In this paper, we propose a Blockchain-based infrastructure to support security- and privacy-oriented spatio-temporal smart contract services for the sustainable Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled sharing economy in mega smart cities. The infrastructure leverages cognitive fog nodes at the edge to host and process off loaded geo-tagged multimedia payload and transactions from a mobile edge and IoT nodes, uses AI for processing and extracting significant event information, produces semantic digital analytics, and saves results in Blockchain and decentralized cloud repositories to facilitate sharing economy services. The framework offers a sustainable incentive mechanism, which can potentially support secure smart city services, such as sharing economy, smart contracts, and cyber-physical interaction with Blockchain and IoT. Our unique contribution is justified by detailed system design and implementation of the framework.
Puwei Wang, Ji M, Jinchuan Chen, Tao Liu · 7 authors
Smart contracts (SCs) run on the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform and can implement agreements between participants without a trusted third party. This paper uses the DLT and SC techniques to build distributed applications composed of existing services. In practice, there are many functionally-equivalent services on the Internet. To beat their competitors, the service providers usually offer flexible QoS and use dynamic pricing strategies. Moreover, the service providers can change at runtime, e.g., they may encounter problems so that their QoS drops suddenly. This makes achieving the optimization goal at runtime (e.g., the maximization of the utility) more difficult. To address this problem, first, this paper proposes an SC-based negotiation framework. The SCs can ensure that the transactions are automatically and reliably performed as agreed upon between the service requesters and providers. The DLTs can provide the reliable data of the requests and responses of the service requesters and providers to the SCs. In addition, the SCs can identify the troubled service providers, and find other service providers to replace them at runtime. Second, this paper proposes a Bayesian Nash equilibrium (BNE) of the service providers. In the BNE, the cost-efficient service providers offer the high QoS the service requester asks for and report their costs truthfully. This BNE enables the selection of the cost-efficient service providers and the achievement of the (near) maximization of the service requesters' utility. This paper implements the proposed negotiation framework on a DLT platform called Hyperledger Fabric. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the existing approaches and can adapt to the changes of the service providers.
We live in a world that has historically been dominated by centralized, hierarchical organizations. Such organizations are characterized by (i) a centralized source of authority; (ii) a formal hierarchy with clearly defined “roles”; and, (iii) standardized operational systems and procedures dictated by that centralized authority/hierarchy. This type of organization has exerted an enormous influence on modern political, economic and social life, particularly in a business context. Regulatory models have been designed to support and sustain businesses organized in this way. Today, however, new digital technologies are disrupting this “old world” and introducing a shift in the practices and mindset of our society. New technologies are driving the emergence of “flatter”, more decentralized forms of organization. In this paper, we offer an analysis of how blockchain and related distributed ledger technologies are disrupting corporate organizations as an illustration of this broader “digital transformation.” The paper briefly introduces the digital transformation and main argument (Section 1); then considers how the digital transformation has led to the emergence of “platform” companies (Section 2). Since blockchain technology can be viewed as a next step in the “digital development” of a corporate organization, the paper then discusses the main features of blockchain technologies and smart contracts (Sections 3 & 4) and examines the often-made claim that these technologies are all just hype / a fad (Section 5). Section 6 explores why these technologies are so potentially disruptive in a business context and then introduces several examples of such blockchain-based business organizations, as well as possible future developments (Sections 7 and 8). Section 9 concludes.
In this paper, we analyze the value of smart contracts and blockchains as an alternative to traditional contractual obligations. In particular, we start by exploring some of the advantages of these technologies, specifically the immutability of blockchains and automated contract remittance. We also discuss two critical shortcomings of decentralized smart contracts, namely regulatory uncertainty and a lack of confidential execution. With these issues in mind, we next explore how American legislators have begun to address smart contracts and blockchains. Though quite limited, there have been a few provisions clarifying the status of these technologies. We break down some of the language expressed in these bills so as to understand the current legal status of smart contracts and blockchains. Given this foundation, we consider the next steps that should be taken as smart contracts mature. This pertains to both the continued improvement of the underlying technology as well as the progress taken by regulators. Finally, assuming a futuristic scenario where there are no technological or regulatory barriers to smart contract adoption, we discuss how the process of contract remittance can be expedited in a world fully committed to the use of smart contracts.
У статті розглянуті особливості інновацій, що лежать в основі технології розподілених реєстрів, її різновиди, потенційні і фактично реалізовані напрями застосування, організаційні форми відповідних проектів. Показано, як ця технологія трансформується в напрямку наближення до централізованих реєстрів, але водночас стимулює удосконалення і модернізацію останніх. Виявлено, що для максимального використання потенціалу ТРР необхідна інтеграція децентралізованих систем з правовим полем і зміна технології не лише у проблемних ланках, що найбільше виграють від її застосування, а й в середовищах, з якими ці ланки взаємодіють. Як свідчить досвід реально запроваджених ТРР-проектів, найбільш успішними з технічних та інституційних причин виявляються платформи, що перебувають десь посередині спектру централізованих і децентралізованих реєстрів, тож втілення радикальної лібертаріанської місії ТРР ще не знайдено – системам потрібний централізований арбітр, координатор, суб’єкт відповідальності і гнучкість, якої можна досягти за допомогою авторитетного втручання в протокол. Зроблено висновок, що навіть максимальне поширення ТРР не означатиме перемогу мереж над ієрархіями і демократизацію: по-перше, тому, що будь-яким мережам властиві процеси подальшої ієрархієзації, а по-друге, відновлення ієрархічного порядку може виявитися необхідним для запобігання сповзанню в анархію.
