Blockchain Papers

Zaman Nihat, Işıl Karabey Aksakalli, Nursena Bayğın

With the rise of digitalization and increased internet usage, digital certificates' security issues have gained significant importance. The utilization of counterfeit certificates can lead to deceptive identity and capability verifications, allowing untrustworthy individuals to assume misleading positions. Simultaneously, factors such as data leaks and technical glitches can jeopardize the security of certificates. These challenges can complicate talent verification processes and result in unsuitable individuals being placed in incorrect roles. The proposed work aims to thwart forged certificates and ensure their verifiability within this context. The methodology employed in the study strives to mitigate potential data loss or accessibility problems by adopting a decentralized storage structure. The primary objective is to establish certificates that are reliable, traceable, and capable of being verified. A rapid and efficient user interface was developed using React.js to achieve this aim. Smart contracts were scripted on the Ethereum blockchain using Solidity, and data, including user information and certificate details, were stored within components like MongoDB. In the phase of practical implementation, diverse scenarios have been designed to facilitate the generation, verification, and monitoring of certificates. The proposed approach is geared towards deterring forgery and enhancing the credibility of certificates. Through this system, users and organizations can authenticate certificates and prevent the proliferation of counterfeit ones. Furthermore, the enhanced security and ease of sharing certificates on digital platforms offer substantial advantages to certificate holders. In summary, this study strives to enhance the safeguarding and dependability of certificates by addressing the security concerns posed by the era of digitalization.

S. M. Wazid Ullah, Sibghat Ullah Bazai, Zubair Zaland, Muhammad Imran Ghafoor · 6 authors

The rapid growth of digital art has necessitated the development of secure ownership verification systems due to the inherent ease of duplication and distribution within the digital realm. This paper delves into the integration of smart contract technology, particularly the ERC721 standard, along with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), to establish a robust and secure framework for validating ownership of digital art. By harnessing the power of blockchain technology and smart contracts, this system aims to forge an indisputable connection between digital art pieces and their rightful owners, ensuring equitable compensation for artists and instilling confidence in the authenticity of acquisitions for collectors. The limitations of watermarking as a sole method for safeguarding digital copyright are explored, underscoring the susceptibility of watermarks to removal and manipulation. To surmount these limitations, we propose the fusion of watermarking with other methods to bolster the security and resilience of digital art protection. Notably, the implementation of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain emerges as a pivotal approach for establishing transparent and immutable ownership records.

Mohammad Hajian Berenjestanaki, Hamid R. Barzegar, Nabil El Ioini, Claus Pahl

The employment of blockchain technology in electronic voting (e-voting) systems is attracting significant attention due to its ability to enhance transparency, security, and integrity in digital voting. This study presents an extensive review of the existing research on e-voting systems that rely on blockchain technology. The study investigates a range of key research concerns, including the benefits, challenges, and impacts of such systems, together with technologies and implementations, and an identification of future directions of research in this domain. We use a hybrid review approach, applying systematic literature review principles to select and categorize scientific papers and reviewing the technology used in these in terms of the above key concerns. In the 252 selected papers, aspects such as security, transparency, and decentralization are frequently emphasized as the main benefits. In contrast, although aspects like privacy, verifiability, efficiency, trustworthiness, and auditability receive significant attention, they are not the primary focus. We observed a relative lack of emphasis on aspects such as accessibility, compatibility, availability, and usability in the reviewed literature. These aspects, although acknowledged, are not as thoroughly discussed as the aforementioned key benefits in the proposed solutions for blockchain-based e-voting systems, whereas the considered studies have proposed well-structured solutions for blockchain-based e-voting systems focusing on how blockchain can strengthen security, transparency, and privacy, in particular, the crucial aspect of scalability needs attention.

