Blockchain Papers

Musaed Autairi, Jawaher Ali Alhowaish

One major issue associated to microservices architectures is aspects related to data consistency and management of data within such a context. To measure the effect on system integrity, this research paper compares different data consistency models which are, eventual consistency, distributed transactions through Two-Phase Commit (2PC), the Saga pattern. Employing historical data analysis, case studies, and examining the recent technological advancements, the study gives a comparative assessment of various approaches in terms of their capabilities to achieve transaction latencies and throughput and possibility to guarantee consistent results. Based on the results, it is evident that although eventual consistency models provide high scale-out and availability characteristics, the models experience transitory data inconsistency. Consistency is high since data is accessed from, and committed to, multiple databases in a distributed transaction but they have performance penalties. The Saga patterning gives a balanced view but at the same time brings together additional design difficulty. New trends like Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as well as new consensus algorithms that can be used to solve problematic approaches like the Raft algorithm give new possibilities for improving consistency of the data but bring their own concerns. The study implies that one must choose the right consistency model depending on the need and performance Degree and the future research can consider the use of the combination of several models along with the improvement of technological solutions to have a better deal with data consistency in microservices.

Arpita Patil, Akanksha Mane, Poonam Todkar

Abstract: Ensuring the integrity, privacy and accessibility of electoral system remains a critical global challenge. This paper proposes a secure blockchain based e-voting framework enhanced with anti-spoofing facial recognition for voter authentication and zero-knowledge proofs to preserve voter anonymity while enabling verifiable results. The proposed system integrates seamlessly with existing election infrastructure, allowing transparent vote recording on a tamper-resistant distributed ledger while preventing identity fraud through advanced biometric anti-spoofing techniques. Zero Knowledge Proofs enable vote verification without revealing individual choices, ensuring both privacy and trust. By combining blockchain’s immutability, biometric security and cryptographic privacy guarantees, this approach addresses vote tampering, impersonation, and transparency concerns, offering a scalable , auditable, and privacy-preserving solution for modern elections. Keywords: Blockchain, E-Voting, Anti-Spoofing, Facial Recognition, Zero Knowledge Proofs, Election Security, Privacy preserving systems.

Universitas Indonesia, Sendrawan Tjhong, Rosa Agustina, Edmon Makarim · 6 authors

Inheritance laws regarding the transfer of digital property after someone’s death is a relatively new and evolving area of legal consideration. Inheritance laws were developed long before the widespread adoption of digital property, such as cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), online accounts, and other forms of digital property. Therefore, existing inheritance laws often lack clear guidance on how to handle the legal transfer of these digital assets upon the owner’s death. This article aims to analyze the legal concept of digital property to be inherited and provide solutions for current digital property inheritance issues from a notarial perspective. To conduct a thorough analysis on digital property inheritance law and how notaries should play a role in digital inheritance matters, this study employs a doctrinal legal analysis of current national and international laws and regulations pertaining to digital property succession; comparative legislative studies examining proposed policies across jurisdictions to garner real-world insights into the operational challenges, emerging practices, and pragmatic considerations surrounding notary participation in digital inheritance procedures. Updating inheritance laws to address the transfer of digital property is crucial in order to protect the rights and interests of individuals, promoting legal certainty, and ensuring that these valuable assets are properly accounted for and transferred to rightful heirs or beneficiaries. The law of property in the Indonesian Civil Code needs to be immediately adjusted to the development of the digitalization era. This article suggests optimizing the role of notaries to create authentic deeds on digital property inheritance.

