In this paper, we developed a blockchain application to demonstrate the functionality of Sui's recent innovations: Zero Knowledge Login and Sponsored Transactions. Zero Knowledge Login allows users to create and access their blockchain wallets just with their OAuth accounts (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitch), while Sponsored Transactions eliminate the need for users to prepare transaction fees, as they can delegate fees to sponsors' accounts. Additionally, thanks to Sui's Storage Rebate feature, sponsors in Sponsored Transactions can profit from the sponsorship, achieving a win-win and sustainable service model. Zero Knowledge Login and Sponsored Transactions are pivotal in overcoming key challenges novice blockchain users face, particularly in managing private keys and depositing initial transaction fees. By addressing these challenges in the user experience of blockchain, Sui makes the blockchain more accessible and engaging for novice users and paves the way for the broader adoption of blockchain applications in everyday life.
Driven by the great advances in metaverse and edge computing technologies, vehicular edge metaverses are expected to disrupt the current paradigm of intelligent transportation systems. As highly computerized avatars of Vehicular Metaverse Users (VMUs), the Vehicle Twins (VTs) deployed in edge servers can provide valuable metaverse services to improve driving safety and on-board satisfaction for their VMUs throughout journeys. To maintain uninterrupted metaverse experiences, VTs must be migrated among edge servers following the movements of vehicles. This can raise concerns about privacy breaches during the dynamic communications among vehicular edge metaverses. To address these concerns and safeguard location privacy, pseudonyms as temporary identifiers can be leveraged by both VMUs and VTs to realize anonymous communications in the physical space and virtual spaces. However, existing pseudonym management methods fall short in meeting the extensive pseudonym demands in vehicular edge metaverses, thus dramatically diminishing the performance of privacy preservation. To this end, we present a cross-metaverse empowered dual pseudonym management framework. We utilize cross-chain technology to enhance management efficiency and data security for pseudonyms. Furthermore, we propose a metric to assess the privacy level and employ a Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL) approach to obtain an optimal pseudonym generating strategy. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed schemes are high-efficiency and cost-effective, showcasing their promising applications in vehicular edge metaverses.
Feb 5, 2024·(2025). A Philosophical and Ontological Perspective on Artificial General Intelligence and The Metaverse. Journal of Metaverse, 5(2), 168-180
This paper leverages various philosophical and ontological frameworks to explore the concept of embodied artificial general intelligence (AGI), its relationship to human consciousness, and the key role of the metaverse in facilitating this relationship. Several theoretical frameworks underpin this exploration, such as embodied cognition, Michael Levin's computational boundary of a "Self," and Donald D. Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception, which lead to considering human perceived outer reality as a symbolic representation of alternate inner states of being, and where AGI could embody a different form of consciousness with a larger computational boundary. The paper further discusses the necessary architecture for the emergence of an embodied AGI, how to calibrate an AGI's symbolic interface, and the key role played by the Metaverse, decentralized systems and open-source blockchain technology. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of achieving a certain degree of harmony in human relations and recognizing the interconnectedness of humanity at a global level, as key prerequisites for the emergence of a stable embodied AGI.
Crypto donations now represent a significant fraction of charitable giving worldwide. Nonfungible token (NFT) charity fundraisers, which involve the sale of NFTs of artistic works with the proceeds donated to philanthropic causes, have emerged as a novel development in this space. A unique aspect of NFT charity fundraisers is the significant potential for donors to reap financial gains from the rising value of purchased NFTs. Questions may arise about donors' motivations in these charity fundraisers, potentially resulting in a negative social image. NFT charity fundraisers thus offer a unique opportunity to understand the economic consequences of a donor's social image. We investigate these effects in the context of a large NFT charity fundraiser. We identify the causal effect of purchasing an NFT within the charity fundraiser on a donor's later market outcomes by leveraging random variation in transaction processing times on the blockchain. Further, we demonstrate a clear pattern of heterogeneity based on an individual's decision to relist (versus hold) the purchased charity NFTs (a sign of perceived strategic generosity) and based on an individual's social exposure within the NFT marketplace. We show that charity-NFT 're-listers' experience significant penalties in the market regarding the prices they can command for their other NFTs, particularly among those who are more socially exposed. Finally, we report the results of a scenario-based online experiment, which again support our findings, highlighting that the re-listing a charity NFT for sale at a profit leads others to perceive their initial donation as strategic generosity and reduces those others' willingness to purchase NFTs from the donor. Our study underscores the growing importance of digital visibility and traceability, features that characterize crypto-philanthropy, and online philanthropy more broadly.
