The Internet of Things (IoT) providers serve better IoT services each year while producing more IoT gateways and devices to expand their services. However, the security of the IoT ecosystem remains an afterthought for most IoT providers. This action results in many cybersecurity breaches in the field, most likely due to the lack of access control mechanisms. In this paper, we propose BorderChain, an access control framework based on blockchain for IoT endpoints. The security protocol guarantees two properties. First, our proposal assures IoT users and services that they communicate with approved IoT gateways as endpoints, holding verified IoT devices that they need. Second, BorderChain also generates access tokens that the IoT service and users can use to query IoT resources legitimately inside the IoT domains. As a result, the protocol can convince IoT domain owners that the system will only authorize IoT requests that they approve. We realize our protocol in the form of a smart contract to allow many IoT entities such as IoT domain owners, IoT devices, IoT gateways, IoT vendors, IoT services, IoT users, and Internet Service Provider (ISP) to collaborate in a unified environment. We then implement entities in BorderChain as Node JS applications connecting to the Ethereum blockchain as our peer-to-peer platform. Based on our performance evaluation using several Raspberry Pi hardware and our private server, we show that BorderChain can process entities' authentication and authorization requests efficiently using all hardware resources. Finally, we release BorderChain for public use.
Every kind of business depends on the evolving technologies that tend to take advantages of new opportunities. With every new technology, different set of challenges appear. In recent years, numerous blockchain-based applications have been proposed to solve problems in different areas. In this paper, an adaptive strategy is proposed to eliminate driving license frauds using blockchain technology. With second generation of blockchain technologies, smart contracts have helped to develop trust and automated transactions between large numbers of users. Smart Contracts are programs that run on the blockchain to take action on the records. This paper proposes a driving license registration and verification smart contract using Ethereum blockchain. The smart contract mechanism allows for registration of the officers/agents by a higher authority. It can dynamically restrict unregistered officer/fraud agents from generating fake driving license. Also, the smart contract facilitates verification of a registered driving license which includes checking its validity and authorization. It provides special rights to the traffic regulator officer to add remarks to the driving license if the driving license holder is found violating the traffic rules. Since the blockchain is an immutable ledger, this remark cannot be tampered and the apprehended person would be liable to pay the fines. This would result in reduction of traffic accidents and violation of traffic rules. This smart contract opens up doors for more innovations in this field and improves traffic regulation and management.
A way to enable full decentralisation in our P2P- oriented economy are ‘Smart Contracts’,a term coined by Nick Szabo.<br> These smart contracts enforce a set ofpredefined rules which are coded as logic to orchestrate agreement between different entities. .The current implementation makes the use of smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum blockchain that provides full-fledged car sharing functionalities along with various countermeasures to tackle malicious behaviour.
Benjamin Mariano, Yanju Chen, Yu Feng, Shuvendu K. Lahiri · 5 authors
This paper aims to shed light on how loops are used in smart contracts. Towards this goal, we study various syntactic and semantic characteristics of loops used in over 20,000 Solidity contracts deployed on the Ethereum blockchain, with the goal of informing future research on program analysis for smart contracts. Based on our findings, we propose a small domain-specific language (DSL) that can be used to summarize common looping patterns in Solidity. To evaluate what percentage of smart contract loops can be expressed in our proposed DSL, we also design and implement a program synthesis toolchain called Solis that can synthesize loop summaries in our DSL. Our evaluation shows that at least 56% of the analyzed loops can be summarized in our DSL, and 81% of these summaries are exactly equivalent to the original loop.
This paper proposes a decentralized framework for the orchestration of Cloud Services using heterogeneous resources residing in the homes of private individuals or small-scale clusters. The framework makes use of Ethereum Smart Contracts to provide a decentralized mechanism for discovering the different interfaces exposed by Cloud Components. The paper introduces a novel concept of Component Administration Networks, which are peer-to-peer networks that monitor and ensure the availability of the software components. The concept applied for the Orchestration process to ensure that the deployment of an Application continues in the presence of Orchestrator component failure. Checkpoints are used to address the continuity of the Management components, in general, and of the Orchestrator, in particular. In our proposal, checkpoint metadata is stored in a Smart Contract to assess the execution time of a Service to reimburse the participants that ensure its execution.
