Blockchain Papers

Ruiyun Yu, Ann Move Oguti, Dennis Reagan Ochora, Shu Li

No abstract is available for this record.

Jeethendra Balaji, Jayasree Narayanan

The following paper proposes a blockchain-enabled online voting system with existing technologies. Blockchain technologies enable a plethora of applications that take advantage of distributed economies. The proposed model is a web application built with AngularJS that uses Firebase for security and authentication. The Ethereum Blockchain is used by the project to deploy the smart contract. A smart contract is constructed for each poll to keep track of vote tallies, and when the vote is cast, a transaction is triggered. A voter can see the live status of the poll after they cast their vote.

Mirko Zichichi, Stefano Ferretti, Gabriele D’Angelo, Victor Rodrı́guez-Doncel

Abstract The centralization of control over the processing of personal data threatens the privacy of individuals due to the lack of transparency and the obstruction of easy access to their data. Individuals need the tools to effectively exercise their rights, enshrined in regulations such as the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Having direct control over the flow of their personal data would not only favor their privacy but also a “data altruism”, as supported by the new European proposal for a Data Governance Act. In this work, we propose a multi-layered architecture for the management of personal information based on the use of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). After an in-depth analysis of the tensions between the GDPR and DLTs, we propose the following components: (1) a personal data storage based on a (possibly decentralized) file storage (DFS) to guarantee data sovereignty to individuals, confidentiality and data portability; (2) a DLT-based authorization system to control access to data through two distributed mechanisms, i.e. secret sharing (SS) and threshold proxy re-encryption (TPRE); (3) an audit system based on a second DLT. Furthermore, we provide a prototype implementation built upon an Ethereum private blockchain, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Sia and we evaluate its performance in terms of response time.

Rodolfo Mecozzi, Giuseppe Perrone, Dario Anelli, Nicola Saitto · 6 authors

The decentralization of digital identity management brought notable advantages to the user, together with complete ownership of his identity. In this paper is summarized the state of the art of the Identity and Access Management in the blockchain environment and the related regulatory or guidelines with a proposal, based on literature and on the previous experiences.

Gioele Bigini, Mirko Zichichi, Emanuele Lattanzi, Stefano Ferretti · 5 authors

The management, protection and sharing of sensitive data such as those associated with the health domain are crucial in enabling personal care and contributing to worldwide medical advancements. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) allow for data protection compliant solutions in untrusted contexts that guarantee data immutability, protection and transparency when needed. This paper proposes an architecture based on DLTs, Smart Contracts and Distributed File Storage (DFS), enabling user data sovereignty, confidentiality and secure access control. A use case on health data is presented, where we apply a combination of DLT, DFS and an access control mechanism to allow users to distribute their data. Finally, we show an experimental evaluation of the overall architecture to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing practical DLT-based healthcare solutions. The results are collected through independent tests, available opensource, that verify the system's response time in each of its functions and as the load increases. The results are promising and show that the system is feasible and can scale as the load increases.

Yunxiang Wang, Jianhong Zhou, Gang Feng, Xianhua Niu · 5 authors

The recently emerging federated learning (FL) exploits massive data stored at multiple user nodes to train a global optimal learning model without leaking the privacy of user data. However, it is still inadequate to learn the global model safely at the centralized aggregator, which is an essential part for the traditional FL architecture. Specifically, when using FL in radio access networks to enable edge intelligence, it is difficult for a central server, which belongs to a third party, to guarantee its credibility. Moreover, because the central server may cause a single point of failure, its reliability is also difficult to guarantee. Besides, a malicious participating node of FL may send ill parameters for model aggregation. In this article, we develop a blockchain assisted federated learning (BC-FL) framework, with aim to overcome the single point of failure caused by central server. Meanwhile, we propose to use blockchain to implement auditing of individual involved nodes to ensure the reliability of learning process. To avoid privacy leakage during the audit process to the greatest extent, we design a matching audit mechanism to realize efficient random matching audit process. A cryptocurrency free delegated byzantine fault tolerant (CF-DBFT) consensus mechanism is also designed to realize the low-latency distributed consensus of all nodes in the FL proces. We apply the proposed BC-FL framework to resolve the computing resource allocation problem at the edger servers in MEC network. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and performance superiority of the proposed BC-FL framework. Compared with legacy FL algorithm, the serving time of MEC servers and utilization of computing resource are increased by 35 percent and 48 percent respectively under our proposed BC-FL algorithm.

