As interest in the practical use of cryptocurrencies continues to grow, so does the focus on the (perceived) privacy and anonymity of users within this domain. Despite this attention, there is a notable absence of standardized definitions for these terms. This article aims to address this gap by exploring the various interpretations of privacy, anonymity, and related concepts in the context of cryptocurrencies. Drawing from a thorough review of existing literature, we propose practical definitions for both privacy and anonymity. Utilizing these definitions, we introduce an ontology designed to streamline future research, identify knowledge gaps, and facilitate clearer communication in the field.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Existing traditional lottery systems are often prone to issues of fraud, transparency and centralized authority, which compromise the degree of fairness and security involved in the lottery process. The current work offers a blockchainbased traditional lottery system that is based on smart contracts and offers a decentralized, tamper-proof and transparent environment. Using cryptographic hashing and distributed ledger technology, the proposed system eliminates intermediaries, reduces operating costs by as much as 35 % and increases user trust by 87 %. The automated functioning of smart contracts means that the entire lottery process from the issuance of tickets to how winners are chosen and paid is immutable and verifiable. The proof-of-concept implementation using Ethereum and solidity demonstrated improvements in efficiency, such as shortening the payout time from$24-48$hours to less than 10 seconds and exhibiting 100 % resistance to known smart contract vulnerabilities. The empirical evidence highlights the potential of blockchain technology to transform the way digital lotteries are conducted by providing the benefits of security, fairness and transparency.
G. Ramesh, Utkarsh Anand, P. B. Edwin Prabhakar, Akhilesh Pahade · 5 authors
Depending on past results, data manipulation, centralized control, and fraud could be problems with either digital or hand-voting systems. In a democratic state, everyone lacks honest and safe voting systems. Here, we present a fresh consensus approach for Proof of Eligibility and Identity (PoEI). The intended users of this system are distributed voting applications emphasizing security and forward-looking needs. This approach guarantees eligibility and enables anonymous voting by combining a custom permissioned blockchain with a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP)- based identity verification system. Furthermore, the approach guarantees the preservation of eligibility. While smart contracts manage voter registration, ballot submission, and automated tallying, cryptographic audit trails are responsible for increasing operational transparency. A virtual municipal election, which included 10,000 candidates, was conducted to confirm the approach. The election was an apparent success, given that there was no space for repeated voting and a transaction latency of less than a second. These findings suggest that the proposed model can replace current blockchain consensus systems, providing verifiability, tamper-proofness, and scalability. Ensuring its security, this work prepares for future electoral modernization grounded on distributed technologies.
Tholfiqar Z. Ismail, Mehdi Ebady Manaa, Durbek Sayfullaev, Muhidinov Ayubbek Nuritdinovich · 6 authors
Electronic voting systems are increasingly being explored to enhance accessibility, efficiency, and speed in modern electoral processes. However, ensuring vote integrity, privacy, and auditability remains a major challenge, especially in remote and online voting environments. Traditional electronic voting methods often face issues such as data tampering, lack of end-to-end verifiability, and potential privacy breaches, which undermine public trust and electoral transparency. To address these issues, this paper proposes the ZK-VOTE (Zero-Knowledge Verified Online Tamper-resistant Election) framework, which integrates zk-SNARKs with a permissioned blockchain protocol. In this system, voters generate zero-knowledge proofs to verify their eligibility and the validity of their votes without disclosing sensitive information. Each vote is immutably recorded on a permissioned blockchain, ensuring transparency while maintaining voter anonymity. The use of consensus algorithms prevents unauthorized alterations to voting records, and smart contracts automatically enforce vote submission rules. The ZK-VOTE framework is particularly suited for national-scale elections, enabling secure remote voting for diaspora populations while ensuring system-wide auditability. Election authorities and third-party auditors can independently verify election results without accessing private voter data. Experimental evaluation and theoretical analysis demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high levels of privacy, resistance to tampering, and verifiability. Results confirm that ZK-VOTE enhances voter trust and electoral transparency while remaining computationally efficient. The framework represents a significant advancement toward secure, scalable, and trustworthy electronic voting systems.