Loren King

Forms of informal cooperation, coordination, and action that embody mutuality without hierarchy are the quotidian experience of most people. Only occasionally do they embody implicit or explicit opposition to state law and institutions. Most villages and neighborhoods function precisely because of the informal, transient networks of coordination that do not require formal organization, let alone hierarchy. In other words, the experience of anarchistic mutuality is ubiquitous. Subsidiarity frustrates. Emerging from Catholic roots to become an explicit part of EU law,1 the principle admits of clear articulation as an ideal (‘vest authority as close as feasible to those most affected’) but then invites conflicting interpretations and elaborations. As a workable principle, subsidiarity founders seemingly when we need it most: when we ask what, precisely, that principle regulates. Andreas Føllesdal has shown that distinct interpretations of subsidiarity have strikingly incongruous political implications, with any “apparent consensus … gained only by obfuscation” (Føllesdal 1998, 190). And as a moral precept, subsidiarity promises a politics sensitive to diverse needs and responsive to local knowledge; yet in practice, any implementation of the ideal pulls us back toward an authoritative center to regulate disputes and coordinate all of this local wisdom. Jenna Bednar describes subsidiarity as “the soul of federalism” (Bednar 2014, 231) and she has in mind two complementary rationales: ensuring that political power is close to the people affected, while also finding efficient ways to satisfy diverse preferences. Of particular interest in Bednar's account is the epistemic role for subsidiarity in bringing a wider range of perspectives to bear on judging new policies than might otherwise be the case in a more centralized system. Here, then, the justification of subsidiarity appeals to efficiency and accountability, not simply for any given snapshot of needs, interests, and associated policies, but also (and more critically) to the constitutional and administrative system as a whole.2 Still, these epistemic hopes for subsidiarity seem to assume, as Jacob Levy puts it, “a fantastic level of competence, knowledge, and disinterestedness on the part of the body that allocates decision-making authority in each case—itself usually one of the contenders for the authority at stake” (Levy 2007, 462). I love subsidiarity for these frustrations and ambiguities. In this respect, it is the perfect moral maxim for the real worlds of political institutions and practices, where most of us, most of the time, muddle through the messy day-to-day complexities of living together, while leaving space for dissent and resistance. Levy argues that subsidiarity “fails as an institutional decision rule,” but he prefaces that indictment with the thought that it “may offer a useful critical language” (Levy 2007, 462). That, I think, is a thought worth pursuing. Perhaps we will be less frustrated with subsidiarity if we see it not primarily as a decision rule or principle of institutional design, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as an essential challenge to the dominant vocabulary of the sovereign territorial state? To be sure, subsidiarity labors under the long shadow of the Westphalian imaginary, a vision of politics anchored in justifying coercion over a bounded territory. Sovereignty and rights are the coins of that realm. If subsidiarity is to be a critical lens, then it will be laboring against that imaginary, and our settled moral and legal vocabularies so firmly entrenched therein. To make my case, then, this is the labor I will undertake here. On a rather cold and unfriendly morning in October 1625, Rudolph Christian, the newly enthroned count of Eastern Frisia, arrived at the city gate of Emden, expecting that the city would welcome him and immediately start with the traditional ceremonies during which it had to pay homage to its new sovereign. But nobody met Rudolph Christian at the gate, and only later in the day a delegation of the city council appeared at the count's residence, telling him to his great surprise, that it had not been possible to meet him at the city gate because it had not been known through which of the several gates he had wished to enter (Hueglin 1979, 9). Centuries later and half a world away, Clifford Geertz (1980) offers the following story to set the puzzle of his remarkable account of politics and ceremony in precolonial Bali. Dutch administrators, seeking to establish clear designations of local authority and ownership, wished to establish the boundary between two hostile princedoms. The princes agreed that the boundaries were, respectively, wherever one could see the sea, facing outward, or the marshlands, facing inward. Perplexed, the administrators asked if there hadn't been past conflicts over such a murky division: didn't they fight over this territory? “Mejheer,” one of the old leaders replied, “we have much better reasons to fight than these shabby hills” (Geertz 1980, 24–25). Ultimately, things end poorly for the Balinese order. Geertz recounts one of the final encounters of that regime with Dutch forces in 1908, at “Klungkung, the nominal ‘capital’ of traditional Bali” where “the king and court again paraded, half entranced, half dazed with opium, out of the palace into the reluctant fire of the by now thoroughly bewildered Dutch troops. It was quite literally the death of the old order. It expired as it had lived: absorbed in a pageant” (12–13). What binds these two accounts? In each, older forms—and animating symbols and rituals—of political order fall before the imperatives of sovereignty and its most central ordering feature: coercion. Violence. Max Weber's (in)famous claim to monopoly over legitimate coercion within a clearly delineated territory (Weber 1919, 78). In the case of the Balinese order, Geertz means to highlight what our Westphalian-inflected conceptions of politics and the state tend to obscure: “the ordering force of display, regard, and drama” (Geertz 1980, 121). If we invoke our favored analytic categories and causal explanations to reduce the semiotic core of Balinese politics to “the worn coin of European ideological debate” we “allow most of what is most interesting about it to escape our view. Whatever intelligence it may have to offer us about the nature of politics, it can hardly be that big fish eat little fish, or that the rags of virtue mask the engines of privilege” (123). When the homage was finally paid two years later, on the 28th of June 1627, the relation between city and sovereign had indeed been radically changed. In the place of the unilateral obligation of the city, there now was a mutual contract: in exchange for the city's oath of loyalty, the count had to guarantee the city's privileges by an equally binding ‘declaration of rights’. Especially the oath-formula itself appeared fundamentally altered. Where the old oath had spoken of obedience according to customary law between vassals and hereditary sovereign, the new text only spoke of faith between count and city according to mutual contract and in consideration of the city's privileges (Hueglin 1979, 9-10). At the dawn of the sovereign territorial state, then, and sharing so much by way of law and culture, Althusius could negotiate favorable terms of Emden's submission with the fading relevance of local sovereigns. Two centuries later, no such space was possible for the Balinese, and for countless other peoples with distinctive ways of ordering their public lives together. History is littered with peoples who had better reasons to fight than their shabby hills, or who might sometimes fight over shabby hills that they only saw and settled on every few years, before moving on. These peoples lost out to others, whose understandings of use, possession, property, territory, and place were grounded in a particular notion of a right: powers and entitlements to exclude, ultimately grounded in the violence of the sovereign territorial state. The imperatives of territorial sovereignty are distinct from mere control: Henrik Spruyt (Spruyt 1994, 34–35) notes the fundamental novelty of what happens in the decades and centuries after the encounter Hueglin describes. Human territoriality is a deep fact of social life, to be sure; and claims of exclusive and absolute authority are familiar throughout history. The latter, however, were typically made by priests, emperors, and kings, and those claims were over people (bodies and souls), resources, and activities. Territorial jurisdiction was incidental to these desirada, and indeed unimportant insofar as the final authority of divine edict—and of the king or emperor sanctioned by the mandate of heaven—was universal and undifferentiated. In the medieval West, the idea of sovereignty, while a part of medieval thought and law at least from Bodin's famous reflections,3 took a long time to become politically important because it was not clearly differentiated in space: there were no borders delimiting God's power. Spruyt puts the point succinctly: “Church and empire were universalist forms of organization” (1994, 35). This is not to say that claims of territorial jurisdiction were uncommon in human history, but most often they were not claims of exclusive and final authority over clearly bounded physical regions. More often, jurisdictional claims were limited to particular times, people, and activities. Territorial control was incidental to, and derivative of, authority over peoples, activities, and resources. So, what is possible for Emden and some other cities fades as territorial jurisdiction becomes wed to the idea of sovereign territorial states. Possibilities for understanding and implementing complex and overlapping configurations of negotiated, provisional sovereignties become foreclosed under the emerging logics of capital (commerce, exchange, exploitation) and coercion (violence, control, domination), a historical dynamic beautifully elaborated by Charles Tilly (1993).4 Against that history, we so often find ourselves chafing at the legacy of the sovereign state system. Scholars wrestle with how regionally concentrated—and often historically oppressed or marginalized—groups can be fairly and within and most or when those might it from sovereign territorial Scholars with the of and the by peoples, in the and the world has with and if sovereign territorial may and more coercion at borders And and that state and perhaps most us to the of state sovereignty and the of how institutions in fact to with these complexities the of and legitimate coordination with to and indeed the and of the