MRS‑AUTH is a novel authentication framework that achieves deniability even against an active verifier who may adaptively query candidate credentials both before and after receiving a challenge. Unlike ring signatures or zero‑knowledge proofs – where the prover holds a single secret witness that can be extracted under coercion – MRS‑AUTH exploits the multiplicative structure of linear Diophantine equations. Through recursive decomposition, it generates a Diophantine forest of exponentially many syntactically valid credential chains. The authentic chain is sampled uniformly from this forest and committed together with k‑1 indistinguishable aliases using a fixed‑shape Merkle tree with dummy leaves, eliminating structure‑ and length‑based side‑channel leakage. The Forest Symmetry Theorem proves that all chains are structurally information‑theoretically indistinguishable. However, the full index‑anonymity against an active verifier is computational and bounded in Theorem 6.6 by k · ε_SHA3 + ε_coll + negl(λ). For cryptographic scales N ∼ 10⁴², the Ehrhart‑based continuous‑volume approximation yields an effective entropy exceeding 371 bits, with a statistical distance to the perfect uniform distribution of Δ ≤ 2⁻¹³⁵ – well below the 128‑bit security threshold. Empirical validation via exact enumeration and a chi‑squared test (χ²/dof ≈ 0.985) confirms the uniformity. A constant‑time Rust implementation, leveraging the subtle and zeroize crates, exhibits an execution time of approximately 0.12 ms across four orders of magnitude of N, demonstrating practical deployability. The work also formalises the Active Verifier Game model, a new adversarial definition that quantitatively captures coercion resistance in a post‑quantum setting.
Open access
2 source records
Cryptography and Data Security
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Stateful cryptographic schemes—exemplified by the hash-based signatures XMSS (RFC 8391) and LMS (RFC 8554)—require the signer to advance a local state monotonically; any rollback is catastrophic, yet a verifier has no way to check it. IETF guidance on state and backup management for hash-based signatures states explicitly that the verifier must simply trust the signer not to have reused state. We define verifiable monotone chains (VMC), a primitive that makes such state discipline cryptographically verifiable: state evolves along a finite poset (S, ⪯) under inflationary monotone operators, every transition carries a zero-knowledge proof, and a public commitment to the state provides an audit trail. We formalize two security notions: monotone-unforgeability (MU), which captures that an external adversary cannot certify an illegal or rolled-back transition, and auditability (AUD), which captures that signer rollback cannot be hidden from a public root history. Both notions reduce, with explicit advantage bounds, to position binding of the underlying vector commitment and knowledge soundness of the proof system. We instantiate VMC as RSEP-XMSS, in which each XMSS signature carries a proof that the signed leaf advanced along the chain FRESH ≺ USED ≺ SPENT in a Poseidon-based state Merkle tree, and we give a complete algorithmic specification with a concrete circuit design (~6041 R1CS constraints estimated, Groth16 proving time estimated at 5–15 ms, signature overhead of about 1–3 KB). RSEP-XMSS is one-way compatible with standard XMSS: legacy verifiers verify the core signature, while enhanced verifiers reject unprotected signatures, preventing downgrade attacks.
Sibelle Torres Vilaça, Alexandre Aleixo, Juliana A. Vianna
The biodiversity crisis is accelerating, with recent IUCN Red List confirming multiple recent species extinctions (IUCN, 2025). Of the 17 megadiverse countries, which account for ~70% of Earth's biodiversity, 15 are part of the Global South. Most of the habitat and biodiversity loss is concentrated in nine of the megadiverse countries. Generating knowledge for all life on Earth is fundamental for bending the curve of biodiversity loss, and genomics has recently emerged as an important component in conservation biology. Mapping and understanding genome-wide variation can help estimate important biological variables essential for species conservation, understanding adaptation to climate change, and predicting populations' long-term resilience (Vilaça et al., 2024).Genome sequencing has ramped up in the last decade as the costs drop and technology advances (Wetterstrand et al, 2025). The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is capitalizing on this in its aim to sequencing the genomes of all known eukaryotic species. The lead article by Blaxter et al., (2025) paves the way for Phase II of the EBP, which aims to sequence reference genomes for 150,000 species throughout the tree of life. With an estimated cost of US$ 1.1 billion (US$4.42 billion for all 3 phases) Phase II will bring important developments in technology for data production and processing, while establishing sequencing centers worldwide. Although these accomplishments are set to change the way we do biodiversity genomics research globally, we believe that major challenges need to be overcome for the project to accomplish its goals and truly reach equitable partnerships and effective engagement with the Global South. Bringing our significant experience as researchers involved in EBP-affiliated initiatives based in South America, we address potential blockers for Phase II in the Global South in sequencing infrastructure and technology, funding sources, enabling equitable global participation, and engaging government and policy makers.Sequencing life on Earth requires global participation, especially in biodiversity-rich regions. A solution proposed by Blaxter et al., (2025) involves the creation of decentralized laboratories (gBox) established at 25 regional nodes. This model is based on the approach used in outbreak response for pathogen detection like COVID-19. While laboratories for rapid response to disease outbreaks require a Biosecurity Level 3/4, the general infrastructure (Affara et al., 2021) is typically simpler in terms of equipment than the laboratories required for sequencing reference genomes. In our experience, maintaining sequencers in countries where few or no other similar equipment is available is challenging due to the lack of specialized and timely maintenance. The reliance on imported reagents from the Global North can further undermine efforts because of common cold-chain failures that often lead to reagents not arriving at their destination with the required integrity for optimal use (Vilaça et al., 2024). The current limitations in technology, maintenance, importing reagents, and keeping sample integrity are important obstacles that need to be overcome for the gBox model to work in countries without a tradition in genomic sequencing.Securing adequate funding remains a key issue. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, rapid funding availability by governments and the private sector allowed investments of USD$9.2 billion in vaccine development (Tortorice et al., 2024) generating trillions in social, health, economic revenue. The same model is needed for biodiversity. With an estimated global cost of €14 trillion in ecosystem services associated with biodiversity loss until 2050 (ten Brink et al., 2009), this loss will bring severe impacts on health, economy and social well-being. Unfortunately, this sense of urgency is not yet instilled in funding priorities and financial investments. In our experience, this is a general pattern of biodiversity-related science funding, as both the Chilean and Brazilian governments have invested in large facilities for astronomy and physics (Catanzaro et al., 2014;Angelo, 2017). Environmental expenditures by governments decrease in times of recession with some countries failing to include biodiversity agendas in their post-COVID economy recovery packages (McElwee et al., 2020). Because reference genomic libraries are key for supporting the monitoring of endangered species and developing local bioeconomy initiatives, wider investments focused on biodiversity knowledge are necessary for its conservation and recovery. The creation of a global public-private co-funding mechanism similar to the recently established Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) -aimed at compensating financially countries that commit to preserving their tropical forests (https://www.wri.org/insights/financing-nature-conservation-tropical-forest-forever-facility) -could be explored as an alternative to support sequencing efforts in megadiverse countries. Under such a co-funding mechanism, Global South countries would find mechanisms for matching at least some percentage of the external funding that is brought into the country for biodiversity genomics in several alternative ways.We view this as an important step to root perennial biodiversity initiatives in their Global South countries' own territories. These mechanisms could include institutional commitments (e.g., integration into national biodiversity and bioeconomy agendas) and recurrent budget lines supporting the development of local biological collections, biobanks, and molecular biology laboratories, in addition to genomics expertise.Achieving the goals of Phase II of the EBP will require more than advances in sequencing technologies and expanded reference databases; it will require structural changes that enable equitable global participation and governance. Researchers