Cordyceps militaris is a high-value medicinal mushroom known for its bioactive compounds, including cordycepin and polysaccharides, which have driven demand for scalable and economically efficient cultivation systems. This study presents an integrated techno-economic analysis (TEA) of Cordyceps production in modular shipping-container units under two operational strategies: (i) a centralized system with on-site substrate and spawn preparation, and (ii) a decentralized system relying on commercially produced spawn at a single grow-only site. Red rice was used as the cultivation substrate at two production scales (50 and 100 lb/day) and evaluated using a five-year financial model that incorporated capital expenditure (CapEx), operating expenditure (OpEx), revenue, net cash flows, discounted cash flows, and net present value (NPV). The model assumed 80% debt and 20% equity financing, a WACC of 6.48%, and a 30% corporate tax rate. GHG emissions were quantified within a farm-gate boundary encompassing electricity consumption, CO 2 from mushroom respiration, and raw material transportation. Centralized systems required higher initial CapEx ($212,232 and $375,408) but benefited from substantially lower raw-material costs, resulting in superior operating margins and annual cash flows. In contrast, decentralized systems incurred two-to three-fold higher substrate-related costs, which constrained profitability despite lower upfront capital requirements. As a result, centralized systems achieved significantly higher NPVs and shorter payback. Sensitivity analysis confirmed that the selling price and biological efficiency are the dominant drivers of NPV, while the electricity price has minimal influence across all scenarios. Centralized container-based production offers a more economically viable and scalable pathway for commercial Cordyceps cultivation.
The article examines the distribution and use of budgetary resources across different levels of governments in post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Ukraine. The relevance of the study derives from the need to assess fiscal decentralization models in the context of institutional transformation and current challenges, including those related to wartime conditions. The analysis focuses on the relationship between the institutional structure of subnational governance, the degree of fragmentation of local communities, and the patterns of budgetary resource allocation. Particular attention is given to the comparative assessment of revenue and expenditure structures, with an emphasis on ensuring cross-country comparability by excluding social security funds from the general government sector. The results indicate that most post-socialist countries have a centralized pattern of revenue formation combined with a relatively decentralized execution of public expenditures. This configuration gives rise to an asymmetry between the sources of financial resources and the responsibilities for their use. It is argued that this asymmetry represents a structural feature of intergovernmental relations and constrains the financial autonomy of local governments. The analysis also shows that more fragmented municipal systems are associated with higher levels of revenue centralization and stronger dependence on intergovernmental transfers, whereas larger territorial communities tend to provide a more stable basis for local fiscal capacity. In the case of Ukraine, a dual trend is observed. On the one hand, decentralization reforms have strengthened the financial capacity of local communities; on the other hand, wartime conditions have led to a temporary re-centralization of financial resources and an expanded role of the central government in financing priority expenditures. The findings may be used to improve the allocation of budgetary resources and to achieve a better alignment between revenue assignment and expenditure responsibilities, particularly in the context of post-war recovery.
О. А. Єрмоленко, Н. М. Лисьонкова, О. А. Карвацький
The article explores the evaluates the transformative potential of blockchain technology in modernizing Ukraine’s budgetary processes. Current public finance management faces systemic challenges, including opaque resource allocation, corruption risks, and inefficient oversight, as traditional centralized architectures lack real-time verifiability and remain susceptible to manipulation. As a decentralized distributed ledger technology, blockchain provides a robust framework for immutable record-keeping, cryptographic security, and comprehensive traceability. Specifically, smart contracts enable programmable governance by automating conditional payments in public procurement and social programs upon the verification of specific milestones, significantly reducing human intervention and establishing a tamper-proof single source of truth. International benchmarks, such as Georgia’s land registry and Estonia’s e-governance applications, demonstrate the efficacy of decentralized systems in ensuring data integrity. In the Ukrainian context as of 2026, implementation remains primarily in the pilot stage. While projects like the e-hryvnia and the State Land Cadastre have faced delays due to wartime constraints, humanitarian initiatives have successfully utilized blockchain for transparent donor tracking. The transition to this technology promises a substantial reduction in administrative costs and the restoration of institutional trust essential for post-war recovery and European Union integration. However, structural hurdles persist, ranging from technical scalability and high infrastructure costs to regulatory gaps and institutional resistance. A successful transition requires a phased strategy that prioritizes targeted pilots in high-risk sectors while harmonizing national legislation with international frameworks. By investing in digital infrastructure and comprehensive training, Ukraine can position blockchain as the cornerstone of a resilient, corruption-resistant public finance system.