Academic credentials are precious assets as they form an evidence for one’s identity and eligibility. Fraud inissuance and verification of academic certificates have been a long-standing issue in academic community. Due to lack of antiforgery mechanisms there has been substantial increase in fraudulent certificates. The need of the hour is to have a transparent and reliable model for issuing and verifying academic certificates to eliminate fraud in the process. Decentralized, Auditable and Tamper-proof properties of Blockchain makes it possibly the best choice for issuing and verifying academic certificates. In this paper we propose a model, where regulatory body authorizes higher education Institutes (universities and colleges) for issuing academic certificates to students in a decentralized way. Anyone in the world can verify the authenticity of the certificate by triggering appropriate smart contract functions, thus eliminating any possibility of fraud in the process. In addition we used multi signature scheme where certificates are required to be signed by designated authority from Higher Education Institutes, thus allowing for multi-level checks on certificate contents before being successfully deployed on Blockchain. We have also provide Proof of Concept in Ethereum Blockchain and evaluated its performance in terms of cost, security and scalability.
Prosper Lamothe Fernández, Prosper Lamothe López, Manuel Ángel Fernández Gámez, Sergio M. Fernández-Miguélez
El presente estudio tiene como objetivo el desarrollo de nuevos modelos para determinar con alta precisión los factores que explican el precio de las principales criptomonedas. Para ello, se ha utilizado una amplia base de datos de variables relacionadas con el bitcoin y el ethereum, y se han aplicado técnicas de redes neuronales artificiales. Los resultados obtenidos han permitido identificar que los aspectos relacionados con el número de publicaciones en foros, el volumen de transacciones en blockchain y la tasa de hash proporcionan una excelente estrategia para predecir el precio del bitcoin. También, que el volumen de transacciones, el tamaño de los bloques, las comisiones de mineros y los precios del petróleo son los mejores predictores del valor de mercado del ethereum
Kimberly Michelle Sandoval-Guzmán, Mardo Iván López-Ortega, Pedro Ernesto Domínguez-Rivera, Nelson Ernesto Rivera-Díaz
El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la factibilidad de la implementación de criptomonedas como un medio para el financiamiento de la deuda pública externa de El Salvador. La estrategia utilizada corresponde a un modelo econométrico de medias móviles que utilizan las cotizaciones del Bitcoin y Ethereum. Paralelamente, se complementa con un análisis de escenarios propuestos.
A growing stream of research finds several relations between the economic growth and corruption. Government implements various strategies to diminish the corruption and also technology often plays a dominant role to face it. Among various technologies alterations, Block-chain technology that becomes an effective and efficient way to resolve these issues related to corruption. This paper represents a brief knowledge related to the Block-Chain technology as it is a kind of distributed database or public ledger of all transactions that have been executed and shared among participating parties. Each and every transaction in the public ledger is verified by a majority of the participants registered in the system. The possible risk related to current scenario and give brief idea for resolving that problem with the help of blockchain technology. Non-Governmental Organization (NGOs) which aim is to tackle some of the issues faced by the society. NGO faces difficulty in terms of maintaining and gaining the support from donors in terms of funds. In recent decades there have been multiple examples of corruption misconduct scandals impacting the public image and reputation of NGOs. It is clear that trust of the people in NGOs is affected adversely by such events. Doubts arise in terms of where does the donation ends up? Who is leading the organization? Is donated money are used in a proper direction? So as a part of it, a need is raised to solve such issues for the betterment of the society. For the above stated problem regarding management of funds in NGOs, we propose a solution by using the Blockchain technology among various technologies alteration available. Blockchain offers the way to eliminate the doubts by providing data security, immutability and transparency. So, Blockchain Technology can offer the NGO industry to regain the trust of public.
Andrew Meegan, Shaen Corbet, Charles Larkin, Brian M. Lucey
Blockchain technology appears to be ready to revolutionise a broad number of industries. However, the blockchain itself contains a number of inefficiencies and areas for improvement, namely: transaction fees and transaction speeds. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) address, and improve on these inefficiencies and a number of digital currencies utilising this technology have already begun to appear. This paper provides an explanation of the technology behind DAG-based assets, while identifying and highlighting strategic advantages that DAGs possess over traditional blockchains. We conduct an EGARCH volatility analysis of a range of blockchain-based and DAG-based cryptocurrencies in the aftermath of a range of market shocks, taking the form of regulatory announcements such as bans and broad restrictions for cryptocurrencies. We find that DAG-based assets become increasingly responsive to market shocks as they mature. Such behaviour mirrors that of established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, providing evidence that DAG-based cryptocurrencies now share similar characteristics to traditional blockchain-chain based products.