based in megadiverse countries cannot be relegated to sample providers (Vilaça et al., 2024), but need to be embedded in decision-making, generate data locally, and contribute as skilled personnel.Therefore, it is important that EBP-Phase II -in addition to direct efforts to reference genome sequencing proper -also include the training of local researchers in genome sequencing, assembly, curation, and annotation to overcome the capacitation gap in genomics found nowadays in Global South countries.First, the involvement of Global South scientists within the EBP must extend to decision-making and leadership roles that reflect the contribution of the communities within megadiverse countries. Other critical roles include setting local priorities in terms of species to be sequenced and linking locally generated genomes with national research, development, and innovation agendas, as done in the Genomics of Brazilian Biodiversity (GBB) consortium (Vilaça et al., 2024;Povill et al., 2025). Recently, Latin American countries started organizing an EBP node (Red de Genomas Neotropicales -BioGenomas) with country representatives sharing experiences, realities and local models for sequencing projects with reduced financing support. Brazil and Chile began coordinating meetings with scientists from Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. Since then, Argentina has set the first framework for a national biodiversity genomics consortium. In our model, organizing under nationwide initiatives, followed by a larger network is the first step to ensure that regional and local realities are represented and considered. Other approaches can also be used as models, like the African BioGenome Project, which started as a continent-wide initiative.Second, the feasibility of decentralized sequencing infrastructure-such as the proposed gBox-must be carefully evaluated within the context of countries facing recurrent challenges in importing reagents, maintaining equipment, and ensuring reliable cold-chain delivery. These barriers remain major bottlenecks that cannot be overlooked when deploying high-throughput sequencing technology globally. The establishment of the proposed US$0.5 billion Foundational Impact Fund (FIF) in Phase II is therefore essential. By focusing support on capacity development and long-term infrastructure in the Global South, the FIF could catalyze sustainable growth in biodiversity genomics rather than short-term or project-bound grants. Decentralized funding models, unconstrained from politically-bound research agendas are crucial for the EBP hubs to dictate research direction considering local aspects. In this way, we can focus on local solutions to solve global problems.In many Global South countries, the acquisition of reagents is hindered by persistent failures in maintaining the required cold chain during importation, customs delays, and the lack of reliable distributor networks. These issues lead to frequent reagent degradation and increased costs that slow down or halt genomic workflows. There is a pressing need for supply chains that support room temperature reagents to preserve, high-quality samples.Legal uncertainties, the absence of standardized national frameworks, and administrative bottlenecks further constrain access and sharing of biological samples. Creating and supporting existing local biodiversity biobanks, possibly associated with natural history collections, is also important for access to high-quality well-documented samples for genome sequencing. Addressing these challenges requires coordinated technological advances, policy development and long-term engagement with keystone local institutions.Third, a critical step toward enabling equitable participation in EBP's Phase II is transforming how political leaders and policymakers engage with biodiversity science. They must recognize that the biodiversity crisis is as urgent as climate change or future pandemics, and that delaying action will have profound consequences. The ongoing discussions in international policy like the Convention for Biological Diversity highlight a timely opportunity: biodiversity genomics must be integrated into global and national environmental agendas as a strategic tool for conservation, climate adaptation, and sustainable development.Genomic resources are not only essential for monitoring and protecting biodiversity, they also underpin emerging bioeconomy value chains, biotechnological innovation, and preparedness for future biological emergencies.Importantly, national public policies for genetic-resource protection-including implementation of the Nagoya Protocol and emerging approaches to Digital Sequence Information (DSI) benefit sharing-are key to enabling local sequencing and ensuring that local researchers remain central. Countries need legislation that not only regulates the use of genetic resources but also actively encourages and funds local sequencing, capacity development, and equitable scientific leadership. This will enable Global South researchers and governments to play active roles in international agreements, boosting their confidence in becoming equitable partners in biodiversity genomics initiatives, rather than adopting a defensive attitude to avoid any undue use of the countries' genomic resources.As biodiversity loss accelerates, investments in biodiversity genomics should not depend solely on academic enthusiasm; they must be recognized as essential national and global priorities, with clear economic, health, and societal implications. To realize this vision, policymakers should no longer be considered as "stakeholders". They must become active partners in the co-creation of genomic initiatives (see Vilaça et al. 2024). Co-designing strategies with governments ensures that genomic data are incorporated into national priorities, that legal frameworks evolve in tandem with scientific advances, and that investments in infrastructure and capacity remain stable across political cycles. This shift is especially critical for megadiverse countries, where genomic knowledge can directly inform sustainable resource management, climate resilience, and health surveillance systems. By integrating scientific, political, and community perspectives, the EBP Phase II can become not only a global sequencing effort but a transformative movement toward a more inclusive, resilient, and strategically valuable model of biodiversity science.Author contribution
Local government institutions (LGIs) are widely recognized as the cornerstone of democratic governance and sustainable local development. In Bangladesh, Union Parishads, Municipalities (Pourashavas), Upazila Parishads, Zila Parishads, and City Corporations play a vital role in delivering public services, promoting participatory governance, and fostering socio-economic development. Despite significant progress in decentralization, the financial autonomy of local governments remains limited due to excessive dependence on central government transfers and grants. The inadequate mobilization of own-source revenue (OSR) restricts the capacity of LGIs to finance infrastructure, maintain essential public services, and respond effectively to local development needs. This conceptual paper examines the relationship between strengthening local government institutions and improving own-source revenue mobilization in Bangladesh. Drawing upon theories of fiscal decentralization, public financial management, and good governance, the paper argues that sustainable local development requires financially autonomous local governments capable of generating, managing, and utilizing local revenues efficiently and transparently. The study identifies key institutional, legal, administrative, technological, and political constraints affecting local revenue collection while proposing policy options to enhance fiscal capacity. The paper further emphasizes that digital transformation, improved tax administration, citizen participation, institutional accountability, and fiscal transparency can significantly strengthen local revenue systems. Effective utilization of locally generated revenue not only improves service delivery but also reinforces public trust and democratic accountability. The findings contribute to the growing literature on decentralization and local public finance by providing a conceptual framework for strengthening local government finance in Bangladesh.
This paper introduces Automated Institutional Discovery (AID), a novel computational framework that conceptualizes economic institutional design as a high-dimensional combinatorial search problem. Traditional institutional design relies heavily on human intuition, historical evolution, or analytically constrained mechanism design, which often fails in complex, adaptive multi-agent environments. AID transcends these limitations by framing institutions as tuples i = (r_1, r_2, ..., r_K) within an expansive institutional space and utilizing advanced search and optimization algorithms to discover configurations that maximize global objective functions F(i). By combining multi-agent simulation modeling with metaheuristic search strategies, AID evaluates allocative efficiency, incentive compatibility, resilience, and distributional equity without requiring empirical laboratory experiments. The framework establishes a paradigm shift from manual rule-making to automated machine discovery, offering robust applications for digital economies, decentralized finance, and economic governance.
