Decentralized finance (DeFi) represents a novel financial ecosystem built on open blockchain networks and smart contracts, enabling the provision of financial services without traditional intermediaries. This article examines the conceptual foundations of DeFi, its legal nature, associated risks, and regulatory challenges through a comparative analysis of international practice and the emerging legal framework of Uzbekistan. Particular attention is paid to the composability of DeFi protocols, the legal uncertainty surrounding smart contracts, and the difficulty of identifying responsible parties in decentralized systems. The study analyzes scholarly perspectives, including those of Schär and Zetzsche, and reviews regulatory responses in the United States and the European Union, with a focus on enforcement actions and AML/CFT concerns. It further evaluates risks such as cyberattacks, fraud, money laundering, and consumer harm, highlighting the systemic vulnerabilities of DeFi infrastructures. The article argues that while DeFi offers transparency and innovation, effective regulation requires balancing technological neutrality with robust consumer protection and compliance mechanisms. The findings suggest that Uzbekistan may adopt a cautious, technology-integrated regulatory approach to harness DeFi’s potential while mitigating legal and financial risks.
The pseudo-anonymity and rapidly expanding ecosystem of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) have brought about significant liquidity on EVM-compatible blockchains, making them lucrative targets for cybercriminals. In the modern financial landscape, the need for an automated, high-speed, and effective illicit money tracing system is more urgent than ever to support regulators, on-chain service providers and security practitioners in their efforts to combat the frequent and large-scale occurrences of cyber financial crimes. In this paper, we propose MFTracer, an automated system for tracing illicit money flows on EVM-compatible blockchains. Against the backdrop of a domain where tracing remains labor-intensive and expert-driven, MFTracer is developed in response to two pressing real-world demands: operational efficiency and forensic effectiveness. In response to the sophisticated fund transfer mechanisms enabled by the EVM environment, we introduce a novel fine-grained technique that enables protocol-agnostic transaction-level fund flow analysis. We further propose MFA, a lightweight and purpose-built graph abstraction with a tailored storage backend, to support efficient data retrieval. We also present a simulation algorithm for downstream illicit flow discovery. We implemented MFTracer. Its infrastructure for data retrieval achieves 3.7× to 9.4× higher storage efficiency while being 14.1× to 300× faster than the leading graph database systems. Furthermore, applied to real-world cybercrime incidents, MFTracer achieved 94.09% coverage of illicit money flows. It also newly reported 686 blockchain addresses and 4183 related transactions involved in money laundering that were previously undiscovered. MFTracer was able to reconstruct complete fund flow trajectories and provide strong evidence to investigators for 120.9 million in stolen assets.
Stablecoins are crypto-assets designed to maintain a stable value against a reference asset, typically the U.S. Dollar. The peg to the dollar is supported by the assets that back the stablecoin. Stablecoins perform dollar-like functions in decentralized finance (DeFi) and represent a run-able liability for their issuers.
Abstract Blockchain technology is emerging as one of the most profound and cutting-edge innovations of the twenty-first century, providing a decentralized, immutable system for recording transactions. It has enabled the tokenization of distinctive digital assets, including art, music and real estate, through non-fungible tokens (NFTs). NFTs enable asset transfers by operating on pseudonymous blockchain networks, thereby preventing the disclosure of the owner’s real-world identity. While it enhances user privacy and innovation, it also creates significant anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing challenges. Fraudsters and other bad-faith actors can use these assets to obfuscate dirty money and illicit financial transactions, given lax or non-existent regulations on NFTs and extremely lax Know-Your-Customer compliance. In light of the above, the authors explore the nexus between NFTs and financial crime (with a particular focus on the legal frameworks of the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom) in this article. The paper aims to evaluate how each jurisdiction’s response to NFT-related abuse has evolved and been effective in practice. This will be done through a review of existing laws, enforcement, regulations and regulatory gaps. The article ends with specific policy recommendations to enhance regulatory certainty, enforcement effectiveness and international cooperation, supporting an innovation-first approach to the NFT space tempered by necessary measures to prevent criminal abuse.