idea of and These are all indeed and I if we might do to some of those ways of ordering public that have been or under the that sovereignty has over Perhaps the of from such us to an understanding of subsidiarity at its a of against that as much as a rule of for What it to subsidiarity not primarily as a principle and an authoritative as a moral principle and but as a of against the dominant vocabulary of territorial sovereignty, and rights of jurisdiction and is as a and not a to and of the old order. after much to in the world we find ourselves have a and moral vocabulary that we can and and that admits of important and But how we the between peoples, and without some idea of And if we that to be a then we can with for the sovereign territorial state as and those This is also to however, that by the between peoples and as a of who has a to territory, we are these in a a and legal that to the idea of a over or and of and are institutional means to those and within a This is the of much by and who has a to what territory and its who as a distinct When and are these claims and what do those rights by way of resources, within a territory, and borders against to These are important and in a and with and our need for and on these is Still, these and labor firmly within the and vocabularies of the Westphalian sovereign state, and a dominant of that realm. are a and we can as engines for and we can territorial of claims of legitimate and of terms of rights ownership, and These are not the only such however, and we perhaps as the principle of to our and not force and political on other other ways of the between and peoples, territory and To this a might what could our to resources, and people other than one of This after the world we find ourselves have a and moral vocabulary from the past can and that and we offer important and to these in of the and of those past But on ways of understanding these if we were to in that what would be the as political those to and the most of ideal do not we long in the of at do not there and claim the of with we not only to our practices, but also to be in and in a world where where such to and where territorial the only feasible way to those rights through and I claim that she is such a but in on territorial sovereignty, an of the historical to the sovereign territorial these historical to the territorial system not because they real for us for the most they social and that no and they In on to that these historical complexities make clear it may be at the territorial system is not a or an political Still, so other in this of a given that we do in fact in a world of sovereign territorial (and associated is she moral justification for our world as a of jurisdictional we see this of political as a firmly historical are there that might or legitimate I not a I with and that state political authority can indeed be least given some of the by I to the on offer by such as and others, claims of for peoples to be on particular but also that the familiar state system is and in critical and that state claims of sovereign control over peoples and claims to in to moral and of that however, I that of I have more of the I what by the fact and our categories and the of authority so often toward the world in a particular and to that world according to their administrative logics and of and I also not a but in this I those have the can about and of political or that state but at the end of the if of a state and then it is a that its and at or use, this is what their their core their most I by as (and the vocabulary of rights when about the of politics, we may be that moral about coercion what so a that state is the or limited to Westphalian and or it to of or it is and its and according to the imperatives of analytic and of not they useful in understanding how our world and in I the territorial rights ultimately in the Westphalian imaginary, this these and and where it is Still, it is how our of, territorial rights in and in or ultimately to so much in moral vocabulary of and territorial jurisdiction a particular that those entitlements to regulate of and in so other not as a deep point of but as a yet historical fact about our and I not for of a territorial state system by the privileges of state and then by that those need be “the we are familiar with in authoritative of public but she that decision-making by and would count as on this would local that typically on a much than famous local for resources, such as local or to the But the of how those and local would be is the of the of territorial sovereignty are to politics, and I we escape that simply by some or the messy but local and that so in of and and the of occasionally in of a centralized To see the more in these of be to a that for their peoples and would this the the other in our world on terms that they would have historically for In that at the they can be our are in and a or ways that their understandings and would have without the of European to our understanding of and legitimate not us to And this the old that we simply their their conceptions of and to Of we and they But for all of our of and and we to in ways that make those the in through the complexities of use, and territorial on and the that are now I think, the only in these to only to while and this not the that is the The one other in in when the of rights is with of how to and place are I between and two this is more than the any other way of life, have in political and These and foreclosed for and the quotidian of and social life, on the that have to the hopes and of and and yet that sovereign have in and in the ways The of these I and and moral and then perhaps of our and ask if our favored ownership, use, jurisdictional territorial be in ways that are not so to the idea of and more to the legacy of that that that our understandings of and and that so for politics and and resources. can the and of the Westphalian on a bounded sovereign authority over territory, and then with our and their or we can that and its at least to some useful we can do the by and and are and in through who has rights to territory, when and and how we about and and But they are much within the Westphalian a little against the and historical of that we do when we ask about the of ways of within these and we find ourselves and often So, we need and moral within the and political we have but we also at those where the and and need not and It may be that we the ways that other other can us the and of at its can be such a a principle of through in ways that against rule by others, while the that we are often with those I of the to the at of this when they to their with the messy of politics as it is in and and villages and neighborhoods and and overlapping that quotidian against a of subsidiarity for and other within sovereign states. In other has as that sovereign territorial can be yet also then consideration (and to the of how a principle of subsidiarity might an institutional “a of by their to of a world but where subsidiarity more coordination at the level is with more local argues for a of control over when that control is to in but those can be by the more fundamental of When claims on and of which subsidiarity is an In a that and the justification of borders against the of than and and the notion that political order and peoples who claim sovereignty over a particular to through sovereignty on a on complex and of deep people, such as and which she terms In through how these of and but also and in of territorial rights and state sovereignty, appeals to an account of I the of account of territorial and on point us to about and in terms that the vocabulary of the sovereign territorial state. The of of what and where and as by and and typically the of of resources. of this is perhaps the story to of complex that few have the and on the by and the Emerging from a between two sovereign the has into a but of and that and that state, and policies to that at least people one and of two sovereign If there is one that what the day-to-day and formal the and and the to of would have to be decision is made that not make to those the of and most importantly, of is to local and and and The in some ways a point about of subsidiarity that are typically as a that any workable implementation of subsidiarity under of social and will require coordination and at of organization, and that the (and on such will be To the that any principle of subsidiarity of to that mandate will require a coordination of diverse of which require that are by as and which authority back toward a one of subsidiarity in the European at of that while subsidiarity has been by as a challenge to more with to it has to be an which some political not least the have to more and 2014, with that might be thought to that in of is not and that “the on are not however, on to that perhaps is better as a for with less on the in of On my favored of subsidiarity as a for critical these simply are not of subsidiarity as a moral and critical do a close between subsidiarity and of the between the epistemic and of subsidiarity within And I this to territorial anchored in what she a of most clearly by of the through with the of and authority in I do however, we need to these in of and overlapping jurisdictional and rights within a sovereign territorial state? If the is that politics is about and our then perhaps subsidiarity can be the core moral rather than sovereignty and rights of jurisdiction and perhaps more as the critical been subsidiarity is a that sovereignty, and control rights from and of the and in which so much of our most What of the at the by Andreas Føllesdal and several others, that interpretations of subsidiarity authoritative of the principle to to be a not with subsidiarity and not with subsidiarity as a critical lens, but with constitutional that the of their frustrations of by of human and the of politics as the of particular sovereign territorial states. to consensus on interpretations of political we claim to In such an however, constitutional and may not be a but a subsidiarity is as much about through in as it is a to challenge sovereign imperatives and their dominant In a world that has the of Westphalian territorial sovereignty, the imperatives of and which to toward the of with a critical have a that is perhaps If a on subsidiarity can us then it is The is to and for their on these and for their two on and subsidiarity at the of This from with and with at the Subsidiarity from two with this and in particular from by and Andreas Føllesdal on the of On the for to the dominant vocabulary of state sovereignty, I have much over the years from Hueglin and the The no conflicts of