Pipelines that pair a large language model with a static analyzer, feeding findings back as repair instructions, appear throughout recent smart contract repair research. They rest on a rarely examined assumption: that the analyzer output serving as the oracle faithfully records what the analyzer found. I report three ways that assumption fails, identified during a four-contract instrument-validation exercise preceding a planned repair study. First, Mythril v0.24.8 can exit without reaching the analysis phase while returning exit status zero, empty standard error, and a findings array byte-identical to that of a genuinely clean scan; the failure is reported in a sibling JSON field that finding-extraction code has no reason to read. Second, 12 of 23 Slither findings in my validation set fell outside the high, medium, and low impact bands, so an unfiltered count measures a composite whose components may not behave alike under repair. Third, keying finding identity on source location breaks across repair rounds. On the one contract carried through three rounds, location-based keying inflated resolved findings from 7 to 12 and introduced findings from 2 to 7. The underlying instability is established in the warning-tracking literature; my contribution is its consequence for repair metrics, where it biases both transition counts upward and can confound comparison between methods producing differently sized .patches. I separately report an executed exploit showing a specification-level authorization defect that produced no high or medium impact finding. I propose calibration procedures for each hazard and release the harness, contracts, and raw analyzer output at doi:10.5281/zenodo.21586404.
This article develops the concept of the “Manufacture of Deviance* 2.0” as an extension of the economic model proposed in The Economic Policy of Online Media: Manufacture of Dissent. It argues that the transition from traditional mass media to decentralised digital platforms has produced not simply a transformation in the distribution of violent imagery, but a new economic relationship between attention, taboo and atrocity. Traditional broadcast media developed institutional and ethical mechanisms intended to restrict representations of real torture, mutilation and death. The online attention economy partially reverses this logic: what is forbidden, disturbing, transgressive or difficult to access can acquire additional informational value precisely because of its exceptional character. As audiences become saturated with conventional news, entertainment and political controversy, increasingly extreme material can compete successfully for the scarce resource of human attention. Violence consequently becomes capable of generating multiple currencies simultaneously: advertising value, subscriptions, donations and cryptocurrency, but also views, followers, notoriety, group membership, prestige and social recognition. The article traces a genealogy from the spectacle of public punishment and execution, through the controversial appearance of uncensored atrocity footage on traditional television, to gore communities, extremist propaganda, cartel execution videos, closed social-media groups and contemporary networks of digitally performed vigilantism. Particular attention is given to the evolution of so-called “pedophile hunter” subcultures associated with Maxim “Tesak” Martsinkevich and Occupy Pedophilia, in which humiliation and violence could be transformed into reproducible performances possessing recognisable scripts, symbols and gestures. Rather than assuming the existence of a single organisation commissioning such violence, the article proposes a more disturbing possibility: networked media can reproduce violent behaviour without central command because attention, imitation, belonging and social currency themselves operate as incentives. Against this background, the article examines the 2026 Youth Hill case in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, involving teenagers accused of participating in the fatal assault and humiliation of a 37-year-old man after he had allegedly been lured to a meeting. The case is treated cautiously, distinguishing established information, prosecutorial allegations and media reporting from the broader theoretical interpretation developed here. It nevertheless provides a disturbing case through which to investigate the migration of violent spectacle from the screen into physical behaviour and its subsequent return to the screen as content. The article argues that this process resembles, in technologically transformed form, the public scaffold: the condemned sinner, the righteous crowd, ritual humiliation and spectacular punishment return within a global digital square in which spectators can simultaneously watch, judge, distribute and reward the spectacle. The Manufacture of Deviance 2.0 therefore describes a potentially advanced stage of the attention economy: not merely the monetisation of disagreement and outrage, but the conversion of transgression, cruelty and ultimately human suffering into communicative value.
Open access
4 source records
Populism, Right-Wing Movements
Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Cheuk Hang Au, Po-Hsu Shieh, Vladimir Nurbaev, Kris M. Y. Law · 5 authors
Digital platforms face a fundamental paradox: while expanding service variety is a dominant competitive strategy, it risks inducing a “paradox of choice” that confuses and deters users. This tension manifests with extreme clarity in the nascent, high-complexity market of cryptocurrency exchanges, creating a pressing empirical puzzle. To resolve this, we adopt the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) perspective in a three-stage mixed-method study to investigate how platforms can strategically manage this trade-off. Our qualitative exploration (Study 1) established a capital flow schema called “inflow, roll, and go” and identified key complexity-reduction mechanisms. A subsequent survey (n = 190, Study 2) validated that perceived innovativeness and scalability are critical stimuli for service variety, which in turn drives user continuance intention. A final survey (n = 140, Study 3) confirmed that users prioritise services that bridge to the traditional financial system, forming a minimal viable structure with a variety of functions. Our meta-inferences make several key contributions, including the resolution of the service variety paradox by introducing a theoretical distinction between value-adding “real-variety” and confusing “pseudo-variety” and the development of a strategic roadmap that guides exchanges in navigating the tension between service expansion and user confusion, offering actionable insights for platform strategy in any high-velocity digital market.
The fluctuation characteristics of financial time series have always been one of the research hotspots in the academic community. Generally speaking, financial return series have the characteristics of volatility clustering, fat tails, conditional heteroskedasticity, asymmetric shocks, etc. The above phenomena can be explained from the perspective of dynamic conditional variance by GARCH models and their extensions. This paper first introduces the basic ideas of ARCH and GARCH models, with a focus on the issue of volatility clustering of financial returns. Then, it reviews the relevant research from three aspects: model evolution, application scenarios, and practical value. It also analyzes the role of GARCH-type models in capturing volatility persistence, asymmetric impact, and risk transmission through applications in cryptocurrencies, energy assets, and high-frequency financial data. The study shows that GARCH-type models capture the volatility clustering feature of financial returns well, but there is still room to improve the modeling of extreme risk, the handling of high-dimensional assets, and model interpretability.
Crypto currency is one of most interesting financial innovation of 21st century. Crypto currency trading not only involve financial literacy while trading but also there are psychological factors affecting the decision of traders. Keeping in view the psychological factors and investors’ decision, this research study is designed to investigate the complex interplay between psychological triggers and market dynamics in the cryptocurrency sector in Pakistan, specifically examining how these elements coalesce to drive investor behavior and market volatility. While traditional financial models often attribute asset fluctuations to technological or fundamental shifts, this study posits that cryptocurrency markets are fundamentally driven by human perception and emotional reactivity. Utilizing a quantitative methodological approach, data was collected from a sample of 175 experienced traders to analyze the impact of emotional states, market sentiment, and behavioral discipline on trading outcomes. The empirical results, derived through multiple linear regression analysis, reveal that the model possesses a high level of explanatory power, accounting for 56% of the variance in emotional trading behavior (R2=0.56R2=0.56). Market sentiment emerged as the primary determinant of impulsive trading (β=0.48β=0.48), demonstrating that external social cues often exert a stronger influence on decision-making than internal emotional states. Among specific psychological variables, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) were identified as the most significant predictors of rash choices (β=0.34β=0.34), while the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) also demonstrated a substantial, though secondary, effect (β=0.21β=0.21). Conversely, the study found that trading experience and the application of systematic strategies serve as vital moderating factors that decrease emotional reactivity and enhance behavioral stability (β=−0.19β=−0.19). The findings contribute to the fields of behavioral finance and digital economics by illustrating that the volatility inherent in digital assets is a systemic byproduct of individual psychological biases aggregated through digital narratives. The research concludes that achieving a sustainable financial ecosystem requires moving beyond purely technical regulations. Instead, it advocates for the implementation of behaviorally-informed safeguards, such as algorithmic "cooling-off" periods and sentiment-aware trading tools, to mitigate the risks associated with reactive investing. Ultimately, this work provides a blueprint for a more resilient digital financial future by prioritizing human factors in market governance.
