We analyse the determinants of success for 630 ICOs undertaken from August 2015 up until the end of December 2017, a period in which the market for ICOs grew to an unprecented level. We find evidence that ICOs are more successful in raising funding when they disclose more information to investors (i.e. have a higher profile rating), have a higher quality rating by cryptocurrency experts, have a pre-ICO GitHub repository, organise a presale, refrain from offering bonus schemes, have shorter planned token sale durations and have a larger project team. ICOs that disclose more information to investors and that have a higher quality rating at the time of the campaign show stronger ex-post performance. Longer-term project success is positively impacted by having a pre-ICO GitHub repository, a shorter planned token sale duration and having a larger project team at the time of the ICO, although these results depend on the ex-post success measure used. We conclude that for entrepreneurs it is important to make an ICO as transparent as possible and that profile and expert ratings are a valuable means to overcome the information asymmetry problems associated with token sales.
Abdullah Mohammed Ayedh, Abdelghani Echchabi, Mohamed Battour, Mohammed Mispah Said Omar
Purpose This study aims to examine the factors that could increase the investment in the Bitcoin market among Malaysian Muslim communities. Design/methodology/approach The study used a survey questionnaire to collect data for a sample of 200 Muslim respondents in Malaysia. Subsequently, the collected data was analysed using structural equation modelling, as well as basic descriptive statistics and one sample test. Findings The findings showed that compatibility, awareness and facilitating conditions have a significant impact on Malaysian Muslim communities’ investment in the Bitcoin market. Originality/value It is worth emphasizing that this is one of the earliest studies that examine the Muslim communities’ perception and willingness to invest in the Bitcoin market. Hence, it is expected to be one of the foundations for future studies in this area.
Blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are current hot topics\nin research and practice. However, the potentials of their combination have\nbeen studied just recently to a larger extend. While different use cases for\ncombining AI and blockchain have been discussed, the idea of enabling\nblockchain-based smart contracts to perform "smarter" decisions by using AI or\nmachine learning (ML) models has only been considered on the conceptual level\nso far. It remained open, how such AI-enabled smart contracts could be\nimplemented in a robust way for real-world applications. Therefore, in this\npaper a new, enterprise-class implementation of AI-enabled smart contracts is\npresented and first insights regarding its feasibility are discussed.\n
There is A finite amount of portable water which is decreasing day by day. Rapid degradation of useful water on earth results in an unkind impact on livelihood. In future, people may have to face (DAY 0) problem therefore, conservation of water is essential. A solution has been proposed to this problem that is “decentralized water management system” using blockchain technology. Blockchain technology can help to use water more efficiently so that every household can lend/borrow the required/extra water from its peer household in the network. In this research work, water ledger architecture has been proposed. This architecture can serve as the basis for Blockchain implementation which can help inbuilding transparency in the water management system with the ultimate goal of Water Conservation. To purpose a system architecture that meets the “demand and supply” of all consumers in a peer-to-peer network so that water can be conserved. A smart contract has been written for transactions (P2P network of 10 household) using Ethereum as a platform. A web interface is created for consumers. Hence, the overall objective is to create a smart water management system for 10 households using blockchain technology to conserve water by medium of sharing water among peer-to-peer as per their needs.
Smart contracts have been a paradigm shift in the realm of business.In the present epoch,smart contracts are a hot potato.Their influence is escalating by leaps and bounds and it is desideratum for the development also.There is paroxysm of interest in cryptocurrency and smart contracts run on ethereum in every nook and corner and it is snowballing on quotidian basis.Firstly,in this research paper,smart contracts and rationale for trusting them is thrashed out.Secondly,this paper expounds the etherum and its cryptocurrency ether.This digital currency has made a leap from an academic concept to virtual reality and is inspiring legion of followers.It has become a de-facto.Thirdly, smart contracts have brobdingnagian gamut of potential application scenarios including both financial as well as non-financial services.Penultimately,this paper delineates the benefits of smart contracts.Lastly,it explicates the challenges thwarting adoption of smart contracts and current scenario of smart contracts in India.This research paper is targeted at providing direction for further research and also,it will serve as a reference for future research papers.
