Blockchain Papers

FABIAN LEO NARESSI

No abstract is available for this record.

Dimpi Gulati

Abstract Originally designed to support cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchain technology has evolved into a powerful tool with applications far beyond digital currency. This paper explores how blockchain is transforming software development by enabling decentralized, secure, and transparent systems. Key areas of focus include digital identity verification, smart contract automation, supply chain tracking, decentralized data storage, and secure e-governance solutions such as digital voting. The study outlines fundamental blockchain components—such as distributed ledgers, consensus mechanisms, and tokenization—and explains how they contribute to building tamper-resistant applications. It also examines blockchain’s role in powering Web3 technologies, decentralized finance (DeFi), and cross-chain interoperability. Through real-world case studies in healthcare, logistics, and digital governance, the paper highlights the tangible benefits of blockchain-based solutions while acknowledging current limitations like scalability, energy use, and regulatory issues. The analysis offers a forward-looking perspective on how software developers and organizations can harness blockchain to create resilient, next-generation applications.

Regiane Cristina Azevedo

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols increasingly interface with the United States financial ecosystem while exhibiting structural vulnerabilities related to operational resilience, governance fragmentation, and illicit finance exposure. This paper proposes a structured Operational Risk Governance Framework tailored to decentralized financial platforms, translating established financial-sector internal control and operational risk principles into functionally equivalent governance mechanisms suitable for blockchain-based environments. The framework introduces (i) an operational risk taxonomy adapted to DeFi, (ii) an internal control governance model mapped to COSO and Basel-aligned concepts, and (iii) the ORG-DeFi Model, a scoring methodology that evaluates platforms across governance integrity, technical controls, AML and illicit finance exposure, liquidity and market stability, and transparency and monitoring. A hypothetical lending-protocol case example illustrates application for institutional due diligence, compliance assessment, and research benchmarking. By operationalizing governance indicators that align with U.S. policy priorities on financial stability, market integrity, and illicit finance mitigation, this work provides an implementation-oriented methodology to support responsible innovation and strengthen risk governance in decentralized systems.

Kingsley Imandojemu, Aliyu Akorede Rufai, Felix Orole, Romanus Osabohien

ABSTRACT Balancing energy security, energy equity, and environmental sustainability has become increasingly challenging as economies pursue low‐carbon growth amid climate risk and persistent disparities in access to modern energy. Although entrepreneurship is widely recognized as a driver of innovation, its role in addressing the energy trilemma remains contested. This study examines whether, and under what conditions, entrepreneurship contributes to resolving the energy trilemma, using panel data for 64 countries from 2011 to 2022. Drawing on the World Energy Council's trilemma indices, World Bank entrepreneurship and macroeconomic indicators, and OECD‐DAC climate finance data, the analysis employs random‐effects models to capture both within‐ and between‐country variation. The results show that entrepreneurial activity is robustly associated with improved energy security and energy equity, alongside more modest gains in environmental sustainability. Innovation capacity strengthens these relationships, while foreign direct investment and climate finance exhibit uneven effects, tending to support system‐level and environmental outcomes more than inclusive access. Regulatory quality emerges as a critical enabling condition that significantly amplifies the positive impact of entrepreneurship across the energy trilemma. Overall, the findings provide cross‐country evidence that entrepreneurship functions as both an innovation conduit and a decentralizing force in energy transitions, underscoring the importance of predictable regulation and better‐targeted climate finance for access‐oriented clean energy solutions.

Farbod Ghasemlu

No abstract is available for this record.

K. Balaji, P. Seshagiri Rao

No abstract is available for this record.

Jinwook Kim, Jonghun Hong

There have been various attempts at token standards on numerous blockchain platforms today to fundamentally change the way assets are traded in the traditional capital markets, but there is a lack of research and resolution on regulatory issues that become the common foundation for interoperability and reusable standards. Our proposal, Regulatory Compliance Protocol (RCP), is based on the regulations and reports of 15 global financial institutions and standardizes recommendations and guidelines involving the overall asset tokenization of TradFi and DeFi into five regulatory groups: Traceability, Privacy, Enforceability, Finality and Tokenizability, compiling them into 31 items and presenting a benchmark for technology and standards as an underlying protocol. To review the legality and effectiveness of RCP, it was validated based on three tokenization and trading scenarios, and by benchmarking existing asset-tokenization standards (ERC-20, ERC-7943, ERC-1400, and ERC-3643) against RCP, it makes explicit which regulatory requirements each standard addresses at the token level and which remain inherently off-chain.

