Jan 1, 2020·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
H. Schöll, Roman Pomeshchikov, Manuel Pedro RodrÃguez BolÃvar
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) such as Blockchain have been heralded for their potential to fundamentally disrupt traditional industries and longstanding practices in private and public business-es. In the financial sectors, for example, quite a number of novel financial technology (fintech) services based on DLT/Blockchain have been introduced with cryptocur-rencies representing prominent cases. While the already highly regulated financial sectors have emerged as ear-ly targets for DLT/Blockchain induced disruption, a diverse set of other areas, such as healthcare record keeping, insurance record keeping, industrial and retail supply chain management, property registries, citizen identification systems, and voting systems to name a few, has also come into the focus of DLT/Blockchain innovation. These new types of services might be in need of both complementary and novel regulations for DLT/Blockchain-based services. Interestingly, smaller jurisdictions such as Bermuda, Gibraltar, Malta, and Liechtenstein were among the first to provide advice and regulation for DLT/Blockchain service provisions. The study compares these early regulatory approaches to each other and discusses the prospects of DLT/Blockchain service regulation based on the study’s findings. DLT/Blockchain service regulation appears to incorporate predominantly principle-based rather than rule-based regulations, which makes the regulation en-forcement a uniquely individual case-based task.
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) enables data storage in a decentralized manner among collaborating parties. The software architecture of such solutions encompasses models placed in the relevant architectural views. A lot of research is devoted to smart contracts and consensus algorithms, which are realized by distributed applications and can be positioned within the Logical view. However, we see the need to provide modeling support for the Deployment view of distributed ledger solutions. Especially since the chosen DLT framework has a significant impact on implementation and deployment. Besides, consistency between models and configuration deployment scripts should be ensured. So, we have applied Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) that allows on the transformation of models into more detailed models, source code, or tests. We have proposed Unified Modeling Language (UML) stereotypes and tagged values for distributed ledger deployment modeling and placed them in the UML Profile for Distributed Ledger Deployment. We have also designed the UML2Deployment model-to-code transformation for the R3 Corda DLT framework. A UML Deployment model is the source whereas a Gradle Groovy deployment script is the target of the transformation. We have provided the complete solution by incorporating the transformation into the Visual Paradigm modeling tool. Furthermore, we have designed a dedicated plug-in to validate generated deployment scripts. In the paper, we have shown how to design transformation for generating deployment scripts for the R3 Corda DLT framework with the ability to switch to another one.
Data are becoming the cornerstone of many businesses and entire systems infrastructure. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are no different. The ability of intelligent vehicles and devices to acquire and share environmental measurements in the form of data is leading to the creation of smart services for the benefit of individuals. In this paper, we present a system architecture to promote the development of ITS using distributed ledgers and related technologies. Thanks to these, it becomes possible to create, store and share data generated by users through the sensors on their devices or vehicles, while on the move. We propose an architecture based on Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) to offer features such as immutability, traceability and verifiability of data. IOTA, a promising DLT for IoT, is used together with Decentralized File Storages (DFSes) to store and certify data (and their related metadata) coming from vehicles or by the users' devices themselves (smartphones). Ethereum is then exploited as the smart contract platform that coordinates the data sharing through access control mechanisms. Privacy guarantees are provided by the usage of distributed key management systems and Zero Knowledge Proof. We provide experimental results of a testbed based on real traces, in order to understand if DLT and DFS technologies are ready to support complex services, such as those that pertain to ITS. Results clearly show that, while the viability of the proposal cannot be rejected, further work is needed on the responsiveness of DLT infrastructures.
The electronic tendering process is rapidly growing popularity among private and public sectors for its efficiency and convenience. An end to end fair and transparent tendering process is desirable for all stakeholders and the proper business environment. Researchers and business entities are continuously working to improve its quality. In general, while offering a tender, an enterprise usually maintains the following steps [1].
In this article, we study the pricing and resource management in the Internet of Things (IoT) system with blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) and mobile-edge computing (MEC). The BaaS model includes the cloud-based server to perform blockchain tasks and the set of peers to collect data from local IoT devices. The MEC model consists of the set of terrestrial and aerial base stations (BSs), i.e., unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to forward the tasks of peers to the BaaS server. Each BS is also equipped with an MEC server to run some blockchain tasks. As the BSs can be privately owned or controlled by different operators, there is no information exchange among them. We show that the resource management and pricing in the BaaS-MEC system are modeled as a stochastic Stackelberg game with multiple leaders and incomplete information about actions of leaders/BSs and followers/peers. We formulate a novel hierarchical reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for the decision makings of BSs and peers. We also develop an unsupervised hierarchical deep learning (HDL) algorithm that combines deep $Q$ -learning (DQL) for BSs with the Bayesian deep learning (BDL) for peers. We prove that the proposed algorithms converge to stable states in which the peers' actions are the best responses to optimal actions of BSs.