Kriminalitätsdaten, Aufkommensschätzungen und höchstrichterliche Aktenlage – mit Befunden gegen beide Seiten der Debatte Die Bundesregierung hat am 29. April 2026 im Rahmen der Eckwerte für den Bundeshaushalt 2027 angekündigt, die Besteuerung von Kryptowerten neu zu regeln. Am 6. Juli 2026 hat das Bundeskabinett den Regierungsentwurf des Haushalts 2027 beschlossen; nach der vom Bundesministerium der Finanzen veröffentlichten Textfassung der Pressekonferenz will die Bundesregierung "Kryptogewinne künftig genauso besteuern wie Kapitaleinkünfte", und zwar mit Zeitziel 2027. Amtlich angekündigt ist damit die Gleichbehandlung mit Kapitaleinkünften; der Wegfall der einjährigen Haltefrist für private Veräußerungsgeschäfte nach § 23 EStG ist die naheliegende Folge dieser Einordnung, wird hier aber als **Schlussfolgerung** und nicht als amtliche Aussage geführt. Ein Referentenentwurf, ein Gesetzestext, ein Steuersatz, ein Stichtag und eine Aufkommensschätzung mit offengelegter Herleitung lagen bis zum Redaktionsschluss dieses Berichts nicht vor. Dieser Bericht prüft vierzehn in der Reformdebatte wiederkehrende Tatsachenbehauptungen gegen die jeweils einschlägigen Primärquellen: Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, des Bundesfinanzhofs und des niederländischen Hoge Raad, amtliche Bundestagsdrucksachen, Berichte des Bayerischen Obersten Rechnungshofs, parlamentarische Materialien der Republik Österreich, Erhebungsdaten der Europäischen Zentralbank, On-Chain-Forensik sowie die amtlichen Verlautbarungen des Bundesministeriums der Finanzen. Dokumentierter Anlass der Prüfung ist eine öffentlich aufgezeichnete Fachdiskussion vom 7. Juli 2026, in der die Behauptungen in verdichteter Form vorgetragen wurden; die Befunde gelten für die Debatte insgesamt, nicht für einzelne Personen. Ergebnis: Der überwiegende Teil der geprüften Behauptungen hält der Prüfung an den Primärquellen in der vorgetragenen Form nicht stand; einzelne halten stand, präzisieren sich aber erheblich. Die zentralen Befunde: Die als Beleg für kriminelle Bitcoin-Nutzung angeführten Daten weisen den ganz überwiegenden Teil des betroffenen Volumens Stablecoins zu, nicht Bitcoin; die unabhängige On-Chain-Forensik beziffert den Stablecoin-Anteil am illegalen Transaktionsvolumen des Jahres 2025 auf 84 Prozent. Eine amtliche Aufkommensschätzung mit offengelegter Herleitung existiert nicht: Die Bundesregierung hat am 17. September 2025 auf eine Kleine Anfrage geantwortet, Angaben zur Höhe der Steuereinnahmen aus Kryptowerten lägen ihr nicht vor und ein statistischer Nachweis sei nicht möglich; sieben Monate später nannte sie eine Erwartung von zwei Milliarden Euro für ein kombiniertes Bündel aus Kriminalitätsbekämpfung und Kryptobesteuerung. Ein Fraktionsentwurf beziffert die Mehreinnahmen auf "mindestens etwa 5 Mrd. Euro" – ohne Herleitung im Entwurf; ausweislich des Ausschussberichts ist der Betrag die Hälfte einer nicht amtlichen Hochrechnung. Im herangezogenen Vergleichsfall Österreich lag die amtliche Folgenabschätzung im zweistelligen Millionenbereich und das tatsächliche Aufkommen 2024 bei 33,8 Millionen Euro, 0,57 Prozent des dortigen Kapitalertragsteueraufkommens; der österreichische Rechnungshof rügte, dass die Folgenabschätzung keine Herleitung ihrer Beträge enthält. Dieser Vergleich ist allerdings nur begrenzt übertragbar: Österreich hat den vor dem 1. März 2021 angeschafften Altbestand von der Neuregelung ausgenommen, sodass die Zahl aus einer durch Bestandsschutz verengten Bemessungsgrundlage stammt. Bei der Rechtslage ist das Bild differenzierter, als es die Debatte auf beiden Seiten darstellt: Der Bundesfinanzhof hat 2023 ein *normatives* Vollzugsdefizit bei Kryptowerten ausdrücklich verneint – und dabei die tatsächlichen Vollzugsschwierigkeiten ausdrücklich mitbedacht und für den verfassungsrechtlichen Maßstab für unerheblich erklärt. Zugleich dokumentiert der Bayerische Oberste Rechnungshof für die Veranlagungszeiträume 2018 bis 2021 ein *tatsächliches* Erhebungsdefizit: Die Finanzämter konnten "mangels Informationen oder Kontrollmaterial keine Fälle selbst aufgreifen" und waren "vollständig auf die Erklärungsangaben der Stpfl. [Steuerpflichtigen] angewiesen". Für Altbestände, deren Haltefrist bei Verkündung bereits abgelaufen ist, folgt aus der Rückwirkungsrechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (Beschluss vom 7. Juli 2010) ein verfassungsrechtlich gebotener Vertrauensschutz. English abstract On 29 April 2026, the German federal government announced a reform of the taxation of crypto-assets as part of the budget benchmarks for the 2027 federal budget. On 6 July 2026 the federal cabinet adopted the government's 2027 draft budget; according to the transcript of the press conference published by the Federal Ministry of Finance, crypto gains are to be "taxed in the same way as investment income", with 2027 as the target date. What has been officially announced is therefore the alignment with investment income; the removal of the one-year holding period for private disposals under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG) is the obvious consequence of that classification, but is treated here as an **inference** rather than an official statement. No ministerial draft bill, no statutory text, no tax rate, no cut-off date and no revenue estimate with a disclosed derivation existed at the time of writing. This report examines fourteen recurring factual claims in the reform debate against the relevant primary sources: case law of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the Federal Fiscal Court and the Dutch Supreme Court, official Bundestag documents, reports of the Bavarian Supreme Audit Office, Austrian parliamentary materials, European Central Bank survey data, on-chain forensics, and official statements by the Federal Ministry of Finance. The documented occasion for this review is a publicly recorded expert panel of 7 July 2026; the findings address the debate as a whole and not individual speakers. Result: most of the claims examined do not withstand scrutiny in the form presented; some do hold, but require substantial qualification. Key findings: the data cited as evidence of criminal Bitcoin use attribute the great majority of the relevant volume to stablecoins, not Bitcoin; independent on-chain forensics put the stablecoin share of illicit transaction volume in 2025 at 84 