This paper provides an in-depth examination of the latest trends in financial technology (FinTech) and their profound impact on the global financial sector.By delving into groundbreaking innovations such as blockchain technology, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in banking, and the burgeoning prominence of digital currencies, this study seeks to offer a comprehensive understanding of the current state of FinTech.We explore how blockchain is revolutionizing financial transactions with its decentralization and increased security, while AI in banking is enhancing customer experiences, automating processes, and bolstering risk management.Additionally, the paper highlights the rise of digital currencies, discussing their potential to redefine monetary systems and their influence on global finance.Our investigation extends to the challenges and opportunities presented by these technological advancements, including regulatory hurdles, ethical considerations, and the need for new skill sets in the finance sector.Furthermore, the study contemplates the future trajectory of FinTech, speculating on how emerging technologies like quantum computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) could further transform financial services.This paper aims not only to provide insights into how FinTech is currently reshaping the financial landscape but also to anticipate the future direction of these developments.Through this analysis, we contribute to the broader understanding of FinTech's role in driving innovation, efficiency, and change in the financial world.
In recent years, blockchain technology has received attention because of its decentralized, immutable and other characteristics, but it faces storage and retrieval challenges. To address these challenges, this paper introduces IOTA distributed ledger technology, which solves the scalability and cost problems of traditional blockchains. By analyzing and experimenting the Tangle, the underlying consensus structure of IOTA, this paper reveals the main factors affecting its development, and proposes a segmented adaptive cutting-edge transaction selection algorithm to optimize the system performance. At the same time, based on IOTA distributed ledger, this paper proposes a data encryption storage and retrieval scheme, which speeds up the data link and retrieval speed, and ensures the integrity and security of data. Finally, this paper discusses the application of blockchain in accounting informatization, and puts forward the scheme of building a new generation of accounting informatization platform, which is of great value to the construction of accounting informatization.
This paper explores the integration of social media data and natural language processing methods, specifically utilizing the Transformer model, to predict Bitcoin price movements. We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of using social media data and the Transformer model in forecasting market trends for Bitcoin. By analyzing social media posts and incorporating them into predictive models, we demonstrate the potential of the Transformer architecture in capturing complex dependencies and patterns within sequential Bitcoin prices. Additionally, different clustering methods are applied to process the original social media data in a rolling manner. The evaluation of Transformer-based models on historical data showcases their predictive performance compared to various social media data clustering approaches. Furthermore, the impact of incorporating outliers of social media data into the Transformer model is explored to improve prediction accuracy. The results of this study demonstrate the potential of clustering on social media data and the Transformer model for forecasting market trends.1
Mohsin Kamal, Muhammad Tariq, Mian Ahmad Jan, Houbing Song
Blockchain technology has found applications across diverse domains owing to its ability to establish trust in a decentralized manner. Nevertheless, the integration of blockchain into critical infrastructure domains encounters significant challenges posed by the computational demands and storage requirements associated with the proof-of-work puzzle during the mining process. This scenario becomes particularly complex in the context of applications within the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), where stringent timeliness constraints are inherent, notably in functions such as intrusion detection and control. This paper presents a novel solution that takes into account the time-sensitive nature of application constraints within the IIoT. Specifically, we focus on online functions involving intrusion detection and control. By doing so, we address the imperative need for timely and secure data delivery, crucial in maintaining the integrity of hard-to-tamper ledger blocks. These blocks encapsulate measurements that are seamlessly utilized by various system functions and components. The proposed approach optimizes the utilization of heterogeneous resources governing blockchain computations. This optimization ensures that the desired properties for logging within the blockchain are met, enabling the prompt delivery of measurements. The novel collaborative mining technique entails the sharing of nonce ranges among miners, which effectively reduces the overall mining time and enhances the efficiency of the process.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi), propelled by Blockchain technology, has revolutionized traditional financial systems, improving transparency, reducing costs, and fostering financial inclusion. However, transaction activities i n these systems fluctuate significantly and the throughput can be effected. To address this issue, we propose a Dynamic Mining Interval (DMI) mechanism that adjusts mining intervals in response to block size and trading volume to enhance the transaction throughput of Blockchain platforms. Besides, in the context of public Blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, a shift towards transaction fees dominance over coin-based rewards is projected in near future. As a result, the ecosystem continues to face threats from deviant mining activities such as Undercutting Attacks, Selfish Mining, and Pool Hopping, among others. In recent years, Dynamic Transaction Storage (DTS) strategies were proposed to allocate transactions dynamically based on fees thereby stabilizing block incentives. However, DTS’ utilization of Merkle tree leaf nodes can reduce system throughput. To alleviate this problem, in this paper, we propose an approach for combining DMI and DTS. Besides, we also discuss the DMI selection mechanism for adjusting mining intervals based on various factors.
