Blockchain is an immutable and shared database of time–stamped transactions that supports decentralization and strong consistency support over many authoritative domains where trust is a major factor. The above advantage of Blockchain makes it potentially suitable for a diverse set of applications in many sectors like healthcare, education and finance. In this paper, we propose a globally trusted blockchain based educational framework among various stakeholders like universities, companies and other higher educational institutions that agree to collaborate as a part of the framework. This framework aids to verify academic certificates and course credits of a student registered in a university which can be digitally transferred among the stakeholders. This ensures a global view of a student’s performance by achieving consistency among the local copies of educational certificates and credits. The proposed framework will assign tokens on successful completion of courses as credits of registered students in various universities. The transferred credits will act as transactions mined as blocks and added to longest chain. It will work in a homogeneous environment where all stakeholders collaborate irrespective of the hurdles of legal and administrative policies.
Bitcoin is a digital currency that has enticed considerable recognition as an alternative solution to the traditional payment system. Its success is mostly due to the use of Blockchain over a decentralised peer-to-peer network. Today's Bitcoin network has more than 10,000 online peers geographically scattered around the world. However, its topology is still unknown due to security concerns. In this paper, we design and implement a fast and efficient framework named BTCmap to discover and map the Bitcoin network topology. Our BTCmap framework includes two modules viz., a sniffer to collect the local addresses database of each peer, and a Bitcoin peer emulator to select neighbours and generate the topology. Our analyses show that to remain within 1% confidence interval, we have a window of 56 minutes 40 seconds for collecting the local address databases from all peers. Within this time duration, BTCmap requests more than 8200 reachable peers to map the real Bitcoin network topology. We present a Bitcoin topology snapshot captured on June 14, 2018, 15:53 CEST and show that this snapshot is connected.
Alfonso Panarello, Nachiket Tapas, Giovanni Merlino, Francesco Longo · 5 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of smart devices to collect data and make intelligent decisions. However, a lack of intrinsic security measures makes IoT vulnerable to privacy and security threats. With its "security by design," Blockchain (BC) can help in addressing major security requirements in IoT. BC capabilities like immutability, transparency, auditability, data encryption and operational resilience can help solve most architectural shortcomings of IoT. This article presents a comprehensive survey on BC and IoT integration. The objective of this paper is to analyze the current research trends on the usage of BC-related approaches and technologies in an IoT context. This paper presents the following novelties, with respect to related work: (i) it covers different application domains, organizing the available literature according to this categorization, (ii) it introduces two usage patterns, i.e., device manipulation and data management (open marketplace solution), and (iii) it reports on the development level of some of the presented solutions. We also analyze the main challenges faced by the research community in the smooth integration of BC and IoT, and point out the main open issues and future research directions. Last but not least, we also present a survey about novel uses of BC in the machine economy.
Aug 1, 2018·2018 17th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications/ 12th IEEE International Conference On Big Data Science And Engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE)
Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury, Alan Colman, Muhammad Ashad Kabir, Jun Han · 5 authors
In recent times, Bitcoin has gained special attention both from industry and academia. The underlying technology that enables Bitcoin (or more generally crypto-currency) is called blockchain. At the core of the blockchain technology is a data structure that keeps record of the transactions in the network. The special feature that distinguishes it from existing technology is its immutability of the stored records. To achieve immutability, it uses consensus and cryptographic mechanisms. As the data is stored in distributed nodes this technology is also termed as "Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)". As many researchers and practitioners are joining the hype of blockchain, some of them are raising the question about the fundamental difference between blockchain and traditional database and its real value or potential. In this paper, we present a critical analysis of both technologies based on a survey of the research literature where blockchain solutions are applied to various scenarios. Based on this analysis, we further develop a decision tree diagram that will help both practitioners and researchers to choose the appropriate technology for their use cases. Using our proposed decision tree we evaluate a sample of the existing works to see to what extent the blockchain solutions have been used appropriately in the relevant problem domains.