Immanni Bhanu Prakash, Adarsh Kr Tiwari, U. Hariharan

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become known as a game-changing digital asset class, revolutionizing digital content ownership and trade. These one-of-a-kind tokens symbolize a variety of digital and physical goods, including art, music, antiques, and more. The metadata linked with each token is crucial to the value and legitimacy of NFTs, giving crucial details about the asset's authenticity, ownership history, and other pertinent factors. It is critical in this setting to ensure the security, longevity, and usability of this metadata. The novel method of storing NFT information on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized and distributed file storage technology, is explored in this research article. It then digs into IPFS's design and operations, describing how it works as a decentralized file storage system. The integration of IPFS with NFT collections is thoroughly examined, emphasizing the advantages it provides with regard to data integrity, accessibility, and security. This study highlights IPFS's potential as a game- changing solution for NFT metadata storage. Creating a web- based NFT minting and querying application using Next.js, Web3Modal, and Ethereum on the Mumbai test net user-friendly integration of decentralized NFT contracts, aiming to facilitate broader adoption of NFT applications. As a result, it adds to the continuing discussion about NFT technology and its integration with decentralized systems, paving the path for a more robust and permanent digital art and collectibles market.

Yuwei Xu, Zehui Wu, Jie Cao, Jingdong Xu · 5 authors

Covert communication technology serves as a crucial tool for safeguarding not only the content of communication but also the identities of the parties involved. In this regard, blockchain emerges as a promising solution due to its decentralized nature, flood propagation of data, and inherent anonymity features. This makes blockchain an ideal candidate for covert communication channels, effectively addressing the weaknesses associated with traditional covert communication methods susceptible to detection, tracing, and interruption. However, the current efforts encounter obstacles like limited practicality, constrained channel capacity, and insufficient concealment capabilities, impeding their broad adoption in real-world scenarios. To address these issues, we propose DarkTrans, a blockchain-based covert communication scheme consisting of an address binary tree and a novel embedding mechanism. The address binary tree as a dynamic label method enables rapid recognition of specific transactions by the recipient, rendering detection by third parties challenging. The embedding mechanism encodes secret messages into transaction values for transmission to augment channel capacity, which can be practically realized within an Ethereum private blockchain. Our experiments with three aspects demonstrate that, compared with the existing scheme, DarkTrans achieves a low embedding time and a high channel capacity. Additionally, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and sample entropy analysis are conducted to validate the robust concealment of this scheme.

Anirudh P. Singh, Dhyanendra Jain, Prashant Vats, Ayush Tiwari · 5 authors

Blockchain is a technology that uses decentralized network of nodes (miners), blockchain consists of blocks. Each block has three parts data, hash, hash of previous block. Once data is stored it is very difficult to change the data to temper the data. Miners verify the transaction by calculating its hash function for which they get to keep some commission. In this review paper will provide a deep understanding of Blockchain technology and its applications through a Smart contract used for industries like banking, healthcare, supply chain, security, and numerous others. Blockchain is a growing field of worlds with newer applications throughout the various types of fields in the industry from the use of cryptocurrency to hospital management and various others, these applications are only made possible because of How blockchain works and does things.

B A Usha, S Monish, Murali Manohara Hegde A S, Nikhil Kumar · 6 authors

This survey investigates the transformative potential of blockchain technology in document generation and authentication, emphasizing its decentralized and distributed architecture for secure transaction recording and verification across a network of computers. By operating on a consensus mechanism, blockchain ensures transparency and data immutability, countering manipulation through cryptographic techniques like hashing and digital signatures. The survey explores blockchain-based approaches for certificates in education, professional certifications, and legal documentation, examining essential components such as smart contracts, cryptographic hashing, and consensus mechanisms. Platforms like Ethereum and Hyperledger are scrutinized for their strengths and limitations in certificate/document management, addressing challenges in traditional systems and underscoring the potential for heightened security and reliability in document authentication.

