Blockchain Papers

Andrew Le Gear

No abstract is available for this record.

Lyazid Sabri, Abdelhak Boubetra

No abstract is available for this record.

Ahto Buldas, Dirk Draheim, Takehiko Nagumo, Anton Vedeshin

No abstract is available for this record.

Michele Marchesi, Andrea Pinna, Francesco Pisu, Roberto Tonelli

No abstract is available for this record.

Fickson Mvula, Jackson Phiri, Simon Tembo

Developing Countries in Africa in general and Zambia in particular, have seen a rapid rise in use of mobile payment platforms. This has not only revolutionized access to finance for the poor but also allowed them access to other financial products such as savings or insurance. With a growing number of mobile money providers in Zambia, there is need for a solution that would enable integration of the mobile money provider’s systems using a central clearinghouse for purposes of clearing and settlement to achieve mobile money interoperability. In this study, we first reviewed the technical landscape and features of mobile payment systems in Zambia and then assessed the feasibility of using blockchain technology in proposing a settlement and clearing system that would facilitate mobile money interoperability. A prototype system was then designed in which amounts being interchanged between providers are managed as assets on a permissioned blockchain. The system runs a distributed shared ledger, which provides non-repudiation, data privacy and data origin authentication, by leveraging the consistency features of blockchain technology.

Chinwoo Kim

No abstract is available for this record.

Lukas Hetzenecker

Um Kryptowährungen enstand in den letzten Jahren ein enormer Hype. Das kann unter anderem auch an den zahlreichen Lehrveranstaltungen unserer Universität beobachtet werden, die innerhalb kurzer Zeit aufgekommen sind. Im Zuge dieser Hype-Phase entsprang eine schier unübersichtliche Anzahl an Projekten im Kryptowährungs-Umfeld, und jede einzelne davon mit scheinbar vielversprechenderen Funktionalitäten als die zuvorgekommenden. Wir wollen mit dieser Arbeit zumindest wieder ein wenig Ordnung in diesen Bereich bringen. Dafür vergleichen wir die wichtigsten Plattformen auf einer technischen Ebene, und analysieren welche der Versprechungen sie wirklich halten können. Unsere Erfahrung zeigt, dass derzeit besonders Plattformen mit Unterstützung für “Smart Contracts” besonders beliebt sind. Das ist auch nicht wirklich verwunderlich, da diese neue Möglichkeiten zu Interaktionen innerhalb der Blockchains bieten. Ein weiterer Trend in der Blockchain-Forschung beschäftigt sich mit der Frage nach nachhaltigen Lösungen, um die bestehenden Probleme der Skalierung von Blockchains, die mit anderen Technologien verglichen nur einen äußerst geringen Durchsatz an Transaktionen schaffen, in den Griff zu bekommen. Dazu werden wir in dieser Arbeit einige Vorschläge besprechen. Einer davon stellt sogar die Struktur von Blockchains an sich in Frage. Diese stelle einen Engpass dar und daher sollte statt einer Kette (Chain) besser ein gerichteter Graphen ohne Zyklus (Directed acyclic graph, DAG) verwendet werden. Dieser hat zwar bessere Eigenschaften in Bezug auf die Skalierbarkeit, hat stattdessen aber den Nachteil, dass “Smart Contracts” auf solchen Strukturen nur schwer zu implementieren sind.In dieser Arbeit versuchen wir dennoch beide dieser Ansätze “Blockchain 2.0”, also “Smart Contracts” und “Blockchain 3.0”, wie Kryptowährungen basierend auf einer DAG-Struktur manchmal genannt werden unter einen Hut zu bringen. Solch eine Verbindung könnte man dann als “Blockchain 5.0” bezeichnen.

Authors unavailable

No abstract is available for this record.

Adam Mihai Gergely, Bogdan Crainicu

Blockchain is an innovative technology which is used by cryptocurrencies as a public, immutable ledger for recording transactions, while more recent versions of Blockchain can also record smart contracts and other assets. Blockchain can be viewed as a distributed platform that holds transactional records without the involvement of a central authority, and where ensuring decentralization, transparency and security is of paramount importance. But the transparency requirement, absolutely necessary for improving trust among the blockchain’s users, came with a price: lack of privacy. In most of the blockchains which are based on Bitcoin’s Blockchain, anyone can query the blockchain and see all the transactions. This introduces a privacy issue which needs to be addressed. Although there are a few solutions for mitigating the privacy concern, we consider that true anonymity must be built-in, not added on trough extensions to the base protocol. We propose a novel solution, called RandAdminSuite, that addresses the blockchain privacy problem through a comprehensive approach that covers the blockchain architecture itself, transaction mechanism and cryptocurrency as well. RandAdminSuite offers some improvements over the concept of currency rewards for transaction processing nodes.

