Aušrinė Šilenskytė, Jurgita Butkevičienė, Andrius Bartminas
Digital globalization enabled by disruptive technologies has opened a myriad of ways to create value, warranting a cross-disciplinary research agenda on digital connectivity in international business (IB). Given the scarcity of understanding about the role of specific technologies enabling value creation through digital connectivity, we investigate how blockchain-based digital connectivity shapes value creation in international digital platforms and ecosystems (DPEs). Building on a comparative empirical analysis of international DPEs enabled by different types of blockchain technology, we develop a typology of blockchain-based connectivity in IB. The typology demonstrates how different blockchain technology types enable different kinds of connectivity, resulting in diverse approaches to value creation within newly emerging forms of DPEs. These findings contextualize the concept of digital connectivity, enabling more precise explanations of blockchain's adoption in DPEs, and expand the conceptualization of DPEs, with three new types emerging from the utilization of blockchain-based connectivity. Moreover, this interdisciplinary explanation reveals why certain features theoretically attributed to blockchain (e.g., decentralization, trust) do not always realize or support value creation in practice in IB based on the DPE business model.
Initially designed to represent ownership of various assets, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have emerged as a new tool in the blockchain domain for investment and trading. The NFT markets are rapidly budding with significant growth in trading volumes over the last few years. While the NFT ecosystem is continuously evolving, users are exploring astute trading practices to gain financial profits. In this paper, we uncover shill looping, a novel NFT trade practice that NFT owners can exploit to artificially inflate the price of an NFT token. We investigate shill looping and its primary effects in a multi-billion dollar NFT collection called BAYC, showing that approximately 50% of these NFTs exhibit shill looping. Our empirical analysis shows that shill looping significantly boosts the average NFT values by over 45% in the best case. Our initial results highlight the severeness of the shill looping phenomenon and open a new research direction for further exnloration.
Abstract Blockchain has emerged as a key Industry 4.0 technology, enabling novel forms of governance and coordination mechanism among organizations and markets. However, extant literature has largely focused on the technical aspects of blockchain, with limited attention to the behavioural and institutional aspects. In this paper, we argue that blockchain‐based smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations represent the potential for a radical departure from traditional forms of contractual governance and hierarchy, carrying profound implications for the design and governance of economic transaction and organizational structures. We elucidate how blockchain technologies, characterized by transparency, immutability, programmability and decentralization, reduce transaction costs and establish an industrialized and trustless transactional governance system. Finally, we present an agenda for future research, highlighting the need for new theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence to understand the impact of blockchain on organizational design and forms.
I took a close look at what a blockchain-based compliance layer might actually do for U.S. payment systems using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) as the key ingredient. The study lays out a conceptual model, grounded in current research, and then walks through different architectural options so you can see the trade-offs. The big takeaway? ZKPs appear capable of meeting core U.S. AML and KYC obligations without forcing people to hand over more personal details than necessary. Frankly, that's kind of the point: keep compliance intact, but avoid needless data exposure. The analysis also suggests that a ZKP-enabled layer could smooth regulatory workflows, cut down on operational risk and costs, and perhaps most importantly drastically reduce how much sensitive information gets shared across payment networks. It's promising, if a bit early-stage, but worth paying attention to.
This article explores the essence of international experience in digital imaging, the need to regulate different types of assets, approaches to legal regulation, prospects for the legal regulation of assets in the digital economy of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The strategy for this growth must be determined by the private sector, directed by the government, analyzed by civil society and academia through the lens of private international law. The main purpose of the article is to expose the unclear jurisdictions, conflicting laws, and fragmented oversight that create barriers to the accountable management of traditional cross-border finance that are missing in decentralized networks. The authority to regulate stock trading remains contested among national and subnational regulators, resulting in duplicative compliance efforts that are estimated to cost investors large sums of money.
N. Rameshkumar, E. Rama Kalaivani, Anagha Bhope, Rajeev Sobti · 6 authors
Blockchain, which was once the foundation of cryptocurrencies, has developed into a flexible as well as decentralized platform that is changing the way that digital transactions are conducted across various industries. The significant effects of blockchain technology on identity management, supply chain management, healthcare, and finance are examined in this essay. The decentralized ledger, smart contracts, and cryptographic security of the technology improve openness, expedite processes, and lower fraud. Blockchain transforms international trade alongside promotes decentralized finance in the financial sector. It guarantees end-to-end transparency and accountability in supply chain management. Verifiable digital identities enhance identity management's safety, while secure patient data sharing and streamlined procedures benefit healthcare. Blockchain is a catalyst for a safer and more efficient digital future because of its diverse applications and fundamental components, which together have the capacity to revolutionize the industry.