Farocki. Together with his sister, Anna Groos, Jan directed and produced multiple film projects (including www.endzeit.at). The joy of 1 The Etherum project is a public, global, open-source, blockchain-based distributed computing platform for 'decentralised' applications. First proposed in December 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, it went 'live' in July 2015. Like other blockchains, it has its own cryptocurrency (in this case, 'Ether' or in short ETH) as inherent part of its protocol design. Cf ethereum.org/ what-is-ethereum/ 2 These points will be taken up directly, but see: CleanApp (2018) 'The Wood-Zamfir Governance Debates,' blogger, Crypto Law Review,
Blockchain is a technology for storing an immutable history of transactions in a decentralized platform by using cryptographic principles. Many industries have become interested in adopting blockchain within their IT systems. However, the accessibility, privacy, performance, and scalability aspects of different blockchain-based platforms are still legitimate concerns when designing an enterprise solution. Permissioned blockchain frameworks facilitate a way to immutably store confidential records. Numerous research studies have been carried out on the opportunities, challenges, application areas, and performance analysis of different public and permissioned blockchain-based platforms. However, the implication of blockchain in recent private enterprise solution requires detailed comparative analysis. This paper conducts a performance and scalability analysis of popular private blockchain platforms, including Ethereum (private deployment), Quorum, Corda, and Hyperledger Fabric. Each of these platforms is assessed by varying the workloads (no. of transactions and nodes) and determining the performance evaluation metrics such as throughput and network latency.
The blockchain technology is quickly becoming the most disruptive technology of recent times. This technology has generated a lot of buzz and optimism, and it has gained a lot of attention from both the public and private sectors. Information can be transferred using blockchain technology in a manner that is confidential, safe, reliable, and open to scrutiny. This analysis focuses on the ways in which blockchain technology can be used to solve problems related to scalability and give solutions in the context of the healthcare industry. In light of this, the proposed solutions can be categorized into two primary categories: storage optimization and blockchain redesign. However, there are still several restrictions, such as the block size, the enormous volume of data and transactions, the number of nodes, and the obstacles posed by the protocol. It has seen widespread application in decentralized crypto currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example. An example of a public blockchain application that was successful, Bitcoin, was the impetus for a significant increase in research and development into blockchain technology. Nevertheless, scalability continues to be a significant obstacle. According to the facts that we've compiled, the primary causes of scalability issues appear to be bottlenecks in the transaction throughput, the network latency, and the consensus methods. On the other side, the potential for scalability includes the application of techniques like as sharding, hybrid systems, and off-chain computations. We also examine the consequences of these findings as well as prospective paths for future study to help solve the scalability problems that blockchain-based systems provide.
The interconnection of private resources on public infrastructure, user mobility and the emergence of new technologies (vehicular networks, sensor networks, Internet of things, etc.) have added new requirements in terms of security on the server side as well as the client side. Examples include the processing time, mutual authentication, client participation in the choice of security settings and protection against traffic analysis. Internet of Things (IoT) is in widespread use and its applications cover many aspects of today's life, which results in a huge and continuously increasing number of objects distributed everywhere.Security is no doubt the element that will improve and strengthen the acceptability of IoT, especially that this large scale deployment of IoT systems will attract the appetite of the attackers. The current cyber-attacks that are operational on traditional networks will be projected towards the Internet of Things. Security is so critical in this context given the underlying stakes; in particular, authentication has a critical importance given the impact of the presence of malicious node within the IoT systems and the harm they can cause to the overall system. The research works in this thesis aim to advance the literature on IoT authentication by proposing three authentication schemes that satisfy the needs of IoT systems in terms of security and performance, while taking into consideration the practical deployment-related concerns. One-Time Password (OTP) is an authentication scheme that represents a promising solution for IoT and smart cities environments. This research work extends the OTP principle and propose a new approach to generate OTP based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Isogeny to guarantee the security of such protocol. The performance results obtained demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our approach in terms of security and performance.We also rely on blockchains in order to propose two authentication solutions: first, a simple and lightweight blockchain-based authentication scheme for IoT systems based on Ethereum, and second, an adaptive blockchain-based authentication and authorization approach for IoT use cases. We provided a real implementation of our proposed solutions. The extensive evaluation provided, clearly shows the ability of our schemes to meet the different security requirements with a lightweight cost in terms of performance.
