Blockchain Papers

Baokun Zheng, Liehuang Zhu, Meng Shen, Feng Gao · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Minul Wimalagunaratne, Guhanathan Poravi

The realm of cryptocurrency has grown exponentially over the past decade, with the most rapid advances seen in the past few years as more and more parties around the world recognize the value of holding digital assets online. Statistics from Twitter support this statement where, approximately 1,500 Tweets about Bitcoin alone is recorded per hour. Consequently, many people are beginning to become more aware and accepting of the nature of digital currencies, and traders in particular seek to know how they can make profitable crypto-coin trades and investments. Although a number of research projects have been undertaken to develop systems that can effectively predict price movements in the cryptocurrency market, they display significant efficiency gaps, which this paper further explores. The authors then attempt to learn from past studies and construct a more holistic approach to a predictive price model for the cryptocurrency market. This focuses on assessing key factors that affect the volatility of the market - public perception, trading data, historic price data, and the interdependencies between Bitcoin and Altcoins - and how they can be best utilized from a technological aspect by applying sentiment analysis and machine learning techniques, to increase the efficiency of the process.

Kaspars Zīle, Renāte Strazdiņa

Abstract The goal of the paper is to provide a vague summary of currently existing blockchain use cases in the information technology industry. Respective use cases have been examined in already existing scientific papers, Master Theses, industry white papers and blogs of industry experts. The paper also contains a description of blockchain main technological aspects and working principles, which allows making the assessment of the presented use cases. For each use case respective companies or organisations are added that are applying or testing the given solution. Due to research limitations the paper should not be considered an exhaustive blockchain use case description. The paper also provides short introduction into a feasibility analysis of specific blockchain use case. The authors describe the basic steps of potential idea evaluation with regards to blockchain main aspects. It helps understand the necessity for development of a detailed blockchain feasibility model.

Maxim Ya. Afanasev, Yuri V. Fedosov, Anastasiya A. Krylova, Sergey A. Shorokhov

Blockchain, which is a new technology of distributed data storage in the form of a chain of blocks, has become one of the most popular topics in the field of information technology for today. Although the term “blockchain” is often associated with operations in cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, for example), its application is not limited to this area. The algorithm for automatic confirmation of transactions has already been successfully applied in accounting, postal services, and smart devices. Additionally, people can participate in the confirmation of transactions. This article considers the possibility of using the technology in creating distributed networks of industrial equipment, i.e. creation of a backbone network for cyber-physical production systems. The proposed approach is detailed and discussed with the support of relevant use cases. A number of architectures of support networks based on blockchain technology are proposed, the positive and negative aspects of this approach are considered.

Maxim Ya. Afanasev, Anastasiya A. Krylova, Sergey A. Shorokhov, Yuri V. Fedosov · 5 authors

The concept of cyber-physical production systems is highly discussed amongst researchers and industry experts, however, the implementation options for these systems rely mainly on obsolete technologies. Despite the fact that the blockchain is most often associated with cryptocurrency, it is fundamentally wrong to deny the universality of this technology and the prospects for its application in other industries. For example, in the insurance sector or in a number of identity verification services. This article discusses the deployment of the CPPS backbone network based on the Ethereum private blockchain system. The structure of the network is described as well as its interaction with the help of smart contracts, based on the consumption of cryptocurrency for various operations.

Chinmay Saraf, Siddharth Sabadra

In recent years, cryptocurrencies gained popularity with Bitcoin. The main promising technology behind Bitcoin was `Blockchain'. Blockchain provided unique features like transactional privacy, system transparency, immutability of data, security with cryptography, etc. These features paved way for Blockchain in advancing many technologies like voting systems, IOT applications, supply chain management, banking, healthcare, insurance, etc. Blockchain development was boosted with the increasing demand of the technological update. Many blockchain platforms are available like hyperledger fabric, ethereum, corda, etc. We always end up with perplexity while choosing a platform for blockchain development. Through our survey, we provide a comparative analysis of all the hyperledger platforms, ethereum, corda to make a choice of the platform easily according to the requirement.