Chetan Chauhan, Pradeep Laxkar, Ram Kumar Solanki, S. R. Parihar · 6 authors

Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing the inherent vulnerabilities of Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Conventional IoT systems rely on centralized architectures that are prone to single points of failure, data breaches, and unauthorized access. This paper presents a blockchain-enabled secure communication framework for smart IoT systems that integrates symmetric encryption, distributed ledger validation, and smart-contract–driven access control. The proposed model is formalized through mathematical definitions of encryption, hashing, and contract execution, and validated using simulation tools such as NS-3 and Ethereum-based test environments. Comparative results demonstrate that the framework significantly improves communication security, data integrity, and resistance to cyberattacks while reducing latency and energy consumption relative to traditional models. The findings suggest that blockchain integration provides a scalable, resilient, and efficient foundation for trustworthy IoT communication in smart environments.

M Savitha Devi, Ningthoujam Chidananda Singh, Thoudam Basanta Singh

Abstract - The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices calls for the design of computationally light blockchain consensus mechanisms immune to quantum threats. The conventional consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) may have quantum cryptanalysis and incur high computational overhead on resource-limited IoT devices. In this paper, we introduce QR-LightChain, a new quantum-robust light weight consensus algorithm with the combination of lattice-based cryptography and a brand-new Proof-of-Lightweight-Work (PoLW). Our proposal is based on formalism Learning With Errors (LWE) as a quantum resistant based scheme, also, but with the use of the adaptive difficulty tuning and energy efficient mechanism to validate the hashing. Experimental results show that QR-LightChain reduces the computational overhead by 52.3% with respect to traditional quantum-resistant approaches, while preserving security against both classical and quantum adversaries. The protocol shows good performance in IoT: The average block validation time of 1.2 sec is achieved and there is 40% less energy consumed than for current quantum-resistant consensus in the literature. Our work fills the important research challenge of providing 1 Post-Quantum Cryptography and Blockchain Modern internet of things (IoT) blockchain net- works are being developed in resource-constrained environments such as smart cities, while QCs Key Words: Quantum resistance, IoT blockchain, lightweight consensus, lattice-based cryptography, post-quantum cryptography, Proof-of-Lightweight-Work, resource-constrained devices

R. A. Khan, B. Sharma, Nita Thakare

In the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain technology, the twin challenges of scalability and security remain significant obstacles to widespread adoption. Traditional blockchain architectures struggle to balance the increasing demands for transaction throughput and the imperative of maintaining robust security measures. This work addresses these limitations by proposing an innovative model that integrates advanced privacy mechanisms, rigorous security analysis, and scalability enhancements to forge a more resilient and efficient blockchain framework. The cornerstone of our model is the introduction of ZeroKnowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to enhance user privacy significantly. By enabling transaction verification without revealing sensitive information, ZKPs mitigate information leakage and boost transaction confidentiality. Our findings suggest an estimated 15% improvement in privacy levels, marking a substantial advancement over existing methods that often compromise user privacy for transparency. Addressing the security aspect, we employ Temporal Logic of Actions Plus (TLA+) for formal verification of the blockchain protocol. This method allows us to model the blockchain's behavior systematically, ensuring its correctness, safety, and liveness even under adverse conditions such as Byzantine faults. Our analysis reveals a 98% success rate in detecting and thwarting Byzantine behaviors, thereby substantiating the robustness of our proposed model against a range of security threats. To tackle the issue of scalability, we introduce adaptive sharding with dynamic load balancing. This approach not only partitions the network into manageable shards but also optimizes transaction processing by adapting to changes in transaction volume and network congestion. Our results prove a 20% increase in transaction throughput and a 25% decrease in network latency, showcasing the effectiveness of adaptive sharding in enhancing blockchain scalability and performance.