Abstract Taxation justice and fiscal federalism are foundational pillars for building an inclusive, democratic, and sustainable nation. As countries diversify economically and socially, the role of equitable taxation becomes central to financing public goods, reducing inequality, and strengthening socio-political cohesion. Fiscal federalism, which concerns the distribution of financial powers and resources across central, state, and local governments, further reinforces the principles of subsidiarity, autonomy, and accountability required in a modern democratic state. This research paper analyses how taxation justice and fiscal federalism contribute to nation-building, examines structural gaps in existing fiscal arrangements, and highlights the need for transparent resource allocation, participatory governance, and decentralized fiscal empowerment. Using qualitative secondary data and descriptive analysis, the study demonstrates that taxation systems that are equitable, efficient, and progressive combined with a well-designed fiscal federalism framework help strengthen democratic participation, reduce regional disparities, support sustainable development, and stabilize public finance. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to enhance the equity and efficiency of taxation systems, thereby improving fiscal governance and promoting inclusive nation-building.
Margaret Simangunsong, Zamzami Zamzami, Parmadi Parmadi
This study aims to: 1) identify and analyze the degree of fiscal decentralization and the level of financial independence of regencies and cities in North Sumatra Province during the period 2015–2024; and 2) analyze the variation in regional revenue realization based on its components, as well as the variation in regional financial capacity across regencies/cities during the same period. The methods used in this research include the Fiscal Decentralization Degree Ratio (DDF), the Regional Financial Independence Ratio (RKKD), and a Two-Way ANOVA test, supported by SPSS 20 software. The findings show that the degree of fiscal decentralization remains relatively low from year to year, indicating a strong dependence on central government transfers. Similarly, the regional financial independence ratio is also categorized as low, with an instructive pattern of relationship, meaning that regional governments still have limited ability to finance development needs independently. The Two-Way ANOVA test results reveal significant differences in regional revenue realization both across regencies/cities and across years within the study period. The largest variations are attributed to the differing characteristics of each regency/city, including economic potential, effectiveness in managing locally generated revenue, and variations in regional fiscal structures. These findings highlight the importance of enhancing fiscal capacity and optimizing local revenue sources throughout North Sumatra.
Blockchain is the new age internet equivalent evolution along with the rise of artificial intelligence they both are revolutionizing a new way of safer, faster, and government free interaction for real time financial verification. This study primarily investigates the role of these new age technologies in providing better security and transparent transactions in accounting systems related to crypto notably in decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems currently prevailing on solana, Ethereum and Base networks. These blockchain networks currently power billions of transactions in value using great techniques to ensure immutable, verifiable audit trails while removing any 3rd party interference In 2025 major accounting firms and compliance institutions will use AI-driven analytics, anomaly detection and predictive modelling to provide much better scope and structure of audit; this will help to decrease human errors and compliance delays by an estimate of 30%. AI along with blockchain technologies will provide real time decentralized monitoring and forensic analysis via smart contracts with include the major one such as ERC-20The combination of blockchain’s immutable ledger and AIs supremely adaptive intelligence creates a new wave of real time auditing right from retrospective verification to predictive ongoing assurance. However due to delays and legislative fragmentation issues and government ethical remain major obstacles for successful development. Finally our study demonstrates that the combination of Al with blockchain marks a fundamental change toward transparent, automated, and resilient accounting ecosystems capable of maintaining confidence in an increasingly digital and decentralized global economy.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet of Things and AI
Innovations and Analysis in Business and Education
This study does a bibliometric analysis of financial inclusion research within the framework of a sustainable economy, utilizing papers indexed in a prominent scientific database from 2000 to 2025. The study utilizes performance analysis and scientific mapping methodologies through VOSviewer and Bibliometrix to investigate publication patterns, prominent authors, institutions, countries, and networks of keyword co-occurrence. The findings indicate that financial inclusion and sustainable development form the primary conceptual core, intricately linked to economic growth, financial development, and sustainability. Contemporary research is mostly focused on digital issues, including fintech, digital financial inclusion, and decentralized finance, which progressively associate inclusive finance with environmental performance, green innovation, and the reduction of carbon emissions. Networks of international collaboration indicate that emerging economies, notably China, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, assume a prominent role, but such collaboration is predominantly localized rather than entirely global. The study elucidates the structure and history of this interdisciplinary domain, identifies significant research clusters and deficiencies, and delineates avenues for further exploration of inclusive and sustainable financial systems.
