BPN), MATLAB, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) In this study, we investigate Bitcoin price volatility from December 15, 2014 to January 29, 2024 using an integrated, multisource feature set and an optimization-learning pipeline that couples Taguchi orthogonal arrays with a backpropagation network (BPN) implemented in MATLAB.Publicly available market variables were prioritized and nonquantifiable exogenous shocks were not modeled; Taguchi screening identified critical predictors and simultaneously tuned control factors (network specification, hidden-neuron count, and currency inclusion), after which the BPN was trained on aligned weekly (n = 573) and monthly (n = 108) datasets to ensure cross-market comparability.Model accuracy, assessed by mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), improved substantially after Taguchi-guided selection and configuration-weekly MAPE decreased from 3.23% to 0.36% and monthly MAPE from 6.32% to 0.07%demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed optimization framework.Out-of-sample forecasts for February-April 2025 achieved predominantly sub-10% MAPE, while high-error instances were analyzed and attributed to contributing factors, yielding decision-relevant insights for practitioners and researchers.Collectively, the results show that systematic variable selection and orthogonal-array-based model design materially enhance neural forecasts of cryptocurrency prices and provide a reproducible pathway to accurate, time-efficient prediction.
Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a distributed paradigm enabling multiple participants to collaboratively train machine learning models without sharing their raw data. By keeping data local, FL mitigates many privacy risks inherent to centralized learning architectures. However, despite this promise, recent research has revealed that exchanged gradients can still leak sensitive information about local datasets. Furthermore, most existing approaches rely on strong and often unrealistic trust assumptions toward the central server, while providing no means to verify whether privacy-preserving mechanisms have been correctly enforced. These limitations expose a critical gap between theoretical privacy guarantees and their practical implementation in real-world federated systems.This thesis investigates how to bridge this gap by combining differential privacy (DP) with cryptographic and verifiability protocols to achieve verifiable and trust-reduced federated learning. First, we explore the use of additive homomorphic encryption to protect client updates and minimize reliance on a trusted aggregator. Second, we introduce a non-interactive verifiability protocol based on zk-SNARKs and cryptographic hashes, allowing third parties to prove and verify the correct application of DP without revealing sensitive information. Finally, we propose ProoFed, a distributed framework that leverages secret sharing to decentralize noise generation and integrate verifiable aggregation proofs in zero knowledge, thereby eliminating single points of trust.
Rapid digital transformation across financial, e-commerce, and decentralized platforms has amplified the need for secure, transparent, and resilient transaction systems. Conventional security mechanisms often fail to address sophisticated cyber threats, identity fraud, and evolving attack patterns, highlighting the necessity for integrated technological solutions. The convergence of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) establishes a robust framework that combines immutable, decentralized ledger structures with adaptive, intelligent analytics. Blockchain ensures transactional integrity, data provenance, and decentralized trust, while AI facilitates real-time anomaly detection, predictive risk scoring, and automated decision-making. This synergy enhances digital identity management, strengthens access control, and mitigates fraud by enabling continuous monitoring, behavioral analysis, and transparent verification processes. Applications extend to secure payments, smart contracts, cross-border transactions, and decentralized finance ecosystems, demonstrating improved operational efficiency, scalability, and resilience. The chapter also explores privacy-preserving computation, federated learning, and explainable AI frameworks to ensure ethical and accountable deployment of intelligent transaction systems. By integrating structural security with predictive intelligence, Blockchain-aided AI frameworks establish a next-generation foundation for secure digital transactions, fostering trust, regulatory compliance, and systemic reliability across global digital networks.
BitBallot: Final Proposal Summary Overview This document presents the final architectural design of BitBallot, an electronic voting system engineered for legally binding public elections under explicit institutional and physical deployment assumptions. Architectural Innovation BitBallot addresses long-standing limitations of end-to-end verifiable voting by separating cryptographic enforcement from institutional responsibility. * Execution Model: Rather than relying on trusted execution environments (TEEs), specialized hardware, or application logic embedded in the consensus layer, the system enforces correctness through verifiable programs (vProgs) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). Infrastructure: It utilizes a public Layer-1 blockchain solely as a neutral substrate for ordering and finality. Core Contribution: Atomic Display Integrity (ADI) The central breakthrough of BitBallot is Atomic Display Integrity (ADI)—a protocol-level security property that: Cryptographically binds voter intent, interface display, and recorded ballots. Ensures a single atomic authorization event at the moment of confirmation. Maintains integrity even under re-voting semantics. Strategic Advantage: Combined with last-vote-valid voting and terminal-complete zero-knowledge tallying, BitBallot achieves strong privacy, public verifiability, and resistance to coercion without intermediate information leakage. Practical Deployment BitBallot is purpose-built for deployment on commodity hardware within supervised polling environments. Cost & Complexity: By avoiding trusted execution environments and specialized cryptographic hardware, the system significantly reduces operational complexity and deployment costs. Security: Despite using standard hardware, it preserves rigorous security guarantees through its underlying protocol design. Conclusion Together, these design choices demonstrate that large-scale, verifiable public elections can be implemented using architectures that are both cryptographically sound and institutionally realistic.