João Beleza Sousa, Gonçalo Marques

Nothing prevents several Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to be associated to the same digital asset, for instance, an image. As a consequence, the NFTs ecosystem is flooded with NFT replicas associated to the same assets of famous NFTs. The purpose of this paper is to propose creating NFTs in such a way that NFT/asset combination can not be replicated. We call the NFTs created in this way, Authentic NFTs. NFT token ids are known in advance, before creating the NFTs. Our approach is to include the NFT token id in the digital asset, and have the asset being digitally signed by it’s creator (author/artist). Given that NFT IDs are unique, our main finding is that any Authentic NFT replica can not be authentic. Either the NFT replica id does not match the NFT ID in the asset (if the asset was not modified), or the NFT replica asset is not signed by the asset creator (if the asset was modified).

Mikhail Cherdakov, Aleksey Kudashkin, Yash Madhwal, Yury Yanovich

The music industry faces numerous challenges regarding tracking and distributing royalties. This article explores how a decentralized and transparent system for managing music royalties can be created with a smart contract implementation on the Polygon network, utilizing Chainlink oracles. By enhancing the efficiency and transparency of royalty distribution, this groundbreaking smart contract has the potential to revolutionize the music industry and stand as a blueprint for diverse sectors grappling with analogous challenges in intellectual property rights and revenue allocation. At its core, this smart contract, functioning on the bedrock of blockchain, ensures meticulous oversight of financial transactions between consumers and content creators. It streamlines the process and facilitates the collection of user view statistics crucial for strategic fund allocation. With the potential impact of transaction fees on the user experience of blockchain payments, a new solution has been developed that includes a payment channel that reserves significant amounts of funds and enables off-chain payments through specialized messages. By combining these technological advancements, we are taking a transformative step towards a more seamless and fair future in the complex world of royalty management. The application is structured into conventional backend and frontend segments, with the code available on Github.

Sangharatna Godboley, P. Radha Krishna, T. Venkat Sai Naik, Lakshita Choudhary

A miner node in a blockchain network is important in validating and incorporating transactions into the blockchain ledger. The mining process demands a good amount of computational power, resulting in high energy consumption. Energy usage has notable environmental consequences, notably in the form of increased carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming and climate change. Existing research works evaluate the energy consumption of the entire blockchain network, encompassing factors like total network energy and the number of nodes. There is a requirement for research work specifically addressing miner nodes within local blockchain networks. In this paper, we present an approach to assess the energy consumption of miner nodes in local blockchain networks. Our analysis considers several key factors that influence energy utilization, including computational power (hashrate), power consumption, and electricity costs. To obtain precise data, we established a local blockchain network where we measured the hashrate and power consumption of the miner node. This empirical data helps us understand the exact amount of energy consumed during miner node activities. In our experiments, we used the Ethereum network to compute the energy consumption associated with various transaction types. Our proposed approach enhances the efficiency of blockchain applications. Also, it solves the environmental impact, contributing to the creation of a more sustainable and eco-friendly blockchain network.

Sakshi Rajvanshi, Sachin Sharma

A decentralised, distributed, open, and transparent digital ledger that keeps track of transactions among a number of computers is what is meant by the term "blockchain." By creating Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, in 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, a person or group created a revolutionary technology. Designing a solution to the issue of confidence in digital transactions, which would do away with the need for middlemen like banks or governments to verify and approve transactions, was urgently needed. The blockchain was created as a result of several important considerations. First, the blockchain addressed the problem of double spending, in which digital currency might be duplicated and used more than once, by developing a decentralised consensus system that validates transactions and upholds a single source of truth. Second, blockchain introduced the idea of "smart contracts," which are self-executing contracts that autonomously enforce terms and conditions by doing so without the use of intermediaries, thereby increasing efficiency and lowering costs across a range of businesses. As each transaction is recorded on a block that is linked to earlier blocks in a chronological and immutable manner, creating a visible and auditable history of all transactions, bringing transparency to transactions was Blockchain's biggest accomplishment. This has repercussions for supply chain management, electoral processes, and other sectors where accountability and openness are crucial.