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have seen exponential growth and interest due to their potential to redefine organizational structure and governance. Despite this, there is a discrepancy between the ideals of autonomy and decentralization and the actual experiences of DAO stakeholders. The Information Systems (IS) literature has yet to fully explore whether DAOs are the optimal organizational choice. Addressing this gap, our research asks, "Is a DAO suitable for your organizational needs?" We derive a gated decision-making framework through a thematic review of the academic and grey literature on DAOs. Through five scenarios, the framework critically emphasizes the gaps between DAOs' theoretical capabilities and practical challenges. Our findings contribute to the IS discourse on blockchain technologies, with some ancillary contributions to the IS literature on organizational management and practitioner literature.
Henrik Axelsen, Sebastian Axelsen, Valdemar Licht, Jason Potts
Managing rapidly growing decentralized gaming communities brings unique challenges at the nexus of cultural economics and technology. This paper introduces a streamlined analytical framework that utilizes Large Language Models (LLMs), in this instance open-access generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models, offering an efficient solution with deeper insights into community dynamics. The framework aids moderators in identifying pseudonymous actor intent, moderating toxic behavior, rewarding desired actions to avoid unintended consequences of blockchain-based gaming, and gauging community sentiment as communities venture into metaverse platforms and plan for hypergrowth. This framework strengthens community controls, eases onboarding, and promotes a common moral mission across communities while reducing agency costs by 95 pct. Highlighting the transformative role of generative AI, the paper emphasizes its potential to redefine the cost of cultural production. It showcases the utility of GPTs in digital community management, expanding their implications in cultural economics and transmedia storytelling.
Yilin Ye, Qian Zhu, Shishi Xiao, Kang Zhang · 5 authors
Image search is an essential and user-friendly method to explore vast galleries of digital images. However, existing image search methods heavily rely on proximity measurements like tag matching or image similarity, requiring precise user inputs for satisfactory results. To meet the growing demand for a contemporary image search engine that enables accurate comprehension of users' search intentions, we introduce an innovative user intent expansion framework. Our framework leverages visual-language models to parse and compose multi-modal user inputs to provide more accurate and satisfying results. It comprises two-stage processes: 1) a parsing stage that incorporates a language parsing module with large language models to enhance the comprehension of textual inputs, along with a visual parsing module that integrates an interactive segmentation module to swiftly identify detailed visual elements within images; and 2) a logic composition stage that combines multiple user search intents into a unified logic expression for more sophisticated operations in complex searching scenarios. Moreover, the intent expansion framework enables users to perform flexible contextualized interactions with the search results to further specify or adjust their detailed search intents iteratively. We implemented the framework into an image search system for NFT (non-fungible token) search and conducted a user study to evaluate its usability and novel properties. The results indicate that the proposed framework significantly improves users' image search experience. Particularly the parsing and contextualized interactions prove useful in allowing users to express their search intents more accurately and engage in a more enjoyable iterative search experience.
