You must be familiar with the word âorganic agricultural productsâ, but because of the lack of universal credit vouchers in the market, people can't be reassured by the purchase of organic agricultural products. Therefore, it is particularly important to trace the agricultural products. The Blockchain technology has developed rapidly in recent years. This technology has aroused the attention of experts and scholars, and has become a hot topic. The Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, information security and trustworthiness. If the Blockchain is applied to the traceability system of agricultural products, the authenticity of organic agricultural products can be well tested. This paper introduces the formation process of Blockchain, describes the characteristics of Blockchain, and analyzes the model and the key technologies of Blockchain system. At last, the paper constructs a traceability system model based on the Blockchain technologies.
Pancy Thakur, Yash Pal Sharma, Seema Sharma, Chitra Bhardwaj
Block chain technology, an eminent technology in recent era is known for its well distributed, safe, secured ledger transaction and forgery proof data creation and its maintenance among the users. A block chain facilitates a public platform by providing it secured ledger system. It is commonly accessible and secured database to store and distribute information without any central controller. This article emphases on Block chain technology as a reliable, promising, transparent, error prone and as a distributed ledger technology towards agriculture sector and food product supply chains. However, the hitches of the Block chain technology are also highlighted which may hinder the widespread and open practice of this technology among farmers and the consumers in future. These hindrances could be overcome by intended use of Block chain technology experimentally as well as by simultaneous working on its feedback.
In todayâs world, everything is transforming to digital forms. These yield large amount of data. A good analysis of these data can lead to new knowledge about the present situation as well as the future insight. While many advantages could be obtained from these large data, the issue on how to run the Machine Learning on a large dataset as effective and efficient as possible remains an open problem. In this paper, data processing simulation using machine learning algorithm ofLinear Regression is conducted to learn from Bitcoin trading dataset. The simulation is carried out in Apache Spark cluster architecture and GPU. The running time and error of the algorithm implementation in both architectures are compared with each other. The simulation results show similar error performance between Apache Spark cluster and GPU. Yet, Apache Spark can run the simulation faster than GPU.
<tw:p>Aufgrund ihrer Eigenschaften birgt der Einsatz der Blockchain-Technologie auch fĂŒr Logistik- bzw. Supply Chain-Prozesse Innovationspotential. Das belegt eine zunehmende Anzahl dahingehend begonnener Projekte. Das Potential von Blockchain-Anwendungen erschlieĂt sich aus den generischen Eigenschaften eines Blockchain-Protokolls wie Proof-of-Work/Stake, Proof-of-Authenticity und Smart Contracts. Mögliche Anwendungen in der Logistik bzw. dem Supply Chain-Management sind Dokumenten-Blockchains, Smart Monitoring und blockchain-gesteuerte Prozesse.</tw:p>
Nguyen B. Truong, TaiâWon Um, Bo Zhou, Gyu Myoung Lee
In recent years, Blockchain has been expected to create a secure mechanism for exchanging not only for cryptocurrency but also for other types of assets without the need for a powerful and trusted third-party. This could enable a new era of the Internet usage called the Internet of Value (IoV) in which any types of assets such as intellectual and digital properties, equity and wealth can be digitized and transferred in an automated, secure, and convenient manner. In the IoV, Blockchain is used to guarantee security of transactions that the transactions are nearly impossible to be altered; thus it is impractical to retract once a transaction is confirmed. Therefore, to strengthen the IoV, before making any transactions it is crucial to evaluate trust between participants for reducing the risk of dealing with malicious peers. In this article, we clarify the concept of IoV and propose a trust-based IoV model including a system architecture, components and features. Then, we present a trust platform in the IoV considering two concepts, Experience and Reputation, originated from Social Networks for evaluating trust between two any peers in the IoV. The Experience and Reputation are characterized and calculated using mathematical models with analysis and simulation in the IoV environment. We believe this paper consolidates the understandings about IoV technologies and demonstrates how trust is evaluated and used to strengthen the IoV. It also opens important research directions on both IoV and trust in the future.