Chirag Jain, Luv Gupta, Manav Ranawat, Varsha Hole

Democracy, a system of governance founded on the principle of citizen representation, has become prevalent worldwide. Elections are crucial components of democratic systems, and it is essential to guarantee transparent, secure, and impartial election processes to maintain citizens’ trust in the government. However, the lack of transparency and security in democratic elections has raised concerns about their legitimacy and fairness. Creating a secure e-voting system that provides fairness, anonymity, transparency, and flexibility has been a significant challenge, despite the increasing adoption of technology worldwide. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) offer time and effort-saving benefits compared to traditional paper ballots but are susceptible to challenges that compromise the integrity of the electoral process. To address these challenges, we have proposed a Blockchain based E-voting system. This system provides a secure, decentralized platform where votes are recorded on an immutable ledger. It enables real-time vote counting, overcoming the time-consuming and error-prone nature of traditional methods. The proposed approach involves using Hyperledger Fabric and Chaincode to develop a scalable, maintainable, and cost-effective e-voting system within a customized private Blockchain network. This system adheres to the principles of Zero Knowledge Proof, ensuring accurate vote accounting and safeguarding the credibility and legitimacy of democratic elections.

Abhijeet R. Raipurkar, Shreyas Bobde, Anurag Tripahi, Mohit Sahu

A digital identity represents an external entity, be it a person, business, program, or object, and serves as the foundation for automatic access to computer-based services and interpersonal interactions. Despite years of research, the challenge of reliable internet connectivity for digital identification remains unresolved. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution for digital identification in situations of mutual mistrust. Unlike current identity management systems that rely on centralized storage, our recommendation is a blockchain-based, self-sovereign identity (SSI) platform where true identities of customers/users are held in their respective web applications, utilizing decentralized storage. The identification information is validated using the Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) technique offered by SSI-based platforms, ensuring privacy and security. The proposed approach in this paper serves as a digital identity wallet, empowering users to verify their identities using blockchain technology and an SSI-based approach, resulting in a decentralized, ZKP-verified, and immutable identity. By addressing the issues of data immutability, traceability, and centralized control often associated with traditional identification systems, the proposed approach offers a robust and versatile model of proven claims that can be verified by external sources. Different implementations of claim formation and verification, showcasing sub-second performance is presented in the paper.

Devishree Naidu, Bhushan Wanjari, Rohit Bhojwani, Saurabh Suchak · 6 authors

In today’s era, over 90 percent of the population is involved in digital transactions. This increased adoption of digital payments has raised concerns about security problems, such as insecure and fraudulent transactions, phishing, replay attacks, and password attacks. Authentication and data privacy play a major role in addressing these security challenges.This paper proposes a secure mechanism to perform authentication using the Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) algorithm in Blockchain. Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) allows users to prove that they possess certain knowledge or information without revealing that knowledge or information to the verifier. This makes Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) ideal for privacy-preserving authentication, which is essential for protecting sensitive user data. This enables storing the record of all the payment history keeping transaction tracking and makes the record storage immutable and tamper-proof. With added features of better payment authentication and payment tracking, the system mitigates any chances of corruption, unauthorized transactions, and payment discrepancies. This leads to a faster and more transparent end-to-end process. The scheme is demonstrated using a funds flow process between vendors by implementing a smart contract. The system accuracy is tested by performing audit analysis using the SolidityScan tool achieving a 94.44 score. The overall implementation shows that the proposed scheme outperforms several attacks preventing unauthorized access and providing data privacy.