Distributed ledger technology and IoT has revolutionized the world by finding its application in all the domains. It promises to transform the digital infrastructure which powers extensive evolutions and impacts a lot of areas. Vehicle parking is a major problem in major cities around the world in both developed and developing countries. The common problems are unavailability or shortage of parking spaces, no information about tariff and no mean of searching availability of parking space online. The struggle doesn't end even if an individual finds a spot, he is required to pay in cash. This traditional and manual process takes a lot of time and causes a lot of hassle. In this paper, we provide a novel solution to the parking problem using IoT and distributed ledger technology. This system is based on pervasive computing and provides auto check-in and check-out. The user can control the system and their profile using the app on their smartphone. The major advantage of the system is an easy and online payment method. Users can pay for their parking tickets using their credit cards from their smartphone app. This decreases their hassle of carrying cash and coins for purchasing parking tickets. Smart Parking will optimize the parking mechanism, save time, reduce traffic and pollution, and provide an enhanced user experience. It is robust, secure, scalable and automated using the combination of cutting-edge technologies.
The healthcare market demands advanced, flexible, and secure solutions for personal health data sharing. In our paper, we present preliminary work that proposes a distributed infrastructure of negotiating agents for the healthcare domain. This infrastructure will support healthcare stakeholders to share and access patient health data in a secure way, thus providing benefits for patients and their treatment. Distributed ledger technologies and smart contracts can be considered as a basis for negotiations between distributed agents that carry health-related data. We present an overview of related work and outline the research methodology.
Dec 1, 2019·2019 IEEE Intl Conf on Parallel & Distributed Processing with Applications, Big Data & Cloud Computing, Sustainable Computing & Communications, Social Computing & Networking (ISPA/BDCloud/SocialCom/SustainCom)
Xi Rui, Kang Liu, Shuo Liu, Wuhui Chen · 5 authors
Recently, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) equipped with autopilot technology show much concern in their quality of service (QoS), especially in how to ensure the quality of crowdsourcing data for QoS. It is an open issue to encourage high-quality data to be sold as digital goods. Although existing works manage to design incentive mechanisms in data trading for IoV, they fail to address the trust problem. The blockchain technology has been widely studied to establish trust among participants, however, little is currently known about the perishability in the data market, which leads to the failure in explaining the price difference of digital goods. In this paper, we propose a perishability-oriented pricing mechanism to support perishable digital goods trading among IoVs. We also introduce consortium blockchain that provides distributed hyper ledger to address the trust issue in the market. By employing Stackelberg game theory, we obtain the optimal response of selfish users and providers. And finally, we propose a distributed algorithm to simulate our mechanism. Our experiment results demonstrate the efficiency of our distributed algorithm and prove the correctness and consistency of our mechanism.
This paper presents the implementation of a traffic violation management system. A vehicle tracking system uses the GPS, GSM and a microcontroller to detect speed violations on roads. Any violation is sent to a central database.Payments can be performed off-line; without involving a third party during payment, or on-line; contacting an intermediate server for each payment. In this paper, we focus on using online payment without third party by using a new technology called blockchain for the authentication and authorization purposes in case of traffic violations payment. The contribution of this paper is providing a model of electronic payment for traffic violations to enhance two importantfactors; trust and security of the e- payment system. Blockchain as a shared ledger holds a many set of entities thatfaithfully records a series of transactions combined together by using a smart contract platform for embedding scripts that run across the network and enables adding new entries to that ledger. Blockchain technology is used in this paper for securing traffic violations management. Using the Blockchain guarantees highly secured traffic violations payment as no hacker can change the balance in driver's wallet or a vehicle property papers in a network around the world without the requirement for a central management, as all transactions are recorded in all copies distributed among all parties in the network, where each party has the same copy of the ledger. The proposed model should reduce the response times of violation requests and payment at any time and from any place.
This paper introduces a novel digital ticketing platform using blockchain technology. Taking in a number of considerations by observing legacy ticketing systems and existing attempts at digital ticketing, we make use of IBM's Hyperledger Fabric framework to design an architecture that distributes the tickets across all participating organisations. We note the potential benefits this platform has. Governing organisations maintain their right to set the rules of the platform and access the data to generate statistics. Vending organisations share access to the same underlying tickets whilst preserving competition. The platform offers passengers a variety of ways to pay for and access their tickets, using a combination of legacy and modern methods. Furthermore, we note the platform has the potential to eradicate paper ticketing and surplus voucher cards.