Christopher Kuner, Fred H. Cate, Orla Lynskey, Christopher Millard · 6 authors
It is not uncommon for technological developments to give rise to debates as to whether existing legal norms and regulatory frameworks will be disrupted or undermined. A recent, high-profile, example is blockchain. Most of the popular excitement about blockchain, so far at least, relates to crypto-currencies, especially Bitcoin, and related financial products such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Less visibly, but probably more importantly in the long run, a great deal of investment is going into the development of a broad range of blockchain applications in contexts ranging from registration of assets (including land) to self-executing (âsmartâ) contracts. Notwithstanding widespread confusion about what exactly blockchain is or might become, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have caught the imagination of governments, businesses, and private investors, and they are increasingly a focus of attention for legislators and regulators worldwide. Of specific relevance to this Journal is the question of how data protection concepts and rules will apply to blockchain and, indeed, whether it might prove to be impossible to build and deploy compliant blockchain applications to the extent that that they involve the processing of personal data. Indeed, Jan Philip Albrecht, a Member of the European Parliament who played a prominent role in the development and finalization of the European Unionâs General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has asserted just that. In his view: Certain technologies will not be compatible with the GDPR if they donât provide for [the exercising of data subjectsâ rights] based on their architectural design. This does not mean that blockchain technology, in general, has to adapt to the GDPR, it just means that it probably canât be used for the processing of personal data.1 We consider Albrechtâs views on blockchain as a technology for processing personal data to be overly negative. Whether personal data may be processed legitimately using blockchain technology will depend on the specific technical and organizational model that underpins a particular blockchain application. Before we can go any further, however, we need to clarify what we mean by the term blockchain. Unlike some other recently deployed technologies, such as cloud computing, as yet there is no widely accepted definition of blockchain. This is perhaps because blockchain technology is evolving rapidly and the term is used to cover a broad range of models for establishing and managing a ledger of transactions. Moreover, the term blockchain is often used interchangeably with other concepts such as DLT (see below regarding this concept). Above all, the lack of technical precision that often characterizes discussions of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has resulted in widespread confusion as to what should, and should not, be regarded as an implementation of blockchain technology. It may be helpful to pare the concept down into three fundamental components. For our purposes, a blockchain is (i) a system for recording a series of data items (such as transactions between parties) that (ii) uses cryptography to make it difficult to tamper with past ledger entries, and that (iii) has an agreed process for storing one or more copies of the ledger and adding new entries. This process is usually called âconsensusâ, though that term may also be misleading. DLT refers to a particular type of blockchain system that is âdistributedâ across several, potentially many, ânodesâ (ie individuals or organizations that hold a copy of the distributed ledger). âConsensusâ may be achieved in several different ways. These include the cumbersome and energy-intensive âproof of workâ model used by Bitcoin, whereby âminersâ compete to solve increasingly difficult computational puzzles as a basis for adding a new block to a chain, with the winner being rewarded in Bitcoin for doing so. Other key characteristics of Bitcoin are that it is open and âpermissionlessâ, which means that anyone may, without authorization, use Bitcoin and, indeed, may participate in the network as a node. Widespread distribution of copies of the ledger, together with a consensus process that does not require any centralized, trusted, intermediary to manage the ledger, make Bitcoin and similar DLTs attractive as platforms for use by large numbers of parties who do not trust, indeed may not even be able to identify, each other. It is, however, the very openness, lack of permissioning, and potential anonymity that make public blockchain systems like Bitcoin problematic from a legal and regulatory perspective. For example, how can a financial services regulator check that anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) rules are being complied with if a large number of parties can transfer tokens between each other without involving any regulated entity or other intermediary that can be audited? In terms of data protection compliance, is each node that holds a copy of the distributed ledger a controller in respect of all personal data in the ledger? Might each node also, or instead, be a processor for the operator of every other node? What is the status of the users of an open cryptocurrency? Are they also all controllers and, if so, in what circumstances might they be excused from data protection compliance obligations because of an exemption such as that for processing in the course of a purely personal or household activity? How can controllers give instructions to processors regarding the processing of personal data when the parties may not even know who they are dealing with? Indeed, if thousands of nodes hold copies of data relating to transactions between millions of users how could they all contract with each other anyway? Given that a node or user may be anywhere on the planet, must it be assumed that any personal data in a distributed ledger might be transferred worldwide? Is the proliferation of copies of data in a DLT compatible with the data minimization principle? What happens if a data subject wishes to exercise an individual right, eg to correction or erasure of data if the relevant data are stored in an âimmutableâ blockchain? Very few commentators have gone beyond identifying a selection of these questions and then concluding that data protection compliance in relation to blockchain is highly problematic, or simply impossible. Does this mean that Albrecht is right and that blockchain probably cannot be used for the processing of personal data? Not necessarily. Let us step away from the Bitcoin model and return to the core elements of blockchain as being a tamper-evident ledger that is established and maintained according to some kind of consensus protocol. Based on these fundamental elements, might it be possible to develop and deploy a blockchain system that is compatible with data protection by design principles? Perhaps. For example, instead of being public and permissionless, the blockchain might be set up by a consortium that is governed by rules that establish the basis on which each party will process any personal data that is included in the blockchain. Moreover, instead of a distributed consensus mechanism such as proof of work, the parties might agree to use some kind of âconsensus by authorityâ whereby one or more participants has the authority to add blocks to the chain, eg by each taking turns to do so. Indeed, that role might be outsourced to a trusted third party, perhaps even a cloud services provider that offers Blockchain as a Service (BaaS). It may even be possible to design a blockchain that is âredactableâ or âeditableâ without undermining the core characteristic of being a tamper-evident ledger. These are not just hypothetical suggestions; blockchain arrangements are currently being established that have some or all of these features. So, as with many issues that arise in data protection law, the appropriate answer to the question of whether a blockchain may be used to process personal data is not binary but rather âIt depends.â2
In this paper, we present the applications of blockchain technology in healthcare. Furthermore, we evaluate the choice and deployment of Blockchain technology in such applications, review the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach. We review the Estonian system, which is the first blockchain-based health system at the national level, in detail and discuss its ramifications to Turkey. This paper is one of the first papers in this domain and, to the best of authors' knowledge, the first in Turkish.
