Blockchain Papers

Lee W. McKnight, Richie Etwaru, Yihan Yu

No abstract is available for this record.

Richard Holden, Anup Malani

Two parties sign a contract but before they fully perform they modify the contract.Should courts enforce the modified agreement?The modification may enable efficient trade in response to changed circumstances, or one party may have made an efficient relationship-specific investment and then been held-up by the other.Courts have had difficulty tackling this problem because the facts required to discriminate between the two situations are non-verifiable.A private remedy is for the parties to write a contract that is robust to hold-up or that makes the facts relevant to modification verifiable.But implementing such remedies requires commitment to the provisions, i.e., they themselves are subject to non-compliance.Conventional contract technology, e.g., the use of liquidated damages, to ensure commitment are disfavored by courts and subject to renegotiation.Smart contracts written on blockchain ledgers may offer a solution.We explain the basic economics of these technologies.We argue that they can used to implement liquidated damages without court involvement and thereby obtain commitment to renegotiation design and revelation mechanisms.We address the hurdles courts may impose to use of smart contracts and argue that sophisticated parties' ex ante commitment to them may lead courts to allow their use as pre-commitment devices.

Jim Lindberg

Blockchain technology emerged in 2009 together with the introduction of Bitcoin, the first virtual currency which enabled nodes in a network, that do not necessarily trust each other, to exchange digital value without the use of trusted intermediaries. Since then, the idea of disintermediation and decentralization has gained traction in a large number of applications outside the world of finance and virtual currencies. This thesis is written in collaboration with Scania, an automotive industry manufacturer, with the purpose of gaining a better understanding of blockchain technology and how it can be used in the transportation industry. This thesis proposes five potential blockchain use cases that aim to either enhance Scania’s existing services or to create new services. Out of these five use cases, one is deemed inappropriate in regards to the use of blockchain technology while the other four have potentials benefits. The common denominator among these use cases is that they are decentralized in nature meaning that the use of intermediaries is mitigated. It is recognized that all use cases could be implemented using traditional, centralized databases and that the use of blockchain boils down to a technology choice with its own trade-offs relative to other potential choices. This thesis concludes that blockchain technology offers a new kind of database architecture, the main benefit of which is that it lets several non-trusting entities agree on a common set of facts, without having a trusted intermediary establishing these facts.

Dr Craig S Wright

No abstract is available for this record.

Mary E. Maginnis

No abstract is available for this record.

Abhinayan Basu Bal, Trisha Rajput, Parviz Alizada

Efforts of various international institutions have supported implementation of national/regional single windows and the next logical step would be to internationalize and make them interoperable to allow for greater collaborative information sharing. The purpose of this paper is to review the legal framework necessary for implementing international single window environment (ISWE) and, in that context, examine particular economic and financial aspects of the current developments. The discussion shows that ISWE is desirable as it may contribute towards creating a level playing field for SMEs participating in global supply chains. The paper discusses ASEAN Single Window to identify prospects and challenges, and highlight the legal and economic viability of interoperability. ASW is examined from transaction cost and information asymmetry theory perspectives to provide a methodology for conducting empirical analysis at country-level. Based on the findings the paper argues that full potential of ISWE can be realised through integration of transport and commercial requirements thereby improving G2G, B2G and B2B information flows. Nevertheless, such integration would require the ability to capture the complex relationships between various transport actors from legal and technical standpoints. To illustrate this legal complexity from transport and e-commerce law angle, the disadvantageous position of SMEs vis-à-vis use of electronic bills of lading and access to supply chain finance is examined. A critical analysis of selected legal texts is made through the lens of recent developments such as distributed ledger and cloud technologies to suggest solutions for SMEs. The conclusion highlights that transport and commercial requirements in the ISWE has to be incorporated through laws made for e-commerce and not through a piecemeal approach that replicate the functions of paper documents in an electronic environment.

Ignacio Rabasa Martínez

espanolEl presente trabajo busca analizar los posibles problemas que plantea el uso y aceptacion de criptodivisas como bitcoin en las distintas modalidades de crowdfunding practicadas en la actualidad. Para ello se explican las formas de crowdfunding mas utilizadas en funcion de la relacion contractual promotor- inversor y la normativa juridica a la que estan sometidas. EnglishThe present work seeks to analyze the possible legal difficulties that may arise from the use and acceptance of cryptocurrencies as bitcoin in crowfunding context. To do this, the different forms of crowdfunding are summarized in terms of the contractual promoter-investorrelationship and the legal regulations to which they are subject

