Imagine the hunt to predict Bitcoin&s;s wildly swinging price as a high-stakes competition among four clever computer programs, because investors really need to know where it&s;s headed to make smart plans. Our study pitted these programs—the classic ARIMA, the modern Facebook Prophet, the powerful XGBoost, and the deep-learning LSTM network—against each other to see which could best guess future Bitcoin prices. Using two main report cards, the MAE and RMSE scores, we found that Prophet and ARIMA were neck-and-neck, but the XGBoost model completely missed the mark, proving highly inaccurate with very high error scores. However, the true champion turned out to be the LSTM neural network, which blew the others out of the water by delivering the lowest error scores on both test and training data, essentially making it the most reliable tool for anyone looking to build a winning strategy in the tricky world of crypto trading.
Cloud computing infrastructures are facing serious risks from Distributed-Denial-of Service attacks, which include historically high attack volumes and ineffectiveness of conventional defensive strategies. The usefulness of blockchain based security measures in detecting and preventing DDoS attacks on cloud computing infrastructure is covered in this paper. Analyzed a hybrid approach that integrated distributed ledger technology with smart contracts for the identification of attack patterns across 50 enterprise cloud environments over a period of 18 months. Our results show a reduction of false positives by as much as 87% for blockchain-based validation compared to the conventional approach and a 94% success rate in the detection of advanced DDoS variants. The response time remained, on average, around 2.3 seconds during the high-volume attack in comparison to traditional centralized solutions. The results in the paper gives an idea that an immutable and distributed consensus characteristic based on blockchain provides robust defenses against modern DDoS threats. This work represents a growing body of evidence supporting the validity of incorporating blockchain into the architecture of the next generation of cloud-based security.
Abstract - The rise of digital technology has led to an increase in cybercrime. This has made the management of digital forensic evidence more complicated. Traditional evidence management systems utilize manual methods and centralized databases. Methods like these are vulnerable to data tampering, unauthorized access, and human error. These issues threaten the integrity of the evidence and the chain of custody during the investigation process. In this paper, we introduce a system that utilizes blockchain technology, smart contracts, and a decentralized system for the tracking of forensic evidence. Security and transparency will be guaranteed. In our system, evidence records are stored as ERC-721 Non-Fungible Tokens. A private Ethereum blockchain was developed using Ganache and combined with wallet-based authentication and Role-Based Access Control to ensure that only authorized personnel have the ability to view and manage evidence. Smart contracts facilitate the registration, verification, transfer, and auditing of evidence, thus, considerably reducing the manual work and greatly increasing the trustworthiness of the system. We proposed a hybrid system of storage whereby evidence and its forensic files are stored off chain, and the evidence metadata and its forensic files are stored on chain. This paper presents the design and architecture of the system,implementation and evaluation are in progress.Our system will be a trusted, efficient, and effective system of evidence management.
Background: Maritime container shipping carries over 80% of global trade, yet compliance verification creates a confidentiality–verifiability conflict: carriers treat telemetry as commercially sensitive, while regulators, insurers, and port authorities require verifiable proof that cargo remained within specification. The EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) mandates Digital Product Passports (DPPs), but no standardised DPP architecture exists for the multi-stakeholder maritime domain. Methods: We present Ocean DPP, a blockchain-anchored platform combining GS1 EPCIS 2.0, oneM2M, IOTA, and Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), letting stakeholders verify compliance predicates without revealing raw sensor values; Merkle-tree batching reduces anchoring costs. We evaluate it in 16 experiments on a single-host testbed using synthetic workloads and a local IOTA network. Results: The platform achieved 95th-percentile latency of 48 ms without ZKP and 500 ms with proof generation, throughput of 7 events/s per host, 304 ms mean proof generation and 9.8 ms verification, 100% EPCIS 2.0 compliance, and zero permanent message loss across four failure-injection scenarios; horizontal scaling reduced the median latency by 37%. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, Ocean DPP is the first implemented, quantitatively evaluated platform integrating EPCIS 2.0, oneM2M, IOTA, and Groth16 ZKPs for privacy-preserving maritime DPPs; broader multi-host and public-network validation remains for future work.