Joel Wagner, Siew Ann Cheong, Viola Priesemann

Asset exchange models (AEMs) provide a physics-inspired framework for studying wealth formation. These models capture wealth distribution dynamics via pairwise money exchanges, yielding steady-state distributions from exponential to heavy-tailed power laws. However, empirical validation remains limited due to scarce real-world transaction data. Here, we bridge this gap by analyzing spectral properties of Markov transition matrices from both AEMs and Ethereum blockchain data, enabling quantitative comparison of model and empirical exchange dynamics. We assess thermodynamic equilibrium in exchange processes - specifically, detailed balance - and derive steady-state wealth distributions from transition matrices. We find that equilibrium systems' spectra contain only real eigenvalues and link Ethereum price changes to spectral shifts. We also investigate external factors (e.g., taxes), showing that advantages for richer individuals make wealth evolution path-dependent on initial distributions. Our work establishes a quantitative framework for validating AEMs with real data, advancing economic modeling and understanding of wealth formation.

Xinkui Zhao, Rengrong Xiong, Guanjie Cheng, Xinhao Jin · 10 authors

Hybrid storage solutions have emerged as potent strategies to alleviate the data storage bottlenecks prevalent in blockchain systems. These solutions harness off-chain Storage Services Providers (SPs) in conjunction with Authenticated Data Structures (ADS) to ensure data integrity and accuracy. Despite these advancements, the reliance on centralized SPs raises concerns about query correctness. Although ADS can verify the existence of individual query results, they fall short of preventing SPs from omitting valid results. In this paper, we delineate the fundamental distinctions between data search in blockchains and traditional database systems. Drawing upon these insights, we introduce BPI, a lightweight framework that enables efficient keyword queries and maintenance with low overhead. We propose "Articulated Search", a query pattern specifically designed for blockchain environments that enhances search efficiency while significantly reducing costs during data user updates. Furthermore, BPI employs a suite of validation models to ensure the inclusion of all valid content in search results while maintaining low overhead. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that the BPI framework achieves outstanding scalability and performance in keyword searches within blockchain, surpassing EthMB+ and state of the art search databases commonly used in mainstream hybrid storage blockchains (HSB).

T Buvaneswari, Mageshkumar Naarayanasamy Varadarajan, M. Mythily, Hemantha Kumar B N · 8 authors

The swift expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has expedited the implementation of smart sensors, generating substantial volumes of time-series data that require safe, efficient, and dependable management. Current centralized systems have constraints in maintaining integrity, protecting communications, and deriving economic value from this data. A blockchain-based smart house gateway network is suggested to address security concerns in smart home environments. The framework has three layers: device, gateway, and cloud. Blockchain technology is integrated at the gateway layer to provide decentralized storage and safe data interchange, eliminating single points of failure inherent in centralized systems. This integration ensures authentication, high availability, and secure communication across devices and stakeholders. The system utilizes Ethereum blockchain technology and is assessed based on important parameters such as response speed and detection accuracy. Experimental study demonstrates that the framework much surpasses traditional methods, improving resilience and reliability in smart home IoT ecosystems. The suggested system offers a scalable approach for safe data management and dependable value exchange in dispersed settings.

Suhasini Subba Rao, M. Pavan, G. Sai Venkat, Pavan Kumara Kasam Shiva · 6 authors

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is revolutionizing financial systems by eliminating intermediaries and enabling peer-to-peer transactions through blockchain technology. It enhances transparency, security, and accessibility, allowing users to access financial services such as lending, borrowing, and trading without relying on centralized institutions. Predictions for DeFi indicate exponential growth, with the integration of AI and machine learning driving significant advancements in fraud detection, risk assessment, and transaction analysis. Before the integration of AI, financial fraud detection primarily relied on rule-based systems, manual audits, and traditional statistical models—methods that lacked adaptability and real-time decision-making capabilities. Legacy systems such as credit scoring models and transaction monitoring frameworks struggled with scalability and required continuous human intervention. As fraudulent activities and cyber threats have grown more sophisticated, the limitations of traditional solutions have become increasingly apparent, underscoring the need for AI-driven approaches. By leveraging machine learning, transaction patterns can be analyzed with greater accuracy, enabling real-time anomaly detection and significantly reducing financial risk. The motivation behind this development is to enhance security, improve accuracy in transaction classification, and deliver scalable financial crime detection solutions. Conventional fraud detection mechanisms often fail to keep pace with evolving threats, resulting in considerable financial losses. Manual reviews are time-consuming and error-prone, while static models lack adaptability to emerging fraudulent behaviors. Machine learning enables real-time monitoring and predictive analysis, allowing financial institutions to detect suspicious activities with heightened precision. The proposed system integrates a combination of classifiers—including decision trees, logistic regression, AdaBoost, gradient boosting, k-nearest neighbors, and random forest algorithms—to improve transaction classification accuracy. AI-driven analysis enhances fraud detection by learning from historical data, reducing false positives, and enabling automated de-anonymization of transactions. This system applies advanced algorithms to identify fraudulent patterns, optimize financial security, and streamline transaction verification. By automating the process, AI-powered models offer a more robust and efficient approach to securing financial transactions, ensuring greater reliability and trust in decentralized finance.

