Blockchain Papers

Agostino Capponi, Ruizhe Jia, Ye Wang

No abstract is available for this record.

Kankam O. Adu-Kankam, Luís M. Camarinha-Matos

The rapid proliferation of renewable energy communities/ecosystems is an indication of their potential contribution to the ongoing energy transition. A common characteristic of these ecosystems is their complex composition, which often involves the interaction of multiple actors. Currently, the notions of "networking", "collaboration", "coordination", and "cooperation", although having different meanings, are often loosely used to describe these interactions, which creates a sense of ambiguity and confusion. To better characterize the nature of interactions in current and emerging ecosystems, this article uses the systematic literature review method to analyse 34 emerging cases. The objective is threefold (a) to study the interactions and engagements between the involved actors, aiming at identifying elements of collaboration. (b) Identify the adopted technological enablers, and (c) ascertain how the composition and functions of these ecosystems compare to virtual power plants. The outcome revealed that the interactions between the members of these ecosystems can be described as cooperation and not necessarily as collaboration, except in a few cases. Regarding technological enablers, a vast panoply of technologies, such as IoT devices, smart meters, intelligent software agents, peer-to-peer networks, distributed ledger systems/blockchain technology (including smart contracts, blockchain as a platform service, and cryptocurrencies) were found. In comparison with virtual power plants, these ecosystems have similar composition, thus, having multiple actors, comprised of decentralized and heterogeneous technologies, and are formed by aggregating various distributed energy resources. They are also supported by ICT and are characterized by the simultaneous flow of information and energy.

Taochun Wang, Huimin Shen, Jian Chen, Fulong Chen · 6 authors

With the continuous innovative development and popularization of mobile smart devices , the application of Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) continues to be studied extensively. However, existing centralized MCS applications that use servers for task publishing and data collection exhibit common problems, such as single points of failure and security vulnerabilities . Accordingly, we proposed a hybrid blockchain-based identity authentication scheme for MCS called HBIA, which uses blockchain technology to resolve the single-point failure problem. HBIA builds a cluster structure based on factors such as geographical location and balance, and uses it to construct a hybrid blockchain , with the cluster head node and internal cluster node authenticating on the public and private chains, respectively. We also implemented zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) to ensure the privacy of participants’ identities, thus balancing the contradiction between blockchain transparency and security. In addition, HBIA uses the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (zk-SNARK) technology to enable off-chain computing and on-chain verification, further reducing the blockchain’s workload. Finally,​ HBIA was evaluated based on the pavement crack detection task and tested on the Ethereum public test network known as Ropsten. The test results indicate that the identity authentication scheme proposed in this paper is superior to existing schemes in terms of authentication time.

Zubair Ahmad, Zahra Almaspoor, Faridoon Khan, Sharifah E. Alhazmi · 7 authors

<abstract><p>Cryptocurrency is a digital currency and also exists in the form of coins. It has turned out as a leading method for peer-to-peer online cash systems. Due to the importance and increasing influence of Bitcoin on business and other related sectors, it is very crucial to model or predict its behavior. Therefore, in recent, numerous researchers have attempted to understand and model the behaviors of cryptocurrency exchange rates. In the practice of actuarial and financial studies, heavy-tailed distributions play a fruitful role in modeling and describing the log returns of financial phenomena. In this paper, we propose a new family of distributions that possess heavy-tailed characteristics. Based on the proposed approach, a modified version of the logistic distribution, namely, a new modified exponential-logistic distribution is introduced. To illustrate the new modified exponential-logistic model, two financial data sets are analyzed. The first data set represents the log-returns of the Bitcoin exchange rates. Whereas, the second data set represents the log-returns of the Ethereum exchange rates. Furthermore, to forecast the high volatile behavior of the same datasets, we apply dual machine learning algorithms, namely Artificial neural network and support vector regression. The effectiveness of these models is evaluated against self exciting threshold autoregressive model.</p></abstract>

Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain, Imran Siddique, Sayed M. Eldin, Shahid Hussain Gurmani

