Bitcoin is a Cryptocurrency which is evolving in digital world and gaining a larger market related to digital currency and stands on all the user expectation of decentralize mechanism of system by providing proof of work in peer-to-peer network with the help of Blockchain. In this paper I have done a literature review on Blockchain technology and its application in Bitcoin.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Blockchain also known as a distributed ledger technology stores different transactions/operations in a chain of blocks in a distributed manner without needing a trusted third-party. Blockchain is proven to be immutable which helps for integrity and accountability, and, to some extent, confidentiality through a pair of public and private keys. Blockchain has been in the spotlight after successful boom of the Bitcoin. There have been efforts to leverage salient features of Blockchain for different applications and use cases. This paper present a comprehensive survey of applications and use cases of Blockchain technology. Specifically, readers of this paper can have thorough understanding of applications and user cases of Blockchain technology.
Blockchain has a broad development potential and application prospects. At present, huge storage volume on each node has become one of the primary bottlenecks that restrict the expansibility of blockchain. Optimization for storage mechanism has become a necessary way to accelerate the improvement of blockchain. There are a variety of solutions to relieve the storage burden by modifying the architecture of blockchain, but most of them weaken the decentralization property of the system, which is the core advantages of the blockchain. In this paper, an optimization scheme based on the redundant residual number system is proposed to dramatically reduce the storage volume of nodes in the blockchain system, and fault tolerance mechanism is designed based on the new storage scheme. The simulation experiments are performed to prove the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.
To improve the security performance of blockchain smart contracts against quantum attacks, a smart contract based on light-weighted quantum blind signature is proposed here. Firstly, a smart contract architecture is built after the discussion of related researches, and information processing and information transmitting for quantum blind signature are analyzed. Secondly, the life cycle and signature rules of quantum blind signature for smart contracts are presented. Thirdly, a quantum blind signature protocol for single signer in light-weighted smart contract is put forward, where its algorithm design and business flow are introduced in detail before the security performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed. Fourthly, based on the former single-person signature algorithm, a more complex multi-person quantum blind signature algorithm is proposed, and its security is also analyzed. Fifthly, related references are compared to verify the proposed method. The proposed quantum signature schemes based on quantum entanglement features can be used in single signer case or more, and will improve the security of blockchain smart contracts against quantum attacks, but with light-weighted structure and no need of any trusted third party or arbitrary institute. Finally, some suggestions for engineering applications and the research results are summarized and the future research is prospected.
There are two traditional data trading modes, the hosting mode, and the aggregation mode, which depend on the trusted third parties to a large extent. The hosting mode is that the data are completely hosted in the data trading center, so the data trading center retains the data. On the surface, the aggregation mode is that the data trading center is not to retain the data of trading, but actually, it has the ability to retain the data. There is a fundamental difference between the ability to retain the data and the inability to retain the data. These two trading modes cause the data owners to be afraid to share data trading. In this paper, we propose a solution to the data trading mode based on the smart contract using blockchain and machine learning. Our solution takes advantage of the immutability, tamper-proof and traceability of blockchain, the programmability of smart contract, and the verification of data availability by the similarity learning to propose a challenge response mechanism between the data purchaser and the data owner, an off-chain download mechanism between the data purchaser and the data storage service provider, and an arbitration mechanism for the controversy resolution of the data trading. The challenge response mechanism is used to authenticate and authorize the data owner, the off-chain download mechanism is used to authenticate and authorize the data purchaser to download the purchased data, and the similarity learning is used to deal with the controversy over the data availability in the data trading. The design and implementation of data trading smart contract successfully achieved the goal of removing the trusted third party in the data trading, and thus, the problem that the data trading center has the ability to retain the data in the process of the data trading is solved, as well as the automatic payment by using the Ethereum encrypted currency among the trading participants is realized. This paper presents the whole process of smart contract from the design and implementation to the test completion and provides the security analysis and performance evaluation. The full code of smart contract and the ABI interface have been uploaded to the GitHub for the public release.