Shahar Hameiri, Lee Jones

Many observers of international politics detect a growing Chinese challenge to the rules-based, liberal international order. In particular, some saw Beijing's recent creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a threat to existing organizations governing international development financing. This article broadly concurs with more sanguine accounts emphasizing the AIIB's similarity to existing multilateral development banks. However, we go further by arguing that the full extent of China's challenge to global governance cannot be understood without reference to the ongoing transformation of the Chinese party-state: the contested fragmentation, decentralization and internationalization of state apparatuses. These processes mean that the AIIB is just one institution among many in China's messy international development financing field—alongside policy and commercial banks, functional ministries, provincial governments and state-owned enterprises. Contestation among these agencies will shape China's real challenge to global economic governance, which will often be significant, yet unintended and non-strategic, in nature.

Jim Mason, Hollie Escott

Smart contracts and blockchain technology are at the forefront of technological advancement in the financial services industry. The basic premise involves the creation of an automated contract capable of satisfying common conditions and reducing the need for intermediaries in the process. The blockchain is a means by which the transactions can be recorded on a distributed ledger. 
\nThe enquiry carried out in this paper discusses whether these technologies are capable of being transposed into the United Kingdom’s (UK) construction industry and whether this is a desirable outcome. Technological progression is much slower in construction than in other industries as evidenced by the slow take up of UK government-backed initiatives such as the introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and collaborative working agendas. 
\nA survey questionnaire was designed and distributed to investigate attitudes towards technology and collaborative working. A variety of professions across various organisations including clients, main contractors, consultants and law firms returned 117 responses mainly from senior management or commercial staff. There were divisions between participants believing technology and innovation are important, exciting and the future and those who believe automation is an impossible task in such a complex industry as construction. 
\nKey findings reveal a fear of the unknown and the overwhelming doubt from participants that full automation is possible. There was an acknowledgement that the technology could benefit simple supply-type contracts and that it would be beneficial to reduce the amount of paperwork involved in contract administration. There is a view throughout the industry that disputes cannot be solved with a computer. Opinions were further split along the lines of whether human interaction and relationships are key and technology would detract from or enhance the position.

Christopher D. Clack

The Smart Contract Templates project supports legally enforceable smart contracts, using operational parameters to connect legal agreements to standardised code. The standardised code is derived from legal documentation and performs some or all of the provisions of that contract. For financial contracts such as derivatives agreements, the legal documentation may be extensive, and the standardised code to perform the contract may be substantial. An important issue is how to validate whether the smart contract code will correctly perform the provisions of the legal contract. This requires an understanding of the semantics of legal text and is an important step towards supporting industry adoption of legally enforceable high-value smart contracts.

Rui Yuan, Yubin Xia, Haibo Chen, Binyu Zang · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Jian Liu, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, N. Asokan

Motivated by the great success and adoption of Bitcoin, a number of cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum are becoming increasingly popular. Although existing blockchain-based cryptocurrency schemes can ensure reasonable security for transactions, they do not consider any notion of fairness. Fair exchange allows two players to exchange digital “items,” such as digital signatures, over insecure networks fairly, so that either each player gets the other's item, or neither player does. Given that blockchain participants typically do not trust each other, enabling fairness in existing cryptocurrencies is an essential but insufficiently explored problem. In this article, we explore the solution space for enabling the fair exchange of a cryptocurrency payment for a receipt. We identify the timeliness of an exchange as an important property especially when one of the parties involved in the exchange is resource-constrained. We introduce the notion of strong timeliness for a fair exchange protocol and propose two fair payment-for-receipt protocol instantiations that leverage functionality of the blockchain to achieve strong timeliness. We implement both and compare their security and efficiency.