Nashirah Abu Bakar, Sofian Rosbi

Crptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security, transfer process and storage in ledger.This paper is to validate the correlation between exchange rate changes and trading volume changes.Data selected for this study is hourly data starting from 4 November 2017 until 7 November 2017.Methodology implemented in this study started with normality diagnostics and followed by correlation diagnostic.In this study, Pearson correlation calculation is implemented to evaluate the association between two variables namely exchange rate and trading volume.Pearson's correlation coefficient (r) is a measure of the strength of the association between the two variables.Result shows the coefficient of association is 0.123.Therefore, this study proved that the association between exchange rate changes and trading volume changes is very weak association.This value occurred because there is high volatility in hourly data and existence of outliers.The significant of this finding will help investors to recognize the relationship between trading volume and exchange rate.Therefore, it will help investors to make better decision in developing investment portfolio.

Brandon M. Peck

A recent Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida decision has raised concerns over how both federal and state courts consider the unregulated cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. In State of Florida v. Michell Abner Espinoza, Judge Teresa Pooler held that Bitcoin did not fall under the statutory definitions of “payment instrument” or “monetary instrument” because virtual currency is not directly specified nor could it be included within one of the defined categories listed in Fla. Stat. § 560.103(29) or 896.101(2). Furthermore, Judge Pooler, alluding to the doctrine of lenity, refused to hold Espinoza responsible under a statute that is “so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning.” Judge Pooler thus disagreed with earlier decisions by several federal judges. The federal courts have uniformly held that Bitcoin is “money” or “funds” for the purpose of money laundering. Additionally, the federal courts, analyzing the applicable federal money laundering statutes, have refused to apply the doctrine of lenity because there were no ambiguities such that “an ordinary person would [not] know that engaging in the challenged conduct could give rise to the type of criminal liability charged.” State and federal courts can interpret similar state and federal statutes in differing ways based on each statute’s respective canon of construction and legislative intent. However, because the Florida Money Laundering Act (Fla. Stat. § 896.101) is modeled on the federal Money Laundering Control Act (18 U.S.C. § 1956), it is reasonable to assume that the courts would reach the same conclusion. Part I of this comment describes Bitcoin, discussing the cryptocurrency’s origins as well as how it works. Part II analyzes both the state and federal anti–money laundering statutes in light of Florida v. Espinoza and the opinions of the federal courts. Part III discusses the state and federal business services statutes in light of Florida v. Espinoza and federal court decisions, including U.S. v. Ulbricht, which held Bitcoin to be within the plain meaning of “money” and “funds” under the applicable federal money laundering statute. Finally, Part IV of this paper addresses the public policy implications of how Bitcoin is interpreted under criminal statutes pertaining to money laundering. A brief synopsis will provide information on how other countries and states have considered Bitcoin and the steps that the U.S. Congress has begun to take to address Bitcoin in criminal prosecutions.

Chao Yuan, Mixue Xu, Xueming Si

With the rise of Bitcoin, blockchain which is the core technology of Bitcoin has received increasing attention. Privacy preserving and performance on blockchain are two research points in academia and business, but there are still some unresolved issues in both respects. An aggregate signature scheme is a digital signature that supports making signatures on many different messages generated by many different users. Using aggregate signature, the size of the signature could be shortened by compressing multiple signatures into a single signature. In this paper, a new signature scheme for transactions on blockchain based on the aggregate signature was proposed. It was worth noting that elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem and bilinear maps played major roles in our signature scheme. And the security properties of our signature scheme were proved. In our signature scheme, the amount will be hidden especially in the transactions which contain multiple inputs and outputs. Additionally, the size of the signature on transaction is constant regardless of the number of inputs and outputs that the transaction contains, which can improve the performance of signature. Finally, we gave an application scenario for our signature scheme which aims to achieve the transactions of big data on blockchain.

Pavel Hubáček, Moni Naor, Eylon Yogev

The class TFNP is the search analog of NP with the additional guarantee that any instance has a solution. TFNP has attracted extensive attention due to its natural syntactic subclasses that capture the computational complexity of important search problems from algorithmic game theory, combinatorial optimization and computational topology. Thus, one of the main research objectives in the context of TFNP is to search for efficient algorithms for its subclasses, and at the same time proving hardness results where efficient algorithms cannot exist. Currently, no problem in TFNP is known to be hard under assumptions such as NP hardness, the existence of one-way functions, or even public-key cryptography. The only known hardness results are based on less general assumptions such as the existence of collision-resistant hash functions, one-way permutations less established cryptographic primitives (e.g. program obfuscation or functional encryption). Several works explained this status by showing various barriers to proving hardness of TFNP. In particular, it has been shown that hardness of TFNP hardness cannot be based on worst-case NP hardness, unless NP=coNP. Therefore, we ask the following question: What is the weakest assumption sufficient for showing hardness in TFNP? In this work, we answer this question and show that hard-on-average TFNP problems can be based on the weak assumption that there exists a hard-on-average language in NP. In particular, this includes the assumption of the existence of one-way functions. In terms of techniques, we show an interesting interplay between problems in TFNP, derandomization techniques, and zero-knowledge proofs.

