically secured record of transactions which proponents claim can enable peer-to-peer energy trading. As of November 2018, DLT-enabled energy trading remains in an experimental phase. The question of governance has repeatedly been raised without clear strategic visions set for integration into future energy systems. \nThis research is a single case study which employed participatory foresight methods to understand how governance arrangements, actor networks, and innovation policies can be shaped over the first half of the 21st century in order to facilitate a sustainable energy system transformation enhanced by distributed ledger technology. The foresight methods used are visioning, driver mapping, scenario design, and policy-stress testing. Participants came from various levels, roles, and competencies within the energy sector. Several DLT application areas were identified, along with drivers of change, which were used to frame scenario narratives applied later in policy stress-testing. \nResults show that while DLT is not deemed a necessary part of a sustainable energy system transformation, an interactive mode of governance would be most conducive to a future in which it would have a role. Further, results suggest that there are ample opportunities for DLT and/or innovation policies to be co-opted by vested interests and locked into a non-transformative pathway. The importance of data-sharing in enabling sociotechnical change and, moreover, the legitimacy debate surrounding data collection methods is another key insight. This research enriches the robustness of contemporary knowledge on the arrangement and planning for transformative governance structures which can promote opportunities for sustainable development provided by novel technologies such as DLT, in addition to the role of foresight exercises in anticipatory governance.

Yang Xu, Guojun Wang, Jidian Yang, Ju Ren · 6 authors

The emerging network computing technologies have significantly extended the abilities of the resource‐constrained IoT devices through the network‐based service sharing techniques. However, such a flexible and scalable service provisioning paradigm brings increased security risks to terminals due to the untrustworthy exogenous service codes loading from the open network. Many existing security approaches are unsuitable for IoT environments due to the high difficulty of maintenance or the dependencies upon extra resources like specific hardware. Fortunately, the rise of blockchain technology has facilitated the development of service sharing methods and, at the same time, it appears a viable solution to numerous security problems. In this paper, we propose a novel blockchain‐based secure service provisioning mechanism for protecting lightweight clients from insecure services in network computing scenarios. We introduce the blockchain to maintain all the validity states of the off‐chain services and edge service providers for the IoT terminals to help them get rid of untrusted or discarded services through provider identification and service verification. In addition, we take advantage of smart contracts which can be triggered by the lightweight clients to help them check the validities of service providers and service codes according to the on‐chain transactions, thereby reducing the direct overhead on the IoT devices. Moreover, the adoptions of the consortium blockchain and the proof of authority consensus mechanism also help to achieve a high throughput. The theoretical security analysis and evaluation results show that our approach helps the lightweight clients get rid of untrusted edge service providers and insecure services effectively with acceptable latency and affordable costs.

Hika Nigatu

Decentralization is widely recognized to improve sustainable development through promoting good governance. However, like many African countries, Ethiopia has faced a number of challenges in good governance building process. Thus, this research focuses on assessing the role of decentralization in promoting good governance in Wolaita and Dawuro Zones. The study employed descriptive research design to describe the practices of decentralization and its role in promoting good governance. Both primary and secondary data were used. The primary data was collected through questionnaire and interview while secondary data was collected by conducting extensive desk review from published and unpublished documents like journals, articles, books, reports, etc. To realize the objective of the study 400 employees were selected from 12 selected public sectors of Wolaita and Dawuro zone using simple random sampling techniques. The collected data were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative method of data analysis. The finding of the study shows that the practice of political and administrative decentralization was good. But fiscal decentralization was lowly practiced and remains the problem in promoting good governance. This was mainly because power of rising and controlling own revenue, extent of expenditure planning and financing, revenue transfer ratio, autonomy to borrow fund, financial management capacities of local governments were low in Wolaita and Dawuro zones. Therefore, the government should pay attention to fiscal decentralization by encouraging local governments to have enough fiscal control and capacity to plan their activities in most effective and efficient manner. Keywords : Decentralization, Good Governance, Political decentralization, Administrative decentralization, Fiscal decentralization

Thanos Andrikopoulos, Robert Hudson, Saeed Akbar, Darius Saftoiu

No abstract is available for this record.

Roy Keidar, Sttphane Blemus

No abstract is available for this record.

Anton Kajtazi, Andrea Moro

No abstract is available for this record.

Maneesh Mishra, Rakesh Ranjan

India riding on its demographic advantage will account for more than half of the increase in Asia’s workforce in the coming decade, but this isn’t just a story of more workers. These new workers will have to be much better trained than the existing workforce. For India to reap the dividends of its demographic potential, there is an urgency to equip the youth with necessary skills. Though Skill India outlines this national priority, the outcomes of the public funded skill development efforts have witnessed variance in outcomes with quality being the key concern. Effective monitoring could potentially address many of these challenges but M&E of skill development programs in India suffers from weak data validation processes and lacks technology enablement. This working paper discusses the data requirement for effective monitoring and aims at initiating a dialogue on the case for Distrusted Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain enabled monitoring in the Indian Skill Development Ecosystem.