Christopher S. Henry, Huynh, Kim, Nicholls, Gradon

Bitcoin, digital currencies and FinTech have been the subject of vigorous discussion. There has, however, been limited empirical evidence of its adoption and usage. This paper proposes a methodology to collect a nationally representative sample via the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) in order to track the ubiquity and usage of Bitcoin in Canada. The paper reveals that about 64 per cent of Canadians have heard of Bitcoin, but only 2.9 per cent own it. Awareness of Bitcoin is strongly associated with men, and those with college or university education; additionally, Bitcoin awareness is more concentrated among unemployed individuals. On the other hand, Bitcoin ownership is associated with younger age groups and a high school education. Furthermore, the current authors have constructed a test of Bitcoin characteristics to attempt to gauge the level of knowledge held by respondents who were aware of Bitcoin, including actual owners. Knowledge is positively correlated with Bitcoin adoption. This paper attempts to reconcile the difference in awareness and ownership by deconstructing the transaction and store-of-value motive for holding Bitcoin. The paper concludes with some suggestions to improve future digital currency surveys, in particular to achieve precise estimates from the hard-to-reach population of digital currency users.

Seçkin Karasu, Aytaç Altan, Zehra Saraç, Rıfat Hacıoğlu

In this study, Bitcoin prediction is performed with Linear Regression (LR) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) from machine learning methods by using time series consisting of daily Bitcoin closing prices between 2012-2018. The prediction model with include the least error is obtained by testing with different parameter combinations such as SVM with including linear and polynomial kernel functions. Filters with different weight coefficients are used for different window lengths. For different window lengths, Bitcoin price prediction is made using filters with different weight coefficients. 10-fold cross-validation method in training phase is used in order to construct a model with high performance independent of the data set. The performance of the obtained model is measured by means of statistical indicators such as Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Pearson Correlation. It is seen that the price prediction performance of the proposed SVM model for Bitcoin data set is higher than that of the LR model.

Marek R. Ogiela, Michal Majcher

Distributed Ledger technology and its most notable implementation, the Blockchain, is disrupting today's industry in extremely fast pace with a potential to change the world. The security posture of Blockchain remains one of a key topics in today's industry and distributed services. On and on, we can embrace the attempts to implement the Blockchain technology in sensitive areas of our daily life like finance [1], insurance services [2], health care [3] etc. It is therefore crucial raise awareness of its limitations, possible improvements, as well as embedded compensations. In this paper, we provide a holistic view on the security aspects of the Blockchain technology. We identify the most notable security threats applicable in the above context and reveal technology-specific challenges, that need to be taken into account. Our analysis lists the security features already embedded in the Blockchain and sample uses in nowadays industry. Our results lead to several observations, recommendations, and open points that could be considered in ongoing development of the technology.

Michele Bottone, Franco Raimondi, Giuseppe Primiero

In the past ten years distributed ledgers such as Bitcoin and smart contracts that can run code autonomously have seen an exponential growth both in terms of research interest and in terms of industrial and financial applications. These find a natural application in the area of Sensor Networks and Cyber-Physical Systems. However, the incentive architecture of blockchains requires massive computational resources for mining, delays in the confirmation of transactions and, more importantly, continuously growing transaction fees, which are ill-suited to systems in which services may be provided by resource-limited devices and confirmation times and transaction costs should be kept minimal, ideally absent. We focus on a new block-less, fee-less paradigm for distributed ledgers suitable for the WSN, IoT and CPS in which transactions are nodes of a directed acyclic graph, that overcomes the limitations of blockchains for these applications, and where e.g. sensors can be at the same time issuers of transactions and validators of previous transactions. In particular, we present and release open-source a simulation environment that can be easily extended and analysed, and confirms the available results on the performance of the network.