Nir Chemaya, Lin William Cong, Emma Jorgensen, Dingyue Liu · 5 authors
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is reshaping traditional finance by enabling direct transactions without intermediaries, creating a rich source of open financial data. Layer 2 (L2) solutions are emerging to enhance the scalability and efficiency of the DeFi ecosystem, surpassing Layer 1 (L1) systems. However, the impact of L2 solutions is still underexplored, mainly due to the lack of comprehensive transaction data indices for economic analysis. This study bridges that gap by analyzing over 50 million transactions from Uniswap, a major decentralized exchange, across both L1 and L2 networks. We created a set of daily indices from blockchain data on Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon, offering insights into DeFi adoption, scalability, decentralization, and wealth distribution. Additionally, we developed an open-source Python framework for calculating decentralization indices, making this dataset highly useful for advanced machine learning research. Our work provides valuable resources for data scientists and contributes to the growth of the intelligent Web3 ecosystem.
Blockchains are becoming increasingly important in today’s Internet, enabling large-scale decentralized applications with strong security and transparency properties. In a blockchain system, participants maintain and update the server-side state of an application by appending data as blocks onto an immutable, distributed ledger through a consensus protocol within a peer-to-peer network. There has been a significant increase in profit in mining blocks. For instance, Bitcoin miners currently receive over USD 200,000 per mined block. An essential determinant of these rewards is the time it takes to disseminate newly mined blocks across the network. This paper addresses the challenge of optimizing mining rewards by exploring topology design in a wide-area blockchain network utilizing a Proof-of-Work consensus protocol. We show that under low block times, the geographical location of a miner critically impacts the number of successful blocks mined by the miner. We also show that a miner may improve its success rate by increasing its connectivity to the network. However, contrary to the general wisdom that a faster network is always better for a miner, we show that increasing network connectivity (e.g., by adding more neighbors) is beneficial to a miner only up to a point after which the miner’s rewards degrade. This is because when a miner improves its connectivity, it inadvertently also aids other miners in increasing their connectivity. We also present a network-level collusion attack in which a miner can increase its block success rate by becoming part of a tightly connected cluster. Here too, we observe that the mining gains obtained increase with cluster size only up to a point, and decrease thereafter. Our findings highlight that the network topology is a key variable affecting miner performance in PoW blockchains that must not be overlooked. We demonstrate our observations via detailed simulations modeled using real-world measurement data.
Decentralized Finance, mushrooming in permissionless blockchains, has attracted a recent surge in popularity. Due to the transparency of permissionless blockchains, opportunistic traders can compete to earn revenue by extracting Miner Extractable Value (MEV), which undermines both the consensus security and efficiency of blockchain systems. The Flashbots bundle mechanism further aggravates the MEV competition because it empowers opportunistic traders with the capability of designing more sophisticated MEV extraction. In this paper, we conduct the first systematic study on DeFi MEV activities in Flashbots bundle by developing ActLifter, a novel automated tool for accurately identifying DeFi actions in transactions of each bundle, and ActCluster, a new approach that leverages iterative clustering to facilitate us to discover known/unknown DeFi MEV activities. Extensive experimental results show that ActLifter can achieve nearly 100% precision and recall in DeFi action identification, significantly outperforming state-of-the-art techniques. Moreover, with the help of ActCluster, we obtain many new observations and discover 17 new kinds of DeFi MEV activities, which occur in 53.12% of bundles but have not been reported in existing studies.
Abstract With Bitcoin being universally recognized as the most popular cryptocurrency, more Bitcoin transactions are expected to be populated to the Bitcoin blockchain system. As a result, many transactions can encounter different confirmation delays. Concerned about this, it becomes vital to help a user understand (if possible) how long it may take for a transaction to be confirmed in the Bitcoin blockchain. In this work, we address the issue of predicting confirmation time within a block interval rather than pinpointing a specific timestamp. After dividing the future into a set of block intervals (i.e., classes), the prediction of a transaction’s confirmation is treated as a classification problem. To solve it, we propose a framework, Hybrid Confirmation Time Estimation Network ( Hybrid-CTEN ), based on neural networks and XGBoost to predict transaction confirmation time in the Bitcoin blockchain system using three different sources of information: historical transactions in the blockchain, unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, as well as the estimated transaction itself. Finally, experiments on real-world blockchain data demonstrate that, other than XGBoost excelling in the binary classification case (to predict whether a transaction will be confirmed in the next generated block), our proposed framework Hybrid-CTEN outperforms state-of-the-art methods on precision, recall and f1-score on all the multiclass classification cases (4-class, 6-class and 8-class) to predict in which future block interval a transaction will be confirmed.