Despite standardisation initiatives, the modern financial landscape continues to be characterised by heterogeneous payment systems. This issue persists even with the emergence of distributed ledger technology in the market. Independent groups of developers are producing their own permissioned blockchain solutions without clear directions for standardisation that could be associated to the lack of a clear position from central banks and regulatory organisations regarding these technologies. The unresolved problem of transaction finality in distributed ledgers adds to the difficulty of reconciling separate distributed platforms. One potential solution is the implementation of cross-chain bridges, which can establish connections between platforms and potentially enable seamless experiences for end users and applications. The paper discusses the advantages and issues associated with these bridges.
This paper explores the potential of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) built on blockchain technology, which are expected to revolutionize our computing and transaction infrastructuresThis paper will focus on the legal classification of DAOs, with an emphasis on the mechanisms of raising capital through ICOs and NFTs as alternative financing options for easier access to capital. The potential of linking DAOs and AI is also briefly addressed. Corporate law must keep pace with this rapid change, and the question arises whether it is "sufficiently flexible to make room for the new technical possibilities" and to cover completely "new forms of organization" based on software code that may be inadequately reflected in existing regulations. Overall, this paper highlights the potential of DAOs and their impact on the future of business models, organizational structures, and financing options.
Due to information asymmetry, finance, transportation and warehouse financing gives rise to the issue of repeated pledge, which amplifies the risk of the loan business of financial institutions. In tandem with advancements in fintech, blockchain technology plays a significant role in the supply chain finance realm, primarily because of its core characteristics of being difficult to tamper with and decentralized. Therefore, this study constructed an evolutionary game model involving financial institutions, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and third-party logistics enterprises under a blockchain-enabled model and scrutinized the repeated pledge of financing entities in the finance, transportation and warehouse financing sector from the perspective of blockchain empowerment. The results show that the platform access fee being lower than the cost of conducting a financing business and the immutable characteristics of blockchain are important reasons to promote financial institutions to choose access to blockchain. The permanent retention of performance records owing to immutable performance under the blockchain model intensifies the consequences of dishonest behavior of small- and medium-sized enterprises and third-party logistics enterprises, thus encouraging the adoption of positive financing strategies. Additionally, the additional income obtained by third-party logistics enterprises’ covering behavior surpasses the additional income obtained by the repeated pledge behavior of small- and medium-sized enterprises, which will dismantle collusion between them. This study serves as a valuable reference for decision makers in the development of supply chain finance empowered by fintech.
In 2005, in his book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman claimed that the emergence of the Internet was rapidly flattening the world (Freidman, 2005). The pyramid-shaped hierarchy is gradually dwindling as compared to organizations in the first half of the 20th century. Control is waning and innovation is taking over as the primary driver of productivity, which in turn encourages more hierarchy reductions. However, Web2’s capabilities are constrained, and technology firms that manage Internet access have become new monopolies due to the Matthew effect. Fewer companies can develop into new industry titans and it seems the pace of innovation has slowed down recently…
We propose a new approach for a secure decentralized and censorless upgrade of existing cryptocurrencies to newly created tokens without interaction from any external information sources (oracles). The proposed scheme is based on burning of existing cryptocurrencies tokens and implemented via the multi-currency auction. The auction is carried out on the blockchain of the new token and implemented using a smart-contract that processes participants' bids of burnt tokens of other cryptocurrencies and supports a new token price discovery algorithm for each cryptocurrency with no oracles or any other trusted source of information. Contrary to traditional ways of getting the new asset, like centralized and decentralized exchanges, etc., our method requires no user registration (as well as no KYC – “know your customer” procedure that requires obligatory client identification) and provides a predicted supply level of the new asset for an adequate price within a model with economically rational participants. We provide the results of decentralized auction simulations implemented for several strategies of user behavior (based on bid prices with normal and log-normal distribution laws), both under the normal operation and in the presence of adversary who follows specific strategies.