Caciano dos Santos Machado, AntÎnio Augusto Fröhlich
Blockchain technologies can enable decentralized and trustful features for the Internet of Things (IoT). Although, existing blockchain based solutions to provide data integrity verification for semi-trusted data storages (e.g. cloud providers) cannot respect the time determinism required by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Additionally, they cannot be applied to resource-constrained IoT devices. We propose an architecture that can take advantage of blockchain features to allow further integrity verification of data produced by IoT devices even in the realm of CPS. Our architecture is divided into three levels, each of them responsible for tasks compatible with their resources capabilities. The first level, composed of sensors, actuators, and gateways, introduces the concept of Proof-of-Trust (PoT), an energy-efficient, time-deterministic and secure communication based on the Trustful Space-Time Protocol (TSTP). Upper levels are responsible for data persistence and integrity verification in the Cloud. The work also comprises a performance evaluation of the critical path of data to demonstrate that the architecture respect time-bounded operations demanded by the sense-decide-actuate cycle of CPSs. The additional delay of 5.894us added by our architecture is negligible for a typical TSTP with IEEE 802.15.4 radios which has communication latencies in the order of hundreds of milisseconds in each hop.
Vishal Sharma, Ilsun You, Francesco Palmieri, Dushantha Nalin K. Jayakody · 5 authors
Modern fog network architectures, empowered by IoT applications and 5G communications technologies, are characterized by the presence of a huge number of mobile nodes, which undergo frequent handovers, introducing a significant load on the involved network entities. Considering the distributed and flat nature of these architectures, DMM can be the only viable option for efficiently managing handovers in these scenarios. The existing DMM solutions are capable of providing smooth handovers, but lack robustness from the security point of view. Indeed, DMM depends on external mechanisms for handover security and uses a centralized device, which has obvious security and performance implications in flat architectures where hierarchical dependencies can introduce problems. We propose a new DMM schema based on the blockchain, capable of resolving hierarchical security issues without affecting the network layout, and also satisfying fully distributed security requirements with less consumption of energy.
Kıvanç Ceyhan, Ekim Kurtulmaz, Onur Can Sert, Tansel Ăzyer
In the last few years, Bitcoin is one of the most discussed and popular topic in financial system. This article aims to predict Bitcoin movement by using Machine Learning and Text Mining models. Many models have been used to this end, including the most popular models in financial prediction; Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Logistic Regression (LR). In addition to this, in order to examine the effect of daily news on Bitcoin movement, the text mining models are involved into the prediction system. This paper focuses on applying Machine Learning models on a integrated dataset, which contains both historical Bitcoin values and features from daily news text. Overall, our model can estimate the direction of Bitcoin with a high success.
One of the most well-known and popular crypto money, that is also a digital currency enabled in 2009, is Bitcoin. Over time, many alternatives to Bitcoin have been developed. The blockchain system, which is a very important technology for crypto money transfer, provides many different possibilities besides providing transaction from one point to another without any intermediary. Block chaining is a distributed, shared form of recording that facilitates the recording of assets and transactions in a network. In this study, after explaining the basic concepts behind distributed architecture and blockchain technology behind crypto money, artificial intelligence algorithms were exploited, and based on last three years values of bitcoin forecasting was performed for Bitcoin which has a huge market share in since nine years.