Maged N. Kamel Boulos, James T. Wilson, Kevin A. Clauson
A PubMed query run in June 2018 using the keyword 'blockchain' retrieved 40 indexed papers, a reflection of the growing interest in blockchain among the medical and healthcare research and practice communities. Blockchain's foundations of decentralisation, cryptographic security and immutability make it a strong contender in reshaping the healthcare landscape worldwide. Blockchain solutions are currently being explored for: (1) securing patient and provider identities; (2) managing pharmaceutical and medical device supply chains; (3) clinical research and data monetisation; (4) medical fraud detection; (5) public health surveillance; (6) enabling truly public and open geo-tagged data; (7) powering many Internet of Things-connected autonomous devices, wearables, drones and vehicles, via the distributed peer-to-peer apps they run, to deliver the full vision of smart healthy cities and regions; and (8) blockchain-enabled augmented reality in crisis mapping and recovery scenarios, including mechanisms for validating, crediting and rewarding crowdsourced geo-tagged data, among other emerging use cases. Geospatially-enabled blockchain solutions exist today that use a crypto-spatial coordinate system to add an immutable spatial context that regular blockchains lack. These geospatial blockchains do not just record an entry's specific time, but also require and validate its associated proof of location, allowing accurate spatiotemporal mapping of physical world events. Blockchain and distributed ledger technology face similar challenges as any other technology threatening to disintermediate legacy processes and commercial interests, namely the challenges of blockchain interoperability, security and privacy, as well as the need to find suitable and sustainable business models of implementation. Nevertheless, we expect blockchain technologies to get increasingly powerful and robust, as they become coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) in various real-word healthcare solutions involving AI-mediated data exchange on blockchains.
Anik Islam, Mohammed Belal Uddin, Md. Fazlul Kader, Soo Young Shin
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation receiver is considered as one of the most potent multiple access techniques to be adopted in future wireless communication networks. Data security in the NOMA transmission scheme is on much attention drawing issue. Blockchain is a distributed peer-to-peer network enables a way of protecting information from unauthorized access, tempering etc. By utilizing encryption techniques of blockchain, a secured data communication scheme using blockchain in NOMA is proposed in this paper. A two-phase encryption technique with key generation using different parameter is proposed. In the first-phase data is encrypted by imposing users' public key and in the second phase, a private key of the base station (BS) is engaged for encryption. Finally, the superiority of the proposed scheme over existing scheme is proven through a comparative study based on the different features.
A health-care system gathers comprehensive physiological information and medical records, making its data more important than ever. For example, for years now, the National Health Insurance Administration (https://www.nhi.gov.tw/English/) of Taiwan has requested every doctor, whether in a medical center or private clinic, to upload the diagnosis result, treatment, and prescription. These anamneses have also been stored in the National Health Insurance Research Database (http://nhird.nhri.org.tw/en/index.html) since 1 March 1995, and 99.9% of the Taiwanese population have been enrolled since 2014. With this comprehensive database, analytics tools can be run to uncover useful information to further understand the etiological factors for rare disorders. This database is successful primarily because Taiwan is a small but densely populated island, making it relatively easy for the government to collect most, if not all, the anamneses.
Florentina Magda Enescu, Nicu Bizon, Andrei Cirstea, Cosmin Ştirbu
In increasingly diverse areas of activity, the notion of block technology appears more and more often. What benefits and how they can be applied in the health sector will be presented in this article. This system is decentralized and cannot be controlled, and records cannot be modified. Blockchain technology offers efficiency and low health costs. In this way, the health of the population is monitored worldwide, by using an encryption program for the storage of patients' databases in diagnosis, laboratory analysis, medical imaging, medicine etc. Users are encouraged to use such a platform in a peer-to- peer market to have permanent access to medical history, and last but not least, to support the medical act for a correct diagnosis, research system and pharmaceutical industry. The objective of this paper is to achieving a technology that will make the medical system more efficient by decentralization, faster access to information and the creation of a solid database that will bring essential predictability to the system.
Improving efficiency and performance is an important topic in the world today. As it is well-known, cooperative computing is an effective and traditional approach, and it is widely used in various fields. Inspired by this idea, take E-commerce for example, Security is one of its important indicators. In E-commerce, the security technology has become a major issue restricting the rapid development and popularization of E-commerce. Existing solutions leverage blockchain protocols to improve the credibility of transactions, but most of them have some limitations, such as a lower throughput and higher consensus latency, and these problems make blockchain technology difficult to be widely used. This paper presents a trusted framework (ETT F) using blockchain protocol in E-commerce to achieve a higher credible trading. ETTF includes a peer blockchain protocol (PBP) based on a peer blockchain architecture to support the storage of massive transactions and instant transactions. In PBP, the throughput scales are nearly linearly increased with the computation: the more computing power available, the more blocks are selected per unit time. Besides, in order to ensure a higher security of transactions we have introduced a strong consensus algorithm(ECA) in E-commerce. ETTF is also efficient because the number of messages it requires is nearly linear in the network size. Compared to Bitcoin-derived blockchain, ETTF shows better performance on throughput, latency, and capacity in E-commerce.