Muhammad Aquib, Lachhman Das Dhomeja, Kamran Dahri, Yasir Arfat Malkani

A number of issues regarding Land Record Management has been pointed out in the literature. In particular, developing countries like Pakistan face severe Land Record Management issues, such as data tempering with land record, provision of no means to fetch out a complete history of property ownership, working of various related Land Record Management System in isolation, etc. Prevalent traditional Land Record Management Solutions do not address such issues. To address these issues, we propose a Blockchain-based Land Record Management solution for Pakistan. The proposed system has been designed and implemented, details of which are presented in the paper.

Tom Butler

The recent report on FinTech to the European Commission by the Expert Group on Regulatory Obstacles to Financial Innovation (ROFIEG), of which the author was a member, noted that just 19 of the 161 largest retail and commercial businesses globally are implementing digital transformation at scale. 3 However, over the next 10 years, Europe will grow its FinTech market with existing and new players deploying Al, DLT, smart contracts, and quantum computing at scale. Al will radically transform the front, middle, and back offices of banks. However, as I conclude elsewhere,' the industry will have to manage its information architectures better if it is to fully leverage the potential of an Al to take data analytics to the next level or reduce the burgeoning costs of regulatory compliance. Significantly, innovations in smart contracts and DLT will transform the payment marketplace as they will enable crypt° assets of all types to be traded at all levels across markets. I expect that disruptive digital innovations based on the trading of cryptoassets will transform monetary and fi nancial systems. However, quantum computing with its potential to make strong Al a reality, and at a practical level to perform complex tasks, such as optimizing investment portfolios, identifying arbitrage opportunities, performing accurate credit and risks scoring, and so on, will be the fi nal step in the digital transformation of the industry. It is clear from the forgoing that no one technology is a silver ballet in digital transformation of financial institutions.

Herbert Woratschek, Ulrich Borgdorf, Daniel Dornbusch, Thorben Finken · 11 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Roberto Moro Visconti

No abstract is available for this record.

Henry Cabral Nunes

Blockchain possui algumas características únicas, como a possibilidade de des- centralização em ambientes não confiáveis, auditabilidade e segurança, citando apenas algumas. Algumas blockchains podem até permitir a execução smart contracts, que são programas que podem ser executados de uma maneira distribuída e descentralizada. Eles têm a grande vantagem de permitir estender os benefícios da blockchain para qualquer tipo de aplicação. Contudo, esse conceito não tem sido empregado em todo seu potencial devido a desafios associados a complexidade computacional e latência. Esses desafios estão associados tanto ao uso de smart contracts, quanto ao da blockchain. Algumas soluções foram desenvolvidas com o objetivo de mitigar esses problemas. Uma importante solução proposta na área de blockchain é o desenvolvimento da appendable-block blockchain. Este tipo de blockchain tem o potencial de reduzir problemas de latência e escalabilidade através da possibilidade de adição de dados deforma paralela na blockchain. Contudo, atualmente, este modelo não possuía possibilidade de executar smart contracts. Além disso, modelos tradicionais para a execução de smartcontracts não são compatíveis com a appendable-blockb lockchain. Neste trabalho, nós apresentamos uma solução para essa falha. Nós introduzimos um modelo para a execução de smart contracts, que nós chamamos de context-based model. Este modelo além de permitir a execução de smart contracts na appendable-block blockchain permite que sejam aproveitados os benefícios de inserções paralelas desse modelo deblockchain. Isto incrementa a escalabilidade, porque permite a execução de smart contracts em paralelo. Essa melhora é comprovada por uma prova de conceito implementada neste trabalho, onde uma análise de performance foi efetuada comparando com execução sequencial de smart contracts.

Ajita Banerjee, Arman Singhal, Lokesh Gujral, Kavita Choudhary

No abstract is available for this record.

Jim Wong, Kelvin Ho

No abstract is available for this record.