Abstract Urban regeneration has emerged as a critical strategy for addressing housing shortages and spatial inefficiencies in rapidly urbanizing megacities. However, many urban regeneration approaches are market-driven and often prioritize economic growth over social equity, leading to persistent gaps in affordable housing delivery. This study investigates the institutional barriers to affordable housing provision in Shenzhen, China—a pioneer in market-oriented urban regeneration—through a neo-institutional economics (NIE) lens. Combining policy analysis and 26 semi-structured interviews with government officials, developers, and residents, the research identifies three interconnected institutional obstacles: (1) ambiguous property rights rooted in the rural-urban dual land system, which prolongs negotiation and approval processes; (2) high transaction costs arising from fragmented governance and bureaucratic complexities; and (3) misaligned incentives among stakeholders that prioritize commercial gains over public welfare. Empirical findings reveal that over 80% of urban village regeneration projects face delays exceeding one year due to tenure disputes, while 70% of developers spatially marginalize affordable housing to maximize profits. These dynamics form a self-reinforcing “institutional trap,” where path dependency on land-finance regimes and weak regulatory constraints perpetuate housing inequity. The study contributes to urban scholarship by adapting insights from New Institutional Economics into an integrative tripartite analytical lens (“institutional structure–transaction costs–behavioural choices”, STB) that traces cascading transaction costs across project stages and links them to actors’ strategic, normative and reputational behaviours in Shenzhen’s market-driven regeneration regime. It challenges the assumption that market efficiency aligns with social goals and underscores the need for institutional reforms to reconcile growth with equity. Policymakers must address structural contradictions, such as rigid land ownership regimes and decentralized governance, to break the low-equilibrium trap. The findings hold global relevance for megacities grappling with similar tensions between market-driven regeneration and inclusive development.
An analysis of the ethical and intergenerational dimensions of contemporary energy-finance transitions by systematically mapping the scholarly intersection between crude oil price volatility and cryptocurrency markets is conducted in this study. Drawing on a comprehensive bibliometric and topic-modelling analysis of 4,147 Scopus-indexed publications published between 2014 and 2024, the research investigates how emerging digital financial systems interact with oil market instability and broader sustainability concerns. By integrating Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling with co-citation and keyword network analysis, the study reveals evolving research themes related to energy financialization, decentralized finance, environmental externalities, and regulatory uncertainty. Beyond its technical contributions, the findings highlight critical ethical questions surrounding climate responsibility, distributive justice, and intergenerational equity, particularly in relation to energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining and speculative responses to oil price shocks. The paper advances the concept of moral imagination by demonstrating how financial and technological innovation can either reinforce unsustainable trajectories or support ethically grounded sustainability transitions. The results offer policy-relevant insights for regulators, investors, and institutions seeking to balance economic resilience with long-term environmental responsibility and justice for future generations.
