Blockchain Papers

Mustapha Hrouga, Abdelkader Sbihi, Marc Chavallard

No abstract is available for this record.

Carlos Antônio Rufino Júnior, Eleonora Riva Sanseverino, Pierluigi Gallo, Daniel Koch · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Nir Kshetri

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine blockchain's roles in promoting ethical sourcing in the mineral and metal industry. Design/methodology/approach It analyzes multiple case studies of blockchain projects in the mineral and metal industry. Findings It gives detailed descriptions of how blockchain-based supply chain networks' higher density of information flow and high degree of authenticity of information can increase supply chain participants' compliance with sustainability standards. It gives special consideration to blockchain systems' roles in overcoming the deficits in the second party and the third-party trust. It also demonstrates how blockchain-based supply chain networks include outside actors and configure the supply chain networks in a way that enhances the empowerment of marginalized groups. Practical implications It suggests various mechanisms by which blockchain-based supply chain networks can give a voice to marginalized groups. Originality/value It demonstrates how blockchain is likely to force mineral and metal supply chains to become more traceable and transparent.

Muhammad Salman Asif, Harsimran K. Gill

Abstract In this competitive and technology driven world, businesses are striving to gain benefits of environmental sustainability and energy conservation by implementing the latest technologies in their supply chains. A promising way of evaluating the environmental performance of a product or a process is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) modelling, but the reliability of LCA results is mostly compromised due to the lack of real data from upstream and downstream supply chains. Our research aim is to drive LCA modelling through Blockchain Technology (BCT) and internet-of-things which have the capability to record reliable, transparent, and secure data from across the supply chain. The modified LCA model will provide various industries with the quantified benefits of BCT in terms of industrial emissions reduction. This conference paper reflects the 1st stage of research where we carried out a detailed literature review on potential use of blockchain technology in green supply chain management and based on the findings, we developed an integrative framework architecture for the supply chain of a supermarket product. In the next phase, the integration of BCT and LCA will be studied in food supply chains using a supermarket case study of Walmart-IBM developed blockchain consortium.

Radu Godina, Aurélien Bruel, Ângela Neves, Jo�ão Matias

In many cities and their surrounding environments, materials are wasted and underutilized. As a result, waste and energy recovery can play a critical role. The concept of circularity can be applied to urban environments and their areas of influence in order to stimulate Urban Industrial Symbiosis (UIS). As such, it is vital for cities to have a robust and trustworthy information management infrastructure. A blockchain-based system can provide the accountability the UIS networks need to become traceable, transparent and unchangeable for all the parties involved. Similar to the benefits that blockchain can provide supply chain networks, UIS could benefit from blockchain as well. In this article, we look at blockchain and Smart Contracts as a way to benefit UIS, what they can be used for, what the goals and potential limitations for their implementation are, and how those goals and limitations might influence UIS. Finally, through the implementation of modular blockchain architecture, an UIS blockchain model based on smart contracts is proposed.

Diana Hawashin, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman, Ibrar Yaqoob · 5 authors

Billions of dollars lost has been recorded over the past decade due to the overproduction and underconsumption of medical supplies. The overproducation and underconsumption are usually due to the lack of accountability, transparency, traceability, audit, assessment, security, and trust features in the current healthcare supply chain systems. It is required to ensure that everyone is getting a fair share of medical supplies without unnecessary waste. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution that ensures the commitment and accountability of all participants to prevent them from producing any unnecessary waste. We introduce five phases, such as registration, commitment, production, delivery, and consumption, to perform the waste assessment accurately and fairly. We develop four smart contracts that ensure data provenance, transparency, security, and accountability while recording all actions on an immutable ledger automatically. We utilize offchain decentralized storage to deal with the large data problem. We present five algorithms and discuss each phase of the proposed solution, along with their full implementation, testing, and validation details. We conduct the security analysis to ensure that our smart contracts are secure enough and they do not have vulnerabilities and flaws. The smart contracts code is made publicly available on GitHub.

Godfrey Mugurusi, Emmanuel Ahishakiye

Blockchain technology has recently become the go-to solution for companies and industries that seek to enhance value chain traceability of their products, and transparency in their supply chains. Because of these benefits, it’s been proposed for monitoring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and compliance in industries that have weak regulatory and formal structures. The cobalt mining industry especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s biggest producer of cobalt ore used in the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, is one such environment that’s characterized by conflict, and serious human rights abuses. The key actors in the cobalt supply chain, therefore, face the tradeoff involving maintaining long-term supply versus reducing the risks associated with cobalt sourced from locations with poor environmental and human rights records. Most of such problems emerge from Artisanal and small-scale mining. This paper presents an attempt to tightly link existing blockchain technology frameworks in the cobalt industry with ESG performance of companies to enable them to audit the chain of custody journeys for their components and ultimately sustainability performance. We present a responsible sourcing framework to connect blockchain source data needs to ESG metrics to help companies build interoperable but understandable blockchain architectures.

Irénée Dondjio, Marinos Themistocleous

No abstract is available for this record.