Yaşam koşulları, ihtiyaçların değişimi, teknolojik gelişmeler ve finansal krizler paranın gelişiminde önemli rol oynamıştır. Literatürde, özellikle 2008 yılında yaşanan finansal kriz sonrasında Bitcoin kripto parasının doğduğu ifade edilmektedir. Satoshi Nakamoto tarafından geliştirilen eşler arası nakit sistemi, Bitcoin ile birlikte, kripto varlık, blokzincir ve dağıtılmış defter teknolojisi kavramlarının da gündeme gelmesine neden olmuştur. Günümüzde çok sayıda kripto varlığın mevcut olduğu, kripto varlıkların sayısında, türünde ve işlem hacimlerinde artış olduğu gözlenmektedir. Bu genişleme beraberinde Bitcoin ve diğer kripto varlıkların muhasebeleştirilmesi konusunu da gündeme getirmiştir. Bu çalışmada kripto varlıklar, kripto varlıkların çeşitleri, temini ve mevcut durumu hakkında bilgi verilmeye, IASB tarafından kamuoyunun görüşüne sunulan kripto paraların muhasebeleştirilmesine ilişkin geçici gündem kararı incelenmeye, kripto para dışındaki diğer kripto varlıkların muhasebeleştirilmesi incelenmeye çalışılmıştır. IASB kripto paraların satılmak için elde tutulması durumunda IAS 2 Stoklar Standardı kapsamında, diğer hallerde IAS 38 Maddi Olmayan Duran Varlık Standardı kapsamında değerlendireceğine dair geçici karar bildirmiştir. Diğer taraftan, kripto para dışındaki kripto varlıkların muhasebeleştirilmesi için gerekli düzenlemelerin yapılması da önerilebilir.
Security of payment (SOP) issues still persist in the construction industry despite numerous investigations and incremental reforms. Various solutions and policies have been proposed and analysed in-depth in previous studies. However, limited studies have focused on the integration of advanced technologies to address SOP issues. The aim of this research is to develop a comprehensive framework that integrates practical advanced technologies to address SOP issues in the construction industry. A concurrent mixed-method design was adopted to (a) identify the industry's perspective on what advanced technologies can be accepted to address SOP issues through a questionnaire survey, and (b) identify the use of advanced technologies through a live construction project as a case study. Subsequently, a data flow diagram framework was developed to articulate the whole process flow of how the system delivers automatic payments to subcontractors upon the completion of their contractual obligations and work done. This research contributes new and practical insights into the application and integration of smart sensors, oracles, BIM, blockchain technology and smart contracts in addressing SOP issues in the construction industry.
Blockchain enabled digital scarcity has opened up a whole new dimension of possibilities for the token economy, particularly with regards to rights and assets that have not been traded electronically before. Blockchain based tokenization of rights and assets has also brought a new set of legal and regulatory challenges. Regulators and legislators are yet to address many of the issues raised by blockchain based tokenization, from decentralisation and token characterisation to cross border harmonisation and regulatory compliance with traditional market infrastructure. Lack of regulatory alignment can undermine many of the benefits of the token economy. Lack of legal certainty may not only stifle innovation and slow down mainstream adoption of blockchain based tokenization, but can also raise the risks for investors and harm the reputation of the industry. The emerging regulations vary in approach. Liechtenstein became the first country to have comprehensive technology-neutral regulation of the token economy. Malta and Singapore also represent progressive jurisdictions for blockchain regulation. However, most jurisdictions, including the US and the EU, have not yet formed clear policy for blockchain regulation and many legal questions remain open. The paper examines whether there is an emerging predominant regulatory approach or prevailing regulatory direction for the future of the token economy. It also highlights the existing regulatory void and divergent approaches to blockchain based tokenization. Finally, the paper concludes that there is an urgent need to provide a clear legal and regulatory framework if the potential of the token economy is to be realised.
Crowdfunding is an innovative way of financing projects that allows anyone to contribute money online and support various initiatives, such as businesses, causes, or solutions. However, traditional crowdfunding platforms face some challenges, such as lack of transparency and security, high fees, and limited control over the funds by the contributors and the project owners. Blockchain technology, which is a P2P, decentralized ledger, which is distributed can offer a more reliable, secure, and transparent solution for crowdfunding. Blockchain-based crowdfunding can leverage smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements that encode the rules and conditions of the funding process and ensure that the funds are released only when the predefined criteria are met. This paper aims to propose a concept for designing efficient smart contracts for crowdfunding, which can enable both the contributors and the project owners to have more control and influence over the funds and the project outcomes. Unlike the existing literature-based ideas, our proposed method not only allows the contributors to invest their own money, but also guarantees them that their token values will be preserved. This method can be integrated without disrupting the existing logic of the blockchain. The methodology provides higher control and transparency for all the parties involved in the crowdfunding process.