Yevheniia Malyshko, Pavlo IVAKHNO, Roman KOLONTAIEVSKYI
Abstract. The article examines the theoretical and methodological foundations for assessing the market value of business projects in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector using a risk-oriented approach. The relevance of the study is driven by the rapid expansion of decentralized financial ecosystems, the increasing capitalization of blockchain-based projects, and the high volatility and uncertainty inherent in DeFi markets. Traditional valuation methods are insufficiently adapted to the specific characteristics of decentralized financial platforms, including tokenomics, smart contract architecture, liquidity instability, governance decentralization, and heightened cyber and regulatory risks. The purpose of the study is to improve methodological approaches to assessing the market value of business projects in the DeFi sector through the integration of risk-oriented analytical tools into the valuation process. The study systematizes key risk factors affecting the market value of decentralized financial projects, including technological, financial, operational, market, liquidity, and regulatory risks. Particular attention is devoted to the influence of Total Value Locked (TVL), token volatility, protocol revenue stability, governance decentralization, and smart contract security on investment attractiveness and capitalization dynamics. The methodological basis of the research includes comparative analysis, systematization, risk-oriented valuation methods, scenario analysis, and elements of financial modeling. The study proposes an integrated approach to business project valuation that combines traditional discounted cash flow methods with DeFi-specific indicators and risk coefficients. A comparative assessment of valuation models used in traditional finance and decentralized finance ecosystems is conducted. The obtained results demonstrate that the implementation of a risk-oriented approach significantly improves the accuracy and adaptability of business project valuation in decentralized financial markets. The proposed methodological framework enables a more objective assessment of project sustainability, investment attractiveness, and market capitalization under conditions of high market turbulence. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the development of a comprehensive valuation model that incorporates decentralized governance parameters, blockchain ecosystem indicators, and dynamic risk factors into the market valuation process. The practical significance of the study is associated with the possibility of applying the proposed methodological approach by investors, financial analysts, venture funds, and DeFi platform developers in the process of evaluating investment decisions and managing financial risks within decentralized digital ecosystems. Keywords: valuation, decentralized finance, market value, risk-oriented approach, smart contract risk, business projects, digital assets.
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) in decentralized finance (DeFi) enables searchers to profit from transaction ordering and arbitrage opportunities across Automated Market Makers (AMMs). Among MEV strategies, atomic triangular arbitrage is widely deployed due to its deterministic execution within a single transaction. However, executing profitable arbitrage under realistic constraints, such as limited wallet balance, pool liquidity, gas costs, and blockchain latency, remains a challenging optimization problem. In this work, we formulate atomic triangular arbitrage as a constrained optimization problem that jointly selects an ordered three-pool path and trade amount to maximize net profit. To solve this non-convex problem, we propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning approach based on Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). Experimental results show that while exhaustive grid search attains the highest returns, it requires a significantly high amount of inference time, making it infeasible for on-chain execution. In contrast, the proposed PPO agent achieves millisecond-level inference latency while generating consistent positive profit. These findings highlight a fundamental speed–profit trade-off in MEV extraction and demonstrate that PPO provides an effective and practical solution for atomic triangular arbitrage in DeFi.
Shiho Kim, Ho Suk, Roberto Di Pietro, Davor Svetinović · 7 authors
ZABAPAD (Zero-knowledge proof And Blockchain for WEB 4.0: Advancing the Post-quantum And Decentralized Era) is a workshop focusing on zero-knowledge technologies, blockchain infrastructure, and post-quantum readiness for the emerging Web 4.0 ecosystem. This workshop emphasizes real-world deployments, empirical measurements, and interoperability across Web and non-Web domains. In particular, ZABAPAD explores the convergence of AIoT and ZKP—redefining identity and trust models beyond SIM in mobile networks, IP in Web 2.0, and NFT in Web 3.0. As AIoT systems evolve toward decentralized, post-quantum infrastructures, ZKPbased authentication and AIoT SIM functionalities are emerging as key enablers of secure, privacy-preserving, and verifiable connectivity among intelligent devices, vehicles, and edge services. This theme extends to ZKML, Layer-2 proving/verification, TEE+ZK integration for verifiable compute, and post-quantum migration of identities, wallets, ledgers, and protocols. Expected outcomes include: (1) a practitioner-oriented adoption playbook, (2) an interoperability and standards checklist, (3) a curated set of reproducible benchmarks and datasets, and (4) a catalog of failure modes and mitigations for domains such as finance, mobility, healthcare, AIoT, public services, supply chain, and AI/ML. ZABAPAD complements the Web Conference and Web 4.0 communities by uniting global researchers and developers to chart actionable, trustworthy pathways toward the post-quantum, decentralized, and intelligent Internet.