Data integrity in Smart Grids (SG) systems can be vulnerable with the implementation of the novel Community Blockchain-Driven Traceability Framework (CBDTF). It enhances Detection Rates (DR), maintains low End-to-End Delay (EED), and uses less energy by using distributed ledger technology and community-based validation. This model deployed a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism and community-driven testing, resulting in an average Detection Rate (DR) of 98.7% for Data Tampering attacks and a False Positive Rate (FPR) of 1.78%. It outperforms conventional Blockchain (BC) solutions with an EED of 120.8 ms and an average CPU utilization of 1,113 tx/kWh. When compared with conventional Proof-of-Work (PoW), CBDTF requires 60% less energy while proving 96.2% consensus resilience against distinct attacks. Applying real-world SG data collected by a distributed network of 100 nodes, the accuracy of this model was tested. The present study makes a valuable contribution to the field by signifying how BC platforms driven by the public can address SG's data security issues while maintaining the accuracy of real-time operations.
This paper presents the design and implementation of a decentralized electronic voting system based on a hybrid architecture that integrates the TRON blockchain with off-chain authentication mechanisms.The proposed solution employs smart contracts written in Solidity to record votes in an immutable and publicly auditable manner, while a backend service implemented in Node.js and a MySQL database handles voter authentication and enforces voter uniqueness.To prevent duplicate voting and ensure auditability, cryptographic hash functions are used to bind voter credentials and election parameters to each vote without exposing sensitive data on-chain.Experimental results demonstrate that the system effectively mitigates common security threats, such as duplicate voting and unauthorized data manipulation, while maintaining low transaction costs and practical usability.The findings indicate that the proposed hybrid approach provides a secure, transparent, and cost-effective alternative for electronic voting systems in real-world scenarios.
Ouafae Benoudifa, Abderrahim Ait Wakrime, Rédouane Benaini
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has revolutionized network administration with its unparalleled flexibility and programmability. The secure placement of controllers within a Software-Defined Networking framework remains a significant challenge. This research provides an innovative solution that integrates blockchain technology with the advanced reinforcement learning algorithm MuZero to optimize and secure the placement of SDN controllers. The suggested framework utilizes critical security parameters, including network latency, traffic volume, and the quantity of connected devices, to evaluate and record secure controller locations, employing Mininet for network emulation and OpenDaylight as the SDN controller. These criteria are essential for identifying secure deployment locations and assessing network efficacy. The suggested solution ensures the security and efficacy of controller placement in SDN systems by integrating blockchain technology for transparent and invulnerable documentation of secure locations.
In this framework, Blockchain-Integrated Access Control for Wireless Edge Networks intends to attempt authentication and authorization by using smart contracts and immutable ledgers making it secure and decentralized. It increases trust among edge nodes by connecting them, thereby creating a single point of failure, while providing transparent and tamper-resistant enforcement of policies, which improves scalability, resilience, and performance, ultimately making it the Mold for IoT and edge computing environments. The objectives that the system intends to apply towards are design and implement decentralized access control for wireless edge networks using Blockchain, to provide tamper-proof identity verification solutions, to ensure dynamic access policies enforced through smart contracts, to reduce dependency on central authorities, and also to increase security and privacy, scaling trust, and transparency in the distributed IoT and edge environments. The proposed system proposed to implement decentralized access control via private Blockchain in wireless edge networks. Smart contracts are crafted to dynamically facilitate identity authentication, access rights, and the enforcement of policies. Edge nodes interface with the Blockchain to verify credentials and log access attempts immutably. To curb latency and overhead, lightweight cryptography schemes and consensus algorithms such as PBFT are employed. Simulation in a wireless edge environment showed improvements in access request validation by 35%, unauthorized access attempts down by 42%, and improved scalability with respect to conventional centralized models, showing that the model is effectual and robust in secure access control.
The demand for privacy-preserving machine learning has led to the rise of Federated Learning (FL), where multiple clients collaboratively train a model without sharing raw data. Despite its privacy benefits, FL is vulnerable to Byzantine failures, where malicious or faulty participants inject corrupted updates, threatening model integrity. To address this, a range of Byzantine-resilient aggregation techniques have been proposed, including statistical filters (e.g., Trimmed Mean, Krum), trust-based weighting, cryptographic protocols, and hybrid strategies. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of these defenses, evaluating their robustness, scalability, and suitability for real-world applications. Challenges such as non-IID data, adaptive attacks, and trade-offs between security and efficiency are critically examined. In addition, we explore emerging trends such as domain-specific defenses, energy-aware FL, quantum-resilient methods, and federated zero-knowledge proofs. A novel classification of hybrid approaches and a standardized benchmarking framework are proposed to guide future research. This review aims to support the development of resilient, efficient and scalable decentralized learning systems in adversarial environments.