Irsyad Noeri, Salsa Nur Ramadhani Hermandasari

This research aims to examine the regulatory compliance aspects of smart contracts within the Indonesian legal system using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach. The review focuses on how smart contracts are recognized and regulated within Indonesia’s legal framework, the challenges related to consumer protection, their compatibility with traditional contract principles, and comparisons with international regulatory standards. From a total of 158 relevant studies, 50 articles were selected based on multi-layered search strategies, citation chaining, and relevance scoring. The findings reveal that while Indonesia has established a normative legal basis for recognizing electronic contracts, significant gaps persist in enforcement, legal clarity, and consumer protection. The implications of this review highlight the need for regulatory reform, the standardization of legal frameworks, and the integration of interdisciplinary approaches to secure the application of smart contracts within Indonesia’s growing digital economy.

Bidesh Biswas Biki, Makoto Sakamoto, Amane Takei, Mehreen Alam · 6 authors

The rapid rise of the prices of cryptocurrencies has intensified the need for robust forecasting models that can capture the irregular and volatile patterns. This study aims to forecast Bitcoin prices over a 15-day horizon by evaluating and comparing two distant predictive modeling approaches: the Bayesian State-Space model and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks. Historical price data from January 2024 to April 2025 is used for model training and testing. The Bayesian model provided probabilistic insights by achieving a Mean Squared Error (MSE) of 0.0000 and a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.0026 for training data. For testing data, it provided 0.0013 for MSE and 0.0307 for MAE. On the other hand, the LSTM model provided temporal dependencies and performed strongly by achieving 0.0004 for MSE, 0.0160 for MAE, 0.0212 for RMSE, 0.9924 for R2 in terms of training data and for testing data, and 0.0007 for MSE with an R2 of 0.3505. From the result, it indicates that while the LSTM model excels in training performance, the Bayesian model provides better interpretability with lower error margins in testing by highlighting the trade-offs between model accuracy and probabilistic forecasting in the cryptocurrency markets.

Tulika Shrivastava, Basem Suleiman, Sachit A. J. Desa, Muhammad Johan Alibasa · 6 authors

Abstract The volatility of cryptocurrencies necessitates reliable short-term price prediction models for informed investment decisions. This work presents two benchmarking studies that predict cryptocurrency price over hourly and daily time horizons using market indicators and social media data. Study 1 used BERT-based sentiment analysis of hourly Twitter data combined with financial indicators, while Study 2 applied VADER sentiment analysis to daily Twitter and Google Trends data alongside financial indicators. Both studies systematically evaluated statistical models (ARIMA, ARIMAX), machine learning approaches (SVR), and deep learning architectures (1D-CNN, LSTM) including ensemble, multi-modal, and hybrid configurations. Particular attention was given to the influence of lag periods, data aggregation, and sentiment analysis nuances on cryptocurrency price. Empirical results identify LSTM as the best-performing singular prediction model, achieving a 64.5% reduction in RMSE (4.56e $$-$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> </mml:math> 03) compared with the SVR baseline in Study 1. In Study 2, the hybrid LSTM + ARIMA model delivered the strongest performance, reducing RMSE by 32.5% (RMSE=2.55e+02) relative to the best performing singular baseline. Hybrid architectures combining LSTM with ARIMA or ARIMAX consistently achieved the lowest RMSE values, outperforming all other configurations and proving especially effective at capturing price movements and turning points. These findings demonstrate how combining statistical methods with deep learning can address non-stationarity, improve sentiment preprocessing, and enhance model interpretability.

Saad AL Azzam, Raenu Kolandaisamy, Ghassan AL Dharhani

Smart contracts (SCs) have become an essential component in the world of decentralized applications, automating transactions across blockchain networks without the need for intermediaries, and with this rise in adoption, the technology has also brought forth growing concern due to security vulnerabilities, which have led to serious financial damage, and the problem is far from being solved. Traditional auditing methods often struggle to capture the more intricate vulnerabilities hidden within smart contract logic, particularly owing to the irreversible nature of blockchain transactions. Given these challenges, researchers have been actively exploring more advanced detection techniques. Despite progress, many existing studies tend to focus narrowly on specific methods, whether static analysis, dynamic testing, or machine learning models, without offering a comprehensive comparison across all available approaches. This fragmented landscape leaves a noticeable gap for practitioners looking for a well-rounded understanding of smart contract security solutions. To address this, our study set out to systematically review the existing body of work, analysing 21 reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2024. The primary aim was to combine the diverse techniques that have been proposed for detecting vulnerabilities in smart contracts, ranging from static and dynamic analyses to more recent AI-driven models, graph-based techniques, and hybrid systems, critically evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, and practical effectiveness. The methodology followed a structured approach. We searched major research databases, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, and Scopus—using carefully crafted search queries to ensure that we captured the most relevant and up-to-date papers. Our findings revealed that AI-based methods, especially those leveraging deep neural networks and graph neural networks, have achieved impressive detection accuracy in controlled environments. For example, models such as ContractWard and SCVDIE-ENSEMBLE reported Micro-F1 scores of 98.48% and 95.46%, respectively, but these models also have a trade-off—they demand high computational resources, which limits their real-world deployment in resource-constrained settings. On the other hand, lighter tools such as Slither and NeuCheck offer faster detection and lower resource usage but might fall short in regard to identifying more complex or new vulnerabilities. We also noticed a growing trend towards real-time monitoring tools, such as SODA and GPTScan, which aim to strike a balance by reducing false positives while providing proactive security measures. However, several challenges remain unresolved where many AI-driven models still rely heavily on labelled datasets, which may not generalize well to novel attack patterns. Scalability is another concern, especially for models that are computationally intensive.