per cent. No official revenue estimate with a disclosed derivation exists: on 17 September 2025 the federal government replied to a parliamentary question that it holds no data on tax revenue from crypto-assets and that statistical evidence is "not possible"; seven months later it stated an expectation of two billion euros for a combined package of financial crime enforcement and crypto taxation. A parliamentary group's bill puts the additional revenue at "at least around EUR 5 billion" – with no derivation in the bill itself; according to the committee report the figure is half of a non-official industry projection. In the comparative case examined here, Austria, the official impact assessment projected figures in the tens of millions and actual revenue in 2024 was EUR 33.8 million, or 0.57 per cent of that country's capital gains tax revenue; the Austrian Court of Audit criticised that the assessment contained no derivation of its figures. That comparison is only transferable to a limited extent: Austria exempted holdings acquired before 1 March 2021, so the figure derives from a tax base substantially narrowed by grandfathering. On the legal situation the picture is more differentiated than either side of the debate presents. In 2023 the Federal Fiscal Court expressly denied a *normative* enforcement deficit for crypto-assets – expressly taking the actual enforcement difficulties into account and holding them immaterial to the constitutional test. At the same time, the Bavarian Supreme Audit Office documents an *actual* collection deficit for the assessment periods 2018 to 2021: tax offices could "not take up any cases on their own initiative for lack of information or control material" and were "entirely dependent on the taxpayers' own declarations". For holdings whose one-year period had already expired at promulgation, the Federal Constitutional Court's retroactivity case law (decision of 7 July 2010) requires constitutional protection of legitimate expectations. Änderungsnotiz Version 1.1 (11. August 2026): Anlass war der Eingang externer Hinweise; sämtliche Änderungen wurden unabhängig an den Primärquellen geprüft und sind im Änderungsverzeichnis des Dokuments einzeln ausgewiesen. In Kürze: (1) Befund 12 um die fehlende Fundstelle ergänzt (Zeitcodes, wörtliche Zitate); (2) Befund 8 um Kroatien und Luxemburg als primär belegte Vergleichsregime erweitert; (3) Befund 6: Mittelwert-/Median-Passage korrigiert; (4) Befund 2 um die Methodendebatte zum Nenner der Anteilswerte ergänzt; (5) Befund 1 um Präsentation und Diskussion bei der AFA 2026 ergänzt; (6) Funktionsbezeichnung des Autors der Quelle 8a aktualisiert; (7) Verfahrensstand zu H.R. 3633 aktualisiert. Keine Ergebnis-Einstufung ändert sich. Quellen 25–33 neu.
Cristian Ruvalcaba, Saluca Agentic AI Research Team
Report. Saluca Labs threat research. Defensive use only. In the first ten days of August 2026, three separate campaigns distributing malicious VPN software were in public circulation simultaneously, each reported by a different vendor about a different investigation. This paper answers the question none of the individual reports set out to answer: is this three detection problems or one? The campaigns are the BoryptGrab-lineage infostealer distributed through approximately 292 brand-impersonation GitHub repositories (Arctic Wolf); the QuickFox VPN supply chain compromise delivering the FDMTP implant, which persisted inside a signed vendor installer for roughly a year (Fortinet FortiGuard Labs); and the "Free VPN for PC" GitHub repository delivering Lumma Stealer (CYFIRMA). Two of the three share a single execution primitive, which the paper names borrowed trust: the process that executes is legitimate, correctly signed, and behaving exactly as designed, while the malicious code is something that process resolves at runtime. A signature authenticates the container; it asserts nothing about what the container loads after it starts. The same inversion appears in the delivery chain, where a github.io redirect is consumed as though it certified a destination GitHub never inspected. Crucially, none of the trusted parties did anything wrong, so there is no defect to patch and the pattern will outlive these three campaigns. The paper states explicitly where the synthesis is weaker: the third campaign is a partial case whose first stage borrows nothing. Detections are ranked on survival under infrastructure rotation, because the largest campaign regenerates its payload roughly every sixty seconds and is designed to defeat conventional indicator sharing. Four detections survive rotation entirely and are argued as the tier-one set. Section 5 is the ledger of what this class makes undetectable, and it is the section the individual vendor reports could not contain. Hash-based coverage is close to meaningless when the archive is rebuilt per request. Signature-based allowlisting fails by construction, in both directions, because the signatures are not lying. A clean endpoint sweep is weak evidence for two opposite reasons: one campaign installs no persistence at all and leaves nothing behind, while the other only implants hosts running one of 26 named applications, so a quiet host may be untouched and fully exposed at the same time. For that campaign the correct control is a software inventory check against the affected version range, not a hunt for implant artifacts. None of the three campaigns was surfaced by a victim's own detection stack. All three were found by threat researchers. That observation recurs across this series and has not yet failed to hold. The companion package at saluca-labs/borrowed-trust-detections (Apache-2.0) ships 22 Sigma rules, 12 YARA rules, 15 Defender XDR / Sentinel KQL queries, 16 Splunk SPL searches, 24 Suricata rules, two read-only PowerShell hunt scripts, and a consolidated indicator set. Validation status is published alongside the content: the YARA and Sigma packs were compiled and parsed with reproduction scripts included, the PowerShell executes, and the KQL, SPL and Suricata content was authored against published schemas but not executed. Limits are stated plainly: no victim forensic artifacts, no independent verification, no samples analysed by the authors, all ATT&CK mappings inferred rather than vendor-supplied, and attribution repeated as other researchers' assessment rather than asserted as fact.