Разработаны различные системы электронного голосования. Но большинство таких систем имеют такие недостатки как отсутствие прозрачности и возможности проверки правильности подсчета голосов. В статье рассмотрены вопросы разработки систем голосования с использованием технологии блокчейн. Показана возможность повышения прозрачности, защищенности и достоверности электоральных процессов на основе технологии блокчейн, особенно в условиях ограниченных ресурсов. Показана разработанная авторами практическая реализация ˗ система электронного голосования на основе технологии блокчейн с использованием смарт-контрактов на языке Solidity и пользовательского интерфейса на языке Python с библиотекой Web3.py. Проведен анализ существующих решений, выявлены их недостатки, предложена архитектура системы и реализованы основные функции: регистрация кандидатов, голосование, защита от повторных голосов и автоматический подсчет результатов. Результаты тестирования в среде Ganache подтвердили корректность работы и устойчивость системы к внешним воздействиям. В сравнении с аналогами предложенное авторами конструкция системы с применением технологии блокчейн отличается простотой, доступностью и высокой надежностью, что делает его перспективным для внедрения. Исследование эволюции систем электронного голосования, использование технологии блокчейн для систем электронного голосования способствуют разработке эффективных решений для демократического управления.
As democratic processes increasingly transition to digital environments, safeguarding voter privacy and maintaining electoral integrity have become paramount. This study investigates the application of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) as a cryptographic framework for developing secure and private electronic voting systems. A comparative performance evaluation was conducted between ZKP-based voting protocols and traditional systems, focusing on key metrics such as validation time, privacy leakage index, and memory usage. Quantitative data analysis, supported by statistical methods including mean comparisons and standard deviation assessments, highlights the superiority of ZKP-based systems in minimizing information leakage while maintaining verifiability. Although ZKP protocols introduce higher memory consumption, the trade-off results in substantially enhanced voter anonymity and reduced validation latency. The findings suggest that ZKPs provide a scalable and efficient solution to the dual challenge of transparency and privacy in digital voting infrastructures. This research contributes to the growing body of work on cryptographic voting technologies and underscores the importance of balancing security with performance in the design of future e-voting systems. Keywords: Zero-Knowledge Proofs, E-voting, Cryptography, Privacy, Secure Voting Systems, Digital Democracy, Voter Anonymity, Cryptographic Protocols, Electoral Integrity, Privacy-Preserving Computation
True democracy, strong trust of people in the government and legal transfer of power in the country are possible only when elections are held honestly and correctly. Modern information technologies contribute to innovative restructuring of electoral processes, ensuring optimization of the voting process, minimizing human errors, increasing accessibility for voters. At the same time, the introduction of digital technologies creates significant problems with information security, in particular, possible changes in voting results, manipulation, threats to integrity, availability, confidentiality and anonymity. One of the effective solutions for ensuring information security in electronic voting (e-voting) is blockchain technology. This study is devoted to the problem of developing a website for electronic voting using blockchain technology. Based on the study of scientific literature, the essence, principles, advantages and disadvantages of this technology are revealed. A comparative analysis of the best practices for implementing blockchain technology in the e-voting process is presented. As an example, the process of developing a website for electronic voting using blockchain technology is described: functional requirements for this system are established, the architecture of the software application is described, and a use case diagram is modeled. TypeScript was used as the main programming language for the backend development, Nest.js as a framework, PostgreSQL for data management, and Web3.js for implementing the backend functionality. The frontend was implemented using the TypeScript programming language, the React framework, and Tailwind CSS for interface design. The developed electronic voting platform demonstrates high flexibility and can be implemented for various electoral procedures. Its functionality covers both elections of officials (for example, the rector of the university) and local votes (for example, the election of the head of an academic group), as well as referendums to evaluate the activities of structural units. The data identified during the study can enrich educational materials for students of the 12th Information Technology branch.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Jun 25, 2025·2025 IEEE/ACIS 29th International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD)
The advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to the cryptographic foundations of current electronic voting (e-voting) systems, which commonly rely on algorithms such as Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). These algorithms are believed to be vulnerable to attacks imposed by quantum computers, jeopardizing core e-voting properties, including ballot secrecy, integrity, and auditability. To address these challenges, this work presents a quantum-resistant electronic-voting (e-voting) system, named post-quantum e-voting system (PQEVS) built entirely upon cryptographic primitives standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for post-quantum security. The proposed PQEVS utilizes Dilithium for secure voter authentication, Brakerski/Fan-Vercauteren (BFV)-based Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) for privacy-preserving vote tallying, and Picnic-based Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to ensure vote validity without compromising voter anonymity. Designed for modularity and scalability, our PQEVS delivers enhanced security while achieving significant performance gains, reducing vote processing latency by 85% and supporting throughputs of up to 36,000 votes per second. These results highlight the practicality and robustness of post-quantum cryptography in securing large-scale electoral processes, setting a new benchmark for verifiable and future-proof e-voting systems.
