Blockchain Papers

Ardavan Babaei, Majid Khedmati, Mohammad Reza Akbari Jokar

No abstract is available for this record.

Amal Abdulbaqi Maryoosh, Ahmed Abd Ali Abdulkadhim, Muntaha AbdulzahraHatem

Block chain is a technology for securely storing data in a manner that makes system changes or hacks impossible or difficult. Numerous organizations have adopted this technology, which utilizes a peer-to-peer distributed network. Using a decentralized peer-to-peer network to operate. A block chain is a collection of linked computer systems that operate as a distributed ledger of transactions. Every new transaction that happens on the block chain is copied to each participant's ledger, and each block on the chain is made up of numerous transactions. This paper aims to explain block chain technology, including its uses and difficulties.

Kristian López Vargas, Brett Williams, Shuchen Zhao

No abstract is available for this record.

Yu Ma, xingya wang, Xin Gu, Zhihong Zhao

No abstract is available for this record.

Kseniya Shoshina, Ирина Васендина, V. Berezovskiy

No abstract is available for this record.

Xuelin Wei, Chang Wu, Haoran Yu, Siyan Liu · 5 authors

Abstract Coin selection method refers to the process undergone when selecting a set of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) from a cryptocurrency wallet or account to use as inputs in each transaction. The most applied coin selection method that UTXO-based cryptocurrencies currently employ is an algorithm that decides on a certain set of UTXOs that matches the target amount and limits the transaction fee. However this approach trades off favourable maintenance overhead of the entire network for low transaction fees, as many low-value UTXOs known as “dust” is produced. Over time, this will impact the scalability and management of the cryptocurrency network as the global set of UTXOs become larger. Therefore, there is an urgency to find a higher-performing coin selection method suitable for UTXO-based cryptocurrencies. This paper proposes a method based on the greedy and genetic algorithm for effectively choosing sets of UTXOs in Bitcoin. The main objective of this coin selection strategy is to get as close as possible to the target while also maintaining and possibly reducing the number of UTXO inputs.

Wenbin Gu, Yuxin Li, Dunbing Tang, Xianliang Wang · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Ankit Bansal, Osman Y. Özaltın, Reha Uzsoy, Karl G. Kempf

Abstract Product transitions involve the replacement of products currently being produced and distributed by a firm with new products throughout the firm's supply chain. In high technology industries effective management of product transitions is crucial to long‐term success, and involves the coordination of multiple product development units and a manufacturing unit by a product division serving a particular market. Since the different units are organizationally autonomous, and the product division does not have access to their detailed technological constraints and internal operating policies, a decentralized solution is required. We develop a price‐based coordination framework using the subadditive dual of a mixed‐integer linear program that seeks to maximize the number of units whose proposed plans are included in the final solution. The proposed approach yields superior solutions to a linear‐programming‐based branch‐and‐price approach within the same computing budget. We discuss the broader applicability of this integer column generation approach, and suggest directions for future work.

Veera Babu Ramakurthi, Vijaya Kumar Manupati, José Machado, Leonilde Varela · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Jiewu Leng, Ziying Chen, Weinan Sha, Shide Ye · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Armin F. Buckhorst, Lea Grahn, Robert Schmitt

The Line-less Mobile Assembly System paradigm (short LMAS) provides necessitated flexibility, especially for large-scale products as customer demands for individualized products persist and product life-cycles remain short. To make LMAS advantages operationally usable in an industrial context, it requires a suitable control system to connect multi-purpose assembly resources and to autonomously configure transient assembly stations. Therefore this paper reviews the relevant literature to identify the necessary components of such architectures. Depending on the control system’s intention and use cases, the properties of the organizational paradigm, an adequate ontology and basic design patterns regarding the distribution and order-relationships of the system entities are to be defined conceptually. For the implementation, a role model, an interaction model, and a data model are required. Due to the utilization of mobile multipurpose resources and the possibility of factory shopfloor reconfiguration by transient stations, existing approaches do not meet LMAS inherent properties. Consequently, we present a suitable decentralized multi-agent control system approach.

Kevin Shang, Jing-Sheng Jeannette Song

We review the recent developments in dynamic inventory models with financial flow considerations. The focus is on the literature that introduces cash flow dynamics into the classic inventory models that do not explicitly consider the interactions between physical (or material) and financial flows. These augmented models serve two important purposes. First, they help understand the impact of financial flows on inventory dynamics and decisions. Second, with the connection to the classic inventory models, one can leverage the extant results to derive the optimal control policy or to evaluate/optimize the performance of any given type of policy and reveal insights. We summarize models for both single-stage and multi-stage inventory systems, and discuss the implications and applications to decentralized systems within a broader topic of supply chain finance.