One of the substantial innovations achieved through digitalization is cryptocurrencies, also known as simulated or digital currencies, which have been deliberated in the modern era as a new platform particularly suitable for financiers. Several cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, and Tether, do not trust a dominant expert. The classification and conduction of insecurity and the confirmation of digital currencies complicate decision-making. q-rung orthopair fuzzy hypersoft sets are an emerging arena of research intended to report the confidential restrictions of q-rung orthopair fuzzy soft sets on multiparameter indefinite functions. Such a function maps a tuple of sub-parameters to a power set of the universe. It emphasizes allocating attributes to their corresponding sub-attribute values in disjoint sets. These structures sort it an innovative systematic tool for addressing the obstacles of hesitancy. The q-rung orthopair fuzzy hypersoft set (q-ROFHSS) expertly compacts with tentative and ambagious facts equated to the existing q- rung orthopair fuzzy soft set and Pythagorean fuzzy hypersoft set (PFHSS). It is the most compelling mode for enlarging imprecise data in decision-making (DM). This investigation’s ultimate impartiality is presenting interactional algebraic operational laws for q-ROFHSS. Furthermore, some interaction aggregation operators (AOs) have been anticipated via our proposed operational laws, such as q-rung orthopair fuzzy hypersoft interactive weighted average (q-ROFHSIWA) and q-rung orthopair fuzzy hypersoft interactive weighted geometric (q-ROFHSIWG) operators with their essential properties. In reality, a mathematical illustration of DM obstacles is pondered to substantiate the proven technique’s dominance. Based on the projected interaction AOs, robust multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) design has been offered, which carries the most practical consequences associated with predominant MCGDM methods. The significance spectacle is that the intentional methodology is more operative and steady in bearing weird facts based on q-ROFHSS.

Manuel Pereira Lamela, Jesús Rodríguez-Molina, Margarita Martínez, Juan Garbajosa

The possibilities that Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) offer for cooperation, development, and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are remarkable. This is because DLTs enable several key features, such as sharing complete information about every data transaction in the distributed system that participants belong to, the immutability of the recorded data transactions, or consensus among what data can be regarded as true, of great usefulness for the implementation of the SDGs. As far as developing countries are concerned, this information could be useful in trading locally produced goods, as it could enhance the reputation and profitability of Small-Scale Producers (SSPs). Unfortunately, it is rare to find a digitalized marketplace that has been specifically implemented for this application domain. This paper puts forward a blockchain-based marketplace that makes use of Smart Contracts and offers information about how the sold goods were produced and can be traced to their very origin. Besides, cloud computing has been conceived to be used in this development from the beginning to reduce the computational resources required by end user operations. An implementation with cloud computing facilities, software components running on the Ethereum blockchain and a web front end have been tested with satisfactory performance results.

Leonardo Alt, Martin Blicha, Antti E. J. Hyvärinen, Natasha Sharygina

Abstract Formally verifying smart contracts is important due to their immutable nature, usual open source licenses, and high financial incentives for exploits. Since 2019 the Ethereum Foundation’s Solidity compiler ships with a model checker. The checker, called SolCMC, has two different reasoning engines and tracks closely the development of the Solidity language. We describe SolCMC’s architecture and use from the perspective of developers of both smart contracts and tools for software verification, and show how to analyze nontrivial properties of real life contracts in a fully automated manner.

Zhang Yanjun

As a peer‐to‐peer “P2P” distributed ledger, the blockchain has the advantages of decentralization, no trust, open autonomy, and nontampering. Therefore, many users are willing to conduct transactions in blockchain cryptocurrency systems such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, the throughput of traditional blockchain is extremely low, and the transaction is so delayed. The payment channel network is the most promising solution to expand the blockchain for widespread use. Achieving secure instant payment on the payment channel can significantly increase transaction throughput and reduce transaction delays. When the payment channel is closed, the balance in the channel will be returned to an account on the blockchain. In this paper, we discuss the design and the implementation of a multiparty payment channel network based on smart contracts. Where a two‐party payment channel is designed based on blockchain and smart contracts, a new multiparty payment channel is established on the basis of the payment channel. A detailed definition and description are given, and the creation, update, and closing functions of the multiparty payment channel are designed. Moreover, we design a multiparty payment channel smart contract, deploy it to the local private blockchain, and conduct simulation and testing. The delay time of different transaction methods is counted, and the network topology type, transaction amount, and other factors are studied. The impact of transaction success rate and the gas consumption of different transaction methods are analyzed through multiple sets of experimental statistics.

Saurav Taneja

No abstract is available for this record.