Yana Kogan

The Bitcoin blockchain, a prime example of disruptive technology, has fundamentally altered the way various industries approach remote transactions. Bitcoin grants privacy to its users by anonymizing public keys, provides autonomy by eliminating the need for trusted third parties, and maintains transparency through its public disclosure protocol. Bitcoin is an innovative manifestation of the Fourth Amendment ideals of security and autonomy. It is, thus, no surprise that the Bitcoin blockchain presents unprecedented Fourth Amendment challenges for courts to consider.
 In United States v. Gratkowski, the Fifth Circuit addressed the novel issue of whether Fourth Amendment protections extend to an individual’s Bitcoin transactions. Notably, the court was the first to find that an individual does not have a privacy interest in their information located directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, the Fifth Circuit applied inconsistent and flawed reasoning in reaching this decision, demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin and its users.
 Accordingly, this Note argues that the Gratkowski decision should be applied narrowly and with caution, especially considering the Supreme Court’s warnings against the incompatibility of current Fourth Amendment doctrine with the digital age. It then suggests implementing a modified reasonable expectation-of-privacy standard, supplementing the current standard with an additional inquiry into what information an individual disclosed when initiating a transaction. This modified standard would preserve the integrity of Bitcoin, while simultaneously articulating a proper framework for assessing privacy concerns in the context of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.

Salabat Khan, Fei Luo, Zijian Zhang, Mussadiq Abdul Rahim · 7 authors

Vehicular social networking is expected to become a reality soon, where secure and privacy-preserving identity management is a prerequisite. Various organizations and studies have recommended using Vehicular Public-key Infrastructure (VPKI) to securely and privately manage vehicles' identities. However, the existing VPKI schemes still do not deal with identity management in vehicular social networking. In this work, we propose a Privacy-Preserving Identity Management (PPTIM) scheme for vehicular social networking to securely and privately manage vehicles' social identities. PPTIM builds on the transparency log (distributed ledger) proposals for web PKI, but it addresses challenges specific to vehicular social networking. All pseudo-social identities, pseudonym certificates issued against pseudo-social identities, revocation process, and revocation status validation are conducted on a transparency log. With an efficient data structure named the Accumulation Tree (AT), we extend the conventional transparency log to offer trustworthy pseudonym certificate validation without relying on the Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs). In addition, PPTIM strengthens the security of vehicular social networking by protecting vehicles to a greater extent from being duped by malicious pseudonym certificates through logging and constant monitoring. Finally, performance and security analysis show the cost-effectiveness and security of PPTIM.

Yanru Chen, Yuanyuan Zhang, Shengwei Wang, Fan Wang · 8 authors

With the development of big data, data sharing has become a hot topic. According to the previous research on data sharing, there is a problem with regard to how to design an effective incentive mechanism to make users willing to share data. First, we integrate the incentives based on reputation and payment and introduce “credibility coins” as a cryptocurrency for data-sharing transactions, to encourage users to participate honestly in the data-sharing process based on federated learning. Second, we propose a dynamic incentive model based on the evolutionary game theory to model the game process of users in data sharing and analyze the stability of their strategies. Finally, based on the results of this analysis, we use the blockchain-based smart contract technology to dynamically adjust the participation benefits of users under different conditions in order to promote users to join consortium blockchains more often and steadily to participate in model training for federated learning and obtain better model accuracy. Our work is the first to apply the evolutionary game theory to the study of incentives in federated learning, and plays a leading role in the study of incentives in federated learning. Experimental simulation validation shows that our DIM-DS model can adequately motivate users to participate in the collaborative task of data sharing and maintain stability. The model can maximize the effectiveness of the federated learning model.

Joseph T. Yun, Joanna Strycharz

In this article we provide a primer for blockchain technology (BT) and explain ways that it has been applied (or can be applied) to the field of advertising research and practice. We situate this primer inside a critical look at the evolution of digital advertising that has been driven largely by immediate technological need for the maximization of profit rather than considerations for societal well-being. We discuss arenas in which the current state of digital advertising is not well positioned to maximize societal well-being and has built a consumer distrust of digital advertising, specifically with regard to the areas of privacy invasion, value to consumers, technology companies’ power, inaccuracies of personalizations, and misinformation spread. Throughout this article we discuss how blockchain technologies can be used as a research environment for testing new paths for digital advertising that could tackle these issues and be more beneficial to society. We also provide an overview of avenues for future research on BT application in the digital advertising ecosystem.