Background: As public health strategists and policymakers explore different approaches to lessen the devastating effects of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), blockchain technology has emerged as a resource that can be utilized in numerous ways. Many blockchain technologies have been proposed or implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, to the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive reviews have been conducted to uncover and summarise the main feature of these technologies. Objective: This study aims to explore proposed or implemented blockchain technologies used to mitigate the COVID-19 challenges as reported in the literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review in line with guidelines of PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). To identify relevant studies, we searched 11 bibliographic databases (e.g., EMBASE and MEDLINE) and conducted backward and forward reference list checking of the included studies and relevant reviews. The study selection and data extraction were conducted by 2 reviewers independently. Data extracted from the included studies was narratively summarised and described. Results: 19 of 225 retrieved studies met eligibility criteria in this review. The included studies reported 10 used cases of blockchain to mitigate COVID-19 challenges; the most prominent use cases were contact tracing and immunity passports. While the blockchain technology was developed in 10 studies, its use was proposed in the remaining 9 studies. The public blockchain technology was the most commonly utilized type in the included studies. All together, 8 different consensus mechanisms were used in the included studies. Out of 10 studies that identified the used platform, 9 studies used Ethereum to run the blockchain. Solidity was the most prominent programming language used in developing blockchain technology in the included studies. The transaction cost was reported in only 4 of the included studies and varied between USD 10−10 and USD 5. The expected latency and expected scalability were not identified in the included studies. Conclusion: Blockchain technologies are expected to play an integral role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Many possible applications of blockchain were found in this review; however, most of them are not mature enough to reveal their expected impact in the fight against COVID-19. We encourage governments, health authorities, and policymakers to consider all blockchain applications suggested in the current review to combat COVID-19 challenges. There is a pressing need to empirically examine how effective blockchain technologies are in mitigating COVID-19 challenges. Further studies are required to assess the performance of blockchain technologies’ fight against COVID-19 in terms of transaction cost, scalability, and/or latency when using different consensus algorithms, platforms, and access types.
Ahsan Manzoor, An Braeken, Salil S. Kanhere, Mika Ylianttila · 5 authors
Data is central to the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. With billions of devices connected, most of the current IoT systems are using centralized cloud-based data sharing systems, which will be difficult to scale up to meet the demands of future IoT systems. The involvement of such a third-party service provider requires also trust from both the sensor owner and sensor data user. Moreover, fees need to be paid for their services. To tackle both the scalability and trust issues and to automatize the payments, this paper presents a blockchain-based marketplace for sharing of the IoT data. We also use a proxy re-encryption scheme for transferring the data securely and anonymously, from data producer to the consumer. The system stores the IoT data in cloud storage after encryption. To share the collected IoT data, the system establishes runtime dynamic smart contracts between the sensor and data consumer without the involvement of a trusted third-party. It also uses a very efficient proxy re-encryption scheme which allows that the data is only visible by the owner and the person present in the smart contract. This novel combination of smart contracts with proxy re-encryption provides an efficient, fast and secure platform for storing, trading and managing sensor data. The proposed system is implemented using off-the-shelf IoT sensors and computer devices. We also analyze the performance of our hybrid system by using the permission-less Ethereum blockchain and compare it to the IBM Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned blockchain.