Nyane Ezekiel Macdonald Mofokeng, Thapeli Kenny Matima

Tourism destinations are always seeking new and innovative ways to better market tourism offerings and increase tourism revenues. This paper seeks to highlight a future tourism marketing trend through the use of virtual environments (VE) backed by Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT’s) such as Blockchain. VE is the umbrella term referring to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR), also known as merged reality. The virtual reality market is said to be the next frontier in digital marketing and in recent years the tourism industry has slowly taken advantage of developments in the virtual space. On the other hand, DLT’s such as Blockchain technology is bound to revolutionize and disrupt various business sectors such as the financial and supply chain management sectors, among many. An indicator of this is the number of Fortune 500 companies that are members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance – an alliance that is seeking to build enterprise-grade software on the Ethereum Blockchain. The analysis suggest that VR based tourism utilizing DLT’s can positively impact the tourism industry and provide a means for additional revenue.

Mihai Hulea, Ovidiu Rosu, Radu Miron, Adina Aştilean

In the process of distributing pharmaceutical products multiple stages are involved until products are delivered to patient. A reliable way for validating and verifying that products had been maintained within a licensed range is required. The paper presents a solution for pharmaceutical cold chain management using distributed ledger technologies. An application framework is proposed for shipment tracking which will deliver information to all stakeholders during the distribution phase of pharmaceutical products. The solution is based on Hyperledger Sawtooth distributed ledger framework, which has been extended with a custom transactions family and a sensors gateway for automatically collecting data from temperature tracking devices. The focus of the paper is to describe the data model and how entities of the system communicate.

Mauro Isaja, John Soldatos

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is probably going, in the near future, to disrupt B2B and B2C interactions even more than the advent of the World Wide Web, thanks to the transfer of trust from personal and commercial relationships to computing algorithms. However, a less commonly perceived property of DLT is that of enabler of decentralized computing. In this paper, we explore the use of DLT to innovate Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems.

Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Philipp Jovanovic, Linus Gasser, Nicolas Gailly · 6 authors

Designing a secure permissionless distributed ledger (blockchain) that performs on par with centralized payment processors, such as Visa, is a challenging task. Most existing distributed ledgers are unable to scale-out, i.e., to grow their total processing capacity with the number of validators; and those that do, compromise security or decentralization. We present OmniLedger, a novel scale-out distributed ledger that preserves longterm security under permissionless operation. It ensures security and correctness by using a bias-resistant public-randomness protocol for choosing large, statistically representative shards that process transactions, and by introducing an efficient cross-shard commit protocol that atomically handles transactions affecting multiple shards. OmniLedger also optimizes performance via parallel intra-shard transaction processing, ledger pruning via collectively-signed state blocks, and low-latency "trust-but-verify" validation for low-value transactions. An evaluation of our experimental prototype shows that OmniLedger's throughput scales linearly in the number of active validators, supporting Visa-level workloads and beyond, while confirming typical transactions in under two seconds.

Dennis Miller

Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) are key technologies that will have a huge impact in the next 10 years for companies in the industrial market. This article describes how these two technologies will improve efficiencies, provide new business opportunities, address regulatory requirements, and improve transparency and visibility.

Hong Liu, Yan Zhang, Tao Yang

EVCE computing is an attractive network paradigm involving seamless connections among heterogeneous vehicular contexts. It will be a trend along with EVs becoming popular in V2X. The EVs act as potential resource infrastructures referring to both information and energy interactions, and there are serious security challenges for such hybrid cloud and edge computing. Context-aware vehicular applications are identified according to the perspectives of information and energy interactions. Blockchain-inspired data coins and energy coins are proposed based on distributed consensus, in which data contribution frequency and energy contribution amount are applied to achieve the proof of work. Security solutions are presented for securing vehicular interactions in EVCE computing.

Harshal Patil, Prathmesh Ladkat, Abhishek Jituri, Rohit Desai · 5 authors

The use of technology has become important at this point in helping to meet human needs.Due to the increasing use of technology, new challenges are brought in the process of democracy as most people today don’t trust their governments, making elections is very important in modern democracy . Elections have a great importance in determining who will rule a nation or an organization or it can be said as it is an event that decides the fate of any nation. In modern democracy, elections are very important but large sections of society around the world do not trust their election system which is a major concern for democracy. Even the world’s largest democracies like India, United States, still suffer from a flawed electoral system. Vote rigging, hacking of EVM (Electronic voting machine), election manipulation, and polling booth capturing are the major issues in the current voting system The blockchain is said as emerging, decentralized, and distributed technology that promises to enhance different aspects of many industries. Expanding e-voting into blockchain technology could be the solution to eliminate the present concerns in e-voting system There is no doubt that the ever changing concept of the blockchain, which is the backbone of the famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin has triggered the start of a new era in the Internet and the online services. While most people focus only on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies; there are in fact, many operations, both administrative and fintech that can only be done online/offline can now safely be moved to the Internet as online services because of immutability of blockchain. What makes blockchain a powerful tool is its smarts contracts and many features which overcomes traditional systems. Smart contracts are meaningful pieces of codes, to be integrated in the blockchain and executed as scheduled in every step of blockchain updates. E-votin, is another trending, yet critical, topic related to the online services. The blockchain with the smart contracts, emerges as a good candidate to use in developments of safer, cheaper, more secure, more transparent, and easier-to-use e-voting systems.Due to its consistency, widespread use, and provision of smart contracts logic, Ethereum and its network is one of the most suitable ones. An e-voting system must be secure, as it should not allow duplicated votes and be fully transparent, while protecting the privacy of the attendees. In this project, we have implemented and tested an e-voting application as a smart contract for the Ethereum network using the Ethereum and the Solidity language.

Miguel Pincheira, Muhammad Salek Ali, Massimo Vecchio, Raffaele Giaffreda

The recent, exponential rise in adoption of the most disparate Internet of Things (IoT) devices and technologies has reached also Agriculture and Food (Agri-Food) supply chains, drumming up substantial research and innovation interest towards developing reliable, auditable and transparent traceability systems. Current IoT-based traceability and provenance systems for Agri-Food supply chains are built on top of centralized infrastructures and this leaves room for unsolved issues and major concerns, including data integrity, tampering and single points of failure. Blockchains, the distributed ledger technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, represent a new and innovative technological approach to realizing decentralized trustless systems. Indeed, the inherent properties of this digital technology provide fault-tolerance, immutability, transparency and full traceability of the stored transaction records, as well as coherent digital representations of physical assets and autonomous transaction executions. This paper presents AgriBlockIoT, a fully decentralized, blockchain-based traceability solution for Agri-Food supply chain management, able to seamless integrate IoT devices producing and consuming digital data along the chain. To effectively assess AgriBlockIoT, first, we defined a classical use-case within the given vertical domain, namely from-farm-to-fork. Then, we developed and deployed such use-case, achieving traceability using two different blockchain implementations, namely Ethereum and Hyperledger Sawtooth. Finally, we evaluated and compared the performance of both the deployments, in terms of latency, CPU, and network usage, also highlighting their main pros and cons.

Laurent Bach, Branko Mihaljević, Martin Žagar

Cryptocurrencies have seen a massive surge in popularity and behind these new virtual currencies is an innovative technology called the blockchain: a distributed digital ledger in which cryptocurrency transactions are recorded after having been verified. The transactions within a ledger are verified by multiple clients or “validators,” within the cryptocurrency's peer-to-peer network using one of many varied consensus algorithms for resolving the problem of reliability in a network involving multiple unreliable nodes. The most widely used consensus algorithms are the Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm and the Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm; however, there are also other consensus algorithms which utilize alternative implementations of PoW and PoS, as well as other hybrid implementations and some altogether new consensus strategies. In this paper, we perform a comparative analysis of typical consensus algorithms and some of their contemporaries that are currently in use in modern blockchains. Our analysis focuses on the algorithmic steps taken by each consensus algorithm, the scalability of the algorithm, the method the algorithm rewards validators for their time spent verifying blocks, and the security risks present within the algorithm. Finally, we present our conclusion and some possible future trends for consensus algorithms used in blockchains.