Chao Yuan

With the rise of Bitcoin, cryptographic currencies have attracted more and more attention. Subsequently, other cryptographic currencies were gradually created, such as Zcash, Moreno, Dash and so on. In cryptographic currency, privacy preserving and expansion are two key technical points. In terms of privacy preserving, more effective solutions were proposed in Zcach, Moreno, Dash and other cryptographic currencies systems, in which ring signature, zero knowledge proof and other cryptographic techniques played important roles. But these schemes mainly considered protecting the addresses of both sides of the transaction. In terms of expansion, lightning network and other projects also give solutions. But most of these projects will bring other problems. In this paper, a signature scheme based on the aggregate signature and the elliptic curve algorithm is proposed to hide the transaction value of a single sender and receiver in the transactions which contain multiple inputs and outputs. This signature scheme achieves the purpose of privacy preserving from the transaction value. Further, the correctness proof and security analysis are given in this paper. In addition to that, another signature scheme that combines aggregation signature with bilinear ring signature is proposed. This aggregate ring signature scheme gives another attempt to solve the problem of expansion in the cryptographic currency system only using cryptographic technologies. At the same time, the sender's addresses can be hidden. Similarly, we also confirmed the correctness of this signature scheme.

Veronika Kuchta, Gaurav Sharma, Rajeev Anand Sahu, Olivier Markowitch

No abstract is available for this record.

Henrik Suikkanen

Blockchain technology has been raising enthusiasm over a variety of disciplines, from information technology and finance, to law and economics. Blockchain is a decentralized ledger, which facilitates trust and makes peer-to-peer transactions possible without a central third-party authority. Since 2008, cryptocurrency bitcoin has provided an example of how to implement a marketplace without a central authority by using blockchain technology . The fact that a broad range of economic and government activities rely on a centralized recording of the basic data of the economy makes this technology potentially significant. The utopian views of blockchain have argued that it will disrupt a wide range of markets by eliminating the need for intermediation. The objective of this thesis is to review the relevant literature related to the topic and provide a guide to what blockchain means in the field of economics. The published research is mapped through a three stage literature review, and based on this, it is organized in three main categories: monetary-, innovation- and governance-centred research. Even though the literature surrounding the topic is still in its infancy, the potential of blockchain technologies is recognized by the literature. From the monetary viewpoint blockchain gives unprecedented flexibility in designing the attributes of currencies in terms of supply, value and exchange. From the innovation viewpoint, blockchain can create both increased efficiency of existing markets but also profits through entirely new markets. From the governance viewpoint blockchain facilitates trust and can be instrumental in democratizing economy more towards peer-to-peer production and consumption. Rather than a single technology, blockchain should be understood as a part of a greater digital transformation. In this case, blockchain can play a role in unlocking the potential of digital commons as well as the sharing and platform economy through a decentralized, universal record-keeping system.

Jirawat Metasuttirat, Ratthasirin Wangkanond

No abstract is available for this record.

Hadi Sumarsono, Farida Rahmawati

Implementation of regional autonomy as the government's efforts for the welfare society in accordance with the characteristic of each region. Implementation of the fiscal decentralization recurring phenomenon is the phenomenon of flypaper effect. Flypaper effect occurs when the local government responded to the regional expenditure larger than the central government transfer revenue. The purpose of research is to prove the phenomenon of flypaper in East Java Province period 2011-2015. This research uses quantitative analysis with a population of 29 districts and 9 cities in East Java province. Data were analyzed using panel data regression analysis with Eviews statistical test equipment. The result showed that regional revenue positively affects regional expenditure, general allocation fund positively affects regional expenditure, financing budget surplus positively affects regional expenditure, regional revenue positively effect on growth, positive effect on the regional expenditure growth at district/city in East Java Province. The result of the comparison coefficient general allocation of funds and region revenue indicate there has been a flypaper effect on region expenditure districts/cities in East Java Province period [2011][2012][2013][2014][2015]

Carla Reyes

No abstract is available for this record.

Saurav Chakraborty, Kaushik Dutta, Don Berndt

No abstract is available for this record.