The shortcomings of centralized authentication have led to a move toward decentralized, tamper-resistant solutions as vehicle networks develop. An organized review of blockchain and cryptographic techniques for vehicle authentication and verification is presented in this study. It divides existing approaches into identity management models (decentralized IDs, PKI-less systems), cryptographic techniques (ECC, zero-knowledge proofs, group signatures), consensus mechanisms (PBFT, PoW, DPoS), and hybrid blockchain-IoT frameworks. The analysis examines trade-offs between security, latency, and scalability while presenting a novel taxonomy that matches focused solutions with risks unique to VANETs, like message forgery and Sybil attacks. The increasing use of privacy-preserving authentication techniques and the possibility of post-quantum secure blockchain systems are highlighted. Important insights for boosting resilience and confidence in next vehicle systems are provided by this work.
This article examines the theoretical and methodological foundations of local budget management within the public finance system, specifically addressing the complex challenges of wartime and post-war recovery. The research systematizes diverse scientific approaches to positioning local budgets, proposing a refined definition of the local budget as a multi-functional financial instrument essential for regional strategic development and the provision of public services. The study argues that the multifaceted role of the local budget is a prerequisite for ensuring the socio-economic security and stability of territorial communities amidst current military and economic pressures. The authors establish that efficient public finance management is fundamental to national economic growth and financial system stability. A primary contribution of the research is the development of a conceptual model for local budget management, structured as an integrated complex with clearly defined objectives, subjects, and functional principles. This model incorporates regulatory, legal, and informational support mechanisms, allowing for the effective allocation of funds and increased transparency in the context of decentralization. The study emphasizes that both internal and external factors determine the effectiveness of decision-making and the choice of regional management strategies. Ultimately, the proposed model enhances the accountability of local authorities and reduces uncertainty in financial activities. By providing a framework for robust budgetary analysis, this conceptual approach fosters sustainable development and strengthens the financial capacity of Ukrainian regions. The findings provide a theoretical basis for improving the budgetary security of territorial communities during both conflict and reconstruction phases.
Abstract This paper revisits Virgo, a well-known transparent zero-knowledge proof system that has been used in many subsequent studies. Through our analysis, we uncover previously overlooked limitations and several exploitable security vulnerabilities within Virgo’s zkVPD protocol design and implementation. We subsequently address these issues and improve Virgo’s zkVPD protocol. Our improvements feature simplified but more efficient VPD and zkVPD algorithms, offering enhanced support for computations over binary fields and their extension fields.
Recently, it has been noted that the convergence of blockchain technology presents a promising paradigm for secure, privacy-preserving, and transparent healthcare systems. Moreover, Digital Twins enable real-time replication of patients, hospital operations, and medical devices, and their dependence on continuous sensitive data streams introduces the latest trust and Cybersecurity challenges. A systematic literature review aims to investigate how distributed ledger and blockchain technologies have been applied to secure healthcare digital twins from 2020 to 2025. Furthermore, the review addresses the proposed architecture of blockchain, the security objectives targeted, integration approaches within digital twins, and evaluation methods with limitations. The study follows PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Web of Sciences, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Scopus, and ACM Digital Library were searched from January 2020 to October 2025 by using defined Boolean queries. Also, the focus of the inclusion criteria is on peer-reviewed studies that discussed blockchain for DT security in healthcare. Data extraction captured blockchain type, metadata, security mechanisms, DT domain, and evaluation methods. From the 487 identified records, only 20 successfully met the inclusion criteria. The fact behind it is that most studies only employed permissioned blockchains like Quorum and Hyperledger integrated with digital twins for monitoring patients, device lifecycle tracking, and data provenance. Some main security objectives include provenance assurance, access control, and integrity. Moreover, only some studies provide formal threat analysis or real-world deployment. Blockchain technology is reliable because it increases digital twin security through immutability, smart-contract-based governance, and decentralized trust. However, interoperability, scalability, and privacy-preserving computation remain the main barriers for clinical adoption.
This paper applies wavelet quantile correlation to research on the relationship among renewable energy stocks, investor sentiment, and the cryptocurrency market. The empirical results indicated that under extremely negative conditions, in both the short and medium run, renewable energy stocks and cryptocurrencies are negatively correlated, implying that during such periods, renewable energy stocks can be used as a safe haven for cryptocurrencies. The opposite happens when the market is average or booming. This indicates that investors tend to invest simultaneously in these two promising asset classes when the market performs well. Under varied market conditions, FGI correlates positively with cryptocurrency, demonstrating sentiment influences price patterns. Moreover, the correlation between FGI and renewable energy stocks further validates the relationship between cryptocurrencies and renewable energy stocks. These findings can be used to improve the prediction of market trends by investors using sentiment indices and to devise more effective portfolio diversification strategies that minimize risk amid an evolving market.