[v6] The Foundational Overview is updated to v2.2. (1) Refinements from the literature check of Chapter 4 — the lineage note is sharpened (Kelvin (1867) identified vortices with atoms, not charge; the closest precedent for "a conserved quantum number as soliton winding" is Skyrme, baryon number as topological winding), and Sec. 4.5(1) now records that particle-vortex duality is a theorem of 2+1 dimensions, the 3+1-dimensional dual of a vortex string being a string coupled to a two-form gauge field. (2) Resolution of ledger item (21) — the charging problem of the dark vortex strings is resolved by the two kinds of winding (wavefront phase = charge; arrest-field phase = dark strings), restricting the scope of identification A to the wavefront phase, with the falsifiable corollary (dark strings interact through tension alone) agreeing with Chapter 7. See Appendix C inside the document. [v5] The Foundational Overview is updated to v2.1. Main changes: (1) a new Chapter 4, "The Electromagnetic Force — Where Does Sign Come From?" — the two-sector structure (gravity = the scalar sector of arrest density; electromagnetism = the signed sector of winding number); from the identification charge = winding there follow charge quantization, charge conservation (= a rediscovery of the existing pair-creation prohibition), the identification of the annihilation channel, and the emergence of sign structure; subsequent chapters are renumbered and ledger items (18)-(21) added. (2) The zero-extinction refinement in Chapter 3, Sec. 3.4 — the transparency requirement is extended from zero absorption to zero extinction (absorption plus scattering); by the optical theorem, drag and heating are resolved simultaneously by one condition; the observational bound from the persistence of stellar peculiar velocities is registered as ledger item (22). See Appendix C (Change History) inside the document. [v4] The Foundational Overview is fully revised (document v2). Main changes: separation of the two roles of the arrest parameter (a: degree of arrest / χ: time velocity / Φ: pressure-deficit potential); Chapter 3 restated at the level of a field equation, with a new section answering the classical objections to Le Sage-type gravity (drag, heating, aberration); retraction of the overtone law m_n = n²·m_e and its replacement by the equipartition constraint of the charged-lepton triplet (Koide\u2019s formula, known); consolidation of the MOND attribution onto the coherence-time mechanism; claim labels [A/B/C/Open] applied throughout, with a new Chapter 0 and a change-history Appendix C. See Appendix C inside the document for details. [v3.1 Corrigendum] A corrigendum (corrigendum_v3_1_EN.pdf) concerning the lattice numerical claims of Derivation Note v3, Sec. 7, has been added. The Sec. 7(i) values depend solely on matrix-valued couplings not derivable from the medium model, and Sec. 7(ii) could not be reproduced under pre-registered protocols; the network-level claims of Sec. 7 are therefore withdrawn. The single-link results (plasticity equation, retention law, non-destructive readout) are unaffected. The independent reimplementation code (lattice_reimplementation_code.zip) is included. Japanese-English split edition (English record) of the Wave-Nature Unification Theory (a-theory, Arrest Parameter Framework), containing the Foundational Document (Overview) and Derivation Notes v2 and v3. The Japanese edition is published as a separate record (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21850306). Reconstructed from the former combined record (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21740126). Contents: Foundational Document (Overview) (Markdown, dated 2026-07-30) / Derivation Note v2 (PDF + LaTeX source) / Derivation Note v3 (PDF + LaTeX source). [v2] Derivation Note v2 "Unification of the Averaging Stiffness θ′ — Dispersion θ′(k), Determination of the Coefficient A, Interpretation of ε₀, and the Lifetime Formula". θ′ is redefined as the averaging stiffness of the field itself, establishing: the effective stiffness θ′_eff(k) = c²(k_g/k + k/2k_g)²; the exact coincidence of its minimum with the arrest ground mode k₁ = π/L_s (a variational re-derivation of L_s; total ground energy = ε₀ = 2m_ec²); the complete determination of the selection-rule coefficient A = 6θ′k_g² (= 6U″(φ₀)); the unification of the two readings of ε₀ via topological pair creation; and the lifetime formula τ_n = 2τ₀/(n(n²−3)) with stability boundary n² = 3 and asymptotics Γ ∝ m^{5/2}. Four falsifiable predictions and five open issues are stated explicitly. [v3] Derivation Note v3 "History Retention in the Interaction Medium — the Plasticity Equation and the Forgetting Action S_rec". Formalizes, using only previously derived results and zero additional parameters, the mechanism by which the interaction medium between arrested configurations retains history (a synapse-like plastic coupling). Main results: (1) the plasticity equation dw/dt=(1/τ₀)⟨Θ(E_loc−ε_th)⟩(1−w)−w/τ_r, with the learning rate set by the theory's unique time scale τ₀, the Hebbian coincidence gate derived from the pair-creation threshold and wave interference, and saturation/weight quantization from the packing rule 2L_s; (2) two independent formulations of the forgetting action S_rec (real-space pinning tunnelling vs. order-parameter phase slip S₁=1.16) agree at the 1.2% level through the barrier identification V_PN=μξ_h=1.70𝓔₀ — a cross-validation of the S₁ calculation; (3) the retention law τ_r(d)=ω_att⁻¹exp[2S₁d/ξ_h], programmable from nanoseconds to cosmological scales by the write separation; the separation for age-of-the-universe non-volatility, 38.2ξ_h, equals the dark-structure survival cut L_q(t₀); (4) numerical experiments on a 26-direction cell lattice demonstrating distributed memory and threshold-protected non-destructive readout. Five falsifiable predictions and five open items are stated explicitly.
Overall equipment effectiveness is taught as an industrial convention: three factors, availability times performance times quality, adopted because decades of practice found them useful. This paper proves that it is not a convention. Over the minimal variable set of discrete manufacturing, and with piece count admitted as a base dimension alongside time, the Buckingham π theorem forces exactly three independent dimensionless groups, and those three groups are exactly the availability, performance, and quality factors. The two formulas every OEE practitioner learns, the factored form A × P × Q and the collapsed form τG/T_p, are revealed as the factored and telescoped presentations of one and the same π monomial. Nakajima wrote down the correct answer in 1988. The theorem that makes it inevitable is proved here. The move that makes this work is dimensional rather than statistical. Counts of a specified entity are treated as quantities of a kind rather than as bare numbers, exactly as the International System treats amount of substance for the mole. With the unit dimension U in the basis, ideal cycle time carries T U⁻¹, throughput carries U T⁻¹, and count ratios become true π groups instead of informal percentages. Without U the count variables are dimensionally invisible, the matrix loses a row, and the machinery of the theorem cannot see the structure it is about to reveal. Nothing metaphysical is claimed for U; the instrumental reading, that U is the bookkeeping dimension of a specified countable product, carries every result in the paper. Two completeness theorems. Theorem 1 establishes that over the base dimensions T and U the minimal set {T_p, T_r, τ, N, G} admits exactly three independent groups and that the OEE triple is a complete basis, so every dimensionless quantity constructible from those five variables is a product of powers of availability, performance, and quality. Theorem 2 establishes a completeness result of exactly parallel shape for the statistical layer: over the single dimension of a quality characteristic, the set {Δ, σ, δ} admits exactly two groups, and the capability pair C_p = Δ/(6σ) and the centering index k = 2δ/Δ is a complete basis. The demonstrated capability index C_pk = C_p × (1 − k), the sigma level Z = 3C_pk, rolled throughput yield, and a closed form for normalized Taguchi loss all follow as members of that basis. The extension ladder. Each variable appended to the minimal set introduces no new base dimension until energy enters, so each purchases exactly one further independent group, and at every rung the new group already has a name on the factory floor. Total calendar time gives TEEP. Takt time gives takt coverage. Mean time between failures and mean time to repair give the reliability burden and with it the classical inherent availability as an exact identity, together with a ledger that resolves the opaque quantity 1 − Π_A, the availability loss that OEE reports but cannot explain, into named and separately actionable channels. Changeover time gives the SMED setup burden. Energy gives an efficiency group that only the rank form of the theorem can find, since a naive count of base dimensions predicts three groups and would wrongly conclude that no independent energy group exists. The flow variables give the Factory Physics WIP efficiency together with a closed identity for process cycle efficiency, PCE = Π_F × u, which tells a diagnosing engineer whether poor flow is an inventory problem or a starvation problem. The bridge law. The two layers join at exactly one point. For a process in statistical control with normally distributed output, the capability pair determines a ceiling on the quality group, Π_Q* = Φ(3C_p(1 − k)) + Φ(3C_p(1 + k)) − 1. Determination runs one way: capability sets a ceiling that operations can fail to reach but cannot exceed, and the gap between the ceiling and the observed quality group is itself diagnostic, because an in-control capable process that nonetheless scraps parts is losing them to special causes and startup transients rather than to inherent spread. Consequences for the canon. The Six Big Losses of total productive maintenance and the eight wastes of Lean close one to one against the group registry, each located in the group whose degradation it names. Lean and Six Sigma are re-read as dimensional analysis performed on two different variable sets, the flow variables and the spread variables, by communities that did not know they were doing it, which is offered as an explanation of why their merger into a single methodology worked in practice. The normalized Taguchi loss acquires the closed form ΛQ = (9C_p²)⁻¹ + k², which separates the spread term from the centering term additively and repairs a known defect of Taguchi practice, whose signal-to-noise ratios take logarithms of dimensional quantities. The composite and what it changes. A plant-level composite, Ψ_Plant = Ψ_OEE × Γ_Demand × Γ_Energy × Γ_Flow, becomes an additive loss ledger under logarithms. Because the composite is a product, its log-elasticity with respect to every factor is exactly unity, so no factor carries more marginal leverage than another and improvement priority is set entirely by headroom, which is precisely what the ledger measures. A worked injection-molding line scored over one operating week returns Ψ_OEE = 0.680, a respectable value squarely inside the typical industrial band, while the composite returns Ψ_Plant = 0.0638. The ledger says why: flow contributes seventy-six percent of the log deficit. A single-lever intervention table follows. Buying uptime, the move a manager reading only the OEE number would make, returns 1.12 fold. Cutting work in process to its critical level multiplies the composite eightfold, from 0.064 to 0.510, without touching availability, performance, or quality at all. The intervention that feels natural is not the intervention that pays, and the framework tells them apart before a dollar is spent. Scope and limitations, stated plainly. The bridge law assumes statistical control and normality; for non-normal characteristics the ceiling must be computed from the fitted distribution. Reliability enters through a renewal approximation. The minimal set is single-product, and clamping conventions are declared wherever imposed, with the raw unclamped groups always reported alongside. The worked example is synthetic. Its inputs are constructed to be consistent with published benchmark values rather than drawn from a single instrumented plant, so it demonstrates the machinery and its diagnostic reading but is not an empirical validation; full single-plant instantiation with direct measurement is the subject of the next paper in this program. The paper positions itself explicitly against five bordering literatures, the OEE literature, process-physics dimensional analysis, the dimensional analysis tradition inside operations management, data envelopment analysis and index numbers, and Factory Physics, and states its priority claim as scoped to that survey, with correction from the community invited.