Alexandre Laurin, Kevin Milligan

No abstract is available for this record.

Wenming Xu

No abstract is available for this record.

Kurki, Marleena

The purpose of this study was to describe social movement meeting organization and to increase the understanding of organized spaces for collective action. This paper contributes to several research streams. Firstly, this study advances a novel research stream conceptualizing social movements as spaces, and particularly as open rather than isolated spaces. Secondly, it raises meetings into the focal point of organizing and offers a multisided examination of meeting organization instead of limiting structure under one label such as network or formal organization. Thirdly, by focusing on organizing based on multiple logics and partial organization this study brings forward the understanding of organizing in the contemporary society as well as organization located in the outskirts of formal organizations. Fourthly, by making a distinction between organizing and mobilizing, this study develops the understanding of how movements can serve as a resource for individual actors and their goals. Finally, the case provides a rare example of a movement born around a nascent digital innovation with possibly considerable impact on society. The research was carried out as a descriptive case study focusing on the meetings of Helsinki Ethereum Meetup, which is a meeting-based organization set up around a nascent blockchain platform, Ethereum. The primary data consisted of eight interviews with the meetup participants. In addition, the case was complemented by an analysis of the group’s social media accounts and membership data retrieved from meetup.com, through which the group was facilitated. The data was analyzed utilizing a dual approach deploying both open coding and theory-based coding techniques. Meetings and their organization were analyzed from three perspectives: a network, an institution and an organization. Furthermore, the case analysis included identifying the ideological, business and political context of the case and the meetup group’s relations to other groups in the field of blockchain technologies. The results of the analysis indicate that the meetings can be described as a hybrid of a norm-based institution, a network hub and a partial organization with less than all elements of a formal organization. In practice, all three perspectives are linked to each other and together complement each other to form one entity. However, this study implies that the specific logics can be regarded as analytically separate to arrive at a more pronounced multilevel analysis of meeting organizing. In addition, the case organization was found to be an example of a pioneer group in its own field being the first and only meetup devoted to Ethereum in Finland at the time of the study. Furthermore, the settings and the organization of the meetup were possibly linked to the group’s position in its field and the nascent developmental state of Ethereum.

Wenyao Zhou, Quanfang Xiao

As a new Internet technology, Block chain is highly concerned because of its unique advantages in distributed ledger. Based on the theory of event approach accounting, this paper subdivides the accounting recognition into two processes, and explores the application of the Block chain in the processes. With the application of Block chain, it is possible to make accounting recognition multidimensional and achieve the fundamental recognition criteria.

Marc Pilkington, Jong‐Hyouk Lee

In this article, we analyze the winds of change currently blowing on the booming multi-billion dollar global consumer electronics industry. The revolutionary impact of blockchain technology on supply chain management is discussed as well as potential use cases for the consumer electronics industry. The pivotal role played by the IoT (Internet of Things) industry segment is highlighted. Finally, we conclude by stating that blockchain technology has the power to make the world a more transparent, safer and honest place.

Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Much American electoral and policy debate now centers on how best to reignite the nation’s economic dynamism and rebuild its competitive strength. Any such undertaking presents an extraordinary challenge, demanding a correspondingly extraordinary institutional response. This Article proposes precisely such a response. It designs and advocates a new public instrumentality--a National Investment Authority (“NIA”)--charged with the critical task of devising and implementing a comprehensive long-term development strategy for the United States.Patterned in part after the New Deal-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation, in part after modern sovereign wealth funds, and in part after private equity and venture capital firms, the NIA is an inherently hybrid, public-private entity that combines the unique strengths of public instrumentalities--their vast scale, lengthy investment horizons, and explicit backing by the public’s full faith and credit--with the micro-informational advantages of private market actors. By creatively adapting familiar tools of financial and legal engineering, the NIA overcomes obstacles that ordinarily impede or discourage private investment in critically necessary and even transformative public infrastructure goods. By channeling presently speculative private capital back into the real economy, moreover, the NIA plays an important role in enhancing the resilience and stability of the U.S. and global financial systems.The Article makes original contributions not only to contemporary policy debates over how to revive America’s productive prowess and bring its financial system back into the service of the real economy, but also to current theoretical understandings of “public goods,” “market failures,” and how to provide or address them. It offers an account of what it calls “collective goods”--a broader category than orthodox public goods--as solutions to collective action problems that pervade decentralized markets, hence as goods that can be supplied only through exercises of collective agency. Our NIA proposal operationalizes this theoretical insight by elaborating a specific institutional form that such collective agency can take.