Silvia Crafà, Cosimo Laneve

Liquidity is a liveness property of programs managing resources that pinpoints those programs not freezing any resource forever. We consider a simple stateful language whose resources are assets (digital currencies, non fungible tokens, etc.). Then we define a type system that tracks in a symbolic way the input-output behaviour of functions with respect to assets. These types and their composition, which define types of computations, allow us to design two algorithms for liquidity that have different precisions and costs. We also demonstrate the correctness of the algorithms.

Alex Chinco

The conventional wisdom is that you must reveal something about how you pick stocks in order to prove that you have stock-picking skill. In this paper I show that, prior to executing any trades, it is possible to prove you have stock-picking skill without revealing any additional information about your underlying trading signal. Here is how the protocol works. The evaluator presents you with a sequence of paired return data sets, one real and the other suitably randomized. A profitable trading signal will only be able to predict the cross-section of returns in the real data set. So by repeatedly using your trading signal to identify the real data set, you can prove that you have stock-picking skill without revealing anything else about your underlying signal. This protocol represents a zero-knowledge proof of stock-picking skill—i.e., a proof which reveals nothing except for the validity of your claim. Zero-knowledge proofs allow any skilled stock picker to advertise his ability without fear of his trading signal getting scooped. As a result, they have important implications for how the active-management industry is organized.

Stefano Bistarelli, Francesco Faloci, Paolo Mori

In this paper we present a framework for automatically coding blockchain based supply chain management systems starting from a Domain Specific Graphical Language (DSGL) interface modeling the typical interactions of the actors of a value chain. For each asset defined in the DSGL, a solidity smart contract is created and for each interaction a specific method is defined. The DSGL allows the specification of the roles of the actors involved in the value chain, and of a set of constraints in order to permit the execution of operations on the assets only to users with specific roles. Besides the smart contracts implementing the supply chain management system, two web based user interfaces are produced by our framework for the management of the supply chain designed through the DSGL: one for the supply chain administrator and the other for the supply chain participant.

Beatriz Abdul‐Jalbar, Roberto Dorta‐Guerra, José M. Gutiérrez, Joaquı́n Sicilia

Trade credit is a crucial source of capital particularly for small businesses with limited financing opportunities. Inventory models considering trade credit financing have been widely studied. However, while there is extensive research on the single-vendor single-buyer inventory model allowing delays in payments, the systems where the vendor supplies to more than one buyer have received less attention. In this paper, we analyze a two-echelon inventory system where a single vendor supplies an item to two buyers who face a constant deterministic demand. The vendor produces the items at a finite rate and offers the buyers a delay payment period. That is, the buyers can delay the payment for the purchased items until the end of the credit period. Therefore, during such a period, the buyers sell the items and use the sales revenue to earn interest. At the end of the credit period, the buyers should pay the purchasing cost to the vendor for which external funding may be necessary. It is widely accepted that, in general, centralized policies reduce the total cost of the supply chain. Therefore, we first deal with an integrated model assuming that the vendor and the buyers make decisions jointly. However, in some cases, the buyers are not willing to collaborate, and the management of the supply chain has to be carried out in a decentralized manner. Hence, we also address the problem under a non-cooperative setting. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate both models. Additionally, we perform a computational experiment to compare both strategies, and a sensitivity analysis of the parameters is also carried out. From the results, we derived that, in general, it was more profitable to follow the integrated policy excepting when the replenishment costs for the buyers were high. Finally, in order to validate the computational results, a statistical analysis is performed.

Simon Cousaert, Jiahua Xu, Toshiko Matsui

Yield farming has been an immensely popular activity for cryptocurrency holders since the explosion of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) in the summer of 2020. In this Systematization of Knowledge (SoK), we study a general framework for yield farming strategies with empirical analysis. First, we summarize the fundamentals of yield farming by focusing on the protocols and tokens used by aggregators. We then examine the sources of yield and translate those into three example yield farming strategies, followed by the simulations of yield farming performance, based on these strategies. We further compare four major yield aggregrators -- Idle, Pickle, Harvest and Yearn -- in the ecosystem, along with brief introductions of others. We systematize their strategies and revenue models, and conduct an empirical analysis with on-chain data from example vaults, to find a plausible connection between data anomalies and historical events. Finally, we discuss the benefits and risks of yield aggregators.

Baek Dong Hwan, Kim Sung Wook

No abstract is available for this record.