Token-governance decentralization is not established by launch allocation, raw holder counts, or token-inequality metrics. It is an auditable current-control condition: who holds governance-relevant tokens after protocol-controlled addresses (PCAs) are removed, who retains insider positions, and how voting mechanisms transform holdings into rule-making power. Token allocation is a launch document. Governance concentration is a live institutional state. We turn that standard into a method across a 52-protocol cross-section spanning DePIN, DeFi, infrastructure, and social tokens, computing Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) concentration after PCA exclusion. Under audit, launch-design and protocol-financial covariates (insider, team, and investor allocation; maturity; circulating float; valuation ratios) are each uninformative about steady-state concentration (insider allocation Pearson r = 0.09, p = 0.55, N = 50). Current insider retention is the holder-side correlate that survives: protocols with more insider wallets among top holders are more concentrated (Spearman rho = 0.44, p = 0.005, N = 39, surviving a non-insider HHI tautology check at rho = 0.54). Voting mechanisms then separate rule-making power from holdings: delegation amplifies voting power above token holdings in thirteen of eighteen protocols with sufficient governance data, with five design-driven exceptions (ENS, GMX, HNT, JUP, LPT). A subsidy-to-concentration association appears only through a single outlier (Pearson r = 0.62 including Livepeer, r = 0.07 excluding it). Applied across sectors, the audit also distinguishes DePIN from DeFi: DePIN governance is more concentrated than DeFi after correction, a directionally robust medium effect (Cohen’s d = 0.65, Mann-Whitney p = 0.028), reported as a descriptive sector contrast, not as the central claim. Holder-list concentration is meaningless until the unit of control is identified. The five-class PCA-exclusion typology is control attribution, not data cleaning, correcting systematic inflation in prior holder-list studies (median factor 2.3×, maximum approximately 18×); once control is attributed, Gini and HHI capture distinct properties of the same holder set (r = 0.52), and inequality metrics cannot substitute for direct concentration measurement. All findings are descriptive associations from a single 2026 cross-section (holder snapshots collected March to May 2026), not causal claims; the audit standard and the current-control thesis are general, while the specific point estimates are bounded to that sample. The paper specifies five forward predictions with falsification thresholds and commits to Open Science Framework pre-registration before any panel or event-study extension. The practical implication is a changed audit default: a decentralization claim requires a live-governance audit of PCA-corrected holdings, insider retention, and voting power, not launch allocation or raw holder lists. Concentration of this kind bears on the legitimacy of decentralized governance, not only its efficiency: where a small set of holders or delegates commands decisive voting weight, the broad participation in rule modification that the commons self-governance ideal presumes is nominal rather than operative.
Introduction AI drives hyper personalization in digital marketing while blockchain offers privacy and security. This review addresses the tension between consumer demand for customized experiences and growing concern over data safety. Methods This study applies the PRISMA framework to systematically review 56 peer reviewed papers published between 2015 and 2024 addressing AI personalization, blockchain privacy, and consumer trade offs in digital marketing. Results Three central themes emerged: (1) AI drives hyper personalization and ROI strategies, (2) blockchain enhances data security, trust, and GDPR compliance, (3) consumers face trade offs between convenience and privacy. Consumers accept personalized marketing when the mechanism is transparent and under their control. Blockchain reduces certain ethical issues linked to AI, including data exploitation and lack of auditability, but does not resolve algorithmic bias or scalability challenges. Twenty five percent of the analyzed research originates from India, showing regional concentration, while Africa and Latin America remain under represented. Discussion Marketers should adopt blockchain audited AI systems, such as transparent recommendation engines and decentralized data marketplaces, to build consumer trust. Policymakers should establish hybrid regulatory ecosystems that balance innovation with ethical compliance, including GDPR consistent consent mechanisms and global interoperability standards. Cross discipline collaboration remains necessary to align technology with consumer centric values and ensure equitable adoption of AI and blockchain across markets.