Chen Chen, Tingting Xiao, Tie Qiu, Ning Lv · 5 authors
To improve the urban traffic condition and reduce accidents, we propose a platoon-driving model for autonomous vehicles in a free-flow traffic state in this article. This model allows vehicles with successful path matching to be grouped in a platoon and led by the platoon head (PH). In addition, a PH selection scheme is introduced to provide an incentive for vehicles to be PHs and maintain the dynamic update of platoons. Next, a smart contract is employed to enable the payment based on a blockchain between the PH and platoon members (PMs), avoiding the malicious and false payments. The numerical results show that the platoon model is superior to the individual driving model in terms of fuel consumption. The comparison between carpooling and noncarpooling modes within the platoon shows that our model has a better performance in terms of PH revenue and PM's service charge.
Blockchain technologies enable new forms of data sharing in platforms. This raises questions around how they are jointly developed and managed in blockchain consortia and what role public agencies play in those efforts. Based on an analysis of prior work on data sharing in public-private partnerships and other blockchain projects, we analyze the case of the Cardossier. The Cardossier project and (later) association develops a platform to link the public and private actors in the Swiss car ecosystem. The participating car registration authority has the roles of an actor in interorganizational processes, supplier of data, source of trust, guarantor of data quality, user of data, and incentive for making goods public. We conclude that the public agencies have a very important role in blockchain consortia and propose that they should use this role actively as part of their efforts to create public value.
Aleksandr Kapitonov, Ivan Berman, Vadim Manaenko, Vyacheslav Rzhevskiy · 6 authors
The article describes the concept of a decentralized architecture of a traffic management system for mobile vehicles and is a continuation of the results presented in the previous article “Blockchain-based protocol of autonomous business activity for multi-agent systems consisting of UAVs.. Robonomic protocol is the basis for the system architecture - a combination of the decentralized Ethereum computer, the IPFS distributed file system, Robot Operating System and market mechanisms. In particular, its focused on the principle of communication between nodes of the traffic management system and the stages of the unmanned mission. As a proof of concept, two experiments on the integration of the proposed architecture are presented: air quality measurements using unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and water quality measurements using unmanned surface vessels (USV). Our work demonstrates that distributed ledger and smart contracts technologies are applicable to the traffic management system and increases the transparency and immutability of the data.
Abstract Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) offer to disrupt all existing business models from derivatives trading to real estate, public services procurement and housing. This presents a unique opportunity for architects and urban designers to reshape the built environment by collectively engaging with finance generally, but also with alternative financial mechanisms, ahead of developers and investment companies who are less motivated by the quality of the built environment.
Shared decision making has become a crucial solution to build a consolidated healthcare system. While there is some research in the healthcare literature discussing the advantages and disadvantages of shared decision making, its efficiency has not been addressed quantitatively. In this paper, we propose a Decentralized Patients Assignment System (DPAS) as a universal decentralized decision making architecture. It utilizes the blockchain technology, machine learning, and integer programing to enhance coordination among healthcare providers and patients in consolidated hospital systems. To test the efficiency of the proposed DPAS, a prototype system is developed using an Agent-based model and Ethereum and is compared to the current practice of central referral systems in consolidated hospital systems. The agent-based model consists of four agents including patients, physicians, hospitals, and miners interacting within a decentralized system. The proposed system highlights the importance of interoperability and consensus among healthcare agents in the decision making process. The results demonstrate the DPAS efficiency in decreasing computational time and rejection rates for patients transfer.
Increasing penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) gives rise to the challenges in the secure operation of power systems. The EV charging loads should be distributed among charging stations in a fair and incentive-compatible manner while ensuring that power transmission and transformation facilities are not overloaded. This paper first proposes a charging right (or charging power ration) trading mechanism and model based on blockchain. Considering all kinds of random factors of charging station loads, we use Monte Carlo modeling to determine the charging demand of charging stations in the future. Based on the charging demand of charging stations, a charging station needs to submit the charging demand for a future period. The blockchain first distributes initial charging right in a just manner and ensures the security of facilities. Given that the charging urgency and elasticity differences vary by charging stations, all charging stations then proceed with double auction and peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction of charging right. Bids and offers are cleared via double auctions if bids are higher than offers. The remaining bids and offers are cleared via the P2P market. Then, this paper designs the charging right allocation and trading platform and smart contract based on the Ethernet blockchain to ensure the safety of the distribution network (DN) and the transparency and efficiency of charging right trading. Simulation results based on the Ethereum private blockchain show the fairness and efficiency of the proposed mechanism and the effectiveness of the method and the mechanism.