Blockchain-based financial ecosystems generate unprecedented volumes of multi-temporal data streams requiring sophisticated analytical frameworks that leverage both on-chain transaction patterns and off-chain market microstructure dynamics. This study presents an empirical evaluation of a two-class confidence-threshold framework for cryptocurrency direction prediction, systematically integrating macro momentum indicators with microstructure dynamics through unified feature engineering. Building on established selective classification principles, the framework separates directional prediction from execution decisions through confidence-based thresholds, enabling explicit optimization of precision–recall trade-offs for decentralized financial applications. Unlike traditional three-class approaches that simultaneously learn direction and execution timing, our framework uses post-hoc confidence thresholds to separate these decisions. This enables systematic optimization of the accuracy-coverage trade-off for blockchain-integrated trading systems. We conduct comprehensive experiments across 11 major cryptocurrency pairs representing diverse blockchain protocols, evaluating prediction horizons from 10 to 600 min, deadband thresholds from 2 to 20 basis points, and confidence levels of 0.6 and 0.8. The experimental design employs rigorous temporal validation with symbol-wise splitting to prevent data leakage while maintaining realistic conditions for blockchain-integrated trading systems. High confidence regimes achieve peak profits of 167.64 basis points per trade with directional accuracies of 82–95% on executed trades, suggesting potential applicability for automated decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and smart contract-based trading strategies on similar liquid cryptocurrency pairs. The systematic parameter optimization reveals fundamental trade-offs between trading frequency and signal quality in blockchain financial ecosystems, with high confidence strategies reducing median coverage while substantially improving per-trade profitability suitable for gas-optimized on-chain execution.
This paper introduces CryptoBench, the first expert-curated, dynamic benchmark designed to rigorously evaluate the real-world capabilities of Large Language Model (LLM) agents in the uniquely demanding and fast-paced cryptocurrency domain. Unlike general-purpose agent benchmarks for search and prediction, professional crypto analysis presents specific challenges: \emph{extreme time-sensitivity}, \emph{a highly adversarial information environment}, and the critical need to synthesize data from \emph{diverse, specialized sources}, such as on-chain intelligence platforms and real-time Decentralized Finance (DeFi) dashboards. CryptoBench thus serves as a much more challenging and valuable scenario for LLM agent assessment. To address these challenges, we constructed a live, dynamic benchmark featuring 50 questions per month, expertly designed by crypto-native professionals to mirror actual analyst workflows. These tasks are rigorously categorized within a four-quadrant system: Simple Retrieval, Complex Retrieval, Simple Prediction, and Complex Prediction. This granular categorization enables a precise assessment of an LLM agent's foundational data-gathering capabilities alongside its advanced analytical and forecasting skills. Our evaluation of ten LLMs, both directly and within an agentic framework, reveals a performance hierarchy and uncovers a failure mode. We observe a \textit{retrieval-prediction imbalance}, where many leading models, despite being proficient at data retrieval, demonstrate a pronounced weakness in tasks requiring predictive analysis. This highlights a problematic tendency for agents to appear factually grounded while lacking the deeper analytical capabilities to synthesize information.
Jorge Soria, Jorge Moya Velasco, Carlos Estévez-Mendoza
Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) represent an emerging organizational form for operating physical infrastructure through blockchain-based coordination. DePIN through decentralized protocols and token-based payment mechanisms incentivize independent agents to deploy, maintain, and monetize real-world infrastructure, such as wireless networks, storage units, or sensors. This article presents a first formal economic analysis of DePIN architectures, modelling investment decisions under network effects in a blockchain-native Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), with protocol-defined reward schemes. It establishes the equilibrium conditions that support decentralized provision, where token prices internalize participation, service reliability, and network coverage. Furthermore, it identifies a minimum viable coverage threshold determined by costs and network effects. Through a multi-agent machine learning simulation, we confirm that decentralized provision improves efficiency compared to centralized models. The results support the economic viability of DePIN and provide design guidelines for future decentralized infrastructure protocols. Finally, we propose an DAO incentive mechanism to implement First Best provision in Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks.