This article examines how Switzerland’s decentralized welfare structure shapes the outcomes of Basic Income reforms. Using SWISSMOD, a static microsimulation model based on EUROMOD, we simulate unconditional transfer schemes of varying generosity at federal and cantonal levels, combined with alternative financing. Our results show that Basic Income reduces poverty and inequality across all scenarios, but effects differ by implementation level: federal schemes achieve stronger redistribution and uniformity, while cantonal schemes produce heterogeneous outcomes and maintain interregional disparities. Progressive taxation enhances equity but risks excessively high marginal rates; wealth taxation offers fiscal relief but does not automatically enhance poverty reduction or social protection in a decentralized setting. Thus, centralized implementation enhances uniformity and equity across regions, while decentralized administration preserves local differentiation but risks perpetuating spatial inequalities. These findings underscore the importance of aligning social policy design with fiscal federalism when considering unconditional transfers and equitable access to income security.
In the current conditions of digitalization of the economy, the financial sector is undergoing significant transformations under the influence of innovative technologies and FinTech solutions. At the same time, digitalization is accompanied by new challenges, such as cyber risks, the need to adapt the regulatory environment, and ensuring financial stability. Therefore, the study of trends in the financial and digital space is relevant for assessing the state of the FinTech sector, identifying dominant technologies and directions for the development of the digital financial ecosystem. The purpose of the study is to analyze current trends in the development of the financial and digital space and determine the structure of its main segments in order to assess the role of financial technologies in the transformation of the financial sector and the formation of a digital financial ecosystem. A set of general scientific and special methods was used: theoretical generalization and systematization, analysis and synthesis, statistical and comparative analysis, as well as the graphical method. The empirical basis is the NBU's statistical data on the dynamics of the payment infrastructure for 2021–2025 and analytical materials of the Ukrainian FinTech Association and innovative companies on the structure of the FinTech market. As a result, it was found that in 2021–2025, the payment infrastructure of Ukraine demonstrates a steady recovery after the shocks of 2022: the number of POS terminals increased from 368 thousand units (2022) to 605 thousand units (2025), active payment cards - from 46.3 million units to 65.4 million units, and the volume of transactions through POS terminals - from UAH 106 billion to UAH 210 billion. The structure of the Ukrainian FinTech market in 2025 is characterized by the dominance of technological infrastructure (28%), payments and transfers (18%), and personal/consumer lending (10%); smaller shares are accounted for by RegTech (8%), digital banks (7%), and personal finance management (7%). Among the technologies used by FinTech companies, API (71%), artificial intelligence (43%), chatbots (42%), and cloud technologies (39%) are leading, while blockchain (9%), DeFi (4%), and NFT (2%) are in the initial stages of implementation. The results confirm that the key trends in the financial and digital space are the integration of financial services, process automation, and the active use of artificial intelligence, which form the basis of the digital financial ecosystem. At the same time, the modern FinTech market of Ukraine is in the process of formation, and the latest technologies, such as blockchain and decentralized finance, have not yet become widespread.
Supply Chain Finance (SCF) enhances financial liquidity, optimizes operational efficiency, and strengthens collaboration among supply chain stakeholders. Traditional SCF systems are vulnerable to economic risks, fraud, and a lack of transparency due to centralized data control and limited real-time monitoring capabilities. Current systems rely on slow central financial bodies and static credit evaluations, lacking dynamic risk assessment and mechanisms to build stakeholder trust. This research proposes Bi-MATRA, a Blockchain-Integrated Multi-Agent Trust and Risk Assessment system. The goal is to create a decentralized, intelligent risk evaluation system for real-time trust computation and automated decision-making in SCF contexts. Bi-MATRA combines blockchain's immutability and transparency with a multi-agent system that automatically monitors and assesses risk. Bi-MATRA uses an adapted Eigen Trust algorithm on the blockchain to calculate trust. Agents rate each other based on interaction history, and transitive trust linkages determine global trust ratings. Smart contracts for dynamic trust-based decision-making update these scores. Smart contracts enforce predefined financial agreements, automating processes and reducing the need for intermediaries. Agent-based modelling was employed to develop a blockchain-based simulation testbed for assessing Bi-MATRA's responsiveness, accuracy, and resilience. The framework was more efficient at trust validation and risk identification than typical SCF systems. Key studies reveal that Bi-MATRA saves transaction clearance time by 35% and improves early risk detection by 28%. EigenTrust-based trust computation builds agent trust and accountability, enhancing financial interactions. In conclusion, the Bi-MATRA framework offers a scalable, decentralized approach to intelligent risk assessment and trust-building in blockchain-enabled supply chain finance systems.
This study presents a comparative analysis of the devolution of education governance between Makueni County in Kenya and Ontario, Canada, focusing on governance structures, funding mechanisms, and educational outcomes. The paper analyzes the various challenges and opportunities posed by decentralization in both regions, with a focus on differences in administrative resources, the distribution of central funds, and local government performance; Others are more systemic within the childhood education environment, for example Makueni County is still quite a long way behind Ontario in terms of fully (for the most part) functioning decentralized education systems, check out the comparative in terms of sustainable or reliable governance models, funding mechanisms and local autonomy, the other perhaps is regional segregation as certainly Makueni County has some overarching larger issues beyond just early childhood development e.g. the funding issues and deployment issues of teachers, but these perhaps can be attributed to the ongoing issues with devolution within Kenya and indeed with human capital in this region more broadly. Employing a mixed-methods research design including policy analysis, interviews and analysis of secondary data, the study examines the impact of devolution on educational outcomes. Results suggest that Makueni promotes more local participation but faces challenges with institutional functionality and fair financing, contrary to the Model of Ontario, which shows a much higher levels of efficiently, equity and accountability. The paper then ends with policy recommendations for Makueni, and suggesting to implement ones from Ontario´s decentralized system that could be a solution for Makueni missing in governance, financial, and education standards.
The rapid expansion of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has enabled open and permissionless token trading, but it has also led to a surge in fraudulent activities such as rug pulls, wash trading, and pump-and-dump schemes. This paper presents a novel fraud detection approach based on correlation analysis between token price and liquidity, leveraging the inherent relationship between these two market variables. In legitimate markets, price movements are typically supported by corresponding changes in liquidity, whereas fraudulent tokens often exhibit abnormal or decoupled behavior due to artificial price manipulation. To investigate this, we analyze time-series data of token price and liquidity across multiple decentralized exchanges and compute statistical correlation metrics alongside liquidity variation patterns. Experimental results show that legitimate tokens maintain strong positive correlations (r > 0.7) between price and liquidity, while fraudulent tokens exhibit weak or unstable correlations (r < 0.3), often accompanied by sudden liquidity withdrawals or artificial volume spikes. The proposed framework achieves high detection performance with an accuracy of 92.4%, precision of 90.1%, recall of 93.6%, and F1-score of 91.8%, demonstrating its effectiveness in identifying suspicious tokens at early stages. The findings confirm that deviations in price–liquidity correlation serve as a reliable and computationally efficient indicator for fraud detection in DeFi ecosystems. This approach can be integrated with existing blockchain analytics tools to enhance real-time monitoring and improve investor protection.
Angelo Ferrando, Blondelle Kana Zanlefack, Vadim Malvone
The exponential growth of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has underscored the critical need for formal verification methods that can reason about the financial properties of smart contracts. Traditional formal methods such as Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) cannot express liquidity properties—guarantees about users' ability to access assets based on wallet balances. We introduce Wallet ATL (WATL), an extension of ATL with wallet predicates and financially constrained strategic operators. WATL ensures that actions are both strategically and economically feasible. We formalize the semantics of WATL, provide model checking algorithms within the VITAMIN framework, and address scalability through the Meta-Agent Abstraction, which collapses all non-coalition agents into a single meta-agent with a sum-aggregated wallet. This abstraction preserves liquidity properties while significantly reducing the verification space. Through case studies such as a crowdfunding smart contract, we demonstrate how WATL formally specifies and verifies liquidity guarantees. Our results show that WATL, implemented in the VITAMIN tool, bridges the gap between multi-agent strategic reasoning and financial correctness, providing a practical step towards the formal verification of smart contracts with liquidity-awareness.
Effective management of education funding is crucial to ensuring the quality and sustainability of education, particularly in secondary schools, which often face significant financial challenges. This study aims to understand the meaning of technical and allocative efficiency in education funding in secondary schools in the era of decentralization. Using a qualitative approach, the study explores the experiences, perceptions, and strategies of school stakeholders including principals, teachers, and financial managers in managing educational resources. Data .were collected through in-depth interviews, observations, and document analysis, then analyzed thematically to uncover emerging patterns and meanings. The results indicate that technical efficiency is understood as a school's ability to maximize the use of funds to support effective teaching and learning, while allocative efficiency is defined as the alignment of budget distribution with educational priority needs and the local context. The era of decentralization provides space for schools to be more independent in decision making, but also poses challenges in maintaining a balance between resource constraints and demands for quality improvement. These findings emphasize the importance of managerial capacity and transparency in education funding and provide implications for policies that promote accountability and equitable access to education at the regional level.
This conceptual paper explores the profound impact and pivotal role of information systems (IS) within the rapidly evolving landscape of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Emerging from the advancements in blockchain technology, DeFi represents a paradigm shift in financial management, offering an ecosystem that is more inclusive, transparent, and efficient by removing centralized intermediaries through smart contracts. This paper analyzes how IS principles are fundamental to the design, management, and security of DeFi protocols, contrasting them with traditional financial systems. It delves into core DeFi applications such as Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), lending/borrowing protocols, stablecoins, and yield farming, emphasizing their underlying IS architectures and the challenges related to user experience (UX/UI). Furthermore, the paper discusses critical IS aspects in DeFi, including security management, automation via smart contracts, blockchain-based analytics for risk management and anomaly detection, and the unique governance mechanisms through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Finally, it outlines the future trajectory of DeFi, considering its integration with emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Web3, and its evolving relationship with global financial systems and regulations. This work contributes to understanding the complex interplay between technology and finance, highlighting how robust information systems are indispensable for DeFi's sustained growth and its potential to reshape the digital financial ecosystem.
Abstract: This paper will compare and contrast heights of financial inclusion strategies adopted by Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) in Malaysia and Indonesia and specifically discuss Islamic social finance instruments, digital finance and community-based models. By using thematic analysis applied to a variety of policy documents, as well as institutional and implementation strategies, a qualitative comparative approach that is based on secondary data, the study analyzes policy documents and institutional and implementation strategies. The findings indicate that Malaysia follows a policy-based, centralized, and robust regulatory coordination, digital enablement, and integration of Value-Based Intermediation (VBI) and Islamic social finance tools. By contrast, Indonesia uses a decentralized and community-based model, which is powered by Islamic microfinance institutions, including Baitul Maal wat Tamwil (BMTs) with strong grassroots penetration but with issues in terms of standardization of governance and digital readiness. This research study is of value because it presents an integrative analytical model that connects the governance systems, digital integration, and Islamic social finance in determining the financial inclusion outcomes. It sheds light on significant trade-offs between efficiency and inclusiveness, centralization and flexibility, and provides policy relevant insights towards improving inclusive Islamic finance ecosystems.
The rapid growth of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has been accompanied by increasingly sophisticated security threats. Price Oracle Manipulation Attacks (POMA), a critical vulnerability, have evolved beyond simple economic exploits to include complex, multi-transaction attacks that exploit smart contract logic, causing hundreds of millions in losses. State-of-the-art detection methods, however, often focus on single-transaction, economic manipulations and typically fail to identify these emerging attack vectors, particularly when smart contract source code is unavailable. This article introduces a novel, EVM-compatible detection pipeline that addresses this gap. By combining transaction event logs and execution traces, we engineer a rich set of semantic and structural features that capture the underlying behavior of on-chain operations. We train a regularized autoencoder exclusively on the features of benign transactions to learn a deep representation of normal activity, flagging significant deviations as malicious. Our evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach, achieving 100% recall on a comprehensive dataset of single-transaction attacks and 98.25% event-level recall on a new, manually collected dataset of real-world multi-transaction exploits, with an overall precision of 97.15%. We present a robust, learning-based model capable of identifying both known and unseen POMA variants without relying on source code. Furthermore, we contribute a new dataset of multi-transaction attacks to foster further research, providing a more generalizable and resilient approach to securing the DeFi ecosystem.
Transaction ordering attacks extract billions of dollars annually from decentralized finance users in the form of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols guarantee total order but place no constraint on how that order is chosen, leaving the door open for adversarial reordering. Batch-order-fairness (batch-OF) protocols close this gap, but existing designs pay a steep performance price for this guarantee. Leader-based protocols such as Themis concentrate all fairness decisions at a single replica, while recent DAG-based proposals FairDAG and DAG of DAGs (DoD) force their fairness layer into strictly serial execution despite running on multi-proposer DAGs. We present Herring, the first $γ$-batch-OF DAG BFT protocol whose fairness layer parallelizes the dominant graph construction cost across committed subdags. Herring combines post-consensus graph construction with explicit missing edge resolution piggybacked on the DAG's reliable broadcast layer, a pairing that turns fair ordering from a per-round serial bottleneck into a CPU-bound task. We also uncover previously unreported liveness vulnerabilities in both FairDAG-RL and DoD that a malicious client can trigger to halt the fairness layer indefinitely, and propose patches that we integrate into our reimplementations. We implement Herring on top of the Rust implementation of Narwhal \& Tusk and evaluate it against FairDAG-RL, DoD-W, and Themis. Herring tracks the throughput of Narwhal \& Tusk closely up to roughly $10{,}000$\,tx/s, achieves roughly $90\%$ higher saturation throughput than FairDAG-RL and $100\%$ higher than DoD-W, and substantially reduces execution latency at saturation.
Blockchain technology has established itself as one of the main innovations associated with contemporary digital transformation, standing out for its ability to decentralize records, securely validate transactions, and reduce dependence on intermediaries. Initially linked to cryptocurrencies, its application has expanded to different sectors, such as finance, public administration, supply chains, and digital identity systems. This study aimed to analyze the economic and social impacts of blockchain, discussing its applications, potentialities, and challenges. The research is characterized as qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive, developed through bibliographic and documentary review based on national and international academic publications produced between 2008 and 2025. The results show that blockchain has the potential to promote greater transparency, security, traceability, and operational efficiency, in addition to enabling new business models based on decentralization and process automation. However, the analysis also highlights challenges related to scalability, interoperability, security, regulation, and digital inclusion, factors that may limit its large-scale adoption. Furthermore, the effectiveness of this technology depends on the existence of adequate infrastructure, technical training, and the development of public policies aimed at democratizing digital access. It is concluded that blockchain has strategic relevance in the contemporary economic and social scenario, although its consolidation depends on overcoming structural and institutional challenges that ensure its sustainable and socially inclusive application.
Zahra Niazkhani, Iris Wallenburg, Johanna Hendriks, Rik Wehrens
In the context of increasing healthcare digitalization, hospital-based clinicians are developing and implementing decentralized digital health innovations (DHIs) tailored to their patient and clinical needs. However, achieving financial sustainability remains one of their challenges. We explored clinician innovators' perspectives on these challenges during the implementation and scale-up of their DHIs in a Dutch academic hospital using qualitative methods. Key challenges identified included funding gaps to cover transition costs, misaligned institutional financial incentives and reimbursement structures, short-term logics of funders overshadowing long-term value in DHI financing, and commercialization pressures. Findings provide insights into the financial and operational challenges faced by such context-driven internal innovations, highlighting the need for coordinated project-and institution-level strategies to support sustainable integration into routine care.
Pieter van den Berg, Andre Calmon, Andreas Gernert, Stef Lemmens · 6 authors
Problem definition: Emergency medical services (EMS) in many low- and middle-income countries utilize decentralized platforms coordinating independent ambulance providers. However, significant operational challenges arise from uncertainty in provider time availability and unpredictable idle locations. These uncertainties hinder reliable service coverage and negatively impact patient outcomes. Using data from our partner Flare in Nairobi, Kenya, we investigate the relative effectiveness of enhancing provider temporal commitment (time availability) versus spatial commitment (strategic location) to improve system coverage.Methodology/results: We employ optimization models adapted for ambulance commitment uncertainty, a detailed case study analysis, data-driven simulations, and a game-theoretic model. Our findings quantify a stark "cost of decentralization": the coverage provided by Flare's approximately 340 loosely committed ambulances could potentially be matched by fewer than 15 optimally deployed fully committed units. We find that enhancing spatial commitment generally yields higher marginal returns for improving coverage than solely increasing time availability. Adding just five optimized, location-flexible ambulances increased coverage substantially in simulation (e.g., by approximately 5\% over the baseline fleet) and reduced service variability. Simulations confirm the practical impact of interventions and validate model assumptions, while a game-theoretic model offers generalizable insights; both approaches align in highlighting the significant value of spatial coordination. Managerial implications: For managers and decision-makers overseeing decentralized EMS platforms, prioritizing strategies that improve spatial coordination offers an efficient path to enhancing service reliability and performance. Actionable strategies include targeted incentives that encourage providers to relocate strategically or deploy a small fleet of location-flexible, platform-controlled units to fill critical coverage gaps. Our framework offers practical tools for managers to identify coverage gaps and assess the potential impact of such interventions in resource-constrained settings, ultimately aiming to enhance emergency response.
The article studies the role of finance control in elaborating the effective system of digital asset insurance. Special attention was paid to analyzing regulatory barriers hindering the development of crypto- currency and search for insurance solutions to minimize finance risks of digital economy. Key problems were analyzed, including fragmental nature of legal regulation, absence of unique standards in defining crypto-assets and poor coordination between national and international regulatory approaches. The focus was made on institutional problems, such as drawbacks in court practice, shortcomings in KYC/AML procedures and deficit of specialized compensation mechanisms for investors. On the basis of comparative analysis of regulatory practices in different countries the authors proposed ways to harmonize finance control, including elaboration of unique standards of digital asset insurance, working-out cross-border platforms to exchange information concerning cyber-incidents and introduction of ‘regulatory sandboxs’ to test innovation insurance products. The importance of adapting international recommendations FATF and IOSCO to specific features of decentralized finance systems was underlined. Practical significance of the research consists in advancing mechanisms, which can reduce legal uncertainty, strengthen confidence of investors and integrate crypto-insurance in the global finance infrastructure. Implementation of these steps can give an opportunity to raise sustainability of digital economy to cyber-risks and create conditions for developing insurance solutions of the new generation, such as parametric insurance and decentralized autonomous insurance organizations (DAIO).
The past decade has witnessed unprecedented innovation in financial technology, most notably the rise of cryptocurrency and digital assets. This paper examines how these developments have fundamentally reshaped one of monetary economics’ most enduring concepts: the money multiplier. From Bitcoin’s emergence to today’s complex ecosystem of stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi), digital assets have created parallel monetary systems that challenge central banks’ ability to measure and control the money supply (Bianchi et al., 2021).This paper has three primary objectives. First, to develop a theoretical framework that extends Divisia monetary aggregation - the gold standard for measuring money’s liquidity services (Barnett, 1980) to include cryptocurrencies and related digital assets, building on recent work applying Divisia indices to crypto-inclusive money demand (Mumtaz et al., 2025). Second, to derive a new crypto-adjusted money multiplier that captures liquidity creation across both traditional and digital financial systems, integrating the concept of the "crypto multiplier" introduced by Garratt and van Oordt (2023). Third, to analyse the implications for monetary policy transmission and financial stability using a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model (Fernández-Villaverde et al., 2020), considering the growing synchronization between crypto and global equity cycles (Fund, 2023). By achieving these objectives, we provide policymakers, financial institutions, and researchers with tools to understand and navigate the hybrid financial landscape of the 2020s.