Healthcare data management has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years because of its high potential to provide more accurate and cost-efficient patient care. The traditional client-server and cloud-based healthcare data management systems suffer from the issues of single point of failure, data privacy, centralized data stewardship, and system vulnerability. The replication mechanism, and privacy and security features of blockchain have a promising future in the healthcare domain as they can solve some of the inherent issues of the health management system. However, most of the recent research works on blockchain in the healthcare domain have primarily focused on the permission-less Bitcoin network that suffers from drawbacks such as high energy consumption, limited scalability, and low transaction throughput. Consequently, there is a need for a scalable, fault-tolerant, secure, traceable and private blockchain to suit the requirements of the healthcare domain. We propose a lightweight blockchain architecture for the healthcare data management that reduces the computational and communication overhead compared to the Bitcoin network by dividing the network participants into clusters and maintaining one copy of the ledger per cluster. Our architecture introduces the use of canal, that allows secure and confidential transactions within a group of network participants. Furthermore, we propose a solution to avoid forking which is prevalent in the Bitcoin network. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed architecture in providing security and privacy compared to the Bitcoin network by analyzing different threats and attacks. We also discuss how our proposed architecture addresses the identified threats. Our experimental results demonstrate that our proposed architecture generates 11 times lower network traffic compared to the Bitcoin network as the number of blocks increases. Our ledger update is 1.13 times faster. Our architecture shows a speedup of 67% in ledger update and 10 times lower network traffic when the number of nodes increases.
A blockchain is a decentralized, disseminated and digital ledger that can’t be altered retroactively without modifying every single blocks and the consensus of the network. Blockchain can be used in smart contracts, Banks, IoT devices, Database management, etc., Due to recent times flaws and leakage of Aadhaar information (Aadhaar which is the largest government databases of the Indian citizens) in Internet the security and privacy of Aadhaar became questionable. In order to ensure the security of Aadhaar, Blockchain has the potential to overcome security and privacy challenges in Aadhaar. In this project we are going to create a Blockchain for Aadhaar database and implement light weight algorithm for efficiency, optimization and scalability along with the Blockchain securing algorithm.
Alfonso Panarello, Nachiket Tapas, Giovanni Merlino, Francesco Longo · 5 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of smart devices to collect data and make intelligent decisions. However, a lack of intrinsic security measures makes IoT vulnerable to privacy and security threats. With its "security by design," Blockchain (BC) can help in addressing major security requirements in IoT. BC capabilities like immutability, transparency, auditability, data encryption and operational resilience can help solve most architectural shortcomings of IoT. This article presents a comprehensive survey on BC and IoT integration. The objective of this paper is to analyze the current research trends on the usage of BC-related approaches and technologies in an IoT context. This paper presents the following novelties, with respect to related work: (i) it covers different application domains, organizing the available literature according to this categorization, (ii) it introduces two usage patterns, i.e., device manipulation and data management (open marketplace solution), and (iii) it reports on the development level of some of the presented solutions. We also analyze the main challenges faced by the research community in the smooth integration of BC and IoT, and point out the main open issues and future research directions. Last but not least, we also present a survey about novel uses of BC in the machine economy.
Maged N. Kamel Boulos, James T. Wilson, Kevin A. Clauson
A PubMed query run in June 2018 using the keyword 'blockchain' retrieved 40 indexed papers, a reflection of the growing interest in blockchain among the medical and healthcare research and practice communities. Blockchain's foundations of decentralisation, cryptographic security and immutability make it a strong contender in reshaping the healthcare landscape worldwide. Blockchain solutions are currently being explored for: (1) securing patient and provider identities; (2) managing pharmaceutical and medical device supply chains; (3) clinical research and data monetisation; (4) medical fraud detection; (5) public health surveillance; (6) enabling truly public and open geo-tagged data; (7) powering many Internet of Things-connected autonomous devices, wearables, drones and vehicles, via the distributed peer-to-peer apps they run, to deliver the full vision of smart healthy cities and regions; and (8) blockchain-enabled augmented reality in crisis mapping and recovery scenarios, including mechanisms for validating, crediting and rewarding crowdsourced geo-tagged data, among other emerging use cases. Geospatially-enabled blockchain solutions exist today that use a crypto-spatial coordinate system to add an immutable spatial context that regular blockchains lack. These geospatial blockchains do not just record an entry's specific time, but also require and validate its associated proof of location, allowing accurate spatiotemporal mapping of physical world events. Blockchain and distributed ledger technology face similar challenges as any other technology threatening to disintermediate legacy processes and commercial interests, namely the challenges of blockchain interoperability, security and privacy, as well as the need to find suitable and sustainable business models of implementation. Nevertheless, we expect blockchain technologies to get increasingly powerful and robust, as they become coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) in various real-word healthcare solutions involving AI-mediated data exchange on blockchains.