Atta ur Rehman Khan, Raja Wasim Ahmad

Recycling of electronic waste is a rapidly growing global issue that requires proper monitoring and tracing of electronic devices and the business transactions between the stakeholders. The majority of current systems that manage electronic devices throughout their supply chain stages are centralized and lack data transparency, immutability, and security. Specifically, such systems are incapable of handling problems like comprehensive coverage of the life cycle of e-products, access control for maintaining data security, reputation-aware selection of stakeholders, and large amounts of data generated during various stages of the supply chain processes. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based IoT-enabled system for monitoring all post-production business processes, activities, and operations performed on an electronic device. The system is supported by five smart contracts that record the actions of users on the immutable distributed ledger that aid in ensuring that the business processes carried out by the participants are transparent, traceable, and secure. To store large files, such as images of e-waste materials, products, and licenses for stakeholders, we have integrated our system with a distributed storage system. The proposed system is tested on Ethereum blockchain to check the gas consumption of the functions of the smart contracts. The cost and security analysis shows that the proposed system is viable.

Nidish Vashistha, Muhammad Monir Hossain, Md Rakib Shahriar, Farimah Farahmandi · 6 authors

Counterfeit electronic devices can cause a significant revenue loss and brand value damage to the original component manufacturers (OCM). In addition, they can instigate serious safety and security issues in critical military and space applications. These devices can be injected by untrusted entities in the supply chain, such as outsourced foundries, distributors, PCB assemblers, and system integrators. Existing methods for device authenticity verification are either destructive, require an advanced electrical test or physical inspection infrastructure. Furthermore, the existing database query-based verification systems by OCMs provide an illusion of authenticity verification by looking for a device record in their online system. In reality, a customer may have bought a cloned or recycled copy of an electronic device and may find a valid record in the OCM verification system. This paper presents a blockchain-centric solution to address these limitations to verify electronic devices. A detailed study is presented to transform an existing supply chain into a trustworthy distributed ledger framework calledeChain(electronic Chain).eChaingenerates device provenance records from blockchain that users can utilize to classify authentic and counterfeit ICs. A fully functional prototype ofeChainis developed to demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed solution.

Robert Karaszewski, Paweł Modrzyński, Gözde Türkmen Müldür, Jacek Wójcik

Environmental protection is currently one of the key priority areas of the European Union (EU). The search for precise tools to assess the impact of the economy, industry, or the production of individual products or services is crucial for an effective and efficient policy in environmental protection. Blockchain technology, originally related to the financial sector and cryptocurrencies, is an innovative solution that is increasingly being implemented by other areas of the economy and industry sectors. The authors reviewed the literature and based on it presented the possibilities and effects of using blockchain technology in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is in line with the current development trends of this method. The analysis of the research conducted in this area also allowed to present not only the advantages of blockchain in LCA, but also the limitations of this technology and the potential directions of further research.

Xuda Lin, Xing Li, Sameer Kulkarni, Fu Zhao

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely recognized tool used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product or process, based on the environmental inventory database and bills of material. Data quality is one of the most significant factors affecting the analysis results. However, currently, most datasets in inventory databases are generic, i.e., they may represent the material and energy flow of a process at a market average, instead of a specific process used by a manufacturer. As a result, stockholders are unable to track their supply chain to find out the actual environmental impact from each supplier and to compare the environmental performance of alternative options. In this paper, we developed a new framework, i.e., blockchain-based LCA (BC-LCA), where blockchain technology is adapted to secure and transmit inventory data from upstream suppliers to downstream manufacturers. With BC-LCA, more specific data can be acquired along the supply chain in a real-time manner. Moreover, the availability, accuracy, privacy, and automatic update of inventory data can be improved. A case study is provided based on an industrial supply chain to demonstrate the utilization of BC-LCA.

Katrien Steenmans, Phillip Taylor, Ine Steenmans

Blockchain technology is emerging as a plausible disruptor of waste management practices that influence the governance of plastics. The interest among the waste management community in the potential and fundamental changes to complex resource management associated with blockchain adoption parallels recent research in other sectors, such as finance, health, public administration, etc. During any comparable period characterized by a step-change in positive coverage of an early-stage technology, it can be challenging for actors to access a grounded, evidence-based oversight of the current state of practice and make informed decisions about whether or how to adopt blockchain technology. The current absence of such a systematic overview of recent experiences with blockchain initiatives disrupting waste practices not only limits the visibility of these experimental efforts, but also limits the learning that can be shared across waste plastics researcher and practitioner communities. This paper contributes with a current overview of blockchain technology adoption in the waste management sector, giving particular attention to implications for the governance of plastics. Our study draws on both primary interview data and secondary documentation data to map the landscape of current blockchain initiatives in the global waste sector. We identify four areas of blockchain use that are beginning to change waste management practices (payment, recycling and reuse rewards, monitoring and tracking of waste, and smart contracts). We conclude by outlining five areas of significant blockchain uses, implications, and influences of relevance to the development of circular plastic waste governance in both research and practice.

Mohit Mohit, Sanmeet Kaur, Maninder Singh

No abstract is available for this record.