With the rapid advancement of blockchain technology and modern cryptographic methods, achieving efficient privacy preservation while maintaining robust security has become a critical challenge. To address this issue, this paper proposes a blockchain-based aggregated zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) scheme tailored for electronic voting applications. The proposed scheme leverages zero-knowledge proof techniques to authenticate voter identities while preserving privacy by preventing the disclosure of any sensitive voter information. Furthermore, it supports the aggregation of multiple ZKPs, significantly enhancing verification efficiency. To improve system synchronization and security, the scheme incorporates the Chinese cryptographic algorithm ZUC for dynamic updates of shared secret information. A comprehensive security analysis demonstrates that the scheme is secure under the Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption. Performance evaluation indicates that, under the condition of updating shared secrets twice every 24 hours and with a voting population of 20, the proposed approach reduces communication overhead by 33.3% and computation overhead by 37.1% to 89.5% compared to existing methods. These results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms comparable solutions in both communication and computational efficiency, making it well-suited for electronic voting scenarios that demand frequent identity verification and strong privacy guarantees.
In today's world, e-government services are critical for assisting citizens with their daily activities such as visa applications, tax submission, emergency security assistance, and electronic tendering. By combining blockchain and IoT technologies, e-government services can be made far more secure and efficient. Existing e-government applications suffered from a number of limitations, including a lack of privacy and security, increased job processing time, a lack of coordination among various parties, and a lack of services. More specifically, they did not conduct simultaneous investigations into citizen service, employee service, and business service while comparing performance. To conquer these issues, this article proposes a decentralized blockchain-based secure and privacy-preserving smart e-government system that considers the interactions between informers, government, smart contracts, MetaMask-based public and private wallets, Ethereum, and the Interplanetary File System. We investigated the time and cost delays associated with employee, business, and citizen services in the proposed blockchain-based e-government system. This paper provides appropriate security measures for mitigating malware attacks, DDoS attacks, and Sybil attacks. Our simulation results show that the proposed blockchain-based e-government system can reduce the completion time of existing works by at least 33%. Received: 2 November 2024 | Revised: 6 February 2025 | Accepted: 23 May 2025 Conflicts of Interest The author declares that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement The data that support this work are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. Author Contribution Statement Nahid Imtiaz: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Visualization. Mahfuzulhoq Chowdhury: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration.
The article presents a comprehensive analysis of the transition from traditional centralized digital identity models to an innovative decentralized paradigm based on block-chain technologies and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). It highlights the fundamental problems of existing systems that rely on centralized registries, passwords, and social logins. Such approaches create significant vulnerabilities, including risks of data breaches, mass surveillance, and manipulation, as centralized intermediaries act as sole controllers of personal information, depriving users of control over their data. In response to these challenges, the article discusses the concept of Decentralized Identity (DID). This model enables individuals to own, store, and control their digital credentials independently, without involving intermediaries. The key technological components of this ecosystem include Verifiable Credentials (VC), Digital ID Wallets, and Decentralized Identifiers (DID), which are typically stored on a block-chain to ensure immutability and security. A triadic trust model involving the Issuer, Holder, and Verifier is described, allowing data verification without direct contact with the issuing organization. Special attention is given to the concept of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) as a specific philosophy within DID that emphasizes user autonomy, data minimization, and privacy by design. Unlike the broader DID concept, in the SSI model, the user makes the final decision regarding the disclosure of their data. A central technology ensuring privacy in decentralized systems is zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). ZKP allow the validation of the truthfulness of a statement without revealing the underlying information. The article provides a detailed analysis of the benefits of using ZKP in the context of DID, including selective attribute disclosure (e.g., proving legal age without revealing the date of birth), minimizing the amount of shared data, preventing correlation and user activity tracking, as well as creating reputation systems that preserve anonymity. Practical application scenarios such as private electronic voting and confidential medical data protection are examined. The paper also addresses standardization, which is key to ensuring compatibility and widespread adoption of DID solutions. Leading initiatives such as W3C Verifiable Credentials, the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), and projects like Hyperledger Indy and Aries are mentioned. Examples of advanced implementations already in use are provided: Polygon’s zkKYC for private verification in DeFi, the Sismo protocol for creating anonymous reputation badges in Web3, and Evernym’s SSI platform based on Hyperledger Indy. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the combination of DID and ZKP forms a new paradigm for digital identity management focused on security and user autonomy. Despite challenges related to usability complexity, key loss risk, and legal uncertainty, the technology is actively evolving and moving from conceptual to practical application, which may eventually become the foundation for a global sovereign digital identity.