Mbonigaba Celestin*, J. Azhar Mohamed**, G. R. Gnana Raja** & K. Vinayakan**
This analysis uses data from the IMF, OECD, and the World Bank, studies the viability of decentralized finance within nine economies. The multilevel structural equation model attributes 84 percent of the variance of legitimacy to blockchain reporting (β=0.41), AI analytics (β=0.29), audit accessibility (β=0.22), and the intensity of oversight (β=0.12). The study claims unalterable data combined with algorithmic assurance as novel pillars of accountability and trust. Policy implications advocate for the adoption of cohesive, auditable trust frameworks alongside AI-powered auditing solutions to streamline transparency and fortified cross-border accountability in decentralized finance.
Financial institutions are currently faced with suffering never experienced before as they strive to guarantee the privacy of data and address the demands of regulation to report and cooperate in machine learning. This paper proposes PrivChain-AI, a novel blockchain-based federated learning system designed to facilitate secure and privacy-preserving financial reporting and access control. The proposed framework will integrate three key components: differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and smart contract-based governance, enabling cooperative model training across financial institutions while preventing the leakage of sensitive information. PrivChain-AI is a hierarchical design that incorporates permissioned consensus protocols and utilises zero-knowledge proof verification to authenticate transactions. It has been demonstrated that the performance is higher than that of the actual financial data, with an outcome of 94.7% accuracy in fraud recognition at the cost of e-differentiation privacy, where ϵ = 1.0. It is 40% faster in terms of communication overhead and ensures regulatory compliance, as it features immutable audit trails. The analysis of performances reveals that a privacy preservation metric improves by 78%, and access control granularity is improved by 62% compared to the current state-of-the-art approaches. The PrivChain-AI paradigm introduced provides a new analytical model for safe, collaborative finance, meeting the highest standards and ensuring compliance with relevant regulatory jurisdictions.
Portia Roelofs, Good Governance in Nigeria. Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 356 pp. £ 26.69 paperback. Peer Schouten, Roadblock Politics. The Origins of Violence in Central Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 256 pp. £ 95.78 hardcover. The state in Africa has been the object of ongoing analysis and debate. Those who qualify it as ‘failed’, ‘weak’, ‘fragile’ or ‘neo-patrimonial’ rely on a strict Weberian definition which views the state as the monopolist of legitimate physical violence, an autonomous bureaucratic apparatus, the embodiment of popular sovereignty, and a spatially and territorially coherent entity. These features represent an essentially Western ideal type. As an alternative, scholars have explored its long historical formation (Bayart, 1989; Cooper, 2002; Hibou and Tozy, 2020), the interpenetration of the bureaucratic realm and the social world (Mitchell, 1991), and the everyday making of the state through processes of negotiation, contestation and bricolage (Hagmann and Péclard, 2010). Other scholars have examined the fabric of informal political order, emphasizing, sometimes uncritically, ‘the strength of weak states’ (Meagher, 2012). This essay reviews the two books listed above by Portia Roelofs and Peer Schouten, which are part of the ongoing discussion on state-making theory. Both authors reflect on this theory from a local perspective, employing popular understandings of accountability, legitimacy and forms of sovereignty. Roelofs book on Nigeria and Schouten's on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are excellent cases through which to examine these issues and to rethink some of the significant challenges Africa faces. These include an outward-looking political economy based on mineral wealth in parts of the territory (for example, oil in Nigeria and coltan, copper and gold in Eastern Congo); decades of armed conflicts, indicating the difficulty of the central state in controlling its national territory; widespread forms of patronage understood as the distribution by politicians of private goods to citizens; and the imposition of structural adjustment programmes by the International Monetary Fund which drastically reduced the state bureaucracy and its capacity to govern societies. At first glance, the title of Portia Roelofs book Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-first Century (hereafter Good Governance in Nigeria) might be viewed as provocative. It is surprising to see good governance associated with this country, given that Nigerian politics is often characterized in academic literature by neo-patrimonialism, patronage and corruption. Instead of endorsing the view of Nigerian governance as marked by self-destructive greed and a culture of corruption, Roelofs explores lesser-known forms of popular accountability and transparency by examining how the Nigerian political class governs the population and how Nigerians want to be governed. She focuses on Ekiti, Lagos and Oyo, three southwestern states where governors from the dominant party in the southwest, the All Progressives Congress (APC), adopted new public policies in the 2000s. They did so not because they were influenced by donor agencies (for example, in 2004, development aid represented only 0.6 per cent of government spending) but rather because they reactivated a long tradition of progressive governance ingrained in the history of the southwestern region. While radically different in the argumentation, Peer Schouten's book Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa (hereafter Roadblock Politics) also starts with empirical observations. Schouten mapped more than 800 roadblocks in eastern DRC, where minerals are strongly associated with armed conflict. With this new cartographic evidence in hand, the author challenges a well-established analytical framework — the DRC conflict is not so much about control over natural resources but about control over spaces of circulation or roads. For Schouten, roadblocks form an entry point into ‘forms of political order that somehow remain invisible in