Saeed Banaeian Far, Maryam Rajabzadeh Asaar

Blockchain technology has emerged as a compelling field of study over the past decade. Nevertheless, certain blockchain-based protocols, particularly those reliant on permissioned blockchains, continue to be under the governance of a central authority (CA). This central authority possesses extensive control capabilities, including the facilitation of user network access, as well as the establishment, connection, and revocation of users to and from the network. Consequently, the majority of policies within these protocols are centrally administered by a singular party. This paper introduces an architectural framework and a specific protocol denoted as the ”Anonymous Reporting System with No Central Authority” (ARSnCA) on a public blockchain infrastructure. This design aims to mitigate the challenges posed by untrusted privileged insiders to the ARSnCA. It is hypothesized that this approach can enhance system reliability, fault tolerance, and foster trust among network members. To eliminate the central authority, a concept termed the virtual blockchain (VBC) is implemented as an embedded permissioned blockchain within a permissionless blockchain. Following the removal of the CA, the authorities previously held by the central authority are transferred to the members of the VBC. Comparative analysis and evaluation of the ARSnCA protocol demonstrate a performance advantage, with speeds that are 62% and 92% faster than reporting protocols based on ring signatures and other protocols included in the comparison.

Fahad Rahman, Chafiq Titouna, Farid Naït‐Abdesselam, Ahmed Serhrouchni

Blockchain Technology (BCT), characterized by its decentralized and distributed ledger structure, records transactions securely using cryptographic methods. As BCT continues to evolve rapidly, it’s becoming increasingly integral to distributed system architectures. However, scalability remains a critical challenge for researchers, especially as transaction volume, block size, or node count grows, potentially hindering the development of distributed ecosystems. This paper introduces a federated layered model aimed at creating a scalable Blockchain system. This model ensures immediate, atomic updates across all nodes, including cross-zone transactions. The proposed system’s architecture is not only scalable but also flexible and manageable, effectively addressing issues like network congestion and asymmetric node distribution. When compared to traditional blockchain models, this new architecture significantly enhances scalability.

Junzheng Li, Zhenqi Wang, Shaopeng Guan, Youliang Cao

No abstract is available for this record.

Kevin Joshi, Kaushal Binjola, Rajas Bondale, Avani Sakhapara · 5 authors

The bane of cryptocurrency wallets is that there are too many of them. Many wallets support only a few individual currencies or a set of currencies. They are preferred over generic wallets, which cover all currencies, as each is quite functional and practical for their given currencies over their generic counterparts. We need a system that provides us with all our currencies and their values in one spot so we can have an overview or look at all our investments at a glance. The solution is a Dapp which enables us to link all our wallets in one place and provide a dashboard with the complete crypto net worth across various chains and wallets. An understated privacy issue is seen in many places; like when applying for visas to other countries, we often have to show our bank statements to prove our net worth. This example also holds for cryptocurrencies. If a user wants to reveal all their crypto assets, they have to give an exact distribution of their crypto assets and their wallet addresses to the one asking for the details, impeding their privacy. Once the wallet address is revealed, the asker can continuously keep track of the users’ transaction histories and hence track the user’s current worth at all times, and know about all the transactions the user will do in the future. It is a notable security and privacy issue. The solution to the above problem is a system wherein someone could ask the user whether their net worth is above a particular threshold. The system will return the answer as true or false, but to maintain the integrity of the answer, we will use Zero Knowledge Proof. It will ensure that the total net worth response from all the linked distributed wallets passes the threshold. It will help protect the user’s privacy, and they will no longer have to give an exact distribution of their cryptocurrencies or share their wallet addresses.

D. Deepa, G. M. Karpura Dheepan, R. Yogitha, K. Veena · 7 authors

In today's technology-driven landscape, the ease of access to information has led to a pressing concern: the proliferation of counterfeit documents. Document authentication plays a pivotal role in our daily lives, where proving our identity is crucial. Various identification documents like Aadhar cards, PAN cards, driving licenses, and passports require validation by human operators. To counteract the challenge of counterfeit documents, a highly accurate automated system has been devised. This system employs gradient optimization and domain-specific factors for matching ID documents with live face images. Addressing the scarcity of samples in numerous classes, a pair of interconnected systems with shared parameters facilitates efficient classifier strength training. The decentralized framework utilizes Ethereum blockchain-based innovation, ensuring digital document security through online storage, hashing, face verification, a peer-to-peer infrastructure, and QR code confirmation.