Mwrwan Abubakar, Zakwan Jaroucheh, Ahmed Al‐Dubai, Bill Buchanan
The original consensus algorithm - Proof of Work (PoW) has been widely utilized in the blockchain systems and is been adopted by many cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, among many others. Nevertheless, the concept has received criticisms over its high energy consumption. This is induced by the necessity for all nodes in the network to communicate synchronously for consensus over the ledger state to be reached. Additionally, the concept has also shown clear limitations regarding performance and throughput. In trying to rectify this issue, the paper proposes the introduction of a new hybrid consensus protocol known as the Proof of Notarized Work (PoNW). The PoNW concept reduces the number of nodes that need to achieve consensus, thereby reducing the overall energy consumption in the current PoW. In addition, we propose using a decentralized random beacon to select nodes to participate in the mining process randomly. Therefore, our algorithm promises to achieve higher scalability and consistency levels without conceding its decentralization. When this is paired with a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) verification, the system gains the ability to replace the probabilistic finality in current PoW with absolute finality in a matter of seconds, solving the issue of scalability. Finally, the study will look into the proposed algorithm's security and provides threats model to insure an acceptable failure probability. Results from the security analysis have shown that our consensus algorithm ensures forks cannot occur, and it remains secure and consistent even amid numerous attacks.
Blockchain is a promising new technology, generating widespread interest, and receiving considerable attention in the research community, such as academia and industry. This interest started with the success of Bitcoin but took speed with the promise of smart contracts and a vast number of applications. While there is a broad interest in developing blockchain systems for specific use cases, there is a lack of tools to perform their evaluation and implementation decisions may hamper fast progress. This report provides the review of security and performance of public and private blockchain framework, where each of which is represented by the two well-known papers, the first is titled “On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains” and the second paper is titled “BLOCKBENCH: A Framework for Analyzing Private Blockchains”. The first paper introduces a novel quantitative framework to analyze the security and performance implications of various consensus and network parameters of PoW blockchains. The framework allows for capture existing PoW-based deployments as well as PoW blockchain variants that are instantiated with different parameters, and to objectively compare the tradeoffs between their performance and security provisions. In the second paper, the authors describe BlockBench, the first evaluation framework for analyzing private blockchains. BlockBench measures overall and componentwise performance in terms of throughput, latency, scalability, and fault-tolerance. Next, BlockBench is used to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of three major private blockchains: Ethereum, Parity, and Hyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, there are gaps in performance among the three systems which are attributed to the design choices at different layers of the blockchain’s software stack.
Blockchain as a distributed system that confirms security and reliability have started a new era of a solid and consensus system.Blockchains focus on cryptocurrency is encouraging many other processes to follow the same reliable approach of security.Almost all procedures and operations are now invited to be electronically performed in the digital Ethereum network that has been presented. Moreover, this study proposed the use of an Ethereum network on a blockchain platform in the study when it was moved to a blockchain network to confirm transparency.An E-voting system sample has been tested by using an Ethereum network smart contracts inwhich solidity language and wallets were used. In the voting test, the Ethereum blockchain will be able to collect records in which voters can use their Ethereum wallets or android devices to submit their votes in a consensus node.The researchers studied the voting system taking Jordan as a case study.This study recommended the adaptation of e-voting to support transparency and voters trust to reduce corruption and unreliability in the voting processes. Moreover, the use of this system will allow a voter to vote from home in the time of the pandemic.\n\n
Jun-Mo Lee, Seong‐Jun Kim, Sang-Hyeon Park, Soo‐Mook Moon
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have made payment transactions possible without a trusted third party, but they have a scalability issue due to their consensus mechanisms. Payment networks have emerged to overcome this limitation by executing transactions outside of the blockchain, which is why these are referred to as off-chain transactions. In order to establish a payment channel between two users, the users lock their deposits in the blockchain, and then they can pay each other through the channel. Furthermore, payment networks support multi-hop payments that allow users to transfer their balances to other users who are connected to them via multiple channels. However, multi-hop payments are hard to be accomplished, as they are heavily dependent on routing users on a payment path from a sender to a receiver. Although routing hubs can make multi-hop payments more practical and efficient, they need a lot of collateral locked for a long period and have privacy issues in terms of payment history. We propose RouTEE, a secure payment routing hub that is fully feasible without the hub's deposit. Unlike existing payment networks, RouTEE provides high balance liquidity, and details about payments are concealed from hosts by leveraging trusted execution environments (TEEs). RouTEE is designed to make rational hosts behave honestly, by introducing a new routing fee scheme and a secure settlement method. Moreover, users do not need to monitor the blockchain in real-time or run full nodes. They can participate in RouTEE by simply verifying block headers through light clients; furthermore, having only one channel with RouTEE is sufficient to interact with other users. Our implementation demonstrates that RouTEE is highly efficient and outperforms Lightning Network that is the state-of-the-art payment network.