conventional state theory’ (p. xiv). His comparative analysis with the Central African Republic (CAR) helps us to rethink how informal political orders have been constructed along roads in economically poor, resource-rich countries in Central Africa. For the author, roadblocks are not symptomatic of the region's predicament as Hobbesian anarchy; rather, they display a structure of consistent rules and logics of control. These rules pertain to who can set up a roadblock, where, and how movement beyond the roadblock is organized. In exploring these different forms of territorial governance, both books reviewed here prove useful in rethinking state theory and the making of contemporary political arenas. They are based on several years of fieldwork conducted by the authors as part of their PhD dissertation research. What politicians, traders, market women, policemen, military men and rebels think about governance, sovereignty and accountability enables the authors to decipher conventional wisdom on good governance, the resource curse thesis and the neo-patrimonial state. In the sections that follow, I individually discuss the two books which address different research questions on governance, transparency and political order. Following this, I examine the various local conceptions of authority and political legitimacy, which are rooted in a long historical trajectory and challenge common assumptions about state theory. As in so many developing countries, the World Bank and international donors sought to export a ready-made model to Nigeria to transform the state from within. A classical international good governance agenda insists on the need for an insulated system of techno-managerial governance that will protect the market from politics, and in which elected officials and civil servants in government are committed to delivering public goods and to being held accountable for adhering to rules and meeting key indicators. While this narrative is well known, it is surprising to see its adoption by some states in Nigeria in the early 2000s. A long period of military rule, coupled with the implementation in 1985 of structural adjustment programmes, led to the evisceration of many federal and state institutions, a sharp increase in corruption levels, a general decline of public infrastructure, the marginalization of civil society institutions and an upsurge in the number of violent groups claiming more financial resources from the federal state (Osaghae, 1998; Suberu, 2001). Nonetheless, in the early 2000s, the Lagos State government implemented new public policies consistent with the governance agenda of the World Bank, which entailed upgrading public services, reasserting an autonomous civil service, embracing public–private partnerships in various sectors (security, waste and transportation) and increasing the state budget through taxation. Roelofs convincingly suggests that Lagos became a model replicated in neighbouring states; it was implemented in Oyo State during the mandate of Governor Abiola Ajimobi (2011‒19) and in Ekiti State under Governor Kayode Fayemi (2010‒14) (p. 59). Both governors were able to modernize their states by embracing public‒private partnerships and constructing new roads and market infrastructures. Despite this, Fayemi was not re-elected in 2014, and the APC lost Oyo State to the opposition in 2019. This leads Roelofs to ask, ‘What kind of accountability and what kind of transparency do people expect from their leaders?’ (p. 56). Her book is partly inspired by the suggestion in the early 2000s of Thandika Mkandawire that ‘anti-democratic effects of technocracy can be counterbalanced by an aspect of governance that has been downplayed by Western approaches to democracy: the social dimension’ (p. 24). The core argument Roelofs advances is that power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable. In other words, social demands (either personal, family or group-based interests) have the potential for constraining power which, admittedly, is an argument poorly mobilized by academics working on Nigeria. In the process of doing so, Roelofs reconceptualizes accountability as accessibility. Accessibility is understood as the maintenance of spaces for direct communication between political leaders and their constituents. However, politicians often ignore these demands in favour of dominant technocratic approaches to accountability. On a more theoretical level, the author criticizes the claim that politics should be divorced from the world of social relations. Many academics who promote rational choice theory, as well as economic experts at the World Bank, fail to recognize the central role that social relations between politicians and the broader population play in shaping effective mechanisms of transparency and accountability. Similarly, the dominant interpretation of transparency is largely based on the quantity and coverage of budget information. For Roelofs, this is insufficient. Transparency demands that the social networks, relations and obligations within which leaders are embedded should be made visible. While emphasis is placed on the importance of communication channels, Roelofs is not naïve about the material dimension of politics and does not overlook established practices of exchange of private goods between politicians and voters. She also recognizes that such patronage politics provides only a partial explanation: the relationship between voters and politicians is also shaped by citizens’ social demands and their broader expectations about how politicians should behave. Empirically, the argumentation is convincing for the states of Oyo and Ekiti. The APC governors were lacking human faces and neglecting the masses despite the implementation of progressive policies. Although Ajimobi improved or built new infrastructures, he was seen as arrogant and disrespectful and was replaced by a governor who was perceived as being closer to the people. Lagos State remains a question mark in Roelofs book. It is presented as a model for the southwestern states based on the success achieved during the rule of Governors Tinubu (1999‒2007) and Fashola (2007‒15). This reflects an academic optimism about the policies of Lagos that does not consider the strength of APC bureaucratic machines and societal groups (for example, market women's associations, unions, professional guilds, street leaders) loyal to APC governors