In this paper, we present the applications of blockchain technology in healthcare. Furthermore, we evaluate the choice and deployment of Blockchain technology in such applications, review the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach. We review the Estonian system, which is the first blockchain-based health system at the national level, in detail and discuss its ramifications to Turkey. This paper is one of the first papers in this domain and, to the best of authors' knowledge, the first in Turkish.
The increasing popularity of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies has led to a rising interest in its underlying blockchain technology. Blockchains serve as distributed ledgers, and are fundamentally different from traditional distributed databases. In view of this large scale adoption of blockchain technology, it is of interest to analyze the performance of the underlying mechanisms in peer-to-peer blockchain networks.
Önder Gürcan, Alejandro Ranchal Pedrosa, Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni
Bitcoin-like blockchains do not envisage any specific mechanism to avoid unfairness for the users. Hence, unfair situations, like impossibility of cancellation of transactions explicitly or having unconfirmed transactions, reduce the satisfaction of users dramatically, and, as a result, they may leave the system entirely. Such a consequence would impact significantly the security and the sustainability of the blockchain. Based on this observation, in this paper, we focus on explicit cancellation of transactions to improve the fairness for users. We propose a novel scheme with which it is possible to cancel a transaction, whether it is confirmed in a block or not, under certain conditions. We show that the proposed scheme is superior to the existing workarounds and is implementable for Bitcoin-like blockchains. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Athina-Styliani Kleinaki, Petros Mytis-Gkometh, George Drosatos, Pavlos S. Efraimidis · 5 authors
Biomedical research and clinical decision depend increasingly on scientific evidence realized by a number of authoritative databases, mostly public and continually enriched via peer scientific contributions. Given the dynamic nature of biomedical evidence data and their usage in the sensitive domain of biomedical science, it is important to ensure retrieved data integrity and non-repudiation. In this work, we present a blockchain-based notarization service that uses smart digital contracts to seal a biomedical database query and the respective results. The goal is to ensure that retrieved data cannot be modified after retrieval and that the database cannot validly deny that the particular data has been provided as a result of a specific query. Biomedical evidence data versioning is also supported. The feasibility of the proposed notarization approach is demonstrated using a real blockchain infrastructure and is tested on two different biomedical evidence databases: a publicly available medical risk factor reference repository and on the PubMed database of biomedical literature references and abstracts.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Retinal Imaging and Analysis
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
Blockchain and Internet of things are the most promising and upcoming technologies. Blockchain is a distributed, peer to peer database forming a chain between multiple blocks of data. The internet of things works on a similar paradigm where multiple devices are connected to the internet forming a network of networks. Combined together they offer solutions for various problems, especially in the field of healthcare where quick reporting of data or results is of utmost importance. Recent studies have proven that delays in providing healthcare are directly linked to patient confidence and chances of recovery. An unreliable storage of health records has only aggravated the problem. Our paper aims to provide a solution for these issues by proposing a Blockchain-Internet of things model where a bio-sensor measures and collects real time data with respect to a patient's medical status and stores it in the blockchain. In this way quick reporting and tamper proof storage of data occurs. By deploying a smart contract the final hospital bill can be calculated along with insurance coverage. This would negate the need of third party providers and create a transparent system. Our paper also proposes the use of Inter planetary file system to store discharged patients records thus reducing the load on the actual blockchain. Overall this will surely benefit patients and doctors alike by creating a safe and transparent environment along with quick response to a patient's need.