Blockchain technology is leading a revolutionary transformation across diverse industries, with effective governance standing as a critical determinant for the success and sustainability of blockchain projects. Community forums, pivotal in engaging decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), wield a substantial impact on blockchain governance decisions. Concurrently, Natural Language Processing (NLP), particularly sentiment analysis, provides powerful insights from textual data. While prior research has explored the potential of NLP tools in social media sentiment analysis, a gap persists in understanding the sentiment landscape of blockchain governance communities. The evolving discourse and sentiment dynamics on the forums of top DAOs remain largely unknown. This paper delves deep into the evolving discourse and sentiment dynamics on the public forums of leading DeFi projects—Aave, Uniswap, Curve Dao, Aragon, Yearn.finance, Merit Circle, and Balancer—placing a primary focus on discussions related to governance issues. Despite differing activity patterns, participants across these decentralized communities consistently express positive sentiments in their Discord discussions, indicating optimism towards governance decisions. Additionally, our research suggests a potential interplay between discussion intensity and sentiment dynamics, indicating that higher discussion volumes may contribute to more stable and positive emotions. The insights gained from this study are valuable for decision-makers in blockchain governance, underscoring the pivotal role of sentiment analysis in interpreting community emotions and its evolving impact on the landscape of blockchain governance. This research significantly contributes to the interdisciplinary exploration of the intersection of blockchain and society, with a specific emphasis on the decentralized blockchain governance ecosystem. We provide our data and code for replicability as open access on GitHub.
This paper presents the latest progress of GPTutor: a ChatGPT-powered programming tool extension in Visual Studio Code. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has improved software development efficiency, but their performance can be hindered by training data limitations and prompt design issues. Existing LLM development tools often operate as black boxes, with users unable to view the prompts used and unable to improve performance by correcting prompts when errors occur. To address the aforementioned issues, GPTutor was introduced as an open-source AI pair programming tool, offering an alternative to Copilot. GPTutor empowers users to customize prompts for various programming languages and scenarios, with support for 120+ human languages and 50+ programming languages. Users can fine-tune prompts to correct the errors from LLM for precision and efficient code generation. At the end of the paper, we underscore GPTutor's potential through examples, including demonstrating its proficiency in interpreting and generating Sui-Move, a newly introduced smart contract language, using prompt engineering.
As the reliance on GPS technology for navigation grows, so does the ethical dilemma of balancing its indispensable utility with the escalating concerns over user privacy. This study investigates the trade-offs between GPS utility and privacy among drivers, using a mixed-method approach that includes a survey of 151 participants and 10 follow-up interviews. We examine usage patterns, feature preferences, and comfort levels with location tracking and destination prediction. Our findings demonstrate that users tend to overlook potential privacy risks in favor of the utility the technology provides. We also find that users do not mind sharing inaccurate or obfuscated location data as long as their frequently visited locations aren't identified, and their full driving routes can't be recreated. Based on our findings, we explore design opportunities for enhancing privacy and utility, including adaptive interfaces, personalized profiles, and technological innovations like blockchain.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique cryptographic assets representing the ownership of digital media. NFTs have soared in popularity and trading prices. However, there exists a large gap in the literature regarding NFTs, especially regarding the stakeholders and online communities that have formed around NFT projects. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is one of the most influential NFT projects. Through an observational study of online BAYC communities across social media platforms and semi-structured interviews with four participants who owned BAYC NFTs, we explored the experiences of NFT collectors within the online NFT community. Positive community experiences, i.e., personal expression and identity, mutual support among BAYC holders, and exclusive access to online and offline events, were expressed. Encountered challenges included scams and "cash grab" NFT projects as well as trolling. The results of this study point towards the welcoming, positive nature of the NFT community, which is a possible causation factor of the initial rise in popularity of NFTs. Demotivators, on the other hand, countered the established trustworthiness of NFT technology among its consumers.