and working for their re-election (Fourchard, 2021; Lawanson et al., 2025; Salvaire, 2019). In other words, it remains to be demonstrated that since 1999 APC governors of Lagos State have been re-elected due to their accessibility, accountability and ability to listen to the population at large. At the core of Peer Schouten's book, Roadblock Politics, lies another conventional wisdom. The resource curse thesis is a popular narrative with respect to Central Africa. Richard Auty (1993) is credited with coining the concept,1 but Paul Collier amplified it in the late 1990s. Collier explained that the upsurge of conflicts in Africa was linked to globalization while civil wars were motivated by the same basic ‘greed’ as that of rational entrepreneurs (Collier, 2004; Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). The risk of civil war was especially high if countries with weak institutions depended on primary commodity exports, as in the DRC and CAR (p. 237). Interestingly, Schouten notes that Collier was highly influential in promoting this thesis among an unlikely alliance of activists, governments and industrial stakeholders in the region (pp. 237‒38). Schouten's quantitative and qualitative analysis of roadblocks rightly indicates not only that this oversimplifies the situation on the ground, but also that it conceals other analytical possibilities. He demonstrates and argues that the emergence of mobile economies across long distances gave rise to roadblocking as a political technique for negotiating and governing the control of long-distance exchanges from pre-colonial times to the present. Roadblock Politics is a very well-informed history and geography of roadblocks in central Africa. The work is impressive in its articulation of a quantitative analysis of 1,000 roadblocks concentrated in Eastern Congo and CAR with ethnographic insights from specific places. Schouten advances three principal arguments. First, roadblocks are a meaningful form of state making because they have been a dominant form of power both in the 19th century and in the past 25 years, a point to which I will return in the last section of this essay. Second, different means of different forms of rule and which the author to as an of where the of the of is to and the circulation of goods and Roadblock are highly On national and which of roadblocks are largely by state roads and through the with weak economic are and at per cent by armed groups such as the and other or reflect the of power in that they for They are both a groups different of and a must part of their up the roadblocks do not Following such as or the as they are able to through roadblocks through of and who the on the while a from the under which this work is Schouten's to the theoretical that are First, it challenges the dominant role minerals play in of conflict in Central Africa and an interpretation of the Although roadblocks are a central part of the conflict between groups for control of different they are not linked to the of mineral All goods are not only Second, it what Schouten to as the political of governance which is meaningful only if it is in to a territory and a population within it (p. a with other forms of territorial governance might have been useful to the to which roadblock politics as local political order is that the author roadblocks as a political through which Central African the by the of In for their they from and at roadblock politics reflects local conceptions of public authority in Central Africa. Despite being very both examine African conceptions of state making and political They the making of authority by exploring and often political This is especially in an academic where African history has so often been to Schouten, is a long historical tradition of to the of power in the of Roadblock Politics the history of a on on the roads from the to the and along the Congo to the became widespread in the 19th century as the circulation of goods as and It was a very for able to and control over a party to it was As with was the for these as or For Schouten, a form of He us that this is rooted in Central African the of along key is in and what as first of people to wealth by along (p. were a of state making than autonomous to the emergence of political power (p. Roadblock politics in the century is presented as a of two how the period period from the of the 19th century the of the in might have contemporary and politics is a form of history that to as Peer Schouten's book is well to an between the two the is more historical especially of the and The of roads into during the period is presented as a African are at the same seen as the of the on the suggests that the was along and in in mineral but weak especially in and was This form of government is by the author as on a (p. Schouten suggests in the same that on was a and more form of rule than the of direct across He also that the population was and in in the a as the (p. The last point to is that the analysis of and to be the of the order. All the presented by Schouten favour a thesis from the pre-colonial to the period in to state However, I have some about this The thesis has the of some on rule which are well established by These include the capacity of the to in very the in of central African to along the and in of work and and the ability of to and by especially World In other words, Schouten suggests that the population the imposition of (for example, and and the central state other political possibilities. This thesis does not to how view their of movement of the In the book, a at about In the I from to were this is (p. In a roads are The government (p. These that a system of roads did of the century and that the It a of national state legitimacy, and if this were the roadblocks politics be an radically different to the both in and in the of and In other words, historical between the 19th and are not especially how roadblock politics might from In Good Governance in Roelofs is in to state than in the to rule and the in which political legitimacy is over Instead of that a of good governance was on Nigeria by the Roelofs the tradition of or or In the of a political class led by a and of the Western this have a to rule in so as they display a based on Western with the of in the 19th For historical in the region in the 19th and and replaced war as a of political leaders must than they For and governors in leaders