Anik Islam, Mohammed Belal Uddin, Md. Fazlul Kader, Soo Young Shin
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation receiver is considered as one of the most potent multiple access techniques to be adopted in future wireless communication networks. Data security in the NOMA transmission scheme is on much attention drawing issue. Blockchain is a distributed peer-to-peer network enables a way of protecting information from unauthorized access, tempering etc. By utilizing encryption techniques of blockchain, a secured data communication scheme using blockchain in NOMA is proposed in this paper. A two-phase encryption technique with key generation using different parameter is proposed. In the first-phase data is encrypted by imposing users' public key and in the second phase, a private key of the base station (BS) is engaged for encryption. Finally, the superiority of the proposed scheme over existing scheme is proven through a comparative study based on the different features.
Önder Gürcan, Alejandro Ranchal Pedrosa, Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni
Bitcoin-like blockchains do not envisage any specific mechanism to avoid unfairness for the users. Hence, unfair situations, like impossibility of cancellation of transactions explicitly or having unconfirmed transactions, reduce the satisfaction of users dramatically, and, as a result, they may leave the system entirely. Such a consequence would impact significantly the security and the sustainability of the blockchain. Based on this observation, in this paper, we focus on explicit cancellation of transactions to improve the fairness for users. We propose a novel scheme with which it is possible to cancel a transaction, whether it is confirmed in a block or not, under certain conditions. We show that the proposed scheme is superior to the existing workarounds and is implementable for Bitcoin-like blockchains. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Athina-Styliani Kleinaki, Petros Mytis-Gkometh, George Drosatos, Pavlos S. Efraimidis · 5 authors
Biomedical research and clinical decision depend increasingly on scientific evidence realized by a number of authoritative databases, mostly public and continually enriched via peer scientific contributions. Given the dynamic nature of biomedical evidence data and their usage in the sensitive domain of biomedical science, it is important to ensure retrieved data integrity and non-repudiation. In this work, we present a blockchain-based notarization service that uses smart digital contracts to seal a biomedical database query and the respective results. The goal is to ensure that retrieved data cannot be modified after retrieval and that the database cannot validly deny that the particular data has been provided as a result of a specific query. Biomedical evidence data versioning is also supported. The feasibility of the proposed notarization approach is demonstrated using a real blockchain infrastructure and is tested on two different biomedical evidence databases: a publicly available medical risk factor reference repository and on the PubMed database of biomedical literature references and abstracts.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Retinal Imaging and Analysis
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
This paper introduces some of the interdependent components within the multifaceted solution our team is developing towards accelerating the functionality, complexity and versatility of blockchain-enabled services. The focus here is particularly on introducing and bringing together selected individual components of the solution to achieve a synergistic effect in expanding the functionality of blockchain-enforced smart contracts. The contributions of this paper include: (i) proposing a method for automated management of contracts with hierarchical conditionality structures through an hierarchy of intelligent agents and the use of hierarchical cryptographic key-pairs; (ii) proposing a method for efficient and secure matching and transfer of smart-contract underlyings (entities) among disparate smart contracts/subcontracts; (iii) proposing a method for producing an hierarchy of common secrets to facilitate hierarchical communication channels of increased security, and applying this method both in the context of method (i) and method (ii); and (iv) proposing the use of distributed hash tables DHT in building secure and optimized repositories in the context of method (i) and in the context method (ii), where the former involves a DHT repository of smart contracts and the latter involves a DHT repository of entities underlying smart contracts that are being exchanged among different smart contracts and subcontracts. The smart-contract focused methods introduced in this paper contribute to the overall goal towards a sustainable adaptive mechanism for processing evolving volumes, versatility, and complexity of blockchain transactions, traffic, and services. Blockchain-enabled services are efficient, secure, automated, and allowing worldwide distribution of resources. They present a more efficient and sustainable alternative to current service infrastructures within a range of domains, particularly the legal and financial domains. They also set a sustainable infrastructure for emerging Internet-of-things services.