Srinidhi Kanuri

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency in the world launched in 2009 while Ethereum was the second one launched in 2015. This paper evaluates the risk and return for both the cryptocurrencies using CMBI Bitcoin and CMBI Ethereum indices as their proxies since their inception and compares them to 10 traditional asset classes -- U.S. stocks, developed country stocks, emerging market stocks, gold, commodities, energy, U.S. bonds, global bonds, U.S. real estate and global real estate. Both the cryptocurrencies had very high risk, absolute returns and risk-adjusted performance (Sharpe, Sortino and Omega Ratios) compared to other traditional asset classes. Ethereum and Bitcoin also had very high cumulative returns and generated much more wealth compared to other asset classes. However, both the cryptocurrencies also had very high maximum drawdown and monthly downside deviation compared to traditional asset classes. Overall, Bitcoin and Ethereum are extremely high risk, high reward plays for investors.

Lin Zhang, Brian Lee, Yuansong Qiao

Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger. It is a chain of blocks. Each block contains a series of transactions. Each transaction is for a value transfer or a smart contract execution. The main purpose of the blockchain system is to achieve consensus on transaction sequence without a controller. The transaction processing capability of the blockchain is influenced by the propagation time of a block in the network -- the shorter the block propagation time, the better the transaction processing capability of the blockchain system, and the easier that system can reach consensus. Ethereum is the second-generation blockchain. It supports Turing complete smart contracts. Although many factors will affect the performance of the Ethereum system, the planned future work of the project is to optimise the transaction/block broadcasting process in the Ethereum peer-to-peer network.

Lina Li, Tingting Zhang, Guodong Sun, Dezheng Jin · 5 authors

The continuous production of large-scale data makes data outsourcing computation a trend. In order to ensure that data outsourcing transaction is trusted and fair, it needs the supervision and judgment of a third party. However, the third-party intermediary increases the transaction cost, and there is also subjective unreliability. Smart contracts allow trusted transactions without a third party, which are automatic, traceable and irreversible. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a framework for data outsourcing computation transaction based on the smart contract, in which the transaction is verifiable, fair and privacy protected. In this framework, by improved the replication-based verifiable computation technology, the data in the dataset is evenly distributed to each server, and at least one data in the sub datasets of the adjacent servers is the same, only the results from the duplicate data are verified, so as to implement the verifiable transaction with the low transaction cost. Meanwhile, a punishment mechanism is adopted to solve the fairness of the transaction in the smart contract. In addition, the oblivious transfer protocol is used to implement the privacy protection of transaction data. We deploy the data outsourcing computation transaction framework in the simulation environment of the Ethereum blockchain, and the experimental results show that our proposed scheme is effective and has low overhead. Specifically, the data returned by the server is verifiable, and the data privacy of the client is protected. When the client and servers are dishonest, they will be punished so that the transaction is fair. Moreover, the cost of using the smart contract in transactions is almost negligible.

Yiping Liu, Jie Xu, Baojiang Cui

Abstract With the rapid development of the blockchain, smart contract technology has been widely applied. The number of smart contracts has grown at a high rate and nearly at an average of thousands per day. However, the correctness and security of the smart contract itself are facing huge problems. The well-known DAO vulnerability, and Parity multi-signature wallet’ vulnerabilities have leaded to a hundreds of millions dollars loss, and they are both caused by the security problems of smart contracts. Once the smart contract vulnerability is exploited, it is very likely to bring the loss of cryptocurrencies, the disorder of the financial order and other catastrophic consequences. Therefore the security of smart contracts is imminent. This project has designed and implemented a vulnerability detection system of Ethereum smart contract. The system uses the assembly instruction sequences of the smart contract to generate the control flow graph, then performs symbolic execution and vulnerability constraint solving over the control flow. The system can detect some common types of vulnerabilities, such as the integer overflow and underflow vulnerability, reentry vulnerability and unchecked call return value vulnerability. It has a high accuracy of detection result, and gives support for export vulnerability report.

Satit Kravenkit, Chakchai So–In

In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based framework involving a traceability system for product recall (TSPR) designed to develop a traceability system integrated into the product recall system deployed to the Ethereum to ensure the transparency and visibility of the recall process for all stakeholders. The proposed system incorporates all four stakeholders, including supply chain (SC) participants, the food safety regulatory system, the admin, and end customers, into one chain. In the proposed TSPR system, individual components are developed to provide primarily product traceability events, product recall data and status, which are stored in the blockchain to authorized stakeholders. Moreover, the entity relationship and activity diagram of the TSPR system are developed. In the experiment, we develop three smart contracts of the TSPR system using Remix IDE running on an Ethereum test network. A scenario of the events of product traceability and recall in the SC is developed. Two criteria are used to test the validation of contracts: the correct operation and measurement of gas costs. The results show the correctness of three smart contracts, thereby ensuring that the stakeholder chain is provided with visibility and transparency primarily for the product recall process. Moreover, the summation of gas costs deployed in the TSPR system in Ethereum Mainnet for the regulator and manufacturer is $30.23 and $111.54, respectively. However, when using the Polygon Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the gas cost remains $0.022 and $0.083, respectively; thus, we recommend this system for stakeholders to help them achieve lower costs and increased economic worth.