Abstract Access to housing is a crucial issue worldwide. It is still under discussion whether collaborative economy is enhancing or, on the contrary, constraining access. In this context, the concept of âcollaborative housingâ (collaborative economy applied to the funding, access and organisation of housing) arises to address a range of situations that might potentially help people to access housing, such as co-housing or the so-called âintermediate tenuresâ. Disintermediation through blockchain technology, and the resultant effect of a reduction in the transaction costs of access to housing, is one of those trends regarding collaborative housing. Accordingly, the adaptation of the disintermediation mechanism to the real estate conveyance and land registry, as in many other sectors of the collaborative economy, is timely. This can be achieved by exploring the potential of this mechanism in enhancing traditional methods of this sector through possible technological solutions. This paper presents a preliminary discussion on the different types of collaborative housing and the potentials of the blockchain technology to facilitate access to housing in relation to real estate conveyancing and registration.
Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) â commonly called blockchain â have rapidly come to prominence as a new way to store and control data. But what benefits does blockchain offer to biometric systems developers and users, and how can biometrics be integrated into DLT systems to achieve better security, scalability and privacy?
In this paper, we propose an architecture for Blockchain-based Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) called GAA-FQ (Granular Access Authorisation supporting Flexible Queries) that comprises an access model and an access authorisation scheme. Unlike existing Blockchain schemes, our access model can authorise different levels of granularity of authorisation, whilst maintaining compatibility with the underlying Blockchain data structure. Furthermore, the authorisation, encryption, and decryption algorithms proposed in the GAA-FQ scheme dispense with the need to use a public key infrastructure (PKI) and hence improve the computation performance needed to support more granular and distributed, yet authorised, EMR data queries. We validated the computation performance and transmission efficiency for GAA-FQ using a simulation of GAA-FQ against an access control scheme for EMRs called ESPAC as our baseline that was not designed using a Blockchain. To the best of our knowledge, GAA- FQ is the first Blockchain-oriented access authorisation scheme with granular access control, supporting flexible data queries, that has been proposed for secure EMR information management.
Dirk Andreas Zetzsche, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner
One of the oft-noted benefits of distributed ledger technology is its security. Many commentators seem to believe that because the Bitcoin blockchain has not been hacked, somehow this means all blockchains are secure. This paper draws on recent examples to explore how risk persists when financial services are provided via distributed ledgers. We analyse the kinds of risk, how they arise and their possible legal consequences. While some technologists want to believe using blockchain will not give rise to legal liability, we demonstrate how this is not so. These liability consequences raise significant questions about how distributed ledgers should be structured, owned and, ultimately, regulated.
Daniel Peters, Jan Wetzlich, Florian Thiel, JeanâPierre Seifert
Blockchain technology has become a promising approach in many domains. It first came up with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, where it is used to maintain a distributed ledger, a public list of all transactions. It is assumed that the use of a blockchain as a cryptocurrency, or in general for financial services, was just the first stage, called Phase 1.0. The second phase began with the integration of smart contracts. In Phase 3.0, the focus lies on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which efficiently implement smart contracts. In the future, it is assumed, that by the use of DAOs many benefits for the public sector emerge. In this paper, blockchain applications of Phase 2.0 and 3.0 are analyzed for measuring instruments under legal control. An example are smart meters, where by smart contracts, a new coin/token within the blockchain can be created whenever the electric meter rotates. Promising areas of application in legal metrology, like a decentralized audit trail to log, e.g., software updates and hinder uncertified manipulations, the complete automation of the legally supervised update mechanism by smart contracts, or an alternative to public key infrastructures are being proposed in this paper.
Fabio Massacci, Chan Nam Ngo, Jing Nie, Daniele Venturi · 5 authors
In a Futures-Exchange, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, traders buy and sell contractual promises (futures) to acquire or deliver, at some future pre-specified date, assets ranging from wheat to crude oil and from bacon to cash in a desired currency. The interactions between economic and security properties and the exchange's essentially non-monotonic security behavior; a valid trader's valid action can invalidate other traders' previously valid positions, are a challenge for security research. We show the security properties that guarantee an Exchange's economic viability (availability of trading information, liquidity, confidentiality of positions, absence of price discrimination, risk-management) and an attack when traders' anonymity is broken. We describe all key operations for a secure, fully distributed Futures-Exchange, hereafter referred to as simply the 'Exchange'. Our distributed, asynchronous protocol simulates the centralized functionality under the assumptions of anonymity of the physical layer and availability of a distributed ledger. We consider security with abort (in absence of honest majority) and extend it to penalties. Our proof of concept implementation and its optimization (based on zk-SNARKs and SPDZ) demonstrate that the computation of actual trading days (along Thomson-Reuters Tick History DB) is feasible for low-frequency markets; however, more research is needed for high-frequency ones.