Andrii Svintsytskyi

The expansion of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Anonymity-Enhancing Technologies (AETs) has complicated the tracking of illicit financial flows. This article analyzes three distinct AETs—Tornado Cash, Monero, and Zcash—to assess how specific protocol mechanisms degrade transaction‑graph attribution and obstruct compliance. Synthesizing technical literature, AML/CFT frameworks, and recent judicial documentation, the study traces how design choices translate into investigative challenges. The analysis yields three key findings. First, “decentralization” rarely eliminates control; instead, it shifts choke points to infrastructure layers such as bridges and RPC providers. Second, while AETs significantly raise attribution costs, their effectiveness is often conditional and dependent on usage patterns. Third, the Tornado Cash enforcement saga illustrates the limitations of applying traditional sanctions to autonomous code. The paper concludes by proposing a mitigation agenda focused on measurable risk reduction at entry/exit points without compromising legitimate privacy.

Okan Agur

No abstract is available for this record.

Romain Rossello, Stefano Balietti, Stefan Kitzler, Pietro Saggese

No abstract is available for this record.

Hang-Yu Zhou

No abstract is available for this record.

Nihar Shah

No abstract is available for this record.

Supradip Baul, Minal Dutta, Joydeep Dey, Sanyukta Deb · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Andreas Park

No abstract is available for this record.

Oleksandr Manoylenko, Arsenii Rohoza

The article provides a theoretical substantiation of the essence of investment technologies within the system of decentralized finance. Based on a synthesis of existing scientific approaches, the author proposes original definitions for key concepts: "investment technologies", "financial technologies", and "decentralized finance". It is demonstrated that decentralized finance represents an alternative ecosystem built on public blockchains and smart contracts, which ensures the complete elimination of intermediaries. The formulated theoretical propositions establish a foundation for the further development of the organizational and economic framework for managing investment technologies within the DeFi space.

Wenbin Wu

In traditional banking, repeated deposit-and-lend cycles let a single dollar of reserves support multiple dollars of claims. Decentralized finance produces an analogous structure with tokens. Constructing a Token Graph of 10,200 tokens across 200 blockchains, this paper maps the resulting hierarchy and shows that, by late 2025, each dollar of base assets supports $4.7 of total claims. An embedded yield correction disentangles two channels that raw data conflates: a compositional channel, where lending protocols concentrate in deeper tiers and mechanically raise average yields; and a liquidity channel, where each derivation step reduces secondary-market depth and depresses yields in liquidity-sensitive pools. The liquidity channel concentrates in DEX pools and vanishes in lending pools. A yield decomposition shows that the tier gradient operates entirely through fundamental protocol yields, not incentive-token emissions; quantile regressions reveal that the structural associations concentrate in the upper tail of the yield distribution, with near-zero effects at the median. These findings reframe DeFi's "double counting" as a structural risk question and identify liquidity fragmentation as the primary mechanism associated with yield variation across the token hierarchy.

Jean-Marc Seigneur, Ilona Maklakova, Trang Fernandez-Leenknecht, Bruno Lenski · 14 authors

This Technical Report provides an overview of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Token (NFT). It sets out the principal technical concepts and examines selected legal considerations relevant to these domains, given the close interaction between technological design and regulatory treatment. The report also identifies practical measures to strengthen trust and legal certainty, particularly in relation to NFT metadata integrity, content-addressed storage, smart-contract auditability, and the use of Digital Art Certificate (DAC), including the DAC+NFT model supported by Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES) where a reliable link to real-world identity signature and rights is required. Extended with Human Time Token (HTT), a DAC+ can even certify how many hours of human time has been spent by an artist for a specific piece of art. These proposals are also relevant to future standardization work on legally robust off-chain certification and interoperability between Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) technical and legal layers.