need an of government if they are to their to new The a social and political a social that is through the of It the of social and for constraining the power of Roelofs suggests that Tinubu was elected as governor of Lagos State in he was very much influenced by and a public in the of Nigeria for and the return of in The strength of the on the capacity to of historical and Roelofs is very to local conceptions of APC politicians a to and to be for their good governance, but they politicians from private of and She suggests that is a The book the between political of the politicians who do not often This of development and local authority has as by the for and so ingrained in the southwestern part of Nigeria. ask, to what local politicians have been in the past APC politicians have the in Nigeria since but popular has in a of economic power and of in and What remains of this to It that has as the three political in the very patronage politics to play a significant role in by the widespread of politicians their that the core of and This the question of how political legitimacy has been built over in the two to state on the hand, and popular of accountability, on the other hand, to be central in the of local political the two books are convincing in their argumentation, might be other to For Schouten, roadblock politics reflects the radically and of local public This point the in which informal institutions public authority by a of (for example, associations, associations, women's and In the past years, an of work in and political has the role of state and institutions in shaping local authority in (Fourchard, the African has of institutions working at the of the state and These institutions the state as and while to or their public authority have and conflicts, power local power within a the of political Schouten's central arguments. or informal institutions that transform into This is the for groups that have some legitimacy because they are seen as more than the and a for which people are to and Schouten that roadblock groups have some legitimacy, especially with respect to and they for the of local What might be is the to which these armed groups at a of from the or the local they might be a of the but is a significant between the two in that roadblocks to be a form of between central state services, and what are the or the seen as legitimate or in and on this another from the roadblocks to the in which they are to how to between groups which legitimate or local For Roelofs, local political legitimacy is in the popular of accountability and accessibility. In coupled with a neo-patrimonial of the the social with officials as effective governance in Africa. by patronage or politics, Western political have social relations in their discussion of African politics and socially embedded forms of of the of Good Governance in Nigeria is that it beyond these patronage to other forms of popular accountability in Nigeria and in the For example, politicians are to be embedded in and the of communication through to by of is This is in the literature on politics but largely in the literature on in a broader with literature beyond the African is but political research on Africa with neo-patrimonial literature or rational choice theory political and political research that and the of political legitimacy beyond However, a more central question how politicians are in Africa and how their will and political demands in public The two books reviewed here with historical and conceptions of authority and accountability in Africa that have been This of history into the social remains to a more of the fabric of public authority in the African and is a for more qualitative work that challenges and assumptions about countries in and the African in The two books a central to the conventional wisdom on state authority in Africa and A strength of these two scholars is their capacity to fieldwork over to rethink many central issues in state-making theory. in the of a roadblock, a or in how local politicians to their is an excellent point for on very state theory. 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The rapid growth of IoT devices in smart home environments has introduced significant challenges in ensuring secure, scalable, and efficient communication among heterogeneous devices. Centralized architectures suffer from a single point of failure, while blockchain-only solutions face high latency, limiting their use in real-time control. To address these issues, we propose a multi-layered decentralized framework that combines a consortium blockchain, a trusted off-chain coordinator, group-based zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), and a two-tiered access control policy (ACP) architecture. The consortium blockchain provides an immutable ledger for device identities and foundational, coarse-grained ACP enforcement through smart contracts, ensuring tamper-proof trust. For privacy-preserving mutual authentication, a group-based ZKP protocol enables collective device authorization without revealing sensitive keys. The off-chain coordinator complements this by enforcing dynamic security mechanisms, including fine-grained ACPv2 checks—such as rate limits, time-of-day restrictions, and device telemetry—in addition to anomaly detection for behavioral risk assessment. This proposed hybrid structure achieves both immutability and high efficiency over traditional methods. A performance evaluation highlighted the framework’s efficiency by demonstrating that the core ZKP verification for a 500-device group can be completed in just 190 ms. The framework drastically reduces on-chain costs, with critical access control policy transactions consuming only 82,748 gas—a reduction of over 90% compared to benchmarked on-chain systems. The complete end-to-end workflow, from user request to secure session establishment, has a latency bound of approximately 3s. Formal security verification with the BAN and AVISPA tools validates resilience against common attacks, including man-in-the-middle, replay, and impersonation, while static analysis using the Slither framework confirms the absence of critical vulnerabilities in the smart contract code. By combining an immutable on-chain foundation with intelligent, dynamic off-chain enforcement, our proposed framework provides a uniquely resilient, scalable, and adaptive security solution for modern smart home systems.