Elections are a cornerstone of democracy. Traditional voting systems such as ballots or Electronic Voting Machines face challenges such as voter fraud, reduced accessibility, security vulnerabilities, lack of transparency, and high operational costs. This paper presents a blockchain-based e-voting system that leverages InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for secure data storage; smart contract is developed in Solidity and deployed to execute the e-voting system on the Ethereum blockchain network. Twilio-based OTP authentication is integrated to enhance security, while SHA-256 and AES-256 encryption ensure data integrity and confidentiality. The system is designed to minimize transaction costs while optimizing throughput and reducing latency. Preliminary outcomes show a significant reduction in transaction costs, increased scalability with improved system efficiency and resilience against fraudulent activities.
Smart city infrastructures are resulting in a concern regarding proper security and fine- grained access control for the access of the sensitive data generated by the interconnected devices and services. Having rich yet heterogeneous environments is a common scenario for organizations nowadays, and conventional access control mechanisms often do not suffice to provide support for flexible, scalable and decentralized authorization. Here, we develop a new access control method that leverages Cipher text-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) and Ethereum smart contracts to realize decentralized and fine-grained data access in smart city applications. Users are allowed to access and decrypt information only if they own a suitable set of attribute. They leverage smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to perform attribute verification, issue keys, and log access actions, which removes the need to trust a centralized authority. We also describe the architecture of the system, the design of smart contracts, and an implementation prototype. The experimental results can validate the computational efficiency, the gas consumption and the policy expressiveness of our approach, showing that it is a promising solution for secure and transparent data access control model in smart cities.
An increasing number of DeFi protocols are gaining popularity, facilitating transactions among multiple anonymous users. State Manipulation is one of the notorious attacks in DeFi smart contracts, with price variable being the most commonly exploited state variable-attackers manipulate token prices to gain illicit profits. In this paper, we propose PriceSleuth, a novel method that leverages the Large Language Model (LLM) and static analysis to detect Price Manipulation (PM) attacks proactively. PriceSleuth firstly identifies core logic function related to price calculation in DeFi contracts. Then it guides LLM to locate the price calculation code statements. Secondly, PriceSleuth performs backward dependency analysis of price variables, instructing LLM in detecting potential price manipulation. Finally, PriceSleuth utilizes propagation analysis of price variables to assist LLM in detecting whether these variables are maliciously exploited. We presented preliminary experimental results to substantiate the effectiveness of PriceSleuth . And we outline future research directions for PriceSleuth.
The rise of Industry 5.0 focuses on merging advanced intelligence, automation, and human-centered teamwork in industrial settings. However, keeping interconnected IoT networks secure is still a challenging problem. This paper proposes a new security framework that combines Blockchain, Federated Transfer Learning, and zero trust network (ZTN) principles to improve IoT security in Industry 5.0. Blockchain is a decentralized ledger that ensures secure data sharing and protects model updates. Federated Transfer Learning allows model training across distributed IoT devices to keep data private. The ZTN approach enforces strict access rules, assuming that no entity is trusted by default. The proposed framework offers a scalable and resilient solution to protect next-generation industrial IoT networks, using Blockchain for data security, transfer learning for adaptability, and ZTN for strict access control. The ZTN architecture strengthens security by checking every access request and keeping the IoT system safe. The experimental results show good performance of the proposed method, with better accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores. The model achieved an accuracy of 0.85, 0.88, and 0.87 for learning rates of 0.01, 0.001, and 0.0001, respectively, at 100 epochs. The precision values reached 0.84, 0.87, and 0.86, while the recall scores were 0.82, 0.86, and 0.85, respectively. The F1-scores were recorded at 0.83, 0.86, and 0.85, which confirms the robustness of our model.
Cryptocurrency networks operate on decentralized systems that require efficient performance monitoring for transparency, security, and real-time insights. The establishment of a frontend-only, lightweight dashboard for displaying network metrics linked to popular digital currencies is addressed in this research paper. It collects live data from public APIs and visualizes key performance indicators such as token prices, transaction volume, and ownership distribution using open-source tools like Chart.js. The design emphasizes responsiveness, usability, and data accessibility, targeting users interested in monitoring trends and network health without backend dependencies. This dashboard simplifies data interpretation for end- users and promotes real-time decision-making.