In an era of rising nationalistic populism and shifting global power dynamics, African healthcare systems remain precariously dependent on Western aid frameworks and, increasingly, China’s profit-driven digital health expansions. This dependency perpetuates structural inequities, leaving nations vulnerable to external agendas while stifling local innovation. This qualitative, exploratory study interrogates the potential of blockchain technology to reconfigure healthcare financing from a paradigm of donor reliance to one of autonomous, equitable resource mobilization. Focusing on Africa, the research critically examines emerging models—such as tokenized health bonds and blockchain-based aid tracking—that could decentralize financial sovereignty, enhance transparency, and foster self-sustaining health ecosystems. The study contrasts Western philanthropic approaches, often entangled with conditionalities and bureaucratic inefficiencies, against China’s strategic, commercialized health infrastructure investments, probing how blockchain might offer a third way—leveraging decentralized finance (DeFi) to reclaim agency. Key questions include: How can blockchain mitigate the politicization of aid in an age of populist retrenchment? Can smart contracts and tokenization democratize health financing while ensuring accountability? Drawing on stakeholder interviews and policy analysis, the presentation argues that blockchain’s disruptive potential lies not merely in technological innovation but in its capacity to recalibrate power dynamics—positioning African nations as architects, rather than beneficiaries, of their health futures. By centering African perspectives, this research challenges deterministic narratives of technological solutionism, instead framing blockchain as a contested but potent tool for decolonizing health financing. The findings aim to provoke debate on the intersection of decentralized technologies, post-colonial autonomy, and the urgent need for equitable health sovereignty in a fragmenting global order.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) faces a "Capital Inefficiency Trilemma," relying on overcollateralization due to a lack of off-chain financial identity. This paper introduces Zolvency, the Zero-Knowledge Solvency Layer—a cryptographic infrastructure bridging this gap. By utilizing zkTLS for authenticated data extraction from Web2 sources (e.g., tax portals, banking apps) and zkVMs (SP1) for verifiable computation, Zolvency issues privacy-preserving Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) that attest to financial solvency. This enables under-collateralized lending for Real World Assets (RWA) in emerging markets, unlocking liquidity while preserving user privacy and data sovereignty.
The rapid expansion of digital banking ecosystems has intensified the demand for real-time fraud detection architectures capable of operating at cloud scale.As financial transactions increasingly traverse mobile platforms, API-driven services, embedded finance channels, and cross-border payment networks, fraud patterns have become more dynamic, decentralized, and behaviorally complex.This shift has exposed the limitations of legacy rule-based systems, which lack the adaptability, latency tolerance, and threatintelligence integration required to counter emerging risks.To address these challenges, cloud-native risk orchestration layers have emerged as a foundational component of next-generation fraud detection, delivering high-throughput data ingestion, elastic compute, and intelligent decisioning frameworks suited for modern digital banking environments.At a broader level, cloud-native risk orchestration unifies distributed event streams, machine-learning scoring engines, and policy-management modules within a scalable, microservices-based architecture.This enables fraud systems to process high-velocity transactional, behavioral, and device-identity signals with millisecond latency.As the narrative narrows, the paper explores how real-time fraud detection leverages cloud services such as serverless functions, container orchestration, distributed caching, and streaming analytics to enable adaptive detection pipelines.It further examines how federated intelligence, feature stores, and continuous learning loops enhance model accuracy while maintaining compliance with privacy and data-residency requirements.At its core, the proposed framework emphasizes explainability, risk transparency, and operational resilience incorporating alert-triage routing, anomaly-suppression mechanisms, decision traceability, and integration with case-management workflows.By combining cloud-native design principles with advanced fraud analytics, the paper outlines a comprehensive blueprint for financial institutions seeking to modernize their risk-management stack.This unified approach offers a path toward scalable, real-time, and intelligence-driven fraud prevention that adapts to evolving threats while supporting regulatory compliance and customer trust.