Paper 122F investigates whether local particle-related organization can propagate through a densely contacting Holosphere network without requiring one permanent rigid body to move through the surrounding structure. The calculation begins from thirty-seven inherited states containing twenty-one owner-resolved vacancies distributed among three relational sectors. Rigid triangular and tetrahedral contact motifs occur naturally in this geometry. A rigid tetrahedral carrier is blocked when the surrounding Holospheres remain fixed, but finite cooperative motion of neighboring Holospheres provides first-order release freedom at both source and reconstructed target configurations. A constrained puzzle search then finds finite sequences in which temporary triangular and tetrahedral motifs successively reconstruct the vacancy pattern. The deepest sequence contains six alternating steps while preserving the complete vacancy and ownership ledgers. The reconstruction graph also contains one thousand one hundred forty exact owner-closed structural cycles. Individual vacancy tracking confirms exact token closure for selected mappings, but the subsequent signed mechanical audit finds no unique nonzero circulation direction. The results therefore support cooperative, puzzle-like propagation of an evolving vacancy and contact organization rather than translation of a permanent rigid carrier. Complete continuous trajectories, persistent circulation, a physical gluon mechanism, and confinement remain to be derived.
Open access
2 source records
High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions
We present the Awen Grid Digital Collider, a numerical instrument that ev olv es two coupled ensembles("ledgers") of states on unit hy perspheres: a Real Ledger of up to 10⁷ unit quaternions on S³, and an ImaginaryLedger of equally many unit octonions on S⁷, distributed across two consumer GPUs. The Real Ledger ev olv esby an observ er-weighted map built from the general SO(4) sandwich rotation ψ → q_b·ψ ·q_a⁻¹; the ImaginaryLedger ev olv es by unit-octonion Cay ley–Dickson rotation; "collisions" between the sectors are measured by theoctonion associator [x ,y ,z] = (x y )z − x (y z), an observ able that is prov ably zero on the quaternionic subalgebraand therefore self-calibrating. All structural theorems the instrument relies on — the SU(2) representation of theHamilton product, associativ ity of ℍ, alternativ ity and non-associativ ity of 𝕆, and the composition-algebra law|x y | = |x ||y | underly ing ex act norm conserv ation — are machine-v erified to 10⁻¹⁵–10⁻¹⁶.Three empirical results follow. First, the observ er-weighted map possesses a global ring attractor on S³: from auniform random beam, thousands of independently ev olv ing states v isibly self-organize into a single ring within~27 ticks, after which ev ery measured observ able phase-locks. Second, the locked observ ables are inv ariantacross a 200× range of beam sizes (5×10⁴–10⁷ nodes), ten random seeds, two arithmetic precisions(float32/float64), two backends (CPU/dual-GPU), and two independent operators: collision rift 1 .1 7 90 ±0.001 1 , lion ratio 1 1 .554 ± 0.006, mass index 0.99627 (across-seed range 5×10⁻⁵). Third, a Lev el II sweep ofthe rotation:fold mix ing weight maps the attractor landscape and finds a genuine interior resonance at w ≈ 0.865(lion 39.4), while demonstrating that prev iously published constants of the framework (a claimed fold-amplituderesonance at 0.48, and a legacy "Lion constant" of 0.5352) are respectiv ely not reproduced under a preregistered 10⁷-node blind sweep and unreachable any where on the measured slice — and whose documentaryorigins we identify from the primary sources (an algebraic identity and a bookkeeping snapshot, respectiv ely ;Section 6.5). A 40-item falsifiability audit of the RHC corpus (18 v erified · 8 false · 5 contradictions · 6 ex ternalmismatches quantified · 1 not reproduced · 1 open · 1 untestable) and a measured correction of the framework'scompression claims (delta pre-transform: −30 to −37 % on correlated telemetry ; −0% bey ond entropy on anydata) are included. The instrument computes geometry on simulated states; it does not act on phy sical matter,and no claim to the contrary is made.
The modern energy transition has outpaced the control and optimization frameworks built to govern it. As power and energy systems fragment into webs of renewable generators, storage operators, flexible loads, and carbon-constrained firms, the deterministic, single-optimizer models that once sufficed buckle against nonlinearity, bounded rationality, and strategic conflict among parties who learn and revise as they go. Evolutionary game theory (EGT), which traces how strategies propagate through populations by imitation and selection rather than instantaneous optimization, offers a route through this difficulty—one this review develops across three scales of low-carbon coordination central to cleaner production: enterprise-level industrial symbiosis, system-level smart energy operation, and market-level carbon governance. We synthesize three decades of theory alongside the recent fusion of EGT with artificial intelligence, where deep reinforcement learning approximates high-dimensional payoffs, federated learning lets rival firms co-train models without surrendering proprietary data, and blockchain underwrites decentralized mechanism execution. The synthesis is accompanied by two illustrative numerical case studies, constructed for this review rather than drawn from the surveyed literature, whose quantitative outputs are reported below as demonstrations of modeled behavior rather than as empirical measurements. In the first of these, cooperative emergence in industrial symbiosis hinges on critical thresholds that travel from 0.15 to 0.75 as subsidies and transaction costs vary, with anchor-enterprise targeting accelerating cooperation 2.4-fold while cutting outcome variance 3-fold. In smart energy coordination, AI-enhanced learning buys 32 to 41% faster convergence, yet pays 25 to 39% larger oscillations—a speed–stability tension whose resolution lives in a narrow learning-rate band near 0.08 to 0.12, outside which either sluggishness or instability takes hold. Carbon-market behavior turns on price thresholds: emitters switch abruptly from buying quotas toward investing in abatement once the clearing price clears firm-specific triggers, a discrete state switch that smooth equilibrium analysis misses entirely. Across all three domains, fragmented data, path dependence, and regime-switching dynamics recur as the binding constraints on modeling and on governance alike. Four mechanisms prove invariant to scale—the decisive weight of initial conditions, the catalytic leverage of well-positioned anchor agents, the equilibrium-shaping force of institutional design, and the computational reach added by AI integration—which suggests that insight earned in one domain transfers to the others. We close by mapping open problems in heterogeneity modeling, verification under deep uncertainty, and the still-unrealized coupling of digital twins with privacy-preserving learning. EGT emerges not as retrospective description but as prospective guidance for the cooperative transitions on which credible decarbonization depends.