José Eduardo de Azevedo Sousa, Vinícius Cunha Oliveira, Júlia Almeida Valadares, Alex Borges Vieira · 7 authors
O crescimento do interesse em Ethereum leva a preocupações relacionadas à sua segurança, dado que já houveram ataques que exploraram o seu mecanismo de tarifação ou Penny Attack. Esses ataques afetaram a rede ocasionando lentidão nas transações e há indícios que Ethereum continua susceptível a esse tipo de ataque. Analisamos o comportamento da rede Ethereum durante um Penny Attack, buscando técnicas de aprendizado de máquina para detectá-lo previamente, utilizando atributos das transações. Nossas técnicas tiveram AUC, Fb e recall superior a 94%, 82% e 98% respectivamente.
Ensuring the integrity of executable binaries is of vital importance to systems that run and depend on them. Additionally, supply-chain attacks and security related bugs demonstrate that binaries, once deployed, may need to be revoked and replaced with updated versions.
Pedro Ivo de Castro Oyama, Jó Ueyama, Paulo Matias
Social media has become part of our daily lives. It brought significant developments in the way we communicate, but it also raised some concerns, including privacy and censorship. In this context, this work presents a social media platform -- EtherYou -- that makes use of cryptographic primitives and an Ethereum smart contract to overcome these issues. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the operating costs involved. The results showed considerable values for senders, zero for receivers, and zero maintenance costs, indicating its potential in scenarios with a reduced number of content producers and a large number of consumers. The proposal offers users privacy over their data, transparency on the system behaviour and censorship resistance.
Blockchain technologies make agreement among untrusted parties possible, without the need for certification authorities. Proposed frameworks have been put forward in sector as diverse as finance, health care, notary, intellectual property management, identity, provenance, international cooperation, social good, and security to cite but a few. Smart contracts, that is, self-enforcing agreements in terms of executable software running on blockchains, have been developed in several contexts. Such an under-definition computational model introduces innovative aspects, such as the economics and trust of the decentralized computation relying on the shared contribution of peers and their decentralized consensus. Following the first edition of the International Workshop on Future Perspectives of Decentralized APPlications, FPDAPP (held in conjunctions to EURO-PAR conference), this special issue primarily carries new results from revised and substantially extended versions of papers presented at the workshop. Moreover, this volume contains new contributions that rigorously explore and evaluate the potentiality of novel decentralized frameworks and applications. After a thorough peer-reviewing process focused on quality, innovative contribution, applicability to real-world scenarios, we have selected six manuscripts for publication. The paper “Analysis of multi-input multi-output transactions in the Bitcoin network” proposes an exploratory analysis on the Bitcoin network focused on mixing-like behaviors based on multi-input/output transactions. The article “Trusted systems of records based on Blockchain technology - a prototype for mileage storing in the automotive industry” proposes a blockchain-based trusted system of records to address the problem of asymmetric information on the used car market as described by Nobel laureate Akerlof. The paper “Blockchain applications beyond the cryptocurrency casino: The Punishment not Reward blockchain architecture” proposes an interesting punishment mechanism system as alternative to classical reward strategies for blockchain maintenance. The paper “Implementation and evaluation of smart contracts using a hybrid on- and off-blockchain architecture” introduces a novel hybrid architecture for the implementation of smart contracts, based on a centralized monitoring smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. The paper “Design and practical implementation of verify-your-vote protocol” is focused on the highly debated and challenging problem of electronic voting. It proposes a verifiable blockchain-based online voting protocol that ensures security by using a variety of cryptographic primitives. Finally, the paper “Ensuring transparency and traceability of food local products: A blockchain application to a Smart Tourism Region” proposes a blockchain-oriented platform to guarantee the origin and provenance of food items in a Smart Tourism Region context where local food and beverage can become a good combination to attract tourist and to promote the area thanks to their clearly certified provenance. As guest editors, we would like to express our appreciation for the impressive contributions made by all authors. We would like also to thank all the reviewers that helped us to evaluate all submissions, providing valuable critics and suggestions to the authors. Finally, we would like to thank all editorial board members and all staff for allowing us to publish this Special Issue and for his great support throughout the entire publication process. The guest editors: Andrea Bracciali - University of Stirling Claudio Schifanella - University of Turin