Mao Wang, Shanshan Tu, Haoyu Yu, P.Y. Yan

With the continuous development of Internet of vehicles (IoV) services and the continuous influx of network users, how to solve the security and user privacy protection problems of IoV system has become a top priority. In this regard, based on the in-depth analysis and research of the existing cryptographic theory and anonymous authentication scheme, aiming at the key issues in the security architecture of IoV based on blockchain technology, we propose an anonymous authentication scheme for IoV based on private blockchain. We design a private blockchain-based anonymous authentication scheme for IoV. With the help of the non-tampering characteristics of blockchain, through the decentralized and distributed public key infrastructure (PKI), the registration pressure under high load is effectively shared. In addition, based on the system architecture of distributed authentication, we also design the anonymous identity update stage of the vehicle through the form of hybrid chain, which realizes the continuous tracking and tamper resistance of the vehicle anonymous identity binding information. Finally, through the security analysis and the implementation of the simulation system, we prove that the scheme meets the security requirements and effectively improves the efficiency of the anonymous authentication process.

Tong Gu, Han Min, Songlin He, Xiaotong Chen

Smart contracts are tailored software services that provide consistency and autonomy. The emergence of blockchain has powerfully facilitated the development of smart contracts but also brought dramatic challenges to their security and trustwor-thiness. Plenty of malicious traps are hidden in smart contracts, causing irreversible damage and obstructing the progress of this technology. Although researchers have gradually emphasized the identification of trap contracts, existing approaches suffer from a few concerns, viz., the shortage of an efficient detection model, the unbalanced categories of trap contracts, and the absence of a high-quality dataset with multi-trap contracts. In this paper, we propose an architecture called TrapFormer to intelligently detect trap contracts in the blockchain solely by leveraging the opcodes of smart contracts. We introduce a densely connected transformer that can segmentally extract opcode features and thus distinguish any potential traps. Furthermore, we implement an adaptive data augmentation method to alleviate the category imbalance of trap contracts. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution, we construct a multi-trap contract dataset from Ethereum. The experimental results reveal that the proposed solution can achieve superior performance for practical use.

Swetha K B Swetha K B, Preethi N. R, Prof. Veena Dhavalgi

In India with the population of 1.39 billion a Unique Identification i.e. AADHAAR Identification is a major project. This ID is common for personal and Business usage. In 2009 Government of India by Ministry of Electronic & Information Technology established UIDAI(Unique Identification Authority of India). An Integrated approach to secure Aadhaar Identity using Block chain Technology and Convolution Neural Networks. Model is being proposed using Distributed Ledger Technology(DLT) of Block chain Technology(BT) comprised of 3 phases, In first phase Biometric data and Demographic data of AADHAR is used and data reduction is done. In second phase Convolution Neural Networks( CNN)of Deep Learning with ReLU model to secure biometric data from data cloning and face verification. In 3rd phase Block chain Technology(BT) using Distributed Ledger Technology( DLT) is added to have more security to the proposed model. Thus the Security in Aadhaar Identity can be achieved.

P. V. Sem’yanov, S. V. Grezina

Abstract— This article discusses the security of implementing encryption for the Bitcoin Core cryptocurrency wallet. Particular attention is paid to aspects of the practical use of cryptographic algorithms when encrypting the wallet.dat file with a password. Practical resistance to brute-force attacks using parallel computing on GPUs is also considered. It is discovered that Bitcoin Core does not implement changing the encryption key for the user’s private keys. This implementation makes it possible to carry out a second attack on the wallet without knowing the new password, if it has already been compromised previously. Changes to encryption algorithms are also been proposed to make brute-force attacks more difficult on the GPU.

S. Porkodi, D. Kesavaraja

No abstract is available for this record.