This paper introduces some of the interdependent components within the multifaceted solution our team is developing towards accelerating the functionality, complexity and versatility of blockchain-enabled services. The focus here is particularly on introducing and bringing together selected individual components of the solution to achieve a synergistic effect in expanding the functionality of blockchain-enforced smart contracts. The contributions of this paper include: (i) proposing a method for automated management of contracts with hierarchical conditionality structures through an hierarchy of intelligent agents and the use of hierarchical cryptographic key-pairs; (ii) proposing a method for efficient and secure matching and transfer of smart-contract underlyings (entities) among disparate smart contracts/subcontracts; (iii) proposing a method for producing an hierarchy of common secrets to facilitate hierarchical communication channels of increased security, and applying this method both in the context of method (i) and method (ii); and (iv) proposing the use of distributed hash tables DHT in building secure and optimized repositories in the context of method (i) and in the context method (ii), where the former involves a DHT repository of smart contracts and the latter involves a DHT repository of entities underlying smart contracts that are being exchanged among different smart contracts and subcontracts. The smart-contract focused methods introduced in this paper contribute to the overall goal towards a sustainable adaptive mechanism for processing evolving volumes, versatility, and complexity of blockchain transactions, traffic, and services. Blockchain-enabled services are efficient, secure, automated, and allowing worldwide distribution of resources. They present a more efficient and sustainable alternative to current service infrastructures within a range of domains, particularly the legal and financial domains. They also set a sustainable infrastructure for emerging Internet-of-things services.
Every individual undergoes a series of educational programs and acquires skills and pedagogical certifications throughout his/her life from various educational and skill development organisations across the world, including the companies they work for. It is imperative that there is a comprehensive record of these certifications that can be authentically verified by those wanting to employ the individual for these respective skills accredited through certifications. In this chapter, the authors explore the utility of blockchain technology-led digitization, automation of trust, and disintermediation in education sector. They examine some of the prominent use cases and challenges faced by blockchain technology. They also look at the current state of blockchain technology-enabled applications in related domains and its implications for the education sector in India along with a real-life illustration with implementation using AuxCert on Auxledger, a permissioned blockchain platform from Auxesis group.
Purwono Purwono, Alfian Ma’arif, Wahyu Rahmaniar, Qazi Mazhar ul Haq · 6 authors
Blockchain technology has a promising future in a number of industries and enterprises. Formerly connected to virtual currency like Bitcoin, blockchain has evolved into a versatile technology with many applications. In the upcoming years, it is predicted that blockchain will revolutionize a variety of industries, including banking, supply chain management, healthcare, voting systems, and more. The future of blockchain technology depends critically on its ability to increase security and transparency. By providing a decentralized and unchangeable record, eliminating the need for middlemen, and boosting participant confidence, blockchain promotes secure and traceable transactions. This transparency has the potential to transform whole industries by reducing fraud, streamlining processes, and increasing output. Blockchain also has the power to change financial systems. Blockchain-based smart contracts facilitate faster, more efficient transactions by automating and enforcing contractual agreements without the need for middlemen. By enabling speedier cross-border transactions, reducing costs, and boosting financial inclusion, tokenization and blockchain-based digital currencies have the potential to overturn conventional banking institutions. Blockchain’s key attributes, including decentralization, transparency, immutability, and security, make it a desirable choice for a range of organizations. Cross-border payments, trade finance, and smart contracts are just a few of the financial sector processes that blockchain technology has the potential to enhance and automate, lowering costs and increasing productivity. Additionally, the tamper-resistance of blockchain technology can boost transaction security and reliability, allowing for a wider use in traditional financial institutions. Outside of the financial industry, blockchain technology has a lot of promise, particularly in industries like supply chain management, healthcare, energy, intellectual property, and governance. By enabling transparent and traceable transactions, blockchain may improve supply chain efficiency, ensure product authenticity, and boost customer trust. By facilitating the secure exchange of patient data and research data, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology can enhance data security, interoperability, and privacy in the healthcare sector. A more decentralized and sustainable energy ecosystem may be supported by blockchain technology through peer-to-peer energy exchange, grid management, and monitoring of renewable energy certificates in the energy sector. Additionally, blockchain technology has the potential to transform decentralized governance structures, voting procedures, intellectual property rights, and digital identity management. By allowing people to own and manage their digital identities, blockchain can enhance privacy and reduce identity theft. Blockchain-based voting systems can offer transparency, security, and verifiability, thereby increasing voter turnout and public trust in democratic institutions. Blockchain can also enable the secure and transparent management of intellectual property rights, fostering author credit and just compensation.
Blockchain is considered as the important technological innovation behind Bitcoin system. It facilitates the transaction payment process by creating a decentralized, general ledger to improve regulatory capacity and remove unnecessary intermediaries. At present, the blockchain technology has been employed in the financial industry for a wide range of experimental application and exploration. In this paper, we firstly analyze the principle architecture and the technical characteristics of blockchain. Then its current research achievements and application scenarios are introduced. Finally, the application of blockchain in China Foreign Exchange Trade System is designed and explored. Combining with the credit matching trading system X-Swap, an inter-bank application based on the blockchain technology is implemented.