Muhammad Haziq Abdul Hadi, Nor Azuana Ramli, Qamar UI Islam
Predicting future prices of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, presents a formidable challenge owing to their inherent volatility. This study applies Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), a well-established recurrent neural network for time series forecasting, to predict Bitcoin and Ethereum values. Historical price data for both cryptocurrencies, sourced from Yahoo Finance, serves as the basis for analysis. The dataset undergoes an 80% training and 20% testing partition. Subsequently, LSTM models are developed and trained on both datasets. In parallel, the gated recurrent unit (GRU), recognized as an advanced variant of the LSTM model, is explored for comparative purposes. Performance evaluation utilizes fundamental metrics, including root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The results reveal an intriguing trend: both models exhibit superior performance when applied to the Ethereum dataset compared to the Bitcoin dataset. This observation suggests the potential presence of Ethereum-specific features or patterns that align more effectively with deep learning model architectures. Notably, the GRU model consistently outperforms the LSTM model across RMSE, MAE, and MAPE. These outcomes underscore the GRU model’s capacity as a robust tool for cryptocurrency value prediction. In summary, this study tackles the challenge of cryptocurrency price prediction while emphasizing the promising role of advanced neural network architectures, such as GRU, in enhancing prediction accuracy, thus offering valuable insights into financial forecasting.
Kawsalya Maharajan, A. V. Senthil Kumar, Ibrahiem M. M. El Emary, Priyanka Sharma · 9 authors
Blockchain encourages artificial intelligence towards intelligence while also increasing its autonomy and credibility. In this chapter, the authors examine the relationship between blockchain technology and artificial intelligence from a more thorough and three-dimensional standpoint. One of the greatest problems with blockchain implementations in IoV is that they cannot meet the computational and energy needs of conventional blockchain systems since IoV nodes are limited in their ability to use resources. A marketplace that enables stakeholders (CSPs, asset suppliers, service providers, regulators, etc.) to interact and exchange value with confidence based on smart provenance and governance may be developed using blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT). These innovations offer a decentralised audit architecture that is safe. Such transactions (who uses what) can be kept on a distributed ledger marketplace in an immutable setting. A decentralised consensus process that does not need mining or incentivization in a permissionless architecture ensures data integrity.
Consensus algorithms are the core technology of a blockchain and directly affect the implementation and application of blockchain systems. Delegated proof of stake (DPoS) significantly reduces the time required for transaction verification by selecting representative nodes to generate blocks, and it has become a mainstream consensus algorithm. However, existing DPoS algorithms have issues such as "one ballot, one vote", a low degree of decentralization, and nodes performing malicious actions. To address these problems, an improved DPoS algorithm based on community discovery is designed, called CD-DPoS. First, we introduce the PageRank algorithm to improve the voting mechanism, achieving "one ballot, multiple votes", and we obtain the reputation value of each node. Second, we propose a node voting enthusiasm measurement method based on the GN algorithm. Finally, we design a comprehensive election mechanism combining node reputation values and voting enthusiasm to select secure and reliable accounting nodes. A node credit incentive mechanism is also designed to effectively motivate normal nodes and drive out malicious nodes. The experimental simulation results show that our proposed algorithm has better decentralization, malicious node eviction capabilities and higher throughput than similar methods.
I.sibel KERVANCI, Mehmet Fatih Akay, Eren Özceylan
Bitcoin has high price fluctuations, which involve high risks and high return rates for investors. These high earnings have attracted the attention of investors. This paper proposes a new model for Bitcoin price prediction that effectively reduces prediction error. Hyperparameter optimization methods such as Bayesian optimization (BO), random search and grid search with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Gated Repetitive Unit (GRU), and hybrid LSTM-GRU utilised. Models with BO achieved better results than others. To improve each model's results with BO; Gradient Incremental Regression Trees (GBRT), Gaussian Process (GP), Random Forest (RF) and Extra Trees (ET) were applied to optimizers and corresponding surrogate functions. Evaluating the effects of hyper-parameter values on the problem for each method contributes to the parameter selection process for similar prediction problems. To increase comparability in the literature, Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Square Error (MSE) were used. There is a least one hyper-parameter combination, which produces a result close to the best value for each model when the results obtained from the experiments are interpreted. BO with hybrid LSTM-GRU outperformed all methods in this paper and the examined literature for the value of RMSE, MSE, and MAE.