This research introduces the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) TrustBoost Framework, which combines blockchain technology and Explainable AI to address challenges faced by lenders underwriting small business loan applications from low-wealth households. The framework is designed with a strong emphasis on fulfilling four crucial requirements of blockchain and AI systems: confidentiality, compliance with data protection laws, resistance to adversarial attacks, and compliance with regulatory audits. It presents a technique for tamper-proof auditing of automated AI decisions and a strategy for on-chain (inside-blockchain) and off-chain data storage to facilitate collaboration within and across financial organizations.
BACKGROUND: Kenya’s public tertiary healthcare is facing persistent quality of healthcare challenges characterized by acute shortage of healthcare workers, frequent industrial unrest, broken-down healthcare facilities, and erratic supply of essential commodities. To address these systemic challenges the government introduced the asset lease financing (ALF) mechanism aimed at strengthen tertiary hospitals through modern medical equipment and technologies. However, the effect of ALF on quality remains highly debated and controversial. This study examined the effect and constraints of ALF in improving quality of healthcare within Kenya’s tertiary hospitals. METHODS: A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed with quantitative data collected from 145 hospital managers, staff and patients. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize participants characteristics and indicators of study variables. Ordinary least square regression was then used to estimate the effect of ALF on quality of tertiary healthcare, controlling for existing traditional funding. Complementary qualitative insights were gathered from 26 policymakers, hospital managers, and health financing experts through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis to identify patterns in strengths and constraints. Integration of findings happened through triangulation to enhance interpretation and understanding. RESULTS: Analysis showed that asset lease financing had a significant positive effect on quality of tertiary healthcare (β = 0.587, p < 0.01), explaining 26% of the variance. When traditional funding was controlled, ALF remained significant (β = 0.495, p < 0.01), with the model explaining 33% of the variance. Respondents attributed this to improved access to advanced diagnostic and therapeutic equipment, as well as expanded service capacity. However, descriptive summaries and qualitative perspectives revealed several constraints limiting ALF optimal effect in improving tertiary healthcare quality in Kenya. Stakeholders noted high recurrent costs, under-utilized assets, weak contract negotiation, and top-down procurement processes that limited hospital autonomy and contribution. Operational gaps, including inadequate training and delayed maintenance, further constrained ALF effect on quality. CONCLUSIONS: ALF has the potential to enhance quality of healthcare and technological capacity in Kenya’s tertiary hospitals, but its effects are contingent on robust governance, effective contract design, and alignment with institutional capacity which seem lacking in the Kenyan context. Without these safeguards, current leasing arrangements risk becoming fiscally unsustainable with little quality enhancement. Policymakers should strengthen transparency, decentralize decision-making, and incorporate performance-based provisions into leasing contracts to maximize ALF effect in enhancing quality of care.
Permissionless blockchains have evolved beyond cryptocurrency into foundations for Web3 applications, decentralized finance (DeFi), and digital asset ownership, yet this rapid expansion has intensified privacy vulnerabilities. This study provides a comprehensive review of recent trends, emerging privacy threats, and mitigation strategies in permissionless blockchain ecosystems. We examine six developments reshaping the landscape: meme coin proliferation on high-throughput networks, real-world asset tokenization linking on-chain activity to regulated identities, perpetual derivatives exposing trading strategies, institutional adoption concentrating holdings under regulatory oversight, prediction markets creating permanent records of beliefs, and blockchain–AI integration enabling both privacy-preserving analytics and advanced deanonymization. Through this work and forensic analysis of documented incidents, we analyze seven critical privacy threats grounded in verifiable 2024–2025 transaction data: dust attacks, private key management failures, transaction linking, remote procedure call exposure, maximal extractable value extraction, signature hijacking, and smart contract vulnerabilities. Blockchain exploits reached $2.36 billion in 2024 and $2.47 billion in the first half of 2025, with over 80% attributed to compromised private keys and signature vulnerabilities. We evaluate privacy-enhancing technologies, including zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, and stealth addresses, identifying the gap between academic proposals and production deployment. We further propose a Secure Development Lifecycle framework incorporating measurable security controls validated against incident data. This work bridges the disconnect between privacy research and industrial practice by synthesizing current trends, providing insights, documenting real-world threats with forensic evidence, and providing actionable insights for both researchers advancing privacy-preserving techniques and developers building secure blockchain applications.