Jian Wang, Guanghui Liu, Guosheng Zhao

No abstract is available for this record.

Shreyas Tandon, Niharika Singh, Shivani Porwal, Satiram · 5 authors

In current times, electronic voting systems are used for conducting elections but E-voting system has many problems like transparency, credibility, security functionality and reliability and also the complete process is quite slow. Most of these drawbacks can be removed by using Blockchain based E-voting system. Blockchain is a shared, immutable record that allows for the recording of transactions and the tracking of benefits in a network. Blockchain is an immutable and shared record that provides the method of recording transactions and tracking benefits in a network. In this paper, we propose and implement a blockchain based E-voting system using proof of work as the consensus algorithm. We feel this field has a lot of potential and scope of improvement in near future.

Rachit Goel, Utkarsh Singh, Debanjan Sadhya

Contact tracing is a critical tool for restricting the transmission of any infectious disease. This basic mechanism aids in identifying and breaking the chain of transmission by separating a healthy person from an infected person. Different nations and health institutions use various contact tracing methods to identify the transmission network and control the outbreak. However, the users face severe security and privacy risks, including storing the history of their locations, personal and device information. Subsequently, this personalized information could be utilized by a cyber-attacker for malicious purposes. In this study, the privacy and security risks of contact tracing technologies are identified, and a potential secure solution is proposed based on the blockchain network. The developed model is a decentralized application (or D-App) implemented using Ethereum smart contracts. The Bluetooth technology is used to identify contacts, and their data gets stored in the blockchain. This decentralization approach of D-App makes it an ideal framework for developing contact tracing applications.

Weilong Wang, Yingjie Wang, Peiyong Duan, Tianen Liu · 6 authors

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the rapid popularization of 5 G networks, the data that needs to be processed in Mobile Crowdsourcing (MCS) system is increasing every day. Traditional cloud computing can no longer meet the needs of crowdsourcing for real-time data and processing efficiency, thus, edge computing was born. Edge computing can be calculated at the edge of network so that greatly improve the efficiency and real-time performance of data processing. In addition, most of the existing privacy protection technologies are based on the trusted third parties. Therefore, in view of the semi-trustworthiness of edge servers and the transparency of blockchain, this paper proposes a triple real-time trajectory privacy protection mechanism (T-LGEB) based on edge computing and blockchain. Through combining the localized differential privacy and multiple probability extension mechanism, the T-LGEB mechanism is proposed to send the requests and data to the edge server in this paper. Then, through the spatio-temporal dynamic pseudonym mechanism proposed in the paper, the entire trajectory of task participants is divided into multiple unrelated trajectory segments with different pseudonymous identities in order to protect the trajectory privacy of task participants while ensuring high data availability and real-time data. Through a large number of experiments and comparative analysis on multiple real data sets, the proposed T-LGEB has extremely high privacy protection capabilities and data availability, and the resource consumption caused is relatively low.

", Nadia-Ariadna SAVA, Dacian C. Dragoş

This article attempts to critically review the applications of smart contracts in public procurement. The literature on the topic is characterized by an emphasis on potential advantages and uses of this emerging technology, while it lacks in the concrete practical implementations of smart contracts in public procurement. In this context, we wish to realistically outline the legal regime of smart public procurement contracts. For this, we analyze the potential use of blockchain and smart contracts in public procurement at two stages: contract award and contract execution. Our article also discusses case studies of smart public procurement contracts, in order to assess their compatibility with and their impact on the EU public procurement system.