This article examines the characteristics of school effectiveness and how the school effectiveness policy works in the context of education decentralization. The research approach is qualitative exploratory and was conducted in 2016 in 10 out of 35 districts/cities in Central Java Province. The results showed that there are eight characteristics of effective schools: effective school leadership, efficient learning processes, active community participation, a conducive school environment, increased professionalism of educators, heightened expectations of students, the commitment of teachers, which together lead to good student achievement. Local government policy has not been mentioned explicitly to build an effective school. The government system should contribute to creating effective schools through human resource development, community participation, provision of facilities and infrastructure, professional development of educators, guiding studentsâ and teachers' achievement, monitoring student progress, education financing to some degree, and the commitment of local governments to give appreciation to education actors.
The recent explosive development of new forms of digital currency opens up unprecedented opportunities and poses significant regulatory challenges. This new form of digital currency lowers the costs and other barriers to the global movement of money, international trade, foreign investment and speculation, while simultaneously enhancing the anonymity on which tax evasion, money-laundering and other illegal activities thrive. It also liberates the creation of money and regulation of economic activities from the political control of national governments and central banks. Since the value of a currency is related to the size of the population, strength of the economy and value of transactions that utilize it, a basket of cryptocurrencies could emerge as the first prototype of a world currency whose value is backed by the total productive capacity of the entire human community. Moreover, the triad of Internet, distributed ledger technologies and cryptocurrencies could serve as the basis for the development of new global economic potentials in a manner similar and a degree far exceeding the economic impact of the World Wide Web over the past two decades. At the same time, the rapid deployment of cryptocurrencies could have profound impact on the capacity of governments to tax transactions, income and wealth, one of the main pillars of the modern nation state. The development of autonomous global cryptocurrencies could dramatically reduce the control and effectiveness of existing regulatory mechanisms at the national level and generate considerable pressure for the evolution of more effective institutions for global governance. They could provide compelling incentives for national governments to enhance international cooperation and strengthen the functioning of international institutions to fill the regulatory void. International organizations will play an important role in harnessing the potentials and minimizing the risks arising from the growing usage of cryptocurrencies. Most of the research conducted by central banks on cryptocurrencies over the past four years has focused on risks and benefits as viewed from the perspective of national economies and national monetary systems. This paper explores the global prospects and potential implications of the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies for cross-border transactions and the role of international institutions in their regulation and global fiscal governance.
With the price of Bitcoin ascending to new heights in 2017, the rocketing valuation of cryptocurrencies continues its momentum into 2018. Evidence of the massive growth of these digital assets can be seen in the massive spikes in new clients at companies like Coinbase, adding 100,000 users in a 24-hour period, and Binance, which recently expanded its user base by 240,000 users in just one hour. The financial industry and Silicon Valley are not the only groups who have caught the cryptocurrency fever. Malicious actors have discovered that cryptocurrency newbies are unwitting targets that offer a consistent stream of revenue. Through our global network visibility, Cisco has observed many of these attacks originating from bulletproof hosting infrastructures located in the Eastern European region. This area is a hotbed for crypto theft and other computer crimes such as ransomware, botnets, DDoS services and credit card fraud. Some criminals have even extended beyond the digital world by kidnapping and demanding ransoms in Bitcoin, such as the case in the reported kidnapping and ransom of Pavel Lerner. Lerner was a lead analyst at Ukraine-based digital currency exchange, Exmo, who was released by his kidnappers after a $1 million Bitcoin payment was made. The event illustrates the desperate lengths some criminals will go in order to steal cryptocurrency. Joining the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance in 2017, Cisco is committed to protecting these new crypto technologies. Over the past year Cisco researchers have teamed up with the Ukraine Cyber Police to track a Bitcoin phishing operation dubbed the "Coinhoarder" campaign that has been tied to the theft of tens of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Credential phishing continues to be one of the biggest security challenges for internet users, and cryptocurrency phishers have found it to be a very lucrative form of attack. In 2017, Chainalysis reported Ethereum phishing as being the number one source of theft in that ecosystem with estimates placing the total amount stolen at $115 million. Google also recently published a research paper stating credential phishing is one of their top security challenges. Cisco has been proactive in detecting phishing domains in predictive fashion to help protect our customers. Additionally, we have been working with security personnel at top cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges, such as Blockchain.info and Coinbase, to help protect the cryptocurrency community members from having their tokens stolen.