At the heart of the Bitcoin is a blockchain protocol, a protocol for achieving consensus on a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. To the extent that a blockchain protocol is used for applications such as contract signing and making certain transactions (such as house sales) public, we need to understand what guarantees the protocol gives us in terms of agents' knowledge. Here, we provide a complete characterization of agent's knowledge when running a blockchain protocol using a variant of common knowledge that takes into account the fact that agents can enter and leave the system, it is not known which agents are in fact following the protocol (some agents may want to deviate if they can gain by doing so), and the fact that the guarantees provided by blockchain protocols are probabilistic. We then consider some scenarios involving contracts and show that this level of knowledge suffices for some scenarios, but not others.
Tareq Ahram, Arman Sargolzaei, Saman Sargolzaei, Jeff Daniels · 5 authors
Digital world has produced efficiencies, new innovative products, and close customer relationships globally by the effective use of mobile, IoT (Internet of Things), social media, analytics and cloud technology to generate models for better decisions. Blockchain is recently introduced and revolutionizing the digital world bringing a new perspective to security, resiliency and efficiency of systems. While initially popularized by Bitcoin, Blockchain is much more than a foundation for crypto currency. It offers a secure way to exchange any kind of good, service, or transaction. Industrial growth increasingly depends on trusted partnerships; but increasing regulation, cybercrime and fraud are inhibiting expansion. To address these challenges, Blockchain will enable more agile value chains, faster product innovations, closer customer relationships, and quicker integration with the IoT and cloud technology. Further Blockchain provides a lower cost of trade with a trusted contract monitored without intervention from third parties who may not add direct value. It facilitates smart contracts, engagements, and agreements with inherent, robust cyber security features. This paper is an effort to break the ground for presenting and demonstrating the use of Blockchain technology in multiple industrial applications. A healthcare industry application, Healthchain, is formalized and developed on the foundation of Blockchain using IBM Blockchain initiative. The concepts are transferable to a wide range of industries as finance, government and manufacturing where security, scalability and efficiency must meet.
Spyros Makridakis, Antonis Polemitis, George M. Giaglis, Soula Louca
Blockchain technologies, once used exclusively for buying and selling bitcoins, have entered the mainstream of computer applications, fundamentally changing the way Internet transactions can be implemented by ascertaining trust between unknown parties. In addition, they ensure immutability (once information is entered it cannot be modified) and enable disintermediation (as trust is assured, no third party is required to verify transactions). These advantages can produce disruptive changes when properly exploited, inspiring a large number of applications. These applications are forming the backbone of what can be called the Internet of Value, bound to bring as significant changes as those brought over the last 20 years by the traditional Internet. This chapter investigates blockchain and the technologies behind it and explains their technological might and outstanding potential, not only for transactions but also as distributed databases. It also discusses its future prospects and the disruptive changes it promises to bring, while also considering the challenges that would need to be overcome for its widespread adoption. Finally, the chapter considers combining blockchain with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and discusses the revolutionary changes that would result by rapidly advancing the AI field.
Distributed ledger technology, a method of storing and maintaining the integrity of multiple copies of critical data using a massively redundant network of participating machines, has found a “killer application” in blockchain, a type of distributed ledger. A blockchain consists of sequential blocks that may never be modified or reordered, leaving a public, auditable record that is consistent and highly resistant to tampering and deletion. These qualities make blockchain eminently suitable for its most common use, cryptocurrency, and its occasional variants in the form of cryptocurrency tokens, used to represent ownership or some other right to virtual or physical goods and capabilities. Blockchain also enables smart contracts, discrete bodies of software written to serve both as the memorial and the means of execution of an agreement between parties. Smart contracts can have all the elements of a traditional contract, and as jurisdictions legislate or jurists rule on the fine points of enforceability and the acceptability of smart contracts as traditional contracts, applications in nearly every area of commerce have emerged. Digital lawyers may not need to become software developers, but deepening their understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the technology, developing a keen awareness of the issues at the intersection between code and the law, as well as the law’s readiness in this area, will be of great advantage to them and their clients in this rapidly evolving area at the intersection of technology, commerce and law.