Duc Anh Luong, Jong Hwan Park

Privacy is playing a crucial role in the smart health industry, where health service providers and their customers use the internet of things (IoT) to provide and consume health services. Preserving privacy for legitimate users and preventing illegitimate users from accessing services are difficult to implement simultaneously. In this study, we addressed this issue by proposing a new healthcare system for IoT based on the blockchain and zero-knowledge succinct noninteractive argument of knowledge (zk-SNARK). We employ the anonymity property of the public blockchain to protect users’ privacy. The zk-SNARK scheme works as an anonymous authenticator to prevent unauthorized users from using services. We also analyze the security of the proposed system by showing that it can resist various types of attacks, such as impersonation, collusion, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the zk-SNARK scheme with respect to computational costs and the interactions with the Ethereum blockchain smart contract with respect to transaction fees.

Amiya Karmakar, Pritam Ghosh, Partha Sarathi Banerjee, Debashis De

The health insurance industry requires a secure data management architecture characterized by reliable information processing and fast response. Classical health insurance management system runs on a manually controlled centralized architecture which leverages a vulnerable single point failure and requires frequent human intervention. This makes the model prone to human errors and security attacks. The existing system also lacks the flexibility to choose appropriate health insurance policies for different consumers. To this end, we propose an Ethereum blockchain-based framework, ChainSure, to address this problem. With the power of TOPSIS and smart contracts, ChainSure provides an automated, tamperproof, transparent, scalable system that takes care of all the major functional blocks in a medical insurance environment. We have used the TOPSIS method in this proposed model to help the users to find an insurance policy that best suits their needs. ChainSure works in a decentralized environment and provides an interactive interface for the user. The proposed model is implemented on the Ethereum test network and its performance has been compared empirically with other state-of-art models. ChainSure is found to outperform others in terms of service integrity, latency and cost.

Marah R. Bataineh, Wail Mardini, Yaser Khamayseh, Muneer Bani Yassein

Internet of Things (IoT) has grown increasingly in the past decade. This growth brings up several challenging issues for a successful continuous operation of IoT applications. Some of these challenges that need to be taken care of are resource constraints, central server overload, and the risk of illegal use of private data. On the other side, Blockchain technology is increasingly popular and has gained huge success in cryptocurrencies. It offers numerous vital qualities such as a technique for consensus, peer communications, confidence-building without a trustworthy third party, and a transaction controlled by conditions and functions using the intelligent contract technique. Blockchain is an excellent candidate to establish a decentralized, autonomous IoT system addressing the above issues. This study proposes an IoT-Blockchain integration architecture using an Ethereum Blockchain infrastructure within a rich-thin client IoT approach to address the challenges created by the limited IoT resources while implementing the Blockchain mining technique in IoT systems. The architecture depends on load distribution between the resources. Limited resource devices are the thin-clients, while the higher resource devices are assigned as rich-clients. Both clients can access the blockchain and collect the data, but rich-client can only execute the mining process. In addition, we implement a healthcare system based on the proposed architecture in which surgical process management is carried out. We also prove our solution’s efficiency by testing and comparing the architecture against other well-known IoT-based blockchain architectures. The obtained results show that proposed blockchain-IoT architecture is suited for many IoT applications while avoiding difficulties created by IoT devices’ limitations.

Željko Bjelajac, Momčilo Bajac

In this paper, we want to break down certain prejudices against new blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, especially the Bitcoin, as instruments having mostly negative connotations and representing an opportunity for various criminal activities, including the cases of money laundering where money has been acquired in unethical and illegal ways. According to that aim, there were applied the methods of genetic, structural and functional analysis, the method of correlative variations, as well as the analogous and normative method. A significant part of the paper is dedicated to an introduction to DLT - (Distributed Ledger Technologies), i.e. a distributed book of records technologies, on which the blockchain and its most important exponent - the Bitcoin - rests. Also, we had to touch upon the second most important contribution to this technology, namely the Ethereum blockchain, which expands the perspectives opened by the Bitcoin, and thus the possibilities for misuse of this technology, primarily due to its constitutive principle of anonymity. In the paper, we have shown the fact that despite inadequate legislation, both nationally and globally, the blockchain and cryptocurrencies have not significantly supported the paths of illegal money laundering, especially not related to serious crimes, in particular drug trafficking and terrorism. We mostly see the contribution of this paper in the typologization of possible money laundering procedures, especially by using the NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens), non-exchangeable tokens whose hype, in last two years, might be the result of a perceived opportunity for a new way of money laundering. We conclude that we should not be afraid of the Bitcoin, but it should be accepted as an integral part of a peaceful and prosperous futurity for it opens new perspectives for humanity burdened with bigger problems than money laundering, which had existed to the same degree even before the appearance of the Bitcoin.