Kithmini Godewatte Arachchige, Philip Branch, Jason But
Blockchain technology is an information security solution that operates on a distributed ledger system. Blockchain technology has considerable potential for securing Internet of Things (IoT) low-powered devices. However, the integration of IoT and blockchain technologies raises a number of research issues. One of the most important is the energy consumption of different blockchain algorithms. Because IoT devices are typically low-powered battery-powered devices, the energy consumption of any blockchain node must be kept low. IoT end nodes are typically low-powered devices expected to survive for extended periods without battery replacement. Energy consumption of blockchain algorithms is an important consideration in any application that combines both technologies, as some blockchain algorithms are infeasible because they consume large amounts of energy, causing the IoT device to reach high temperatures and potentially damaging the hardware; they are also a possible fire hazard. In this paper, we examine the temperatures reached in devices used to process blockchain algorithms, and the energy consumption of three commonly used blockchain algorithms running on low-powered microcontrollers communicating in a wireless sensor network. We found temperatures of IoT devices and energy consumption were highly correlated with the temperatures reached. The results indicate that device temperatures reached 80 °C. This work will contribute to developing energy-efficient blockchain-based IoT sensor networks.
In this dissertation, I investigate the existing smart contract problems that limit cognitive abilities. I use Taylor's serious expansion, polynomial equation, and fraction-based computations to overcome the limitations of calculations in smart contracts. To prove the hypothesis, I use these mathematical models to compute complex operations of naive Bayes, linear regression, decision trees, and neural network algorithms on Ethereum public test networks. The smart contracts achieve 95\% prediction accuracy compared to traditional programming language models, proving the soundness of the numerical derivations. Many non-real-time applications can use our solution for trusted and secure prediction services.
This paper presents a general-purpose approach for the drug supply chain management, by proposing a DLT-based methodology to facilitate and make more efficient the development of such applications. For specific domains, such as drug management and traceability, a system based on Django Python framework, on Ethereum blockchain, and on web3.py library has been developed that can be customized for most real supply chains, automatically generating the specific applications (database schema, smart contracts, apps). A case study about a simple drug traceability system for a producer to hospital wards is described, to show how this approach works.
Abstract Due to the highly volatile tendency of Bitcoin, there is a necessity for a better price prediction model. Only a few researchers have focused on the feasibility to apply various modelling approaches. These approaches may prone to have low convergence issues in outcomes and acquire high computation time. Hence a model is put forward based on machine learning techniques using regression algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization with XGBoost algorithm, for more precise prediction outcomes of three cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum. The approach uses time series that consists of daily price information of cryptocurrencies. In this paper, the XGBoost algorithm is incorporated with an enhanced PSO method to tune the optimal hyper-parameters to yield out better prediction output rate. The comparative assessment delineated that the proposed method shows less root mean squared error, mean absolute error and mean squared error values. In this aspect, the proposed model stands predominant in showing high efficiency of prediction rate.
Zhongming Yao, Junchang Xin, Kun Hao, Zhiqiong Wang · 5 authors
Blockchain has become increasingly popular for data management in recent years. However, the existing blockchain systems lack efficient semantic queries, particularly keyword queries. To address this issue, we propose a learned-index-based semantic keyword query architecture on blockchain. First, our architecture records data semantics information to support semantic keyword queries. Second, we establish the lookup table index for semantic information among blocks and the block-level recursive model index for blocks to improve the query efficiency. We store the lookup table in the extended block headers to maintain the result’s completeness, and we store recursive model indexes off chain to optimize the maintenance efficiency. Third, we propose a verifiable query algorithm based on our proposed architecture to maintain the result’s correctness. Finally, the experimental results show that combining the lookup table and the learned index effectively improves the query efficiency on blockchain.