Every individual undergoes a series of educational programs and acquires skills and pedagogical certifications throughout his/her life from various educational and skill development organisations across the world, including the companies they work for. It is imperative that there is a comprehensive record of these certifications that can be authentically verified by those wanting to employ the individual for these respective skills accredited through certifications. In this chapter, the authors explore the utility of blockchain technology-led digitization, automation of trust, and disintermediation in education sector. They examine some of the prominent use cases and challenges faced by blockchain technology. They also look at the current state of blockchain technology-enabled applications in related domains and its implications for the education sector in India along with a real-life illustration with implementation using AuxCert on Auxledger, a permissioned blockchain platform from Auxesis group.
Purwono Purwono, Alfian Ma’arif, Wahyu Rahmaniar, Qazi Mazhar ul Haq · 6 authors
Blockchain technology has a promising future in a number of industries and enterprises. Formerly connected to virtual currency like Bitcoin, blockchain has evolved into a versatile technology with many applications. In the upcoming years, it is predicted that blockchain will revolutionize a variety of industries, including banking, supply chain management, healthcare, voting systems, and more. The future of blockchain technology depends critically on its ability to increase security and transparency. By providing a decentralized and unchangeable record, eliminating the need for middlemen, and boosting participant confidence, blockchain promotes secure and traceable transactions. This transparency has the potential to transform whole industries by reducing fraud, streamlining processes, and increasing output. Blockchain also has the power to change financial systems. Blockchain-based smart contracts facilitate faster, more efficient transactions by automating and enforcing contractual agreements without the need for middlemen. By enabling speedier cross-border transactions, reducing costs, and boosting financial inclusion, tokenization and blockchain-based digital currencies have the potential to overturn conventional banking institutions. Blockchain’s key attributes, including decentralization, transparency, immutability, and security, make it a desirable choice for a range of organizations. Cross-border payments, trade finance, and smart contracts are just a few of the financial sector processes that blockchain technology has the potential to enhance and automate, lowering costs and increasing productivity. Additionally, the tamper-resistance of blockchain technology can boost transaction security and reliability, allowing for a wider use in traditional financial institutions. Outside of the financial industry, blockchain technology has a lot of promise, particularly in industries like supply chain management, healthcare, energy, intellectual property, and governance. By enabling transparent and traceable transactions, blockchain may improve supply chain efficiency, ensure product authenticity, and boost customer trust. By facilitating the secure exchange of patient data and research data, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology can enhance data security, interoperability, and privacy in the healthcare sector. A more decentralized and sustainable energy ecosystem may be supported by blockchain technology through peer-to-peer energy exchange, grid management, and monitoring of renewable energy certificates in the energy sector. Additionally, blockchain technology has the potential to transform decentralized governance structures, voting procedures, intellectual property rights, and digital identity management. By allowing people to own and manage their digital identities, blockchain can enhance privacy and reduce identity theft. Blockchain-based voting systems can offer transparency, security, and verifiability, thereby increasing voter turnout and public trust in democratic institutions. Blockchain can also enable the secure and transparent management of intellectual property rights, fostering author credit and just compensation.
At the heart of the Bitcoin is a blockchain protocol, a protocol for achieving consensus on a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. To the extent that a blockchain protocol is used for applications such as contract signing and making certain transactions (such as house sales) public, we need to understand what guarantees the protocol gives us in terms of agents' knowledge. Here, we provide a complete characterization of agent's knowledge when running a blockchain protocol using a variant of common knowledge that takes into account the fact that agents can enter and leave the system, it is not known which agents are in fact following the protocol (some agents may want to deviate if they can gain by doing so), and the fact that the guarantees provided by blockchain protocols are probabilistic. We then consider some scenarios involving contracts and show that this level of knowledge suffices for some scenarios, but not others.