Muhammad Fakhrul Reza, Ghufron

Ethereum, sebagai salah satu aset kripto utama, memiliki volatilitas harga yang tinggi, sehingga menciptakan kebutuhan akan model prediksi yang akurat untuk membantu pengambilan keputusan investasi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengimplementasikan kinerja dua model machine learning populer, yaitu Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) yang merupakan model deep learning untuk data sekuensial, dan Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) yang merupakan model ensemble. Data yang digunakan adalah data historis harga harian Ethereum yang mencakup fitur Open, High, Low, Close, Volume (OHLCV). Metode penelitian meliputi tahap pra-pemrosesan data seperti normalisasi Min-Max Scaler dan pembagian data dengan rasio 80% data latih dan 20% data uji. Evaluasi kinerja kedua model diukur menggunakan metrik Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) dan R-squared (R²). Hasil pengujian menunjukkan bahwa model GRU menghasilkan prediksi yang lebih baik, mencapai nilai RMSE 101.37 dan R² 0.9718, sedangkan model XGBoost memperoleh nilai RMSE 107.29 dan R² 0.9656. Hal ini mengindikasikan bahwa kemampuan GRU dalam menangkap pola dan dependensi temporal pada data deret waktu lebih unggul untuk kasus prediksi harga Ethereum. Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini adalah model GRU lebih efektif dan dapat diandalkan untuk memprediksi harga Ethereum dibandingkan XGBoost dalam penelitian ini.

Hafsteinn Hjartarson, Fjölnir Thrastarson, Anna Sigríður Íslind, Gísli Hjálmtýsson

Abstract Permissioned blockchains have gained prominence as a means of decentralizing trust while retaining controlled access, particularly in enterprise settings and regulated peer-to-peer environments. These systems offer advantages in scalability, performance, and security; however, challenges persist in effectively managing membership and its interaction with consensus protocols. Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake has also been a transition to managed membership, where validators are actively monitored and penalized for non-performance. This paper examines the dynamic tension between membership management and consensus protocols in permissioned blockchains, as well as the benefits of active management in improving overall system performance. In this paper, we propose a framework for dynamic membership management that includes actively admitting, monitoring, and ejecting members. Our approach decouples membership management from the underlying blockchain construction process. Our simulations confirm the potential benefits of managed membership, in part to facilitate lightweight mechanisms for improved performance and reliability. Our findings suggest that dynamic membership management is a critical area of study with significant implications for the future design of permissioned blockchains. Our contributions provide a conceptual foundation for designing dynamic membership protocols in permissioned blockchains, filling a gap in the literature and offering practical solutions to enhance blockchain performance in controlled environments.

Gerhard Hellstern, Esra Yeniaras

This paper provides an in-depth review of the evolving role of quantum computing in the financial sector, emphasizing both its computational potential and cybersecurity implications. Distinguishing itself from existing surveys, this work integrates classical quantum computing applications - such as portfolio optimization, risk analysis, derivative pricing, and Monte Carlo simulations with a thorough examination of blockchain technologies and post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which are crucial for maintaining secure financial operations in the emerging quantum era. We propose a structured four-step framework to assess the feasibility and expected benefits of implementing quantum solutions in finance, considering factors such as computational scalability, error tolerance, data complexity, and practical implementability. This framework is applied to a series of representative financial scenarios to identify domains where quantum approaches can surpass classical techniques. Furthermore, the paper explores the vulnerabilities quantum computing introduces to digital finance-related applications and blockchain security, including risks to digital signatures, hash functions, and randomness generation, and discusses mitigation strategies through PQC and quantum-resilient alternatives of classical digital finance tools and blockchain architectures. By addressing both quantum blockchain, quantum key distribution (QKD) as well as quantum communication networks, his review presents a more holistic perspective than prior studies, offering actionable insights for researchers, financial practitioners, and policymakers navigating the intersection of quantum computing, blockchain, and secure financial systems.

Narges Dadkhah, Khan Reaz, Gerhard Wunder

The increasing adoption of smart home devices and IoT-based security systems presents significant opportunities to enhance convenience, safety, and risk management for homeowners and service providers. However, secure onboarding-provisioning credentials and establishing trust with cloud platforms-remains a considerable challenge. Traditional onboarding methods often rely on centralized Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) models and manufacturer-controlled keys, which introduce security risks and limit the user's digital sovereignty. These limitations hinder the widespread deployment of scalable IoT solutions. This paper presents a novel onboarding framework that builds upon existing network-layer onboarding techniques and extends them to the application layer to address these challenges. By integrating consortium blockchain technology, we propose a decentralized onboarding mechanism that enhances transparency, security, and monitoring for smart home architectures. The architecture supports device registration, key revocation, access control management, and risk detection through event-driven alerts across dedicated blockchain channels and smart contracts. To evaluate the framework, we formally model the protocol using the Tamarin Prover under the Dolev-Yao adversary model. The analysis focuses on authentication, token integrity, key confidentiality, and resilience over public channels. A prototype implementation demonstrates the system's viability in smart home settings, with verification completing in 0.34 seconds, highlighting its scalability and suitability for constrained devices and diverse stakeholders. Additionally, performance evaluation shows that the blockchain-based approach effectively handles varying workloads, maintains high throughput and low latency, and supports near real-time IoT data processing.