Johannes Sedlmeir, Fabiane Völter, Jens Strüker

The labeling of electricity is considered an important mechanism to differentiate renewable power generation and, thus, to incentivize the expansion of green energy. However, today's systems for documenting and trading green energy certificates suffer from multiple challenges. These could be addressed by a digital solution that holistically collects and processes production and consumption data. Blockchain-based architectures have repeatedly been suggested for this purpose since they can provide transparency and can likely be accepted by a broad group of stakeholders. Yet, there are significant scalability and privacy issues of a blockchain-based approach for storing and processing fine-grained production and consumption data. In this paper, we propose and discuss a potential solution that levers succinct cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs to balance the required level of transparency and privacy while at the same time providing a high degree of scalability.

Luis Kleinknecht

Environmental regulations and standards play critical roles in corporate sustainable supply-chain practices. We explore and reflect on how blockchain can play a role. To answer that question, a small survey was distributed to blockchain experts and evaluated the relationship to implement the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) sustainability standards. We initially find that some characteristics of blockchain provided greater support for specific standards. Conclusions include that information transparency and traceability are more valuable for EPEAT environmental sustainability standards.

Francisco Luis Benítez-Martínez, Pedro Núñez-Cacho Utrilla, Valentín Molina Moreno, Esteban Romero‐Frías

No abstract is available for this record.

Weishan Zhang, Gang Sun, Xu Liang, Qinghua Lu · 7 authors

Regular safety inspection is critical to reduce safety risk in industry. Applying the consortium blockchain technology to safety inspection can ensure the effectiveness of the inspection process and tracing of problems. However, there are two major issues when using conventional consortium blockchain. It is challenging to guarantee the authenticity of the retrieved data source, and meanwhile, achieving a balance between performance and security is not easy. Hence, this article proposes a blockchain-based performance-security balanced safety inspection framework (PSB-SIF), in which a safety inspection box is designed to ensure the authenticity of the inspector’s identity while inspection logic is executed automatically via smart contracts. In addition, this article also proposes a novel credit scoring-based Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithm, named safety inspection BFT consensus algorithm (SIBFT), which is used to balance the performance and security of consensus network in a safety inspection. We evaluate the proposed approach by comparing with the solutions using RAFT, Practical BFT (PBFT), and SIBFT consensus algorithms in terms of throughput, transaction latency, scalability, and security of PSB-SIF. The evaluation results show that PSB-SIF is efficient for all these quality metrics.

Shikang Chen, Xinjiang Cai, Xingzhi Wang, Ang Liu · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Mahdi H. Miraz, P.S. Excell, Khan Sobayel

Following the footprints of Bitcoins, many other cryptocurrencies were developed mostly adopting the same or similar Proof-of-Work (PoW) approach. Since completing the PoW puzzle requires extremely high computing power, consuming a vast amount of electricity, PoW has been strongly criticised for its antithetic stand against the notion of green computing. Use of application-specific hardware, particularly application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) has further fuelled the debate, as these devices are of no use once they become “legacy” and hence obsolete to compete in the mining race, thus contributing to electronics waste. Therefore, this paper surveys the currently available alternative approaches to PoW and evaluates their applicability - especially their appropriateness in terms of greenness.

Tao Ding, Guangrong Yan, Zhenggan Zhou, Yi Lei

Realizing process data traceability of industrial products is an important way to solve the problem of product quality analysis and achieve optimal design. At present, research on product data traceability mainly relies on centralized service provider storage, and product data rarely covers the whole life cycle, resulting in the opacity and incomplete of the product traceability process data. In this paper, blockchain technology is introduced into the traceability management of product data, and a product life cycle data traceability method based on multi-blockchain is proposed. The data sharing and communication mechanisms among blockchains are analyzed. Moreover, the block structure of product traceability data, the upload process of block data and the tracing process of multi-chain product data are elaborated in detail. Finally, based on the open source ethereum architecture, the system application platform is developed to verify the feasibility and rationality of the proposed method.

Chrıstophe Schınckus

No abstract is available for this record.

Alex de Vries, Christian Stoll

No abstract is available for this record.

Terje Andersen, Bjørn Jæger

In the transition to a circular focus on electric and electronic products, manufacturers play a key role as the originators of both the products and the information about the products. While the waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive’s contemporary focus is on handling the product as waste after its end of life, the circular economy focuses on retaining the product’s value with a restorative system. The polluter-pays principle requires producers of pollution to bear the costs of handling the pollution, leading to the extended producer responsibility (EPR) principle. This requires manufacturers to change their focus from their current passive role of out-sourcing end-of-life treatment to taking explicit responsibility for product management over an extended period of time. This paper investigates how a manufacturer can assume its responsibility to achieve circularity for its products. Based on our findings, three fundamental circularity principles, the circular electric and electronic equipment (CEEE) principles, for manufactures of electronic and electrical equipment are defined: (1) Serialize product identifiers, (2) data controlled by their authoritative source at the edge, and (3) independent actors’ access to edge data via a distributer ledger are the foundation of the Edge and Distributed Ledger (Edge&DL) model. We demonstrate the model through a case study of how to achieve circularity for lighting equipment. The CEEE principles and the demonstrated model contribute to building new circularity systems for electronic and electric products that let manufacturers undertake their extended product responsibility.