Sireejaa Uppal, Bindiya Kansekar, S. Mini, Deepak K. Tosh
The Healthcare industry demands increased privacy and security to protect confidential patient information and comply with regulations. Both these features can be incorporated into the existing systems using Blockchain technology. The only challenge faced here is the ease of users, but this can be quickly resolved by integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain. IoT-based devices overcome limited computing capacity for personal intelligent health devices. Cloud-assisted IoT devices also require limited storage capacity for devices like wearable sensors. However, it must be considered that this system still has drawbacks, leading to its inefficiency. These problems include Data Privacy and Data sharing. This paper proposes an Interplanetary File System (IPFS) based solution to these problems. Here, the users continually upload the health data collected by IoT devices and add them to blockchain transactions that the other user nodes, such as physicians, pharmacists, insurance companies, hospital authorities, etc., can access. This system ensures the well-being of the users by monitoring the data gathered every 5 min and daily. It also facilitates the alarm feature in an emergency, making it reliable. The user receives daily notifications regarding his lifestyle, and the family members receive the notifications on his behalf if there are some chances of an emergency. The authorized doctors are also notified immediately in case an emergency is detected. Apart from this feature, the user can get consultations from doctors, prescriptions from the pharmacist, funds from insurance authorities, and hospital supplies, all through the transaction on the six blockchains of HealthDote using the cryptocurrency DoteCoins, which are designed specifically for this system.
Haoran Zhu, Xiaolin Chang, Jelena Mišić, Vojislav B. Mišić · 6 authors
Bitcoin is the largest Proof-of-Work (PoW) public blockchain but is vulnerable to various attacks like stubborn mining attack, which greatly downgrades both system throughput and benefits malicious miners (attackers). The existing works assume miners receive new blocks immediately after block generation, which is away from reality. This article aims to quantify the stubborn mining attack severity in an imperfect Bitcoin network in which there exists block receiving delay. In this article, we first develop an analytic model to capture blockchain dynamics, and then derive formulas of both relative revenue and system throughput, which are applied to study attack severity. Experiment results validate our quantitative analysis method and show that imperfect networks favor attackers. Moreover, the results recommend a blockchain system to be composed of small mining pools to get fair revenue distribution, and minimize its network delay and fork probability to get high TPS.
As coin-based rewards dwindle, transaction fees play an important role as mining incentives in Bitcoin. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism called Efficient Dynamic Transaction Storage (EDTS) for dynamically allocating transactions among blocks to achieve efficient storage utilization. By leveraging a combination of Cuckoo Filter and Dynamic Transaction Storage (DTS) strategies, EDTS is able to improve the scalability while remaining sustainable even after the Bitcoin enters a transaction-fee regime. In addition to preventing deviant mining behaviors under the transaction-fee regime, EDTS can also provide differentiated transmission priorities based on transaction fees while allowing the investors to engage in pledging more transaction fees. In EDTS, we applied the multi-objective optimization algorithm U-NSGA-III to find the best DTS strategy and its corresponding attributes. Experimental results show that the EDTS mechanism together with the optimized DTS strategy can achieve a throughput of 325.3 TPS. The experimental results reveal that the scalability improvement of EDTS is superior to the performance of Bitcoin NG, which is the best known on-chain scaling solution, while maintaining the sustainability under the transaction-fee regime.
Prof. M. S. Kale, Ayush Gimekar, Zuveriya Tamboli, Vaishnavi Patil · 5 authors
Normal cash has developed and appears numerous downsides such as inaccessibility. It is inclined to burglary and is intensely directed by government offices. Cryptocurrencies have risen as a egotistic money related framework. They depend upon secure disseminated ledger data structure. Mining plays a critical portion in this framework. Basically, our cryptocurrency could be a conveyed database that keeps up tamper-proof information structure pieces containing his bunches of person exchanges. Blockchain innovation can be a widely emerging approach to data innovations. Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency has made several considerations since it was one of its earliest implementations. They discuss the key elements driving the development of sophisticated cryptocurrencies alongside Ethereum, a blockchain implementation with a focus on informed contracts. In its most basic form, our cryptocurrency may be thought of as a distributed database that keeps track of tamper-proof data structure blocks comprising batches of individual transactions.
Blockchains are significantly easing trade finance, with billions of dollars worth of assets being transacted daily. However, analyzing these networks remains challenging due to the sheer volume and complexity of the data. We introduce a method named InnerCore that detects market manipulators within blockchain-based networks and offers a sentiment indicator for these networks. This is achieved through data depth-based core decomposition and centered motif discovery, ensuring scalability. InnerCore is a computationally efficient, unsupervised approach suitable for analyzing large temporal graphs. We demonstrate its effectiveness by analyzing and detecting three recent real-world incidents from our datasets: the catastrophic collapse of LunaTerra, the Proof-of-Stake switch of Ethereum, and the temporary peg loss of USDC - while also verifying our results against external ground truth. Our experiments show that InnerCore can match the qualified analysis accurately without human involvement, automating blockchain analysis in a scalable manner, while being more effective and efficient than baselines and state-of-the-art attributed change detection approach in dynamic graphs.