Johannes Fottner, Dana Clauer, Fabian Hormes, Michael Freitag · 13 authors

The paper at hand presents a definition of autonomous intralogistics systems and a classification of intralogistics systems with regard to their degree of autonomy. Intralogistics -; a complex interplay of different logistics functions - covers the organization, control, execution and optimization of internal material and information flows. Over the past two decades, numerous authors have observed and proclaimed an increase in complexity in manufacturing and supply chain operations. A key approach to face this challenge is a paradigm shift from centralized, hierarchical organization structures towards, networked and autonomous systems. Autonomous intralogistics systems enable self-contained, decentralized planning, execution, control, and optimization of internal material and information flows through cooperation and interaction with other systems and with humans.Based on the definition of autonomous intralogistics systems, the authors propose a two-dimensional classification framework covering different automation stages for different intralogistics task levels. The developed classification framework is applied to various industry use cases to evaluate and discuss the state of the art regarding the implementation of autonomous intralogistics systems. Finally, the paper provides an outlook on future research and poses key research questions.

Zi Hau Chin, Timothy Tzen Vun Yap, Ian K. T. Tan

No abstract is available for this record.

Nina-Birte Schirrmacher, Johannes Rude Jensen, Michel Avital

An emerging type of organization challenges the assumptions of what an organization is and how actors work: fluid organizations are characterized by continually changing templates of boundaries, decision-making, and task and role allocation. Increasingly, fluid organizations form around digital tokens, which resemble common shares in a corporation. In this study, we draw on the theoretical lens of practices to explore how the use of tokens shapes work in fluid organizations. We conduct a netnography among actors of two token-issuing fluid organizations in the decentralized finance sector. We identify token-centric practices that (i) leave actors striving toward a goal, giving rise to flexibility, and (ii) are institutionalized, giving rise to a structure. However, these practices also evoke tensions that the actors seek to continuously mitigate through action on a continuum of solutions to emerging problems. The findings contribute to the emerging literature on work in fluid organizations.

Senyu Xu, Huajun Tang, Zhijun Lin

This study introduces a dual‐channel supply chain including a supplier and a retailer with capital constraints, in which the retailer can apply for the trade credit financing from the supplier. This work investigates the effects of two typical behaviors, free riding behavior and consumer switching behavior, on inventory, ordering, and sales effort decisions in decentralized and centralized decision situations with stochastic demand. In order to achieve the optimal performance in the centralized system, this research designs a partial buyback contract to coordinate the supply chain. Furthermore, numerical analysis is provided to test the feasibility of the model. The results indicate that in the dual‐channel supply chain with the above two behaviors, (1) the optimal sales effort level, optimal order quantity, the optimal offline, and online profits under the centralized decision‐making are more than those under decentralized scenario, except for the optimal inventory level; (2) the increase of the offline consumer switching rate will lead to the reduction of the offline order quantity and the offline expected profit and raise the online inventory level and the online expected profit; (3) the increase of the online consumer switching rate will raise the offline order quantity and the offline expected profit but has no significant impact on the online inventory level and the online expected profit; (4) the increase of the free riding coefficient of the supplier, no matter whether in decentralized or centralized systems, will reduce the offline sales effort level, the offline expected profit, and the online expected profit and raise the inventory level. Finally, this work provides some managerial implication.

Muhammad Jawad Hamid Mughal, Muhammad Nawaz Brohi

Data protection and transparency are highly recommended modern approaches for any transaction domain. The proposed layer model will provide an improved and secure approach for transporting of goods using crypto currencies and excluding intermediate parties. Paper gives temporarily overview of crypto currency, logistics movement channels, block chain evaluation, challenges, types, applications and layer model that shows movements of good from scratch (source) to delivery (client destination) through secured transactions medium, excluding intermediate parties (banks etc.) storing signatures in distributed ledger.

Roberta Pellegrino, Nicola Costantino, Danilo Tauro

The purpose of this paper is to study how advanced information about customer needs obtained through an Advance Purchase Discount (APD) contract can be exploited to coordinate the capital flow and enhance the efficiency of a two-stage supply chain (SC) under decentralized control in cases of stochastic customer demand. We developed an APD model in the form of an option contract, where the model and evaluation include the flexibility for the upstream firm to decide whether to provide a discount for an advance purchase at its own discretion. Applying the model to a Fortune 100 company, a leader in the Fast Mover Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, showed that under certain conditions, and with suitably chosen contract parameters, management of decentralized control via APD contracts can lead to system-wide efficiency, and the individual decision makers pursue their own best interests, ensuring a win-win condition.