Gauri Shetye, Nandini Sonar, Dhanamma Jagli

Abstract - The whole concept of self-sovereign identity (SSI) is gaining a lot of optimism, with the emerging Blockchain Technology in the current tech-scenario. It is a major change in how online interactions will take place in the future considering the identity of each user. The different aspects of SSI are examined by various works in the literature This paper surveys the origin of identity, various digital identity models and how it leads to self-sovereign identity. It then goes on to discuss related research, as well as the SSI's building blocks, which include decentralized IDs, verifiable credentials, a distributed ledger, and a variety of privacy mechanisms. Finally, it proposes a solution for self-sovereign identity by using the Ethereum platform for blockchain and other technologies

Cristian Toma, M. Popa, Cătălin Boja, Cristian Ciurea · 5 authors

The paper presents the construction of a proof-of-concept for a distributed and decentralized e-voting application in an IoT embedded device with the help of blockchain technology. A SoC board was used as an IoT embedded device for testing the PoC. This solution ensures complete voter anonymity and end-to-end security for all entities participating in the electronic voting process. The paper outlines the solution’s two layers. Implementation details are presented for the e-voting application, which was deployed inside of an IoT embedded device. The solution and presented protocols provide two major properties: privacy and verifiability. To ensure privacy, the proposed solution protects the secrecy of each electronic vote. As for implementing verifiability, the solution prevents a corrupt authority from faking in any way the process of counting the votes. Both properties are achieved in the presented solution e-VoteD-App.

Jitendra Goyal, Mushtaq Ahmed, Dinesh Gopalani

Abstract In recent years, With the rapid development of blockchain technol- ogy, there has been an increased interest in solving various opera- tional challenges. For the e-voting system at present, voter’s privacy, immutability of votes and third party dependency are major issues. These issues can very well be solved by blockchain technology. In this paper, we have proposed a decentralized framework for e-voting based on blockchain technology that contributes significantly to the implementation paradigm. We have implemented it on the Ethereum platform and developed a fully functional smart contract to store and validate votes. The research provides deep insight into the design of smart contract transactions in an e-voting system from a computa- tional cost perspective. In order to authenticate the voters, We have done voter verification in two phases. In the first phase, the voter reg- isters through a secure code, whose(code) Keccak-256 hash is stored on the blockchain, and in the second phase, the voter is verified by the managing authority. Based on the literature review, we found a lack of standardization for blockchain-based e-voting systems. So we have tried to fill this gap of standardization. In addition, we have also inspectedour model against various security attacks and found that our model is robust against double-spend attack, re-entrancy attack, DDoS etc.

Ivana Stančíková, Ivan Homoliak

Decentralized electronic voting solutions represent a promising advancement in electronic voting. One of the e-voting paradigms, the self-tallying scheme, offers strong protection of the voters' privacy while making the whole voting process verifiable. Decentralized smart contract platforms became interesting practical instantiation of the immutable bulletin board that this scheme requires to preserve its properties. Existing smart contract-based approaches employing the self-tallying scheme (such as OVN or BBB-Voting) are only suitable for a boardroom voting scenario due to their scalability limitation. The goal of our work is to build on existing solutions to achieve scalability without losing privacy guarantees and verifiability. We present SBvote, a blockchain-based self-tallying voting protocol that is scalable in the number of voters and therefore suitable for large-scale elections. The evaluation of our proof-of-concept implementation shows that the protocol's scalability is limited only by the underlying blockchain platform. We evaluated the scalability of SBvote on two public smart contract platforms -- Gnosis and Harmony. Despite the limitations imposed by the throughput of the blockchain platform, SBvote can accommodate elections with millions of voters.

S K Sowmya, Benazir Neha, N Pallavi, M P Poorvika

Traditional voting systems like ballot voting or voting using EVMs (electronic voting machines) basically rely on paper and other human resources during the voting phase, which is time consuming as well as costly. The elections generally have a central system, where an organization looks after the election and manages it. The problem here is that the election is handled by a single organization that has full control. In this work-in-progress paper, we suggest a decentralized application based on blockchain technology and smart contracts that supports e-voting systems. To implement distributed electronic voting systems we propose using a blockchain technology. The paper proposes a unique electronic voting system backed by blockchain that addresses restrictions in existing systems and recommends the favoured blockchain frameworks for building a decentralized e-voting web application. The E-voting system is secure, transparent, protects the privacy of the voters and also, does not allow duplicate votes.