Irfah Najihah Basir, Shaliza Alwi, Masrina Nadia Mohd Salleh, M. Aslam · 5 authors
The concept of cryptocurrency, as part of the digital currency phenomena has been around since 1998 but world-wide adoption only started after the birth of Bitcoin. Financial technology or Fintech is a term used to describe the technological innovation in the financial sector; has seen various major breakthroughs over the past decade, and Bitcoin was right at the center stage. Clearly, a lack of public trust on financial systems after the global financial crisis which describes to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 which started from the subprime mortgage market in the U.S has given cryptocurrency an opportunity to enter the market. Since then, the industry has been growing at a rapid pace driven by increasing acceptance, greater media coverage, sustained inflows, initial coin offering 3 (ICO) frenzy and increased transaction capacity. This study aims to fill the gap by providing insight into the world of cryptocurrency from a Chinese investment perspective. The findings will help the global audience (not limited to those with domicile in China) understand the implication of cryptocurrency as an alternative investment in China. Therefore, this study strives to contribute to the literature and open up a gateway for more future research on FinTech in China.
Land title deeds are important documents that can be used to verify ownership and transfer history of lands. In Thailand, the Department of Lands operates and facilitates the transfer of ownership and other operations related to lands. The current technology used in the operations often encounters problems with the reliability of operations and complexities that cause delays. This paper investigates a proof-of-concept (PoC) of the integration of blockchain in the land registration system to improve the reliability of storage and reduces the steps in the process. The process of loan contracts with banks is used in the PoC and an Ethereum-based private blockchain is developed and tested. Performance evaluation of our proposed system can handle at least 26 transactions per second over a range of a number of transactions of interest. The results show promising potential both in the reduction of process and the performance of blockchain for the proposed use case.
Era Johri, Bhakti Kantariya, Rachana Gandhi, Unnati Mistry
Background: Lacuna of the traditional stock market systems overtime has been bridled by BlockChain Technology. Used cases designed in BlockChain Technology has a flair to deal with the problems in the financial sector. Most vituperative outburst is related to stock markets where the centralization of the clearing house increases the dependency on the central system. Centralization of the clearing houses increases the risks and delay in response to the users of the system. Traditionally, stock market players need to endure the complex multi-layer process of pre-trading, trading and post-trading settlements. The processes in these systems were time consuming and cost inefficient in terms of resources utilized due to the role of intermediaries. Objective: The objective of this paper is to propose a system which will embark the issues of processing, traceability, transparency, and availability of stocks using BlockChain Technology. Method: We offer a decentralized system for the stock market users, and as a result, the intermediaries become expendable. The rules and regulations will execute within every smart contract for every trade transaction being regulatory. Results: This paper discusses various solutions to the problems arise due to current centralized or decentralized systems. Conclusion: We will discuss aspects like security and transparency of the proposed system while concluding the paper.
Traditional contracts are being replaced in an increasing number of instances by smart contracts that is, “decentralized agreements built in computer code and stored on a blockchain”, which are able to automatically execute the terms within the contract and control the relations between parties so that no further “explicit but redundant” negotiations are needed. This paper assesses current and evolving concerns regarding the adoption of blockchain technology in the areas of financial services, and corporate and public governance. The author evaluates the risks and benefits of the utilization of smart contracts and assesses their suitability (in terms of transparency, accountability, responsibility and fairness) for use in the public services’ “space”. It concludes that while the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, great care should be exercised in terms of design and use because this is still a developing area in terms of both the technology itself and the regulatory environment.
Rowan van Pelt, Slinger Jansen, Djuri Baars, Sietse Overbeek
In this article, we introduce a blockchain governance framework that defines the governance of a blockchain as a combination of six dimensions and three layers. An evaluation through eight expert interviews confirms the perceived usefulness and operational feasibility of the presented framework. Furthermore, the framework, is demonstrated by an application in two case studies. The introduced blockchain governance framework establishes a shared understanding and discussion surrounding the topic of blockchain governance.
Cryptocurrency and Block chain are the future of finance industry. The financial industry is inevitably transforming towards digital eco-system. From investment to money transfer everything is going paperless. The newest and promising addition to the digital payment sector is Cryptocurrency and Block chain. A Cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange like normal currency but it is designed for the purpose of exchanging digital information. Cryptocurrencies are digital money without coins and notes with artificial limitations. With the help of Cryptography and a collective booking system is Block chain. Block chain is a decentralized ledger of all transactions across a peer to peer network. Using this technology participants can confirm their transactions without a need for a central clearing authority. Potential applications like fund transfer, settling trades, voting and many other issues. This gives benefits like increased transparency, accurate tracking, permanent ledger and cost reduction.
Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Benjamin Livshits, Arthur Gervais
Credit allows a lender to loan out surplus capital to a borrower. In the traditional economy, credit bears the risk that the borrower may default on its debt, the lender hence requires upfront collateral from the borrower, plus interest fee payments. Due to the atomicity of blockchain transactions, lenders can offer flash loans, i.e., loans that are only valid within one transaction and must be repaid by the end of that transaction. This concept has lead to a number of interesting attack possibilities, some of which were exploited in February 2020. This paper is the first to explore the implication of transaction atomicity and flash loans for the nascent decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. We show quantitatively how transaction atomicity increases the arbitrage revenue. We moreover analyze two existing attacks with ROIs beyond 500k%. We formulate finding the attack parameters as an optimization problem over the state of the underlying Ethereum blockchain and the state of the DeFi ecosystem. We show how malicious adversaries can efficiently maximize an attack profit and hence damage the DeFi ecosystem further. Specifically, we present how two previously executed attacks can be "boosted" to result in a profit of 829.5k USD and 1.1M USD, respectively, which is a boost of 2.37x and 1.73x, respectively.