Global trade is plagued by slow and inefficient manual processes associated with physical documents. Firms are constantly looking for new ways to improve transparency and increase the resilience of their supply chains. This can be solved by the digitalisation of supply chains and the automation of document- and information-sharing processes. Blockchain is touted as a solution to these issues due to its unique combination of features, such as immutability, decentralisation and transparency. A lack of business cases that quantify the costs and benefits causes uncertainty regarding the truth of these claims. This paper explores how the costs and benefits of a blockchain-based solution for digitalising and automating documentation flows in cross-border supply chains compare to a conventional centralised relational database solution. The research described in this paper uses primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with industry experts, as well as secondary data from literature. Two models based on existing services were developed and the costs and benefits compared and then analysed using the Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP). Findings from the analysis show that a consortium blockchain solution like TradeLens is the favourable solution for digitalising and automating information flows in cross-border supply chains.
Price discrimination has been empirically exposed where e-commercial platforms aim to gain additional profits by charging customers with different prices for the same product/service. This situation becomes even worse in nowadays’ Big Data era, giving the chance for service providers to leverage artificial intelligence technologies to have the deep analysis of personalized patterns, urgently calling for solutions to prevent such discriminated behaviors to protect customers’ rights. This article aims to defend against price discrimination by developing a secure and privacy-preserving solution, provable for e-commerce fairness. Using a newly designed cryptographic accumulator and public bulletin board, our system, called FairECom, allows an auditor (i.e., a customer or third-party auditor) to verify if customers are experiencing price discrimination. In particular, FairECom enables a customer to check if his payment to a product/service is identical to other customers through a privacy-preserving challenge-response protocol, for implementing the price transparency against discrimination. We implement a prototype using an Ethereum-based public bulletin board to conduct the system evaluation. Our evaluation indicates that FairECom can integrate with existing APIs provided by Ethereum and incur acceptable costs when deploying to the e-commercial systems.
This paper guides deploying smart contracts and digital ecosystems for institutions and academia. Exploring Web3 and blockchain technologies, it outlines a plan for tailored digital ecosystems with transparent transactions. Focused on smart contract implementation, it exemplifies rules for secure token flows, accommodating diverse user needs. Tailored for academia, the guide bridges traditional and digital systems, enhancing financial stability and transparency.
Integrating new technologies such as distributed ledger technology into government systems is a multifaceted process characterized by numerous potential benefits, associated costs, and risks. Previous and existing pilot implementations of blockchain-based software solutions in the public sector have demonstrated that this technology can have varying impacts depending on contextual factors, including the specific type of chosen government service. Furthermore, within each distinct area of public services, the implementation of e-governance technologies can yield different outcomes for various stakeholders, including government entities, public servants, and citizens. Therefore, this article provides a review and analysis of global experiences with the utilization of distributed ledger technology in various domains of the public sector. To achieve this, several countries with advanced expertise in e-governance and the implementation of distributed ledger technology-based solutions were identified. Drawing from the experiences of these nations and considering the unique features, advantages, maturity level of blockchain technology, and existing solutions based on it, general recommendations were formulated regarding the implementation of distributed ledger technology (blockchain) in Ukraine’s public sector.
In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain network, stakeholders spend tokens for consumption while competing for network transaction fee with unspent tokens. Stakeholders are incentivized to form staking pools to compete with each other, but continued staking pool merge does not occur given fixed pool operating cost. Unlike other blockchain networks and traditional payment systems, token price in PoS blockchain network is a direct result of competition among service providers (staking pools) and is strongly positively correlated with network decentralization level. As an extension, we show that uneven wealth distribution or biased validator selection function enhances stake centralization and sabotage token price.
Blockchain has become a revolutionary technology that has had a great impact on the business environment. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are distinct from fungible tokens traded on multiple centralized or decentralized exchanges. Automated Market-MMs (AMMs) are decentralized markets for crypto-tokens that offer users three core operations: deposition of crypto tokens to get AMM shares in return; the dual operation of getting shares for the base tokens; and swapping of two different tokens with each other. This research aims to put forth a comprehensive view of Blockchain and its applications in the real world, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs trading, voting, and much more. It also focuses on how NFTs are traded on different platforms and aims at better marketplaces for trading NFTs,namely Automated Market Makers on different blockchains like Ethereum and Tezos.
This paper presents the design and preliminary development a new model based on blockchain for improving brand loyalty in agribusiness by customer reward. Using facilities of Ethereum Network and solidity programing, we have created an Agri non-fungible token (NFT) according to ERC-721 protocol that is most widely used protocol for creating NFTs on Ethereum. One of the main advantages of ERC-721 is its flexibility, as it allows developers to define custom metadata for each NFT and customize the attributes. The interaction between Ethereum nodes and the user is established via the frontend, which is developed in Nodejs and connects to the Ethereum network. In previous works on loyalty systems, blockchain-based solutions were proposed that resemble the system developed in this study but there are significant differences between our work and other related works such as: the use of NFT and personalization for customers, the adoption of a new version of Solidity, as well as the adoption of the metadata feature for using media to encourage and assist customer brand awareness and repurchase. We tried to provide a safe and transparent way to use NFTs in the way of increasing brand loyalty in agricultural businesses. Due to characters of NFTs as uniqueness and personalization, customers in a loyalty cycle prefer to shop more in order to earn more AgriNFT, causing retailer to sell more items and manufacturers to generate more goods.
We propose a new way to share licensed spectrum bandwidth capacity in mobile networks between operators, service providers, and end users using blockchain-based smart contracts. We discuss the foundational building blocks in the contract as well as various extensions to support more advanced features such as bulk purchases and future reservations. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the system can be implemented with an open source, permissioned enterprise blockchain, Hyperledger Sawtooth. We show that our smart contract implementation can improve blockchain transaction performance, by approximately four orders of magnitude compared to serial transactions and one order of magnitude compared to parallel transactions, by using public key infrastructure driven bulk purchases of mobile access grants, paving the way for fully automated, efficient, and fine-grained roaming agreements. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from two end-to-end use cases we implemented to validate our distributed ledger design.
Julia Amend, Patrick Troglauer, Tobias Guggenberger, Nils Urbach · 5 authors
Abstract Climate change and an increasing food demand due to a growing world population pose significant challenges for agriculture. Smallholders play a decisive role in establishing a sustainable and efficient future agricultural system since they already provide up to 80% of food in developing countries. However, they often face severe obstacles, especially in developing countries, hampering effective and efficient cooperation and productivity. Even though organizations in the form of cooperatives could help overcome some of the challenges of facilitating smallholders’ cooperation, they still suffer from structural problems. Further, in many countries, a lack of formal mechanisms to enforce contractual agreements exists. Given such challenges, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have already proven to provide alternative forms of governance independent of formal contracts or intermediaries. Therefore, this study follows the design science research paradigm to design, develop, and evaluate a decentralized autonomous organization in the agricultural sector that makes use of cooperative principles. This cooperative-oriented DAO is governed by smart contracts and technically enabled by blockchain technology as the underlying infrastructure. Through our developed and evaluated artifact, the AgriDAO, we guide researchers and practitioners on how such a cooperative-oriented DAO could look to solve existing problems related to smallholders and cooperatives. Additionally, we present eight design principles that will guide the development of cooperative-oriented DAOs. Finally, our research shall initiate lively discussion and extensive exploration of this new form of organization.
Electronic communications security has gained a considerable significance in parallel with the increasing usage of the information and communication technologies. Being one of these technologies, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), more specifically the blockchains, are regarded as a revolution which propose a new era, called “blockchain of things” following the era of “internet of things”. While DLTs promoted the business functionalities and compliance with information security obligations, it has also some vulnerabilities. By the DLTs the cost of intermediaries could easily be eliminated while at the same time assets/transactions are recorded and secured digitally. Nevertheless, this has simultaneously resulted in decentralised power/anarchy. Besides, majority of the studies focus on the contributions of the DLTs. This article aims to concentrate on the security aspect of this technology, which is often disregarded. Thus, after addressing fundamental characteristics of DLTs, it will unfold their tools and advantages in terms of compliance to information security obligations, then, exercise its vulnerabilities and related risks with respect to information security legal frameworks from over the world.
Technology adoption is vital for improving the efficiency of workflows across value chains. However, technology selection can be challenging, especially for multi-party workflows across different geographical boundaries. The chosen technologies must satisfy the requirements of the tasks at hand and align with international and local laws and regulations. Marine bunkering is a global industry comprising multiple stakeholders with diverse roles and responsibilities that must adhere to global standards and regulations. Through a single case study, we endeavor to understand the role of blockchain technology in marine bunkering, drawing on the Task-Technology Fit theory and Group Support System model to investigate this concept. Our analysis reveals that fit depends on underlying legal norms, task characteristics, and technological properties. Furthermore, we shed light on the blockchain framework used and the role of smart contracts in the value chain. Our research offers insights into an extended Task-Technology Fit theory where stakeholders in a value chain are distributed across multiple geographical boundaries.