Andrii Kopp, Dmytro Orlovskyi

Business process modeling helps organizations to capture their workflows visually as diagrams that could be then used to share best practices, identify inefficiencies in ongoing activities, instruct employees, use them as reference solutions, etc. Design and analysis of business process models are essential technologies of the Business Process Management approach, which is successfully adopted and practiced nowadays by many large and medium enterprises. Therefore, business process models should be considered as organizational assets that depict usable and competitive business solutions, which value could be proven by benchmarking. Single reference business process models or even collections of business process models are already accessible on Internet, sometimes for free or, usually, for purchasing because of the value of transferred knowledge. However, peer-to-peer exchange of business process models on a commercial basis is still far from a unification. At the same time, the tremendous growth of the cryptocurrency market and the adoption of Bitcoin by governments (first by El Salvador in June 2021) makes crypto-economics, also referred to as "tokenomics", usable for organizational knowledge sharing and exchanging without third party authorities, such as banks, or payment systems. Moreover, collaborating parties could reach a consensus when exchanging business process models using smart contracts and crypto-tokens to access shared knowledge artifacts. Therefore, this paper proposes an approach to business process model tokenization using blockchain technology and smart contracts. There was proposed as an Ethereum smart contract that combines features of the business process model collection and the non-fungible token. A prototype of a decentralized application was developed and its usage was demonstrated.

yilin wang, Yuan Huang

No abstract is available for this record.

Yue Wu, Junxiang Li, Jiru Zhou, Shichang Luo · 5 authors

Because of its unique decentralization, encryption, reliability, and tamper‐proof, the block chain system makes smart contracts break through the shackles of the lack of trusted environment, and its application field keeps expanding. We read the source code and official documents of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger to explore the operation principle and implementation mode of smart contract. By analyzing the evolution process of smart contracts in blockchain and the sequence of its function expansion, according to the multirole business process of supply chain, we design a semipublic smart contract chain model based on Ethereum and Hyperledger in order to provide useful inspiration and help for the future research of smart contracts in blockchain applied in supply chain.

Salma Khan, Muhammad Gulistan, Nasreen Kausar, Sajida Kousar · 6 authors

One of the most important innovations brought by digitization is the cryptocurrency, also called virtual or digital currency, which has been discussed in recent years and in particular is a new platform for investors. Different types of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, and Tether do not depend on a central authority. Decision making is complicated by categorization and transmission of uncertainty, as well as verification of digital currency. The weighted average and weighted geometric aggregation operators are used in this article to define a multi‐attribute decision‐making approach. This work investigates the uniqueness of q‐rung orthopair fuzzy hypersoft sets (q‐ROFHSS), which respond to instabilities, uncertainty, ambiguity, and imprecise information. This research also covers some fundamental topics of q‐ROFHSS. The model offered here is the best option for learning about electronic currency. This study validates the complexity of decision‐making problems with different attributes and subattributes to obtain an optimal choice. We conclude that Bitcoin has a diverse set of applications and that crypto assets are well positioned to become an important asset class in decision making.

Azhar Mohamad

No abstract is available for this record.

Diana Hawashin, Raja Jayaraman, Khaled Salah, Ibrar Yaqoob · 6 authors

Today’s organ donation and transplantation systems pose different requirements and challenges in terms of registration, donor-recipient matching, organ removal, organ delivery, and transplantation with legal, clinical, ethical, and technical constraints. Therefore, an end to-end organ donation and transplantation system is required to guarantee a fair and efficient process to enhance patient experience and trust. We propose a private Ethereum blockchain based solution to enable organ donation and transplantation management in a manner that is fully secure, traceable, auditable, private, and trustworthy. We develop smart contracts that ensure the data provenance by recording events automatically. We present algorithms with their implementation, testing, and validation details. We evaluate the performance of the proposed solution by performing privacy, security, and confidentiality analyses as well as comparing our solution with the existing solutions. Key Words: organ, donation, private, confidentiality