Autonomous technology has advanced rapidly in recent years, with intelligent systems demonstrating increasingly sophisticated capabilities in perception, decision-making, and adaptive behavior. These advancements have positioned autonomous agents to be teammates, enabling collaboration with humans in diverse domains and prompting emergence of Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) systems. HAT systems increasingly involve multiple autonomous agents working alongside humans in dynamic, high-stakes environments. HAT systems are often engineered with static hierarchical structures that predefine leadership authority for a set of tasks, thereby constraining their adaptability to shifting situational demands or unanticipated conditions, resulting in unintended degradation of collaboration and task performance. For dynamic environments, HAT systems require flexible or emergent leadership structures between agents. This dissertation investigates shared leadership for enabling flexible authority distribution between human and autonomous agents to enhance collaboration and performance in multi-agent systems composed of human and autonomous agents. The objectives of this research were (1) to understand how shared leadership functions in human teams can be adapted for multi-agent HAT systems, (2) to model leadership emergence from the human's perspective and identify factors governing the temporal patterns, and (3) to compare performance and perceived team dynamics between shared leadership and centralized leadership. vspace{0.1in} newline Study 1 was a systematic literature review of shared leadership in human teams for deriving mechanisms that can be engineered into HAT. The review revealed that humans rely on interpersonal trust and performance-based competence assessments for leadership distribution, with decentralization and mutual influence as the most influential mechanisms for enabling sharing leadership. The review also identified questionnaire-based assessments and network analysis as viable measurement approaches, with the latter also a viable approach for implementing shared leadership in HAT. These findings established the theoretical and methodological foundation for operationalizing and assessing shared leadership in HAT. Study 2 was an experiment recruiting human participants to complete a series of object-recognition tasks which involved assignments of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a simulated search and rescue context. Modeling the experimental data using network analysis, specifically in how the human's trust-competence perceptions of the autonomy evolve over time, revealed temporal patterns of leadership assignment. The study included the Trust-Competence-Identity Network (TCIN) that was developed to capture the humans' perception of agents across repeated task iterations. Logistic regression at the population level demonstrated that competence functioned as a capability-based predictor, while temporal exponential random graph models at the individual levels demonstrated that trust operated as an individualized experience-driven factor for predicting leadership assignment. The results provided foundational evidence supporting TCIN in predicting leadership emergence in HAT, illustrating the co-variation of key factors in human selection of autonomous agents as the leader. Study 3 was another experiment recruiting human participants to complete a series of object-recognition tasks that included conditions of the traditional centralized leadership and shared leadership for comparison of performance in multi-agent HAT. Study 3 also included a newly developed shared leadership questionnaire for HAT, adapted from validated instruments in human teams to measure leadership dynamics in HAT. Shared leadership demonstrated superior performance compared to centralized leadership, suggesting that distributing authority between humans and autonomous agents produces better outcomes than concentrating authority. Logistic regression at the population level demonstrated that trust moderated the rate at which complementary claiming-granting increased, while temporal exponential random graph models at the individual levels demonstrated that participants ultimately adopted complementary patterns. The shared leadership questionnaire also revealed that participants perceived more leadership distribution, team collaboration, and deference to expertise under shared leadership than the centralized leadership condition. These findings demonstrate that shared leadership in HAT involves both temporal learning processes and recognition of functional benefits that transcend individual differences in agent evaluation, establishing shared leadership as a viable organizational structure for multi-agent teams.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) represent a revolutionary class of digital assets, characterized by their uniqueness and value derived from metadata and visual traits. However, NFT markets suffer from volatility and a lack of transparent valuation systems, making it difficult for collectors and investors to estimate asset worth. This paper presents a comprehensive machine learning pipeline for predicting the market value of NFTs based on trait rarity and sale metadata. We apply rigorous preprocessing, compute rarity scores from trait distributions, and compare multiple regression models, including Random Forest, LightGBM, CatBoost, and Extra Trees. Our analysis demonstrates that tree-based models significantly outperform simpler regressors, with Extra Trees achieving the lowest RMSE of 136.91 and the highest$\mathrm{R}^{\mathrm{2}}$score of$\text{1. 0}$. Visual and statistical analyses further validate the effectiveness of our methodology in predicting NFT prices with high precision.
Michele Fabi, Viraj Nadkarni, Leonardo Leone, Matheus V. X. Ferreira
<div> We develop an axiomatic theory for Automated Market Makers (AMMs) in local energy sharing markets and analyze the Markov Perfect Equilibrium of the resulting economy with a Mean-Field Game. In this game, heterogeneous prosumers solve a Bellman equation to optimize energy consumption, storage, and exchanges. Our axioms identify a class of mechanisms with linear, Lipschitz continuous payment functions, where prices decrease with the aggregate supply-to-demand ratio of energy. We prove that implementing batch execution and concentrated liquidity allows standard design conditions from decentralized finance-quasi-concavity, monotonicity, and homotheticity-to construct AMMs that satisfy our axioms. The resulting AMMs are budget-balanced and achieve ex-ante efficiency, contrasting with the strategy-proof, expost optimal VCG mechanism. Since the AMM implements a Potential Game, we solve its equilibrium by first computing the social planner's optimum and then decentralizing the allocation. Numerical experiments using data from the Paris administrative region suggest that the prosumer community can achieve gains from trade up to 40% relative to the grid-only benchmark. </div>
In decentralized finance (DeFi), designing fixed-income lending automated market makers (AMMs) is extremely challenging due to time-related complexities. Moreover, existing protocols only support single-maturity lending. Building upon the BondMM protocol, this paper argues that its mathematical invariants are sufficiently elegant to be generalized to arbitrary maturities. This paper thus propose an improved design, BondMM-A, which supports lending activities of any maturity. By integrating fixed-income instruments of varying maturities into a single smart contract, BondMM-A offers users and liquidity providers (LPs) greater operational freedom and capital efficiency. Experimental results show that BondMM-A performs excellently in terms of interest rate stability and financial robustness.