Siddharth Singh, Rohit Prasad, Usha Dhankhar, Seema Malik

The revolutionary concept of blockchain has given a rise to multiple facets of secure, accountable, online services. We witness the rise of E-voting as a critical topic related to online services. Blockchain with smart contracts emerges as a good candidate to use in the development of safer, cheaper, more secure, more transparent, and easier to use e-voting systems. Ethereum and its network are one of the most viable candidates for the implementation of an e-voting system using blockchain, due to their consistency, widespread use, and provision of smart contracts logic. An e-voting system must be secure, as it should prevent duplication of votes while being fully transparent and protecting the privacy of the voters involved. In this work, we have implemented and tested a sample voting web - application as a smart contract for the Ethereum network using the Ethereum wallets and the Solidity language. Eventually, when elections are held, the Ethereum blockchain will store votes and voting results. Users can connect their Ethereum wallet and vote for the candidate they want to, and these transaction requests are processed by the consensus of each Ethereum node. These agreements create a transparent voting environment.

Yousif Mohammed Wahab, Alaan Ghazi, Aras Al-dawoodi, Muthana Alisawi · 7 authors

Election is a basic democratic tool that offers an official mechanism for the people to express their opinions in order to form a government by democratic means. Electronic voting has evolved into the most significant application of e-governance and e-democracy. Few countries have recently taken the opportunity to test and use electronic voting systems. Also, many countries expect that internet voting will become a reality during the next decade. In the conventional voting system, the electors authenticate themselves by displaying credentials; this move is open to the public and is validated by poll workers. During this authentication, they are manually checked before being eligible to vote. The standard system of voting is more costly and needs more human capital. Because of these factors, the whole world is heading toward the trend of e-voting. Electronic voting devices are supposed to be the answer to the shortages. A secure e-voting system must meet many criteria, including uniqueness, performance, fairness, stability, safety, authentication, and anonymity. Blockchain is a modern security solution, which is capable of securing e-voting system. Blockchain is distributed ledger. Each block contains only one transaction. Block chain provides security using cryptography and hashing. Blockchain provides a perfect infrastructure to provide secure e-voting netwms.ork. Blockchain along with smart contracts need hour to improvise an e-voting system. This paper presents a secure blockchain based framework for an e-electronic voting in Iraq.

Admirim Aliti, Elva Leka, Artan Luma, Marika Apostolova Trpkovska

Blockchain technology promises that it can transform completely modern society and its applications in the near future. Its main characteristics could change activities that are related to public politics and services, such as administrative processes, security, privacy, transparency, integrity, and confidentiality. The citizens concern about the potential risks, that are mainly related to data security, respectively documents falsification in a corrupted and non-transparent government. Not only in terms of administrative efficiency, but also in terms of boosting confidence, transparency, and accessibility of services, blockchain technology has the potential to play a major role in the digitalization of the public sector. Blockchain-based solutions facilitate citizen-government collaboration by safely streamlining and automating procedures while maintaining privacy and secrecy. To better understand the adoption of blockchain in public administration, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) including 32 primary papers in this study. We intend to address one of the Informatics Society's major concerns: the data security of thousands of individuals and the inviolability of citizen databases. Furthermore, we identified gaps and future trends to support researchers in this domain.

Roseline Oluwaseun Ogundokun, Sanjay Misra, Rytis Maskeliūnas, Robertas Damaševičius

Federated learning (FL) is a scheme in which several consumers work collectively to unravel machine learning (ML) problems, with a dominant collector synchronizing the procedure. This decision correspondingly enables the training data to be distributed, guaranteeing that the individual device’s data are secluded. The paper systematically reviewed the available literature using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guiding principle. The study presents a systematic review of appliable ML approaches for FL, reviews the categorization of FL, discusses the FL application areas, presents the relationship between FL and Blockchain Technology (BT), and discusses some existing literature that has used FL and ML approaches. The study also examined applicable machine learning models for federated learning. The inclusion measures were (i) published between 2017 and 2021, (ii) written in English, (iii) published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and (iv) Preprint published papers. Unpublished studies, thesis and dissertation studies, (ii) conference papers, (iii) not in English, and (iv) did not use artificial intelligence models and blockchain technology were all removed from the review. In total, 84 eligible papers were finally examined in this study. Finally, in recent years, the amount of research on ML using FL has increased. Accuracy equivalent to standard feature-based techniques has been attained, and ensembles of many algorithms may yield even better results. We discovered that the best results were obtained from the hybrid design of an ML ensemble employing expert features. However, some additional difficulties and issues need to be overcome, such as efficiency, complexity, and smaller datasets. In addition, novel FL applications should be investigated from the standpoint of the datasets and methodologies.