The rapid expansion of Indonesia’s digital financial ecosystem has significantly advanced financial inclusion and innovation through the growth of fintech platforms, digital payments, and crypto-asset adoption. However, this transformation introduces multifaceted risks, including cyber threats, data breaches, digital fraud, regulatory uncertainty, and money-laundering vulnerabilities associated with crypto-assets and decentralized finance. This study employs a systematic literature review to examine the challenges and innovations in digital financial risk control within Indonesia’s fintech and digital asset sectors. Findings indicate that effective risk mitigation relies heavily on regulatory coordination, advanced supervisory technology, consumer digital literacy, and robust data protection practices. RegTech and SupTech innovations powered by artificial intelligence support real-time risk monitoring and enhance compliance with global standards such as FATF recommendations. Nevertheless, successful digital financial governance also requires algorithmic accountability and ethical technology deployment. This study underscores that safeguarding stability, trust, and consumer protection is essential to achieving a secure and inclusive digital financial system while enabling responsible innovation.
The fundamental limitation of blockchain architecture lies not in cryptographic primitives or consensus mechanisms, but in a conceptual mistake: the bundling of state transitions with asset custody. Every distributed ledger since Bitcoin has conflated these two concerns, creating an artificial ceiling on performance that no amount of clever engineering can overcome. This paper presents Virtual Rollups, a post-blockchain architecture that achieves what was previously thought impossible—sub-millisecond finality with full self-custody—by recognizing that state and escrow need not travel together. We formalize the Virtual Rollup construction, prove its security properties under Byzantine conditions, and demonstrate how its unified liquidity layer solves the multi-chain fragmentation problem that plagues decentralized finance. The result is not merely an incremental improvement but a categorical leap: trading venues can now match centralized exchanges in performance while exceeding them in security.
Adaptive models and mechanisms of project financing, which are becoming critical for ensuring the sustainability of entrepreneurial activity in Ukraine in conditions of unprecedented military uncertainty were explored and analyzed in the article. Particular attention was paid to the need to integrate risk-sharing instruments between the public and private sectors. The study focused on transforming traditional approaches to assessing investments that have proven to be unviable in conditions of systematic military risk and mass destruction of capital assets, and to identify factors that minimize fiscal pressure and facilitate the attraction of private capital to critical recovery sectors. The methodology was based on the analysis of empirical cases (the «5-7-9%» program, grant mechanisms) and their critical comparative analysis using the real options theory (ROT) as a strategic framework for assessing managerial flexibility (relocation, expansion options). Global regulatory requirements (IFRS, RDNA4) and institutional risk transfer mechanisms (MIGA and DFC) were also systematized. The hypothesis of a direct proportional dependence of financing efficiency on the synergy between state compensation for systemic risk and the ability of enterprises to quickly adapt was substantiated. The results confirm that business sustainability was achieved through a two-vector mechanism: centralized risk absorption (MIGA/DFC) provides an «external anchor», and decentralized flexibility mechanisms allow the implementation of managerial options at the enterprise level. Empirical analysis showed the effectiveness of state credit risk subsidy programs and identified key challenges, which allowed formulating recommendations for the transition to mechanisms for subsidizing the cost of insurance premiums. The scientific value of the article lies in the substantiation of an adaptive project financing model that integrates ROT and institutional de-risking, as well as in the systematization of requirements for investors and forecasting possible consequences of modern financing models in Ukraine.
Abstract This study examines the economic and geopolitical determinants of Indonesia’s defense expenditure from 1984 to 2022 using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to capture both short-term and long-term dynamics. Recognizing the contextual relevance of Indonesia’s Total People’s Defense and Security System (SISHANKAMRATA), the analysis relies on conventional military expenditure data (% of GDP) due to the absence of consolidated multi-ministerial records. The results show that in the short run, defense spending is highly sensitive to macroeconomic shocks: inflation, exchange rate volatility, and foreign direct investment exert negative effects, while debt, trade openness, and regional military expenditure strengthen budgetary allocations. In the long run, macroeconomic fundamentals (debt, growth, inflation, and foreign investment) together with neighboring countries’ military spending drive defense expenditure, whereas regional average spending has a negative effect and U.S. military expenditure does not show a structural impact. These findings underscore the dual pressures of fiscal fragility and regional security competition in shaping Indonesia’s defense budget. Policy implications highlight the importance of inflation-adjusted and exchange rate–resilient budgeting, sustainable financing mechanisms such as defense bonds or a Defense Sovereign Wealth Fund (D-SWF), and deeper ASEAN defense cooperation to balance security needs with fiscal discipline. This study contributes a macro-level perspective on defense economics under conditions of institutional fragmentation, offering a framework for future comparative and panel-based research across decentralized security systems.