Abstract The market for derivatives is substantially different after the 2007/08 financial crisis. Trust fuels business yet the financial crisis undermined this concept and customers lost faith in financial institutions. The then dichotomy, faced by innovators, was to insist with a system based on trust in financial institutions, or explore others where neither trust nor banks, as intermediaries, were indispensable for the successful and safe completion of financial transactions. The aim of this piece of research is to analyse to what extent innovative technology would change the way the ‘Over The Counter’ (OTC) market operates by providing investors with a trustworthy platform for the efficient assessment of the risk behind certain financial instruments. Consequently, the market may not be caught by surprise when another financial crisis strikes.
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik, insb. im Dienstleistungsbereich, Nürnberg, Germany, Moritz Schindelmann, Philipp Klinger, Freimut Bodendorf
Blockchain capabilities like Ethereum Smart Contracts offer great opportunities to manage cross-organizational business processes due to their trustless and tamperproof nature. However, communication in such processes poses a major issue since there is no direct option for one participating organization to inform other collaborators about their individual progress in their impersonation as a Smart Contract. As that knowledge is vital to execute a cross-organizational process, we design a Smart Contract architecture in which participants express their progress through Blockchain events. Furthermore, we implement a prototype that subscribes to the relevant events of one or more participants and reacts to their occurrence by triggering the subsequent step(s) of the process. Evaluation of the prototype and architecture shows that this does not only avoid unnecessary latency in process communication but also results in a fair cost distribution as each participant is only charged for the expenses of its individual actions.
This thesis investigates blockchain technology and whether its mutually cooperative topology and commons-based peer production practices have implications for society because, instead of the traditional top-down, centralised model of governance, blockchains represent an alternative way of collaborating. Much of the literature anticipates the vast potential of the permanent and publicly auditable nature of the propagated values of blockchains. Indeed, writers have supposed that the smart contract capabilities of the technology may prove revolutionary for areas beyond that of the economic domain targeted by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which is the first successful use-case of a blockchain. However, few advanced use cases beyond that economic realm have materialised; this research demonstrates such usecases. This thesis asks four research questions. The first asks whether blockchains can help reduce energy consumption. The second asks whether blockchains can help digitise the informal sector. The third asks whether blockchains can help counter fake news. The final question asks whether blockchains can help address criticisms of humanitarian aid. Those topics are four amongst many urgent problems currently facing humankind, and therefore, the overarching research question of this thesis becomes whether blockchains can help humanity. This work advances the supposed potential of blockchains proposed by current literature by using design science research to create software artefacts that propose solutions for incentivising energy efficiency, fighting financial fraud, providing digital provenance and adding trust to humanitarian aid reporting. By demonstrating blockchain-based software solutions in those four topic areas, this thesis concludes that blockchains can help humanity. However, if they are to help society address some of its problems, blockchains have significant technological and organisational barriers to overcome. Furthermore, the idea that blockchains can help humanity is a form of techno-determinism and this research concludes that it is impossible to solve every issue by diversifying technical operations; humankind must also change political, economic, and cultural goals, too. Nevertheless, this thesis has implications for regulators, despite the barriers and false solutionism offered by technology because, rather than the trusted lawmakers and experts that nations used to look up to as oracles of truth, now it may be possible to look to blockchains, instead.
Purpose A blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology that stores the information of every transaction in the network. The blockchain has emerged with a huge diversity of applications not only in the economic but in the non-economical domain as well. Blockchain technology promises to provide a wide range of solutions to the problems faced during implementation of smart cities. It has the potential to build smart contracts more secure, thus eliminating the need for centralized authority. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a proof-of-concept for a use case that uses an Ethereum platform to build a blockchain network to buy, sell or rent a property. Findings The findings of this study provide an opportunity to create novel decentralized scalable solutions to develop smart cities by enabling paperless transactions. There are enormous opportunities in this distributed ledger technology which will bring a revolutionary change in upcoming years. Originality/value The concept of blockchain along with smart contracts can be used as a promising technology for sharing services which is a common requirement in smart cities. All the blockchain transactions are stored in decentralized shared database. The transaction recorded in decentralized system is immutable, it cannot be altered and hence chance of forgery is negligible.