Proponents and developers of Web3 and blockchain argue that these technologies can revolutionize how people live and work by empowering individuals and distributing decision-making power. While technologists often have expansive hopes for what their technologies will accomplish over the long term, the practical challenges of developing, scaling, and maintaining systems amidst present-day constraints can compromise progress toward this vision. How technologists think about the technological future they hope to enable and how they navigate day-to-day issues impacts the form technologies take, their potential benefits, and their potential harms. In our current work, we aimed to explore the visions of Web3 and blockchain technologists and identify the immediate challenges that could threaten their visions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 29 operators and professional investors in the Web3 and blockchain field. Our findings revealed that participants supported several ideological goals for their projects, with decentralization being a pivotal mechanism to enable user autonomy, distribute governance power, and promote financial inclusion. However, participants acknowledged the practical difficulties in fulfilling these promises, including the need for rapid technology development, conflicts of interest among stakeholders due to platform financing dynamics, and the challenge of expanding to mainstream users who may not share the "Web3 ethos." If negotiated ineffectively, these challenges could lead to negative outcomes, such as corrupt governance, increased inequality, and increased prevalence of scams and dubious investment schemes. While participants thought education, regulation, and a renewed commitment to the original blockchain ideals could alleviate some problems, they expressed skepticism about the potential of these solutions.
Lucian Trestioreanu, Wazen M. Shbair, Flaviene Scheidt de Cristo, Radu State
Recent technologies such as inter-ledger payments, non-fungible tokens, and smart contracts are all fruited from the ongoing development of Distributed Ledger Technologies. The foreseen trend is that they will play an increasingly visible role in daily life, which will have to be backed by appropriate operational resources. For example, due to increasing demand, smart contracts could soon face a shortage of knowledgeable users and tools to handle them in practice. Widespread smart contract adoption is currently limited by security, usability and costs aspects. Because of a steep learning curve, the handling of smart contracts is currently performed by specialised developers mainly, and most of the research effort is focusing on smart contract security, while other aspects like usability being somewhat neglected. Specific tools would lower the entry barrier, enabling interested non-experts to create smart contracts. In this paper we designed, developed and tested Blockly2Hooks, a solution towards filling this gap even in challenging scenarios such as when the smart contracts are written in an advanced language like C. With the XRP Ledger as a concrete working case, Blockly2Hooks helps interested non-experts from the community to learn smart contracts easily and adopt the technology, through leveraging well-proven teaching methodologies like Visual Programming Languages, and more specifically, the Blockly Visual Programming library from Google. The platform was developed and tested and the results are promising to make learning smart contract development smoother.
Zhixuan Zhou, Tanusree Sharma, Luke Emano, Sauvik Das · 5 authors
Crypto wallets are a key touch-point for cryptocurrency use. People use crypto wallets to make transactions, manage crypto assets, and interact with decentralized apps (dApps). However, as is often the case with emergent technologies, little attention has been paid to understanding and improving accessibility barriers in crypto wallet software. We present a series of user studies that explored how both blind and sighted individuals use MetaMask, one of the most popular non-custodial crypto wallets. We uncovered inter-related accessibility, learnability, and security issues with MetaMask. We also report on an iterative redesign of MetaMask to make it more accessible for blind users. This process involved multiple evaluations with 44 novice crypto wallet users, including 20 sighted users, 23 blind users, and one user with low vision. Our study results show notable improvements for accessibility after two rounds of design iterations. Based on the results, we discuss design implications for creating more accessible and secure crypto wallets for blind users.
Blockchain enables peer-to-peer transactions in cyberspace without a trusted third party. The rapid growth of Ethereum and smart contract blockchains generally calls for well-designed Transaction Fee Mechanisms (TFMs) to allocate limited storage and computation resources. However, existing research on TFMs must consider the waiting time for transactions, which is essential for computer security and economic efficiency. Integrating data from the Ethereum blockchain and memory pool (mempool), we explore how two types of events affect transaction latency. First, we apply regression discontinuity design (RDD) to study the causal inference of the Merge, the most recent significant upgrade of Ethereum. Our results show that the Merge significantly reduces the long waiting time, network loads, and market congestion. In addition, we verify our results' robustness by inspecting other compounding factors, such as censorship and unobserved delays of transactions via private changes. Second, examining three major protocol changes during the merge, we identify block interval shortening as the most plausible cause for our empirical results. Furthermore, in a mathematical model, we show block interval as a unique mechanism design choice for EIP1559 TFM to achieve better security and efficiency, generally applicable to the market congestion caused by demand surges. Finally, we apply time series analysis to research the interaction of Non-Fungible token (NFT) drops and market congestion using Facebook Prophet, an open-source algorithm for generating time-series models. Our study identified NFT drops as a unique source of market congestion -- holiday effects -- beyond trend and season effects. Finally, we envision three future research directions of TFM.