David Mendes, Irene Pimenta Rodrigues, César Fonseca, Manuel José Lopes · 6 authors

We introduce our solution developed for data privacy, and specifically for cognitive security that can be enforced and guaranteed using blockchain technology in SAAL (Smart Ambient Assisted Living) environments. Personal clinical and demographic information segments to various levels that assures that it can only be rebuilt at the interested and authorized parties and no profiling can be extracted from the blockchain itself. Using our proposal the access to a patient's clinical process resists tampering and ransomware attacks that have recently plagued the HIS (Hospital Information Systems) in various countries. The core of the blockchain model assures non-repudiation possible by any of the involved information producers thus maintaining ledger fidelity of the enclosed historical process information. One important side effect of this data infrastructure is that it can be accessed in open form, for research purposes for instance, since no individual re-identification or group profiling is possible by any means.

Christian Fisch

No abstract is available for this record.

Tuyet Duong

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have proven to be a phenomenal success. The underlying techniques hold huge promise to change the future of financial transactions, and eventually the way people and companies compute, collaborate, and interact. At the same time, the current Bitcoin-like proof-of-work based blockchain systems are facing many challenges. In more detail, a huge amount of energy/electricity is needed for maintaining the Bitcoin blockchain. In addition, their security holds if the majority of the computing power is under the control of honest players. However, this assumption has been seriously challenged recently and Bitcoin-like systems will fail when this assumption is broken. This research proposes novel blockchain designs to address the challenges. We first propose a novel blockchain protocol, called 2-hop blockchain, by combining proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms. That said, even if the adversary controls more than 50% computing power, the honest players still have the chance to defend the blockchain via honest stake. Then we revise and implement the design to obtain a practical cryptocurrency system called Twinscoin. In more detail, we introduce a new strategy for difficulty adjustment in the hybrid blockchain and provide an analysis of it. We also show how to construct a light client for proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies and evaluate the proposal practically. We implement our new design. Our implementation uses a recent modular development framework for blockchains, called Scorex. It allows us to change only certain parts of an application leaving other codebase intact.

Chloé Hébant, Duong Hieu Phan, David Pointcheval

Since the seminal paper on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) by Gentry in 2009, a lot of work and improvements have been proposed, with an amazing number of possible applications. It allows outsourcing any kind of computations on encrypted data, and thus without leaking any information to the provider who performs the computations. This is quite useful for many sensitive data (finance, medical, etc.).

Ibrahim Shehata

No abstract is available for this record.

M. Todd Henderson, Max Raskin

No abstract is available for this record.

Ryan Clements

The purpose of this paper is to assess the evolution of cryptocurrency including its demand factors, latent value propositions and regulatory developments. The cryptocurrency market has experienced unprecedented growth driven by improved ease of access, speculation, familiarity, media attention, network effects, mining activity, distrust of traditional banking, global instability hedging, and a demand effect from the initial coin offering (ICO) market. This had led to wide asset bubble speculation. The future of cryptocurrency is impossible to predict, and although it is unlikely that cryptocurrency will eliminate trusted intermediaries, and replace sovereign fiat altogether, it has numerous latent value propositions and long-term use cases including distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain innovations (particularly in financial payments, settlements, clearing, supply chain, agriculture, and voting), identity and data protection mechanisms, crowd-funding, and decentralized business applications and services.There may also be benefits to a bubble including “long tail” successes, hype-financed research and development in DLT and blockchain infrastructure (that wouldn’t have otherwise received funding in a reticent market), and consumer familiarity benefits. The regulatory response to date has largely been enforcement based (emphasizing fraud detection and criminal deterrence), with public statements and interest across a diverse range of regulatory bodies, rather than unified rules. There are however inherent difficulties in regulating the cryptocurrency market, which will be discussed in detail in this paper.

Volodymyr Кorneev, Oksana Cheberyаko

Essence of cryptocurrencies is considered in the article, their risks and prospects of development in Ukraine and world. Advantages and disadvantages of crypto currency are described. Positions of foreign central banks and other financial regulators are lighted up in relation to cryptocurrencies and markets of cryptocurrencies. It is offered, that the experience of Japan, Switzerland, the United States and England in this question should be used as a fairway. It is marked that corresponding activity and financial services must be licensed by the state as a type of professional activity on the stages of formation of cryptocurrency (mining) and support of its circulation (trading and financial consulting).

Andrew Burnie, James Burnie, Andrew Henderson

The rise of cryptocurrency as a new sui generis asset class creates a need for a new classification scheme to cover the wide range of functionality for which tokens can be used. By differentiating tokens based on their functional attributes, cryptocurrency tokens can be categorised into crypto-transaction tokens (which act as a cash substitute); crypto-fuel tokens (which underpin generic blockchain applications); and crypto-voucher tokens (which can be exchanged for a predefined asset). This classification is applied to identify important issues when considering whether to participate in a cryptocurrency system, such as the impact of potential forks, token supply expectations and the level of dependence on a few operators (entity-dependence). For crypto-transaction tokens (and crypto-fuel tokens if used in a similar or overlapping role) it shows the importance of the token being seen as a “better” form of money. For crypto-fuel tokens, the popularity of blockchain applications and the utility of the crypto-fuel system in application development is vital. For crypto-voucher tokens, the value of the underlying asset, the token’s exchangeability for that asset and the importance of a digital representation should be considered by participants. The interplay between fundamentals and speculation as drivers of price is considered.An erratum to this article has been published at as DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/ledger.2018.151.