Ashish Rajesh Narang

Blockchain has been posed as a revolutionary technology. Its application is opposed to the centralized conventional mechanisms. However, it would appear that blockchain has only been able to have a significant impact on payment mechanisms and financial transactions. Like cryptocurrencies, smart contracts have a strong positive and negative potential. This paper will aim to analyze the use cases of smart contracts, aim to weigh its positive potential against its negative potential to understand if its positives outweigh its negatives or vice versa, and analyze how this technology can benefit India.

Bálint Ferencz

Though there are some initiative in order to give legal foundation for smart contracts, its legal status is still not settled. Most of the examination of smart contracts has been presented by common law scholars and practitioners while fewer civil law jurists shared their views on the matter. However, there seems to be a tendency that the representatives of the common law are reluctant to accept smart contracts as legally binding contracts while civil law jurist apparently are more open to that. The aim of the present article is to find out what the core principles and values are which make this difference. While evaluating the approaches in this respect, some additional thoughts will be added why the civil law may be more tolerant towards to smart contracts. The main purpose of the article is to highlight the different aspects as regards the smart contracts.<br/>

Georgios Dimitropoulos

Blockchain technology is a new general-purpose technology that poses significant challenges to the existing state of law, economy and society. Blockchain has one feature that makes it even more distinctive than other disruptive technologies: it is, by nature and design, global and transnational. Moreover, blockchain operates based on its own rules and principles that have a law-like quality. What we may call the lex cryptographia of blockchain has been designed based on a rational choice vision of human behavior. Blockchain adopts a framing derived from neoclassical economics, and instantiates it in a new machinery that implements rational choice paradigms using blockchain in a semi-automatic way, across all spheres of life, and without regard to borders. Accordingly, a global law and crypto-economics movement is now emerging owing to the spread of blockchain. This Article suggests that such a rational choice paradigm is an insufficient foundation for the future development of blockchain. It seeks to develop a new understanding of blockchain and its regulation through code according to the emerging “law and political economy” framework. Blockchain should be understood as much more than a machine that enables the automation of transactions according to a rational choice framework. Blockchain should instead be understood as a technological infrastructure. Acknowledging the infrastructural dimension of blockchain technology may help identify a new role for the law in its interaction with blockchain, as well as for government in its interaction with the new technology. More precisely, identifying blockchain as an “infrastructural commons” helps us recognize that law and regulation should not be relegated to the role of merely facilitating the operation of the invisible hand of the market by and within blockchain, but should rather acquire more active roles, such as safeguarding access on non-discriminatory terms to users, on a model with net neutrality and other public utility safeguards. The Article closes by proposing a “law and political economy” framework for blockchain that is based on principles of publicness, trust, and interoperability.

Prakhar Harit

No abstract is available for this record.

Adam Kuegler

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently took steps to regulate certain forms of cryptocurrency as substitute securities. However, the SEC has not provided clear guidance regarding which forms of cryptocurrency it deems worthy of regulation. This creates a dilemma. While some cryptocurrencies, like those involved in capital-raising via initial coin offerings (ICOs), do indeed seem like securities, others do not. For example, J.P. Morgan is developing a cryptocurrency that appears to be more like fiat currency than a security. This Note discusses how the SEC recently convinced a federal judge that certain ICO-related cryptocurrencies can be considered securities under the Howey test, as well as how the major questions doctrine—which asserts that issues of major importance should not be left to the discretion of federal agencies absent clear congressional guidance—relates to the topic of cryptocurrency regulation. Furthermore, this Note discusses why it is undesirable that the SEC is regulating cryptocurrency without clear guidance from Congress regarding which cryptocurrencies the Commission has the authority to regulate. Because cryptocurrency is such a rapidly developing field, the gray area between forms of cryptocurrency that seem to be securities and those that do not will only become more complex. As a result, piecemeal cryptocurrency regulation will continue to deprive innovators of sufficient guidance regarding issues such as whether their cryptocurrency must be registered with the SEC. Ultimately, this Note argues that the regulation of cryptocurrency—as a developing technology—is a “major question,” and thus Congress should authorize a new commission or sub-agency that can adequately address this varied and everchanging field.

Marco Valeri

No abstract is available for this record.

Gabriel Bello, Alfredo J. Pérez

No abstract is available for this record.

Rupali Hande, Tarasha Agarwal, Ranjeet Monde, N. Sai Sirisha · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.