Regardless of which community, incentivizing users is a necessity for well-sustainable operations. In the blockchain-backed Web3 communities, known for their transparency and security, airdrop serves as a widespread incentive mechanism for allocating capital and power. However, it remains a controversy on how to justify airdrop to incentive and empower the decentralized governance. In this paper, we use ParaSwap as an example to propose a role taxonomy methodology through a data-driven study to understand the characteristic of community members and the effectiveness of airdrop. We find that users receive more rewards tend to take positive actions towards the community. We summarize several arbitrage patterns and confirm the current detection is not sufficient in screening out airdrop hunters. In conjunction with the results, we discuss from the aspects of interaction, financialization, and system design to conclude the challenges and possible research directions for decentralized communities.
Ethereum has become a popular blockchain with smart contracts for investors nowadays. Due to the decentralization and anonymity of Ethereum, Ponzi schemes have been easily deployed and caused significant losses to investors. However, there are still no explainable and effective methods to help investors easily identify Ponzi schemes and validate whether a smart contract is actually a Ponzi scheme. To fill the research gap, we propose PonziLens, a novel visualization approach to help investors achieve early identification of Ponzi schemes by investigating the operation codes of smart contracts. Specifically, we conduct symbolic execution of opcode and extract the control flow for investing and rewarding with critical opcode instructions. Then, an intuitive directed-graph based visualization is proposed to display the investing and rewarding flows and the crucial execution paths, enabling easy identification of Ponzi schemes on Ethereum. Two usage scenarios involving both Ponzi and non-Ponzi schemes demonstrate the effectiveness of PonziLens.
With the growing popularity of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), a new type of digital assets, various fraudulent activities have appeared in NFT markets. Among them, wash trading has become one of the most common frauds in NFT markets, which attempts to mislead investors by creating fake trading volumes. Due to the sophisticated patterns of wash trading, only a subset of them can be detected by automatic algorithms, and manual inspection is usually required. We propose NFTDisk, a novel visualization for investors to identify wash trading activities in NFT markets, where two linked visualization modules are presented: a radial visualization module with a disk metaphor to overview NFT transactions and a flow-based visualization module to reveal detailed NFT flows at multiple levels. We conduct two case studies and an in-depth user interview with 14 NFT investors to evaluate NFTDisk. The results demonstrate its effectiveness in exploring wash trading activities in NFT markets.
Justin Goldston, Tomer Jordi Chaffer, Justyna Osowska, Charles von Goins
In recent years discussions centered around digital inheritance have increased among social media users and across blockchain ecosystems. As a result digital assets such as social media content cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens have become increasingly valuable and widespread, leading to the need for clear and secure mechanisms for transferring these assets upon the testators death or incapacitation. This study proposes a framework for digital inheritance using soulbound tokens and the social recovery pallet as a use case in the Polkadot and Kusama blockchain networks. The findings discussed within this study suggest that while soulbound tokens and the social recovery pallet offer a promising solution for creating a digital inheritance plan the findings also raise important considerations for testators digital executors and developers. While further research is needed to fully understand the potential impacts and risks of other technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing this study provides a primer for users to begin planning a digital inheritance strategy and for developers to develop a more intuitive solution.
Karolis Zilius, Tasos Spiliotopoulos, Aad van Moorsel
The rise in adoption of cryptoassets has brought many new and inexperienced investors in the cryptocurrency space. These investors can be disproportionally influenced by information they receive online, and particularly from social media. This paper presents a dataset of crypto-related bounty events and the users that participate in them. These events coordinate social media campaigns to create artificial "hype" around a crypto project in order to influence the price of its token. The dataset consists of information about 15.8K cross-media bounty events, 185K participants, 10M forum comments and 82M social media URLs collected from the Bounties(Altcoins) subforum of the BitcoinTalk online forum from May 2014 to December 2022. We describe the data collection and the data processing methods employed and we present a basic characterization of the dataset. Furthermore, we discuss potential research opportunities afforded by the dataset across many disciplines and we highlight potential novel insights into how the cryptocurrency industry operates and how it interacts with its audience.
Jordan M. Thompson, Ryan Benac, Kidus Olana, Talha Hassan · 6 authors
NFTrig is a web-based application created for use as an educational tool to teach trigonometry and block chain technology. Creation of the application includes front and back end development as well as integration with other outside sources including MetaMask and OpenSea. The primary development languages include HTML, CSS (Bootstrap 5), and JavaScript as well as Solidity for smart contract creation. The application itself is hosted on Moralis utilizing their Web3 API. This technical report describes how the application was created, what the application requires, and smart contract design with security considerations in mind. The NFTrig application has underwent significant testing and validation prior to and after deployment. Future suggestions and recommendations for further development, maintenance, and use in other fields for education are also described.
The advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have led to technological advancements in a plethora of domains. Healthcare, education, and smart city services are now enriched with AI capabilities. These technological advancements would not have been realized without the assistance of fast, secure, and fault-tolerant communication media. Traditional processing, communication and storage technologies cannot maintain high levels of scalability and user experience for immersive services. The metaverse is an immersive three-dimensional (3D) virtual world that integrates fantasy and reality into a virtual environment using advanced virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices. Such an environment is still being developed and requires extensive research in order for it to be realized to its highest attainable levels. In this article, we discuss some of the key issues required in order to attain realization of metaverse services. We propose a framework that integrates digital twin (DT) with other advanced technologies such as the sixth generation (6G) communication network, blockchain, and AI, to maintain continuous end-to-end metaverse services. This article also outlines requirements for an integrated, DT-enabled metaverse framework and provides a look ahead into the evolving topic.
Sep 11, 2022·15th International Baltic Conference on Digital Business and Intelligent Systems (DB&IS), July 03-06, 2022, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
Web 3.0 is considered as future of Internet where decentralization, user personalization and privacy protection would be the main aspects of Internet. Aim of this research work is to elucidate the adoption behavior of Web 3.0through a multi-analytical approach based on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) and Twitter sentiment analysis. A theoretical framework centered on Performance Expectancy (PE), Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) and Digital Dexterity (DD), was hypothesized towards Behavioral Intention (INT) of the Web 3.0 adoption. Surveyed data were collected through online questionnaires and 167 responses were analyzed through PLS-SEM. While 3,989 tweets of Web3 were analyzed by VADER sentiment analysis tool in RapidMiner. PLS-SEM results showed that DD and eWOM had significant impact while PE had no effect on INT. Moreover, these results were also validated by PLS-Predict method. While sentiment analysis explored that 56% tweets on Web 3.0 were positive in sense and 7% depicted negative sentiment while remaining were neutral. Such inferences are novel in nature and an innovative addition to web informatics and could support the stakeholders towards web technology integration
In teleradiology, medical images are transmitted to offsite radiologists for interpretation and the dictation report is sent back to the original site to aid timely diagnosis and proper patient care. Although teleradiology offers great benefits including time and cost efficiency, after-hour coverages, and staffing shortage management, there are some technical and operational limitations to overcome in reaching its full potential. We analyzed the current teleradiology workflow to identify inefficiencies. Image unavailability and delayed critical result communication stemmed from lack of system integration between teleradiology practice and healthcare institutions are among the most substantial factors causing prolonged turnaround time. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based medical image sharing and automated critical-results notification platform to address the current limitation. We believe the proposed platform will enhance efficiency in workflow by eliminating the need for intermediaries and will benefit patients by eliminating the need for storing medical images in hard copies. While considerable progress was achieved, further research on governance and HIPAA compliance is required to optimize the adoption of the new application. Towards an idea to a working paradigm, we will implement the prototype during the next phase of our study.