Adnan Iftekhar, Chengliang Zheng, Xiaohui Cui, Mir Hassan
Blockchain can preserve supply-chain records, but ledger integrity alone does not show whether a participant should be trusted in a future risk-sensitive transaction. Existing reputation systems mainly address product evidence, global feedback aggregation, or review authenticity, while giving less attention to repeated bilateral inflation, identity multiplicity, and unfair decay for honest participants with sparse histories. We present \RC, a participant trust framework that uses blockchain as an evidence and provenance layer rather than as the source of trust. Governed interaction outcomes are converted into bounded evidence. Repeated interactions between the same pair are discounted, low counterparty diversity is penalized, governance-supplied identity confidence weights positive evidence, and scores decay toward a neutral prior according to verified interaction volume. Identity, contract, outcome, and update provenance remain on chain, while nonlinear reputation computation is performed off chain and checked on chain for admissibility. In controlled simulations with 30 seeded runs and matched interaction traces, the full model reduces mean collusive gain to 0.1443, compared with 0.3688 for naive mean evidence and 0.3585 for static decay. With ten identities under one controller, the reputation inflation ratio falls to 0.8723, while three comparison baselines remain above 1.08. On identical newcomer traces, volume-aware decay increases mean newcomer reputation from 0.6626 to 0.7589 and reduces the false low-trust rate from 0.3633 to 0.1683. Paired analysis confirms these improvements across runs. The results support a bounded reduction in reputation distortion, not attacker detection. Deployment evaluation and calibration with operational data are still required before production use.
A software agent on a public blockchain accumulates authority and economic stakes, raising the engineering question of what makes it count as an individual. The paper's central contribution is a shift of trust root for the key-to-weights binding of agent identity: from hardware, operator, or wrapper trust to cryptographic assumptions enforced by a pinned implementation (liveness, key custody, oracle trust, and the underlying software stack remain external). We design and deploy on Solana devnet an agent whose neural-network weights are a deterministic function of its private key. The binding is committed in zero knowledge at genesis, re-checked against that commitment at every state transition, and signed by the agent into an on-chain history unforkable once finalized; in a PoC-tier extension, a protocol-imposed metabolic cost is debited each cycle from a key-derived economic account, adding a consumption-side economic-viability constraint to the key-history-economy triple. Empirically, the agent completes a 2.36-day on-chain run with two host-side resumptions but no rejected transition, at bounded per-transition verification cost; a substituted substrate is rejected on chain, and independently keyed agents diverge as predicted while a same-key control stays at zero. To our knowledge, this is the first published on-chain agent whose identity primitive is itself a cryptographic invariant re-checked at every state transition. The resulting transition-time invariant instantiates the cryptographic individuality proposed by Suzuki 2026's Artificial Externality framework.
George Thomas Sofras, Ourania Theodosiadou, Theodora Tsikrika, Stefanos Vrochidis · 5 authors
The increasing use of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin (BTC), has created new challenges for financial investigation. Although blockchain transactions are publicly accessible, the pseudo-anonymous nature of cryptocurrency networks can facilitate illicit financial activity. This work explores anomaly detection in the Bitcoin network using a semi-supervised Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder (LSTM-AE). The focus is on the analysis of wallet activity over time in order to capture temporal behavioral patterns that may be related to illicit activities. Experiments are conducted on the Elliptic++ dataset. The model is trained exclusively on licit behaviour and the results indicate that the proposed formulation is able to retrieve a large proportion of illicit wallets despite the highly imbalanced setting.
Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a prominent asset class characterized by rapid price fluctuations, growing institutional participation, and continuing debate over whether their price movements are random or predictable. This study examines the randomness and weak-form market efficiency of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Binance Coin, XRP, USD Coin, Solana, TRON, Dogecoin, and Hype liquid—using daily closing price data from April 2016 to March 2026 (subject to data availability for each coin). Daily log returns were tested using Descriptive Statistics, the Jarque–Bera test of normality, the Wald–Wolfowitz Run Test, and the Autocorrelation Test. The results show that daily returns for all selected cryptocurrencies are non-normally distributed, exhibiting excess kurtosis and skewness. The Run Test results indicate that seven of the ten cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Binance Coin, XRP, USD Coin, and Dogecoin—do not follow a random walk, while Solana, TRON, and Hype liquid exhibit randomness consistent with weak-form efficiency. However, the Autocorrelation Test reveals strong positive serial correlation across all ten cryptocurrencies, indicating that the market falls short of weak-form efficiency. The study concludes that the cryptocurrency market provides mixed and largely inefficient evidence with respect to the Random Walk Hypothesis, implying that historical price information may retain some predictive value for investors.
Adam Zahir, Vincent Lefebvre, Mark Angoustures, Milan Groshev · 5 authors
Multi-agent systems (MAS) comprise autonomous software agents that collaborate to perform complex tasks in critical cyber-physical domains, including multi-robot coordination and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In such distributed environments, a compromised agent may execute modified software while appearing trustworthy, causing other agents to act on false information and corrupting the mission. Agents must therefore establish and maintain mutual trust throughout operation. Remote attestation (RA) is a well-established technique for this purpose, enabling a remote verifier to assess the integrity of a potentially compromised prover device. However, conventional RA approaches face significant limitations in MAS: integrity guarantees are restricted to boot or application-load time, designs rely on centralized trusted verifiers or security hardware, and attestation records lack transparency and auditability. To address these limitations, this paper presents D-MUTRA, a blockchain-based framework that introduces a mutual RA protocol in which agents measure their runtime integrity while verifying that of their peers, acting as both prover and verifier. The framework operates entirely in software and relies on two components: a Security-as-a-Service that instruments agents with lightweight measurement and verification capabilities, and a smart contract that coordinates the attestation protocol in a decentralized and transparent manner. We implement a proof-of-concept on a private Ethereum blockchain using Hyperledger Besu and evaluate it in a swarm robotics scenario built with Robot Operating System (ROS) and the Gazebo simulator. Results show that D-MUTRA enables agents to continuously attest one another, detects malicious software modifications, and scales to large deployments with negligible overhead on protected applications.
High-performance Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) blockchains are designed to achieve high throughput and low latency, yet their observed block time distributions often reveal complex behaviors arising from networking, pipelining, and deployment heterogeneity. In this paper, we diagnose HotStuff-based high-performance BFT consensus by modeling block times through a quorum-based multicast framework that links each block interval to quorum formation latency. We capture multimodal block time distributions using mixture models, where each component represents a distinct network condition characterized by effective transfer rate of block information. The proposed model is fitted to the bulk of mainnet block time data, while tail decay is analyzed separately to assess asymptotic behavior. Applying this methodology to Hyperliquid and Aptos mainnets, we find that Hyperliquid is well explained by a unimodal distribution, consistent with a relatively homogeneous validator deployment. In contrast, Aptos exhibits persistent multimodal structure and a pronounced shift following a consensus upgrade, reflecting heterogeneous deployments and diverse communication paths. These results demonstrate that mixture modeling of block time provides a practical and informative diagnostic tool for analyzing and monitoring high-performance BFT consensus.
When we consider the PoW (proof-of-work) in the Bitcoin blockchain, how is the work calculated? How does this work convert to energy quantities? This paper demonstrates that in the Bitcoin blockchain, "Proof-of-Work" (PoW) is not a complex calculus equation, but rather a probabilistic brute-force search. Miners repeatedly run block header data through a cryptographic hash function, tweaking variables until they output a number that meets a strict network threshold. In the Bitcoin blockchain, Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a probabilistic brute-force search where miners repeatedly run block headers through a double SHA-256 hash function to find an output below a global target threshold. The mathematical "work" is quantified by the network Difficulty (D), requiring roughly D × 2³² expected hashes per block. To convert this cryptographic effort into physical energy, the global network hashrate is first derived by dividing total block hashes by Bitcoin’s 10-minute target block time (600 seconds). This computational rate is then bridged to the physical world using hardware efficiency—measured in Joules per Terahash (J/TH)—multiplied by operational time. Because modern semiconductor ASICs operate roughly seven orders of magnitude above the absolute thermodynamic limits outlined by Landauer's principle, nearly all electricity consumed by this cryptographic pipeline directly converts into waste heat. The calculation of this work, how it translates mathematically to network metrics, and how those metrics convert into physical energy quantities is the discussion of this paper.<b>Part 1: How the "Work" is Calculated</b><b>1. The Hashing Puzzle (Double SHA-256)</b>A miner constructs a block header containing transaction data, a timestamp, the hash of the previous block, and a changing variable called a nonce. They pass this header through the SHA-256 algorithm twice:<br>H(x) = SHA-256(SHA-256(Block Header))The resulting output is a 256-bit unsigned integer, typically represented as a 64-character hexadecimal string.<b>2. The Target (</b><b>T</b><b>)</b>The network enforces a global threshold called the Target (T). For a block to be accepted, the hash output interpreted as a massive 256-bit integer must satisfy:<br>Hash Output ≤ T<br>Because the output of a cryptographic hash function is completely random and uniformly distributed, miners cannot predict the output. Finding a valid hash is essentially a Bernoulli trial (like rolling a die with an astronomical number of sides).<b>3. Mathematical Definition of Difficulty (D)</b>Because the Target T is a massive 256-bit number that changes every 2,016 blocks, Bitcoin uses a human-readable metric called Difficulty (D), scaled relative to a baseline "genesis" target (T<sub>max</sub>).<br>T<sub>max</sub> = 0x00000000FFFF0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000The difficulty formula is D = T<sub>max</sub>/TAs the network gains more miners, T drops (becomes smaller), making hashes harder to find, which increases D.<br>The expected number of hashes E[hashes] required to find a valid block at a given difficulty is proportional to D:E[hashes] = D × 2³² × T/T<sub>max</sub> (scaled to baseline expectations)<br>More simply, the total expected hashes per block is roughly:Expected Hashes ≈ D × 4.295 × 10⁹<b>Part 2: From Computational Work to Energy Quantities</b>Energy consumption is a byproduct of hardware efficiency operating over a span of time to execute these hash attempts. There is no direct algorithmic conversion from a hash to Joules in the protocol code; instead, the conversion bridges cryptographic operations and thermodynamic hardware efficiency.<b>Step 1: Calculate Total Network Hashrate (H</b><sub><strong>net</strong></sub><b>)</b>The global hashrate represents the total number of hashes computed per second across all active machines globally. It is derived directly from the current difficulty (D) and Bitcoin's target block time (t = 600 seconds or 10 minutes):<br>Hashes per block = D × 2³²<br>Network Hashrate (H<sub>net</sub>) = D × 2³²/600 [hashes/second or H/s]<b>Step 2: Factor in Hardware Efficiency (EF)</b>ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) miners dominate Bitcoin mining. Their electrical efficiency is measured in Joules per Terahash (J/TH) or Watts per Gigashash. Let the aggregate hardware efficiency of the network be denoted as EF (expressed in Joules per Hash, J/H):EF = Total Power Consumption (Watts)/Hashrate (H/s)<b>Step 3: Energy Derivation Formula</b>To calculate the total energy consumed by the entire Bitcoin network over a specific timeframe (e.g., 1 second, 1 day, or 1 year), we multiply the network hashrate by the hardware efficiency and time (t):<br>Energy (E) = H<sub>net</sub> × EF × Δ tSubstituting H<sub>net</sub> into the equation:<br>E = (D · 2³²/600) × EF × Δ t<br>For example, assume a network difficulty (D) of roughly 80 × 10¹² (80 trillion). Also, assume an average fleet hardware efficiency (EF) of 25 Joules per Terahash (25 × 10⁻¹² J/H). Calculate energy consumed over 1 day (Δ t = 86,400 seconds):Hashes/sec = 80 × 10¹² × 4,294,967,296/600 ≈ 5.72 × 10²⁰ H/sPower (Watts) = (5.72 × 10²⁰ H/s) × (2.5 × 10⁻¹¹ J/H) ≈ 14,300,000,000 W = 14.3 GWEnergy over 1 day = 14.3 GW × 24 hours ≈ 343.2 GWhThe summary of the conversion pipeline may be expressed as<br>Target (T) ⟶ Difficulty (D) ⟶ Network Hashrate (H<sub>net</sub>) ⟶× Hardware Efficiency (J/H)⟶ Power (Watts) ⟶× Time⟶ Energy (Joules/kWh)<b>Part 3: Thermodynamic Limits and Efficiency Bounds (Landauer's Principle)</b>To fully connect cryptographic work to physical energy, we can look at the theoretical minimum energy required by the laws of physics to perform computation.<b>1. Landauer's Principle</b>Landauer's principle establishes the minimum possible amount of energy required to erase or irreversibly manipulate a bit of information at a given temperature (T<sub>temp</sub>):<br>E<sub>min</sub> = k<sub><em>B</em></sub> T<sub>temp</sub> ln(2)k<sub><em>B</em></sub> is the Boltzmann constant (1.380649 × 10⁻²³ J/K).T<sub>temp</sub> is the absolute temperature of the environment (e.g., 300 K).For a single bit modification at room temperature, this absolute thermodynamic floor is roughly 2.8 × 10⁻²¹ Joules per bit.<b>2. Comparing SHA-256 to the Thermodynamic Limit</b>A single SHA-256 calculation involves processing a 512-bit message block through 64 rounds of complex logical operations (bitwise additions, rotations, and shifts), manipulating hundreds of thousands of bits cumulatively.Theoretical minimum energy per hash: Factoring in the sheer number of bit operations inside SHA-256, even a reversibly ideal computer would require thousands of bit manipulations, putting a strict physical floor on a single hash well above Landauer's limit (roughly on the order of 10⁻¹⁹ to 10⁻¹⁸ Joules per hash under optimal theoretical conditions).Actual ASIC efficiency: Modern state-of-the-art ASIC miners (like the Bitmain Antminer S21 series) operate around 15 to 20 J/TH (1.5 × 10⁻¹¹ Joules per hash).Comparing real-world hardware (10⁻¹¹ J/H) to absolute physical limits (10⁻¹⁸ J/H) reveals that current silicon-based semiconductor technology is roughly 7 orders of magnitude away from theoretical thermodynamic efficiency—meaning nearly all energy put into Bitcoin mining converts directly into waste heat.<b>Part 4: Complete Comprehensive Master Equation</b>Combining all components into a single macro-equation, the total daily electrical energy (E<sub>day</sub>) consumed by the global Bitcoin network can be calculated directly from the network's current Difficulty (D) and the average hardware efficiency fleet-wide (EF<sub>avg</sub> in J/TH):E<sub>day</sub> = (D · 2³²/600) × (EF<sub>avg</sub> × 10⁻¹²) × 86,400<br>Where:<br>D · 2³² / 600 yields the Network Hashrate (hashes/sec).EF<sub>avg</sub> × 10⁻¹² scales Joules-per-Terahash down to Joules-per-Hash.86,400 converts seconds into one full day.This mathematical coupling ensures that as network security (Difficulty D) scales up over time to attract more capital and hashpower, energy consumption scales linearly with it, modulated only by the parallel improvement rate of semiconductor manufacturing efficiency (EF<sub>avg</sub>).To recap the end-to-end framework:The Work: Quantified by the difficulty D and scaled via 2³² to determine total expected hashes per block.The Hashrate: Derived by dividing total hashes per block by the target 10-minute block time (600 seconds).The Energy Conversion: Bridged physically using the hardware's efficiency metric (Joules per Terahash, or J/TH) multiplied over time.The Physical Bound: Bounded by thermodynamic limits like Landauer's principle, explaining why modern ASICs produce the massive amounts of waste heat characteristic of the Bitcoin network.
Autonomous artificial intelligence agents increasingly act across decentralized systems, yet existing authorization models provide limited mechanisms for constraining delegated authority, proving policy compliance, and assigning accountability for machine-initiated actions. This paper presents a policy-enforced identity and accountability framework for cryptographic governance of autonomous AI agents. The proposed architecture binds each agent to a verifiable decentralized identity, machine-readable authorization policies, delegated capability constraints, and tamper-evident action records. Before an action is executed, the framework evaluates identity validity, policy scope, contextual conditions, delegation depth, expiration, and revocation status. Approved actions generate cryptographically verifiable receipts that link the agent, authorizing principal, applicable policy, execution context, and resulting state transition without requiring disclosure of unnecessary sensitive information. The framework also supports attenuated delegation, enabling subordinate agents to receive narrower permissions than their parent agents while preventing privilege amplification. A formal threat model evaluates impersonation, policy substitution, replay attacks, unauthorized delegation, audit-log manipulation, and compromised agent behavior. Security analysis indicates that the architecture strengthens provenance, non-repudiation, least-privilege enforcement, and post-execution auditability across heterogeneous decentralized environments. The proposed approach provides a foundation for governing autonomous agents in blockchain networks, distributed applications, machine-to-machine systems, and multi-agent infrastructures where conventional access control is insufficient. It shifts AI governance from trust-based supervision toward verifiable, policy-bound, and cryptographically accountable execution.
As the blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems continue to expand and mature, rug pull scams involving meme coins are occurring with increasing frequency, posing a threat to the security of investors' assets and the healthy development of the industry. Rug Pull scams are characterized by extremely low deployment costs, covert execution, rapid fund transfers, and high detection difficulty. Traditional manual reviews or fixed rules struggle to meet real-time early warning requirements, and existing detection methods generally suffer from issues such as a single feature dimension, inadequate handling of class imbalance, and weak model generalization and interpretability. To address these shortcomings, this paper focuses on the detection of Ethereum-based rug pull scams. First, we clarify their definitions, types, and harm mechanisms, and construct a multi-dimensional feature system based on dimensions such as malicious smart contract design, on-chain transaction anomalies, liquidity manipulation, and social media disclosures. Next, using the "Second Uncle Coin"(token symbol: BOBU) case as an example, we reconstruct the attack process and derive quantitative detection metrics. Subsequently, a risk detection model based on a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) is designed. We employ a combined strategy of SMOTE oversampling and Focal Loss to address the issue of sample imbalance, dynamically search for optimal thresholds to balance precision and recall, and incorporate gradient pruning and early stopping to enhance training stability. Experiments show that the model achieves an accuracy of 0.927, an F1 score of 0.787, and an AUC-ROC of 0.952 on the test set, outperforming traditional methods. Finally, a visualizable web-based detection system is developed using the Flask framework, enabling batch risk assessment, high-risk ranking display, and result export functions.
Blockchain technology, initially developed as a backbone for cryptocurrencies, has rapidly expanded into broader domains of finance and business. Its unique attributes – transparency, decentralization, immutability, and enhanced security – offer solutions to persistent challenges in financial services. This chapter examines blockchain applications beyond cryptocurrency, focusing on its role in transforming financial services such as Know Your Customer (KYC), cross-border payments, and compliance. A case-based exploration of blockchain-enabled KYC demonstrates how distributed ledgers can streamline identity verification while ensuring trust and efficiency. The chapter also outlines benefits, limitations, and potential applications, contributing to a holistic understanding for policymakers, financial institutions, researchers, and practitioners.
The efficiency and performance of logistics, and thereby business operations, increasingly depend on decentralized and tamper-proof records for managing transactions and data flows. For these reasons, the use and professional implementation of blockchain technology (BCT) has become essential to preserving the competitiveness of the digital and globalized economy. My aim was to examine the collaboration networks of articles on blockchain in logistics published in recent years, and to identify the key studies that may prove fundamental. Data was collected from the Web of Science scientific database in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. The results were visualized using the VOSviewer bibliometric analysis software. As a result of the screening process, I analyzed 32 relevant studies in detail. I found that the United Kingdom and China play leading roles in this field, with several research groups contributing simultaneously to the scientific outcomes. Based on keyword analysis, a total of five clusters were identified, each representing distinct research areas.
Autonomous AI agents, increasingly empowered by large language models, are becoming important components of human-machine systems for high-stakes decision support in digital twin ecosystems. However, existing multi-agent systems often lack robust verification for identity, capability, and policy compliance, especially in decentralized environments spanning multiple institutions. This paper proposes a neuro-symbolic decentralized governance framework for verifiable agents in collaborative digital twin environments. By representing agents through multi-layer semantic profiles, the framework bridges probabilistic neural reasoning with deterministic institutional governance, thereby supporting trustworthy human-AI collaboration and meaningful human oversight. Capabilities are grounded in formal domain ontologies to enable machine-interpretable, policy-aware, and context-sensitive participation. These credentials, issued by organizational authorities, are validated via blockchain-based smart contracts, ensuring auditable participation without exposing sensitive data. We demonstrate the framework using a decision-support prototype with clinic, digital twin, and wearable provider agents effectively prevents unauthorized interaction and enforces institutional policies with manageable overhead. Our findings suggest that neuro-symbolic decentralized governance provides a scalable and trustworthy pathway for safe human-machine collaboration across institutional boundaries.
This study examined blockchain technology's potential to enhance audit efficiency in selected service firms. Traditional auditing is often hindered by data manipulation, limited transparency, time-consuming verification, and high costs challenges that blockchain's decentralised, immutable, and transparent ledger system can plausibly address. The research assessed blockchain's role in improving audit efficiency, focusing on automation and realtime auditing, distributed ledger effects, and consensus mechanisms. Data was gathered through questionnaires, observation, and a technical readiness survey, and analysed using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and multiple regression. The study evaluated current auditing practices to identify the benefits and barriers of blockchain implementation, examining existing audit challenges, blockchain's capacity to resolve them, and the implications for service firms. Respondents were drawn from service firms with interest or prospects in adopting blockchain for audit activities. Findings showed marked improvements in audit accuracy, transparency, and overall efficiency, though adoption barriers, cost, and the need for regulatory structures were also identified. The study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on blockchain's practical application in auditing, offering guidance to service firms, audit practitioners, and policymakers on successful implementation. By addressing these challenges and leveraging blockchain's opportunities, service firms can achieve cleaner, safer, and more efficient audit practices. The research confirms that blockchain technology plays a significant role in enhancing audit efficiency within service firms.
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Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Innovations and Analysis in Business and Education
Ensuring transparency and traceability in horticultural supply chains is difficult due to complex logistics, seasonal variability, and multiple intermediaries.We propose a framework that couples b-local irregular vertex coloring (b-LIVC) with a blockchain architecture to enable end-to-end verification of production and trade.On the Jember Regency subdistrict graph, we compute the b-local irregular chromatic number and obtain χ b-lis (J) = 6, yielding six planting color classes that schedule sowing and harvests to distribute output across the year.The local irregularity induces distinct neighborhood weights, which we use as cryptographic features for unique, verifiable batch identifiers.We implement the pipeline on a public blockchain: harvest lots are tokenized as video NFTs with QR links to a verification page and on-chain records.The integration of discrete mathematics and distributed ledgers provides auditable provenance and transaction history, practical scheduling that reduces harvest clustering, and a low-overhead mechanism for farmer-level transparency.
This paper assesses the adequacy of technology-neutral privacy frameworks in addressing quantum threats to zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and other privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) in global data protection regimes. Challenging assumptions that cryptographic innovation inherently bolsters privacy rights, the analysis demonstrates how post-quantum migration, absent binding regulatory duties, risks entrenching a ‘quantum divide’ in access and liability. Grounded in legal frameworks and actual deployments, including Zcash’s classical Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (ZK-SNARKs) and NantHealth Inc.’s quantum-aware homomorphic encryption systems, the paper contends that access to PETs is becoming ever more determined by institutional capability and geopolitical factors, as illustrated by comparative case studies. This research evaluates the efficacy of statutes such as the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Article 32), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) (§ 1798.150), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) (45 C.F.R. § 164.308) in imposing liability for quantum vulnerable systems, using the cases to illustrate gaps in mandating equitable post-quantum migration. The conclusion reflects upon legal gaps enabling unequal protections, advocating reforms including mandatory quantum risk assessments. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.