Tareq Ahram, Arman Sargolzaei, Saman Sargolzaei, Jeff Daniels · 5 authors
Digital world has produced efficiencies, new innovative products, and close customer relationships globally by the effective use of mobile, IoT (Internet of Things), social media, analytics and cloud technology to generate models for better decisions. Blockchain is recently introduced and revolutionizing the digital world bringing a new perspective to security, resiliency and efficiency of systems. While initially popularized by Bitcoin, Blockchain is much more than a foundation for crypto currency. It offers a secure way to exchange any kind of good, service, or transaction. Industrial growth increasingly depends on trusted partnerships; but increasing regulation, cybercrime and fraud are inhibiting expansion. To address these challenges, Blockchain will enable more agile value chains, faster product innovations, closer customer relationships, and quicker integration with the IoT and cloud technology. Further Blockchain provides a lower cost of trade with a trusted contract monitored without intervention from third parties who may not add direct value. It facilitates smart contracts, engagements, and agreements with inherent, robust cyber security features. This paper is an effort to break the ground for presenting and demonstrating the use of Blockchain technology in multiple industrial applications. A healthcare industry application, Healthchain, is formalized and developed on the foundation of Blockchain using IBM Blockchain initiative. The concepts are transferable to a wide range of industries as finance, government and manufacturing where security, scalability and efficiency must meet.
Spyros Makridakis, Antonis Polemitis, George M. Giaglis, Soula Louca
Blockchain technologies, once used exclusively for buying and selling bitcoins, have entered the mainstream of computer applications, fundamentally changing the way Internet transactions can be implemented by ascertaining trust between unknown parties. In addition, they ensure immutability (once information is entered it cannot be modified) and enable disintermediation (as trust is assured, no third party is required to verify transactions). These advantages can produce disruptive changes when properly exploited, inspiring a large number of applications. These applications are forming the backbone of what can be called the Internet of Value, bound to bring as significant changes as those brought over the last 20 years by the traditional Internet. This chapter investigates blockchain and the technologies behind it and explains their technological might and outstanding potential, not only for transactions but also as distributed databases. It also discusses its future prospects and the disruptive changes it promises to bring, while also considering the challenges that would need to be overcome for its widespread adoption. Finally, the chapter considers combining blockchain with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and discusses the revolutionary changes that would result by rapidly advancing the AI field.
Distributed ledger technology, a method of storing and maintaining the integrity of multiple copies of critical data using a massively redundant network of participating machines, has found a “killer application” in blockchain, a type of distributed ledger. A blockchain consists of sequential blocks that may never be modified or reordered, leaving a public, auditable record that is consistent and highly resistant to tampering and deletion. These qualities make blockchain eminently suitable for its most common use, cryptocurrency, and its occasional variants in the form of cryptocurrency tokens, used to represent ownership or some other right to virtual or physical goods and capabilities. Blockchain also enables smart contracts, discrete bodies of software written to serve both as the memorial and the means of execution of an agreement between parties. Smart contracts can have all the elements of a traditional contract, and as jurisdictions legislate or jurists rule on the fine points of enforceability and the acceptability of smart contracts as traditional contracts, applications in nearly every area of commerce have emerged. Digital lawyers may not need to become software developers, but deepening their understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the technology, developing a keen awareness of the issues at the intersection between code and the law, as well as the law’s readiness in this area, will be of great advantage to them and their clients in this rapidly evolving area at the intersection of technology, commerce and law.
Arthur Gervais, Hubert Ritzdorf, Ghassan Karame, Srđjan Čapkun
Given the increasing adoption of Bitcoin, the number of transactions and the block sizes within the system are only expected to increase. To sustain its correct operation in spite of its ever-increasing use, Bitcoin implements a number of necessary optimizations and scalability measures. These measures limit the amount of information broadcast in the system to the minimum necessary. In this paper, we show that current scalability measures adopted by Bitcoin come at odds with the security of the system. More specifically, we show that an adversary can exploit these measures in order to effectively delay the propagation of transactions and blocks to specific nodes for a considerable amount of time---without causing a network partitioning in the system. Notice that this attack alters the information received by Bitcoin nodes, and modifies their views of the ledger state. Namely, we show that this allows the adversary to considerably increase its mining advantage in the network, and to double-spend transactions in spite of the current countermeasures adopted by Bitcoin. Based on our results, we propose a number of countermeasures in order to enhance the security of Bitcoin without deteriorating its scalability.
Open access
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Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques