With the rapid development of social media, fast transition of organizational management modes, as well as the increasing security risks caused by human intervention and operations, the existing organizational management systems suffer a severe problem of lowered efficiency and security. This motivates our research. In this paper, we strive to design a new solution to this problem, via instantiating the traditional PDCA cycle theory and using software robots powered by blockchain and smart contracts. In our framework, blockchain and smart contracts can guarantee privacy-protected, traceable, and tamper-resistant data access, and can also help reduce the human intervention. Based on the PDCA cycle theory, we propose the PDCA closed-loop ecological chain on the basis of blockchain. We also validate our work in a real-world scenario, and the results can prove the effectiveness of our model.
Tim Weingaertner, Rahul Rao, Jasmin Ettlin, Patrick Suter · 5 authors
This research addresses the issue that in-depth programming knowhow is needed to read and write smart contracts. The goal was making the creation of smart contracts accessible to non-computer experts by the use of a graphical programming language (Blockly). We used modularization to capture the complexity of legal contracts and developed a mapping process to transform the graphical representation to the smart contract programming language Solidity. We applied our approach to legal purchase agreements and proved the practicality of our solution and explored its limitations. A prototype was built to show the feasibility of our approach. Our industry partner challenged the prototype by applying it to the contract creation process. We consider our work as the first step towards an application of smart contracts in the non-IT world and outside the today's expert shaped ecosystem of blockchain specialists. Several continuative research questions have been derived from our finding and are listed at the end of this paper.
Blockchain technology is often discussed and theorized in relation to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Its quality as a technology that produces advanced encryption keys between objects, however, also makes it interesting to those who seek to connect physical objects to digital elements. The reason for this is that the link between objects needs to be ‘secure’ from undesired external interference. In relation to such interests, blockchain has been identified as a highly attractive technology to support the general digitalization of society towards the Internet of Things, smart cities etc. In extension, the implementation of blockchain technology implies that it may work as a tool that has the capacity to direct which objects may/may not interact with each other. The ‘ledger of everything’ that blockchain may possibly produce as regards the ‘Internet of Everything’ is even suggested to make humans and other intermediary technologies redundant. In this essay, I argue that in order to sustain legal critique when the world moves into the next era of digitalization, we need to understand - and question - how technological control operates through e.g. blockchain technology by locking physical and digital elements to each other.
Open access
Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations
Olivia Choudhury, Hillol Sarker, Nolan Rudolph, Morgan A. Foreman · 9 authors
Recent changes to the Common Rule, which govern Institutional Review Boards (IRB), require implementing new policies to strengthen research protocols involving human subjects. A major challenge in implementing such policies is an inability to automatically and consistently meet these ethical rules while securing sensitive information collected during the study. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, based on blockchain technology, to enforce IRB regulations on data collection. We demonstrate how to design smart contracts and a ledger to meet the requirements of an IRB protocol, including subject recruitment, informed consent management, secondary data sharing, monitoring risks, and generating automated assessments for continuous review. Furthermore, we show how we can employ the immutable transaction log in the blockchain to embed security in research activities by detecting malicious activities and robustly tracking subject involvement. We evaluate our approach by assessing its ability to enforce IRB guidelines in different types of human subjects studies, including a genomic study, a drug trial, and a wearable sensor monitoring study. Keywords: Blockchain, Data Sharing, Data Exchange, EHR, electronic health record, Ethereum, interplanetary filesystem, IPFS
This paper explores the design of a robot and interaction model that enables a robot to engage in human-like financial transactions, and to enter into agreements with a human counterpart. More explicitly, (1) we bestow the agent with a cryptocurrency wallet and (2) define bilateral and multilateral agreements that can be automated as smart contracts in a distributed ledger. As a use case of a robot with such features, we describe roBU - a traveling robot, that can enter into financial agreements in exchange for assistance in traveling the world. With this effort, we expect to validate the idea of near-future scenarios where autonomous or semi-autonomous agents are endowed with, a type of, social autonomy and the ability to engage in financial transactions. We believe the latter can improve task completion and enable further exploration of robot-human relationships, dependencies and trust.
Chuka Oham, Salil S. Kanhere, Raja Jurdak, Sanjay Jha
The advent of autonomous vehicles is envisaged to disrupt the auto insurance\nliability model.Compared to the the current model where liability is largely\nattributed to the driver,autonomous vehicles necessitate the consideration of\nother entities in the automotive ecosystem including the auto\nmanufacturer,software provider,service technician and the vehicle owner.The\nproliferation of sensors and connecting technologies in autonomous vehicles\nenables an autonomous vehicle to gather sufficient data for liability\nattribution,yet increased connectivity exposes the vehicle to attacks from\ninteracting entities.These possibilities motivate potential liable entities to\nrepudiate their involvement in a collision event to evade liability. While the\ndata collected from vehicular sensors and vehicular communications is an\nintegral part of the evidence for arbitrating liability in the event of an\naccident,there is also a need to record all interactions between the\naforementioned entities to identify potential instances of negligence that may\nhave played a role in the accident.In this paper,we propose a BlockChain(BC)\nbased framework that integrates the concerned entities in the liability model\nand provides untampered evidence for liability attribution and adjudication.We\nfirst describe the liability attribution model, identify key requirements and\ndescribe the adversarial capabilities of entities. Also,we present a detailed\ndescription of data contributing to evidence.Our framework uses permissioned BC\nand partitions the BC to tailor data access to relevant BC\nparticipants.Finally,we conduct a security analysis to verify that the\nidentified requirements are met and resilience of our proposed framework to\nidentified attacks.\n
Healthcare data exists in silos. These siloed systems lack open standards surrounding how data is stored, labeled, and tagged. In turn, these data silos decrease data liquidity, or the ability of data to flow throughout the healthcare system. Undeniably, the healthcare industry sees the value in responsibly sharing health data to extract more value and new insights using predictive analytics, open science, and collaborative solutions. Effective collaboration requires collaborative data. Particularly with health-related data, “sending that data from one peer to another in a secure manner, in a compliant manner, and in a transparent manner” is vital. While organizations share this sentiment, a complex regulatory framework combined with data usage agreements and non-interoperable, proprietary databases add friction to this data exchange. Particularly in healthcare, blockchain enables greater transparency between healthcare professionals sharing data, and it empowers patients to have control over their data. First, this paper briefly discusses blockchain. Next, this paper outlines issues that plague the healthcare industry including the laws that serve as the framework. Finally, this paper discusses architecture considerations for a blockchain based healthcare data exchange that also respects the current regulatory environment.
Contracts, a set of legally negotiated rules between the transacting parties are often the prime cause of legal as well as business disputes. Due to this discord, they are generally viewed with contempt. The need to revolutionize contracts has been much felt by the attorneys and the business professionals, so as to avoid these daedal contract conflicts. This resulted in the advent of smart contracts that was led by Blockchain technology. It is a blend of legalese from lawyers and computer code. A smart contract is a versatile system capable of facilitating, automating and enforcing an agreement (i.e. contract). In this paper, we preview as well as analyze smart contract based on blockchain technology for a decentralized system.
Abstract This chapter considers the regulatory regime for cryptocurrencies and other value data (defined as assets which are both excludable and rivalrous, recorded by a trusted technology rather than booked by a qualified intermediary). It begins with a discussion of changes in selected monetary assets and manifestations — namely banknotes and central bank reserve balances — that have occurred over time. It then describes three modes of money creation and their effect on the substance of an asset: money created on a temporary basis; outright money created with no connected reversal event; and by issue of helicopter money. It also analyses the different forms in which cryptocurrencies manifest themselves and their consequences for the rules governing title, transfer and protection of commercial dealings. Finally, it explores the excludable and rivalrous nature of value data and the manifestation of such data by entry in a register kept by a trusted technology.
Interacting with Ethereum smart contracts can have potentially devastating financial consequences. In light of this, several regulatory bodies have called for a need to audit smart contracts for security and correctness guarantees. Unfortunately, auditing smart contracts that do not have readily available source code can be challenging, and there are currently few tools available that aid in this process. Such contracts remain opaque to auditors. To address this, we present Erays, a reverse engineering tool for smart contracts without the need for source code. Erays takes in smart contract from the Ethereum blockchain and produces high-level pseudocode suitable for manual analysis. We show how Erays can be used to provide insight into several contract properties, such as code complexity and code reuse in the ecosystem. We then leverage Erays to link contracts with no previously available source code to public source code, thus reducing the overall opacity in the ecosystem. Finally, we demonstrate how Erays can be used for reverse-engineering in four case studies: high-value multi-signature wallets, arbitrage bots, exchange accounts, and finally, a popular smart-contract game, Cryptokitties. We conclude with a discussion regarding the value of reverse engineering in the smart contract ecosystem, and how Erays can be leveraged to address the challenges that lie ahead.
David Rozas, Antonio Tenorio-Fornés, Silvia Díaz-Molina, Samer Hassan
Blockchain technologies have generated enthusiasm, yet their potential to enable new forms of governance remains largely unexplored. Two confronting standpoints dominate the emergent debate around blockchain-based governance: discourses characterized by the presence of techno-determinist and market-driven values, which tend to ignore the complexity of social organization; and critical accounts of such discourses which, while contributing to identifying limitations, consider the role of traditional centralized institutions as inherently necessary to enable democratic forms of governance. In this article, we draw on Ostrom’s principles for self-governance of communities to explore the transformative potential of blockchain beyond such standpoints. We approach blockchain through the identification and conceptualization of six affordances that this technology may provide to communities: tokenization, self-enforcement and formalization of rules, autonomous automatization, decentralization of power over the infrastructure, increasing transparency, and codification of trust. For each affordance, we carry out a detailed analysis situating each in the context of Ostrom’s principles, considering both the potentials of algorithmic governance and the importance of incorporating communities’ social practices into blockchain-based tools to foster forms of self-governance. The relationships found between these affordances and Ostrom’s principles allow us to provide a perspective focused on blockchain-based commons governance.
This chapter describes a short-lived experiment in organizational governance that attempted to utilize algorithmic authority through cryptocurrency and block-chain technologies to create a social and political world quite unlike anything we have seen before. It details the governance structures that were promised by the developers and community members involved in the making of The decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), and in contrast, those that were observed in its discourses before, during, and after the “exploit.” The DAO was a decentralized, crowdfunded, direct-management organization and investment platform. In the original vision of decentralized autonomous organizations, as proposed by Vitalik Buterin, founder and member of the Ethereum Foundation, a DAO is a pseudo-legal organization run by an assemblage of human and “robot” participants. From the earliest days of The DAO, many community members acknowledged that the enormous complexity of decentralized and algorithmic governance required a new kind of experimental “science” to map the “uncharted territory” The DAO was entering.
Abstract This paper argues that the practical implementation of blockchain technology can be considered an institution of property similar to legal institutions. Invoking Penner's theory of property and Hegel's system of property rights, and using the example of bitcoin, it is possible to demonstrate that blockchain effectively implements all necessary and sufficient criteria for property without reliance on legal means. Blockchains eliminate the need for a third‐party authority to enforce exclusion rights, and provide a system of universal access to knowledge and discoverability about the property rights of all participants and how the system functions. The implications of these findings are that traditional property relations in society could be replaced by or supplemented with blockchain models, and implemented in new domains.
Autonomous non-military cyber-physical systems are widely studied in research but there are still few applications in industry. One of the reasons relies in the fact that there is still no proof of guarantee for these systems regarding their safety and their ability to behave in a nonhazardous way, mainly because of the induced complexity caused by their learning abilities coupled with the high ability to interact and cooperate of their composing mechatronics elements. More, cyber-physical systems are intended to be merged into socio-technical systems and interact with humans. As a consequence, the study of their ethical behavior translates currently a major stake. Meanwhile, it is clear that this stake is still not address by the scientific community while 1) sci-fi literature and movies have addressed this since a long time 2) some autonomous road vehicles have already injured people, and 3) EU parliament has launched a procedure dealing with the establishment of civil laws for autonomous learning robots. This paper intends then to open the debate on this topic and suggests to extend dependability studies to integrate ethicality as a new dimension. New emerging research fields are identified and an illustration in the autonomous train transportation is presented.
Open access
Safety Systems Engineering in Autonomy
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Systems Engineering Methodologies and Applications
Philippe Genestier, Sajida Zouarhi, Pascal Limeux, David Excoffier · 7 authors
In our digital world, access to personal data has become an item of concern, with challenging security and privacy aspects. Occurrences of hacking intentions and privacy violations make digital trust a major challenge. This is true in the eHealth area where management of patient health data must comply with many regulations, while remaining accessible to duly authorised health practitioners. Most will have heard about Blockchain because of its most known application - Bitcoin - in the payment area. However, Blockchain’s characteristics make it possible to fulfill the requirements of consent management, as illustrated in an implementation within a health domain use case.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Bitcoin emerged as an alternative monetary system that could circumvent political and financial authorities. A practice in libertarian prefigurative politics, Bitcoin demonstrates the capacity for online subgroups to creatively appropriate internet-based technologies to enact alternative futures. Andrew Feenberg’s critical theory of technology clarifies this capacity and outlines the significance of agency in technical action. As technology mediates many social relations, it has a significant role in the reproduction of social power. Technological agency is therefore a crucial site of resistance in which users can form alternative, democratic rationalizations of technology. Yet are such instances of agency intrinsically democratic? In analysing this aspect of Feenberg’s theory, this article argues that Bitcoin represents a ‘popular rationalization’ of technology – a creative appropriation of technology that empowers some groups while lacking the ethical justification necessary to be considered democratic.
Given the rise of interest, opportunities and use of smart contracts, it is important to understand what they are, what technology they rely upon and how they function so that it can be ascertained whether this new technology requires additional regulation, or whether the law as it stands is adequate to administer their usage. This paper will outline two key contentions. First, that smart contracts are well managed by existing contract law principles, however, there are some novel issues associated with this new technology. Second, this paper will suggest a resolution on how to take these novel issues into consideration and ensure they are overcome.
Ethereum represents the second generation of blockchain technology by providing\nan open and global computing platform which allows the exchange of cryptocurrency\n(Ether) and the development of self-verifying smart contract applications.\nSmart contracts present a foundation for possessing digital assets and a variety of\ndecentralized applications within the blockchain area. Ethereum and smart contracts\nare public, distributed and immutable, as such, they are prone to vulnerabilities\nsourcing from simple coding mistakes of developers.\n\nMotivated by the security breaches and recurring financial losses in smart contracts,\nwe aim to advance the field of security in smart contract programming.\nThe main objective is to aid smart contract developers by providing a taxonomy of\nall known security issues and by inspecting the security code analysis tools used\nto identify those vulnerabilities. Based on previous research as well as attacks on\nEthereum smart contracts, we propose an updated taxonomy which categorizes\nall known vulnerabilities within their architectural and severity level. Our second\nproposed taxonomy is a novel categorization of security tools on Ethereum.\n\nFurthermore, we conduct the investigation of security code analysis tools on\nEthereum by assessing their effectiveness and accuracy. In particular, we analyze\nfour security tools, namely, Oyente, Securify, Remix, and SmartCheck. The results\nindicate that there are overall inconsistencies between the tools on different security\nproperties. SmartCheck outperformed the other tools in terms of effectiveness,\nwhereas Oyente performed the best in terms of accuracy. Furthermore, based on\nthe limitations we identified, we propose future improvements within the user interfaces,\ninterpretation of results, and additional vulnerability checks.