Uri Volovelsky, Sivan Shlomo Agon

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are blockchain-based entities that operate without centralized management or shareholders, enabling worldwide token holders the option of participating in their governance through self-executing smart contracts. With approximately fifty thousand DAOs controlling over $30 billion in assets, these organizations offer unprecedented efficiency and global collaboration, enabling stakeholders to participate and contribute to the operation of DAOs regardless of their jurisdiction or physical presence. DAOs, however, also present significant legal and regulatory challenges, particularly concerning liability, contractual enforcement, tax obligations, and oversight. Their decentralized and fluid structure makes it substantively difficult for any single country—including powerful actors such as the United States and the European Union—to assert jurisdiction or exercise regulatory authority over such organizations. In addition to governance considerations, the decentralized, pseudonymous, and borderless structure of DAOs may be exploited for unlawful purposes, most notably money laundering. This Article examines how DAOs, particularly within the decentralized finance sector, facilitate anonymous cross-border transactions that pose novel and significant money laundering risks. By analyzing existing regulatory responses in major jurisdictions including the United States and the European Union, as well as efforts by key international organizations such as the Financial Action Task Force, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations, the Article demonstrates that prevailing regulatory frameworks and enforcement models cannot adequately respond to the distinct challenges presented by DAOs. This regulatory vacuum poses significant risks to global financial stability, the integrity of the financial systems, and core national-security interests, including the prevention of sanctions evasion, counterterrorism and proliferation financing, and the deduction and disruption of state-sponsored, cyber-enabled illicit finance. Accordingly, the Article proposes a novel, modular, risk-based, global anti-money laundering framework tailored to DAOs’ unique operational realities. The proposed framework aligns with principles of functional equivalence, technological neutrality, and transnational cooperation, offering a more effective means of addressing DAO-related, anti-money laundering risks while preserving space for innovation.

Adaobi Ndukaji

No abstract is available for this record.

Steven Paul Nohr

Transaction fees are a core economic mechanism in blockchain systems, intended to price scarce blockspace and align resource consumption with economic cost. However, in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and decentralized finance (DeFi) environments, fee mechanisms can be exploited to impose asymmetric and persistent economic harm without violating protocol rules. This paper defines <b><i>Gas Fee Drain Loops</i></b>, commonly referred to as <i>grief attacks</i>, as a class of economic exhaustion attacks that weaponize execution costs, transaction ordering, and revert semantics to drain capital from targeted participants. We analyze the structural conditions that enable such attacks, demonstrate why conventional fee market assumptions fail under adversarial strategies, and show how gas griefing degrades security through economic exclusion rather than consensus failure. Finally, we propose a logic-layer mitigation model that bounds execution costs, restores economic symmetry, and preserves open participation under adversarial conditions.

Daniel Liebau, Melody Ma

No abstract is available for this record.

Paul P. Momtaz

No abstract is available for this record.

Phuong Lai, Phong Thanh Nguyen, Binh Nguyen Thanh

No abstract is available for this record.

Steven L. Schwarcz, Jack Tiedemann

Decentralized finance (DeFi) promises cheaper, faster and more accessible financial services by replacing traditional regulated intermediaries with software protocols and smart contracts. But removing those intermediaries also removes the practical chokepoints for implementing modern financial regulation: customer identification and screening, disclosure, recordkeeping, operational safeguards and incident reporting. This paper argues that the core compliance challenge in DeFi is therefore a governance problem: regulators should focus less on DeFi’s underlying computer code and more on the control points where compliance duties could realistically be assigned, supervised and enforced. Identifying those control points could be challenging, however, because DeFi responsibilities are dispersed across software developers, governance structures, parties that interface with investors and third-party service providers. To address that challenge, the paper proposes a layered regulatory strategy comprising four complementary approaches: identifying and regulating gateway intermediaries that facilitate access to DeFi services; prescribing the compliance obligations those intermediaries should assume; establishing targeted governance standards for smart contracts and the oracle and data inputs on which they depend; and applying shadow-banking-type safeguards to constrain spillover channels between DeFi and the traditional financial system. No single approach would be sufficient on its own; their combined effect would reconstruct, at workable control points, the most critical accountability and oversight functions that DeFi displaces. Properly designed and implemented, this strategy could help to preserve DeFi’s efficiency benefits while cost-effectively restoring regulatory protection and accountability.