The mobility landscape has changed over the last years with the advent of innovative transportation solutions which are being constantly deployed whereas more are set to emerge in the near future such as autonomous vehicles and flying taxis. In this landscape a new mobility paradigm has come to the forefront during the last years through Mobility as a Service (MaaS). This refers to a seamless integration of various forms of transport services accessible through one single digital platform. The concept of MaaS is aligned with Smart mobility, one of main Smart City components which refers to smart manners of people and goods mobility through the integration of all transport modes, ICT solutions, zero pollution and congestions and so on [1]. A key enabler for MaaS is technology that can provide the means for complex mobility ecosystems to be integrated, while allowing diverse service providers and related stakeholders (e.g. payment management organizations) to perform transactions between each other (for booking, invoicing, payment, etc.) as well as interact with the traveler, acquire and exchange operational data, and process it into information that can be used to support MaaS related business processes. Such an ecosystem can be centrally coordinated when all participants in the value chain have the same understanding of what needs to be delivered and accept to follow a common approach, which can be proprietary, customized and aligned to vendor specific guidelines. As the MaaS ecosystem expands and the coordination of an increasing number of mobility solutions comes into play, the complexity can be such that new decentralized solutions are required. In this work in progress paper we discuss the role of blockchain technology for enabling seamless mobility for MaaS.
This paper presents a system architecture to promote the development of smart transportation systems. Thanks to the use of distributed ledgers and related technologies, it is possible to create, store and share data generated by users through their sensors, while moving. In particular, IOTA and IPFS are used to store and certify data (and their related metadata) coming from sensors or by the users themselves. Ethereum is exploited as the smart contract platform that coordinates the data sharing and provisioning. The necessary privacy guarantees are provided by the usage of Zero Knowledge Proof. We show some results obtained from some use case scenarios that demonstrate how such technologies can be integrated to build novel smart services and to promote social good in user mobility.
Delivery service via ridesharing is a promising service to share travel costs and improve vehicle occupancy. Existing ridesharing systems require participating vehicles to periodically report individual private information (e.g., identity and location) to a central controller, which is a potential central point of failure, resulting in possible data leakage or tampering in case of controller break down or under attack. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain secured ridesharing delivery system, where the immutability and distributed architecture of the Blockchain can effectively prevent data tampering. However, such tamper-resistance property comes at the cost of a long confirmation delay caused by the consensus process. A Hash-oriented Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) based consensus algorithm is proposed to improve the Blockchain efficiency and reduce the transaction confirmation delay from 10 minutes to 15 seconds. The Hash-oriented PBFT effectively avoids the double-spending attack and Sybil attack. Security analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed Blockchain secured ridesharing delivery system offers strong security guarantees and satisfies the quality of delivery service in terms of confirmation delay and transaction throughput.
With the increasing number of vehicles on the road, the insurance market for vehicular insurance is also increasing. There has been a massive proliferation in the number of policy taken by the drivers over the year. The traditional vehicular insurance processes used by the insurance companies rely on analyzing the history of the behaviors of the drivers for deciding the suitable premium amount to be paid by the vehicles. Usage-Based Insurance (UBI), which is based on telematics, turns out to be a modern and effective approach for providing insurance to the vehicles. Unlike the traditional approach, the premiums in the UBI are calculated based on the current behavior of the drivers. Moreover, there exists a lack of transparency in the processing of the claims, which not only results in delays of receiving the claims but also leads to a number of frauds. Decentralized technology such as blockchain turns out to be an effective solution for the problems mentioned above. In this work, we propose a blockchain-based framework for vehicular UBI and incentives in ITS. We demonstrate and analyze the feasibility of our work with proper experimental testbed setup.
We propose a spectrum sharing algorithm based on blockchain and game theory. Unlike traditional spectrum sharing methods which use a centralized platform, our algorithm takes the decentralization and high-level trust advantages of blockchain for operators to share free spectrum and improve the utilization rate. Our system is built on consortium blockchain in which operators can trade spectrum directly. Consortium blockchain is used to authenticate members waiting to join, record information of all the transactions and ensure that it cannot be tampered by cryptography, consensus algorithm and other methods. In addition, the operators will use the game theory to specifically share spectrum between each other in our model. The operators will make their optimal sharing strategy based on game theory. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the spectrum utilization of operators and increase their revenue.