Damilare E. Bakare, Adekemi Olawunmi Amoo, Mary T. Onifade
The health insurance sector has been facing many challenges recently, such as fraudulent activities in insurance claims, data breaches, and high transaction costs, particularly with existing systems built on the Ethereum network, which negatively affect its efficiency and effectiveness.These challenges undermine the trust and financials of insurance providers while compromising the privacy of the patient's health records.To address this issue, this study proposes a conceptual framework that uses zero-knowledge proof within the blockchain system and is deployed on the Polygon Network for its low transaction fees and higher throughput.The proposed model allows the verification of an insurance claim without revealing sensitive patient health records, ensuring privacy while preventing fraudulent activities.In this conceptual design, the hospital can issue verifiable proof of treatment, appointment, and bill that shows the validity of the insurance claim without revealing the underlying health record to the insurer.This study, therefore, contributes to supporting research in decentralized applications for healthcare insurance by presenting a conceptual model and comprehensively analyzing the feasibility, rather than a full-scale implementation.It also emphasizes the need to preserve privacy in sensitive domains and the potential benefits of blockchain and ZKP integration.In conclusion, the research's findings show that, in theory, integrating ZKP with blockchain technology can enhance healthcare insurance processes in terms of reliability, efficiency, privacy, and security.However, further research and practical development are required to realize and evaluate a fully operational system.
This study aims to analyze the influence of performance-based reward systems and decision decentralization on innovation in human resource management. In an era of increasingly dynamic global competition, organizations are required not only to carry out HRM functions efficiently but also to adopt innovative approaches to address challenges posed by the work environment, technology, and employee expectations. A performance-based reward system, which directly links rewards to individual or team performance, can motivate employees to engage in innovative behavior, while decision decentralization allows for faster decision-making and greater responsiveness to local needs. This study used a quantitative approach with a survey method to collect data from structural and functional officials in six Makassar City government agencies that implement a performance-based reward system and decision decentralization. The results indicate that both variables have a positive effect on HRM innovation, both separately and simultaneously. These findings provide theoretical and practical insights into the importance of integrating a fair and transparent reward system with a more autonomous decision-making structure in encouraging innovation in human resource management. Policies that encourage these two elements can strengthen competitive advantage and organizational performance.
Digital product passports outline information about a product’s lifecycle, circularity, and sustainability-related data. Sustainability data contains claims about carbon footprint, recycled material composition, ethical sourcing of production materials, etc. Also, upcoming regulatory directives require companies to disclose this type of information. However, current sustainability reporting practices face challenges, such as greenwashing, where companies make incorrect claims that are difficult to verify. There is also a challenge of disclosing sensitive production information when other stakeholders, such as consumers or other economic operators, wish to verify sustainability claims independently. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) provide a cryptographic system for verifying statements without revealing sensitive information. The goal of this research paper is to explore ZKP cryptography, trust models, and implementation concepts for extending DPP capability in privacy-aware reporting and verification of sustainability claims in products. To achieve this goal, first, formal representations of sustainability claims are provided. Then, a data matrix and trust model for generating proofs are developed. An interaction sequence is provided to show different components for various proof generation and verification scenarios for sustainability claims. Lastly, the paper provides a circuit template for the proof generation of an example claim and a credential structure for their input data validation. The proposed approach is assessed using a scenario-based evaluation to check the performance metrics for data credential verification and proof generation for verifying material composition in a product.
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Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Tuan-Dung Tran, Bao Huynh, Tra Minh Trong, Tong Thuan Nguyen · 6 authors
Permissioned blockchains using Proof-ofAuthority (PoA) deliver high throughput but face issues of predictability and centralization, while token-weighted governance risks plutocracy that undermines fairness. This paper proposes Proof-of-Merit (PoM), a consensus and governance framework that integrates PoA with Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs) and a dual-token model. PoM selects validators through a weighted combination of transferable stake (UIT-Coin) and non-transferable academic reputation (UIT-Rep), earned via verifiable onchain learning activities. Governance follows the same principle, anchoring voting rights in Sybil-resistant merit rather than pure capital. To ensure sustainability, PoM introduces reputation decay, preventing long-term power concentration and promoting continuous participation. We implement PoM on Hyperledger Besu and evaluate it with Hyperledger Caliper. Results show PoM achieves strong performance while significantly improving fairness, with a much lower Gini coefficient and higher Nakamoto coefficient compared to IBFT 2.0. Sensitivity analysis further highlights the need for dynamic reputation mechanisms to avoid saturation. These contributions establish PoM as a scalable, equitable, and sustainable foundation for Learn-to-Earn ecosystems, where influence derives from ongoing educational engagement instead of wealth accumulation.