Shan Wang, Ming Yang, Yu Liu, Yue Zhang · 8 authors

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services have become a primary gateway for users to access public blockchains. While they offer significant convenience, RPC services also introduce critical privacy challenges that remain insufficiently examined. Existing deanonymization attacks either do not apply to blockchain RPC users or incur costs like transaction fees assuming an active network eavesdropper. In this paper, we propose a novel deanonymization attack that can link an IP address of a RPC user to this user's blockchain pseudonym. Our analysis reveals a temporal correlation between the timestamps of transaction confirmations recorded on the public ledger and those of TCP packets sent by the victim when querying transaction status. We assume a strong passive adversary with access to network infrastructure, capable of monitoring traffic at network border routers or Internet exchange points. By monitoring network traffic and analyzing public ledgers, the attacker can link the IP address of the TCP packet to the pseudonym of the transaction initiator by exploiting the temporal correlation. This deanonymization attack incurs zero transaction fee. We mathematically model and analyze the attack method, perform large-scale measurements of blockchain ledgers, and conduct real-world attacks to validate the attack. Our attack achieves a high success rate of over 95% against normal RPC users on various blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana.

Yulin Liu, Mocca Schweitzer

The Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) market is revolutionizing the sharing economy through token-based economics and smart contracts that govern decentralized operations. By 2024, DePIN projects have exceeded \$10 billion in market capitalization, underscoring their rapid growth. However, the unregulated nature of these markets, coupled with the autonomous deployment of AI agents in smart contracts, introduces risks such as inefficiencies and potential misalignment with human values. To address these concerns, we introduce EconAgentic, a Large Language Model (LLM)-powered framework designed to mitigate these challenges. Our research focuses on three key areas: 1) modeling the dynamic evolution of DePIN markets, 2) evaluating stakeholders' actions and their economic impacts, and 3) analyzing macroeconomic indicators to align market outcomes with societal goals. Through EconAgentic, we simulate how AI agents respond to token incentives, invest in infrastructure, and adapt to market conditions, comparing AI-driven decisions with human heuristic benchmarks. Our results show that EconAgentic provides valuable insights into the efficiency, inclusion, and stability of DePIN markets, contributing to both academic understanding and practical improvements in the design and governance of decentralized, tokenized economies.

Khoirun Nisa Aprilian Agmar, Yudhi Achmad Bashori

Financial transactions in Islam must adhere to sharia principles, avoiding the elements of gharar (uncertainty), maysir (speculation), and riba (interest). One of the most prominent technological innovations in this domain is the implementation of Smart Contracts in cryptocurrency trading on the Ethereum platform. However, their application still faces significant sharia compliance challenges, particularly concerning contractual uncertainty and the potential for misuse. This study aims to analyze the implementation mechanism of Smart Contracts from a sharia compliance perspective while exploring the opportunities and challenges of their adoption within the Ethereum Ponorogo Community. Employing a qualitative approach with a case study method, data was collected through interviews, observation, and documentation. The findings reveal that while Smart Contracts offer greater transparency, efficiency, and automation in transactions, challenges such as regulatory ambiguity, limited sharia literacy, and the inherent volatility of crypto assets remain major obstacles. Although the Ethereum Ponorogo Community has made efforts to avoid non-compliant elements, their practices are more "aspirational" and not yet fully guaranteed by a comprehensive sharia regulatory framework. This research concludes that a clear roadmap is needed, which includes a focus on education, stronger regulations (including fatwas from sharia authorities), and audits of Smart Contract code. By following this path, the technology can become a more ethical and sharia-compliant solution for crypto transactions, bridging the gap between technological innovation and the principles of Islamic economics.

Loso Judijanto, Apriyanto Apriyanto

This study conducts a scientometric analysis of global financial risk management research to map its intellectual structure, thematic trends, and collaboration networks over the period 2000–2025. Data were retrieved from the Scopus database using a comprehensive search strategy and analyzed with VOSviewer to visualize co-authorship patterns, country collaborations, keyword co-occurrences, thematic clusters, and temporal developments. The results indicate that risk management, risk assessment, and financial markets remain the most influential and frequently studied topics, while emerging themes such as sustainability, decentralized finance, cryptocurrency, and supply chain resilience reflect the field’s adaptation to evolving technological, economic, and environmental challenges. Collaboration analysis highlights the dominance of countries such as China, the United Kingdom, and India, alongside increasing participation from emerging economies. The study offers practical implications for policymakers and financial practitioners to align strategies with current research priorities, and theoretical contributions by identifying conceptual linkages and emerging research fronts. Limitations include reliance on a single database and the inherent biases of citation-based analysis.

Godfrey Murairidzi Gotora, Eva Tsitsi Chigodo, Godfrey Benjamin Zulu, Mfula Eunice

Since the synthesis and evolution of the coding and blockchain technology with the self-executing commands, there is a sudden shift to the smart contract consumption patterns. In the global virtual commerce this phenomenon has been enormously increasingly day by day. This has been so based on the distinct, clear and strong advantageous characteristics mainly lies in security, transparency and its unique way of its decentralized automation nature. A large scope of transactions of this technology’s usage has been implemented in virtual and argumentative reality where codes create a lot of services such as games and commercial services amongst end users basically with no lawyers involved. However, despite its wide adoption intensifies, it renders no immune from the potential risks and uncertainty issues like any other software-based platforms. In generic terms every industry needs a regulatory way, which oversee or set red lines of boundaries in the form of structures, organizations and policies. In this context the code written and protocols which are executed automatically in systems aught also to be vetted in legal judiciary systems.