The subject matter of the article is the cryptographic integrity of digital authentication systems facing quantum computing threats, specifically focusing on post-quantum alternatives and efficient authenticated data structures. The goal is to design and formally analyze VERKLE-FRI—a hybrid architecture synthesizing Verkle tree proof-size reduction with FRI-based quantum-resistant commitments, establishing a scalable, stateless, and quantum-secure framework. The tasks are: analyze limitations of hash-based signatures and Merkle trees; evaluate polynomial commitment schemes (KZG, Bulletproofs, FRI, lattice-based); propose a hybrid Verkle-FRI design; develop a formal security proof against classical and quantum adversaries; execute complexity analysis with concrete implementation parameters. The methods used are: theoretical cryptographic analysis, formal security modeling via reductionist proofs, algebraic methods over finite fields, polynomial interpolation, random oracle model, FRI protocol with DEEP-FRI optimization, Merkle trees, vector commitments, and asymptotic complexity analysis. The following results were achieved: a novel architecture where Verkle node vectors are polynomial-encoded, committed via Merkle trees over FRI codewords, and verified through FRI with out-of-domain sampling. A formal proof establishes λ-bit quantum security using 2λ-bit hash functions. Complexity yields proof size O(λ log² N), prover time O(λ N log N), and verifier time O(λ log N). Concrete 128-bit quantum parameters include SHA3-512, field size ≈2²⁵⁵, branching factor 256, and 128 FRI rounds, achieving soundness error ≤2⁻¹²⁷. For a concrete benchmark authenticating 2²⁶ elements, a traditional Merkle proof requires ≈0.8 KB, whereas our VERKLE-FRI proof requires ≈180 KB. While larger, this provides quantum resistance and eliminates the trusted setup, a critical trade-off for long-term security. Conclusions. Scientific novelty consists in: 1) the first hybrid Verkle-FRI architecture replacing pairing-based assumptions with hash-based proximity testing; 2) a formal security proof reducing security to hash collision resistance and FRI soundness; 3) quantified efficiency-security trade-offs; 4) a viable pathway for quantum-resistant infrastructure in blockchains, software distribution, and government communications.
Open access
Cryptographic Implementations and Security
Cryptography and Data Security
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have emerged as an innovative mechanism for raising capital, particularly for blockchain-based projects. However, the lack of regulatory oversight and the prevalence of low-quality information raise important questions about what truly drives ICO success. While existing literature focuses predominantly on technical and signalling variables, the role of investor decision-making remains theoretically underdeveloped and empirically underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by pursuing two objectives. First, we identify the drivers of ICO success using a probit model applied to an original sample of 535 ICOs conducted between January 2016 and May 2021. Second, we investigate investor decision-making patterns using a novel dataset of 200 active crypto-forum participants over the same period. Our results have three main findings, though with modest statistical strength than initially estimated. (I) Marketing channels are the most consistent predictor of ICO success across the sample period, clearing conventional significance thresholds only in the pooled sample (z = 1.90, p<0.10), with each additional channel raising the probability of soft-cap achievement by approximately 1.0 percentage point. (II) Team presentation and video presentation show no meaningful influence on success in any period. (III) Whitepaper availability is not statistically significant even in pooled sample, reinforcing rather than qualifying its irrelevance as a predictor; the number of accepted cryptocurrency price speculation rather than project fundamentals, consistent with mood and sentiment dominating information-based decision making in ICO markets, though this finding should be read alongside the data limitations discussed in 3.B. These findings contribute to the behavioural finance literature by providing an operational definition of ‘investor mood’ and demonstrating its empirical relevance in crypto markets. We conclude that understanding investor mood is not a secondary question but a necessary complement to technical analysis of ICO success.
This paper presents a threshold-cryptographic architecture for reducing the risk of premature leakage of digital examination papers during the interval between question-paper finalization and examination administration. The proposed design separates the data path from the control path. Examination content is encrypted using a fresh AES-256-GCM key, while the key is protected through envelope encryption under a key-release service. The capability to release that key is distributed using (k,n)-Shamir secret sharing across independent custodians, preventing any single custodian from unilaterally authorizing early release. At the scheduled release time, a quorum-based time authority provides an independently attested timestamp. Once the required time quorum and custodian threshold are satisfied, the key-release service reconstructs its private key within an HSM boundary, unwraps the examination key, and derives recipient-specific keys for individual examination centers. These keys are separately wrapped under each center's registered public key, limiting the impact of a compromise at any single examination center. The paper presents an actor and trust model, an explicit adversary model, a step-by-step release protocol, a threat-to-control security analysis, and a qualitative comparison with physical custody, blockchain-anchored distribution, and time-lock-puzzle-based timed-release cryptography. It also explicitly discusses residual risks, including custodian collusion, post-decryption optical or physical exfiltration, hardware and supply-chain trust, and compromise of the time-authority quorum. The architecture is presented as a research design rather than a claim of unconditional leak prevention. Future work includes implementing a prototype, evaluating quantitative performance, replacing reconstruct-and-zeroize key handling with threshold decryption, evaluating post-quantum key-encapsulation mechanisms, and conducting a formal mechanized security proof.
Open access
2 source records
Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
The rapid diffusion of digital technologies has fundamentally reshaped the way organizations generate and report financial and non-financial information, challenging traditional audit approaches that rely on manual and sample-based procedures. Building on this context, this paper aimed to provide a comprehensive synthesis of empirical evidence regarding the impact of digital technologies on auditing and to identify the key factors influencing their adoption across internal, external, and public sector audit functions during the 2015–2026 period. Using a qualitative descriptive design and a systematic literature review guided by the PICOC framework and PRISMA protocol, 33 relevant articles indexed in Scopus were selected from an initial pool of 959 publications. The findings showed that the use of various technologies, including computer-assisted audit techniques (CAATs), audit analytics, big data, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, blockchain, and process mining, generally enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of audit procedures, strengthened internal controls, and reduced errors and financial statement restatements, while simultaneously repositioning auditors as more strategic and data-driven partners. At the same time, the success of digital audit transformation was strongly influenced by technological infrastructure, data governance and security, organizational capabilities, leadership support, regulatory environments, and auditors’ individual competencies, indicating that digitalization was neither a neutral nor an automatic process. This study provides practical implications for audit firms, internal audit units, supreme audit institutions, and regulators in developing more targeted and sustainable digital audit strategies, while also proposing future research directions concerning the organizational and institutional dynamics of digital auditing.