Ashar Prima, Dewi Gayatri, Yati Afiyanti, Christantie Effendy
Background: Indonesia faces a growing double burden of non-communicable diseases, particularly cancer. The latest data from the Global Cancer Observatory (Globocan) indicates over 408,661 new cases and 242,099 cancer-related deaths in 2022, with a projected 63% increase in the case burden between 2025 and 2040 without strategic intervention. Although a new legal framework through Health Law No. 17 of 2023 and the Minister of Health Decree (KMK) No. HK.01.07/MENKES/2180/2023 has mandated palliative care as an integral component of health services, its implementation still faces significant systemic barriers. Policy and Implications: This policy brief analyzes the disconnection between the policy mandate and on-the-ground reality, identifying critical gaps in accessibility, healthcare workforce capacity particularly among nursesand financing mechanisms through the National Health Insurance (JKN) program. The failure to effectively integrate palliative care not only causes unnecessary suffering for millions of patients but also burdens the health system with inefficient costs and suboptimal end-of-life care, reflected in the high "financial toxicity" experienced by patients. Recommendations: We recommend a four-pillar strategy: (1) Formalize and standardize palliative services within the JKN benefits package with a clear financing model to address regulatory ambiguity; (2) Develop a national competency-based palliative education and training strategy for all health workers, with a focus on empowering nurses in primary care; (3) Implement a decentralized and tiered palliative care delivery model centered on Community Health Centers (Puskesmas) to ensure equitable access; and (4) Launch a national public education campaign to destigmatize palliative care and increase awareness. Conclusion: The integration of palliative care is not merely an option but a strategic and ethical imperative for achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Indonesia. It is a cost-effective investment to improve patients' quality of life, support families, and ensure the sustainability of the national health system in facing future non-communicable disease challenges.
Open access
Healthcare Systems and Reforms
Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
How do the emerging Web 3.0 technologies affect the survival of non-state armed groups (NSAGs) in their violent struggles vis-à-vis state entities? While techno-optimists argue that Web 3.0 can democratize the internet and curb monopolistic practices, its decentralized features, such as enhanced privacy, data ownership, and personalization, also present significant security challenges. These technologies can be weaponized by NSAGs to promote their efficiency and resilience. Borrowing insights from social movement theory, we construct a theoretical framework to explain how Web 3.0 applications affect the dynamics of NSAGs by impacting their organizational modes and strategies. It is argued that blockchain-based platforms, metaverse projects, and other Web 3.0 technologies promote the efficiency of the recruitment, training, financing, purchasing, and communication processes of NSAGs, increasing their capacities as social organizations, and thereby render these groups more resilient to collapse. We illustrate and corroborate our theoretical claims by examining the cases of how NSAGs such as the Islamic State utilize decentralized crypto exchanges and the Dark Web in their operations.
Open access
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has emerged as a transformative force in global finance, offering trustless, blockchain-based alternatives to traditional intermediated systems. This paper examines how DeFi innovations — such as tokenized assets, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and automated smart contracts — are reshaping corporate fundraising. It analyzes the efficiency, accessibility, and regulatory implications of using decentralized protocols for capital raising, comparing DeFi mechanisms (e.g., IDOs, security token offerings, DAOs) with traditional equity and debt issuance models. Using case studies and data from leading DeFi ecosystems (Ethereum, Polygon, Solana) and corporate blockchain pilots, we evaluate DeFi’s impact on fundraising costs, investor reach, and transparency. The findings suggest that while DeFi offers reduced friction and democratized access to capital, challenges in regulation, governance, and investor protection must be resolved before large-scale corporate adoption.