Abstract Since new distributed ledger technologies hold out a promise to restructure cross‐border flows of people and material resources, they affect globalization and alter transnational spaces. Their capacity to facilitate secure and disintermediated value transfer through crypto‐code and smart contracts enables novel forms of remittance transfer, resource management and digital identity verification – and may also generate new vulnerabilities. In this article, we examine the use of emerging blockchain applications in various migration and diaspora related initiatives in the emerging economies of Africa, Asia and Europe. By building on existing social networks of mutual obligation and quasi‐ethnic affinities, blockchain technologies may facilitate the ability to enlarge the scope of diasporas and change the nature of belonging, sovereignty, migration and statehood. Through exploring the selective foregrounding of mutuality and materiality in such alternative value transfer systems, we seek to explain the dynamics of trust and agency that these networks generate to extend commitments and loyalties in the transnational space.
The gaming industry has evolved into a multi-functional smart city that combines integrated casinos and entertainment (ICE). ICE logistics involve supply chains with various stages in geographically-distributed locations and with limited and complex storage and warehouses. Challenges are to leverage demands, traffic, and storage allocation in ICE logistics. The decentralized structure of blockchain technology allows all parties to participate in ICE logistics. Its cryptography-based, immutable nature gives the assurance of security. This research deals with the design and application of blockchains in ICE logistics. We first adopt a Concentric Value Circles (CVC) model to identify the requirements and business opportunities that use blockchain technology in ICE logistics. We develop an open, automated, and transparent platform, TransICE, which utilizes the feature of smart contracts in blockchain technology and adopts a decentralized model, Hawk, where no financial transactions are stored on the blockchain to hold privacy of transactions publicly. Two cases, (1) the Shipment Pricing and Scheduling process and (2) the Pickup, Shipping and Delivery process in TransICE, are studied to illustrate the applications and feasibility of the proposed TransICE platform and the developed smart contracts of the Hawk model.
Blockchain is highly secure in design and can hand huge data efficiently. A smart contract, based on a blockchain, can automate the entire process and make the contract self-executing in nature. Since the first introduction of these technologies in the 1990s, they have been at the center interest for academia and industry. Numerous researchers and practitioners have investigated the principles and usage of blockchain and smart contracts. However, little is coincidental regarding estimating the consumer’s additional willingness to pay (WTP) and analyzing the relationship with socio-economic characteristics of the consumer for blockchain and smart contracts in the insurance sector. This study conducted the survey on 1000 heads of the household or homemakers who represent population well in South Korea and estimated additional WTP using one-and-one-half-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation (OOHB DC CV) method. About 65% of sample respondents answered they are willing to pay some additional premium for blockchain and smart contracts. The mean WTP has the value of KRW 28,425.43 (USD 25.38) and the median WTP is KRW 16,111.71 (USD 14.39). Those with high incomes, high education and more insurance contracts are more likely to pay extra for insurance policies using blockchain and smart contracts. Considering the total number of households in South Korea, the aggregated additional WTP is about 8 percent of the net income of the insurance industry in fiscal year of 2017. Consequently, strategic development of insurance products using block chains and smart contracts targeting educated consumers with high-income will increase the number of policyholders, which can in turn increase premium revenues.
A decentralized ride-or carsharing application is among the early proposals of what smart contracts on blockchains may enable in the future. To facilitate use cases in the field of location-based services (LBS), smart contracts need to receive trustworthy positioning information, and be able to process them. We propose an approach on how geofences can be defined in smart contracts, and how supplied positions can be evaluated on whether they are contained in the geofence or not. The approach relies on existing location encoding systems like Geohashes and S2 cells that can transform polygons into a grid of cells. These can be stored in a smart contract to represent a geofence. An oracle run by a mobile network provider can submit network-based positioning information to the contract, that compares it with the geofence. We evaluate the location encoding systems on their ability to model city geofences and mobile network cell position estimates and analyze the costs associated with storing and evaluating received oracle-positions in an Ethereum-based smart contract implementation. Our results show that S2 encodings perform better than Geohashes, that the one-time cost of geofence definition corresponds linearly with the number of grid cells used, and that the evaluation of oracle-submitted locations does not incur high costs.
Organizations are interested in transferring their cyber-risks to insurers aiming to mitigate the cost of cyber-threats. However, cyber-insurance has not been widely accepted due to several obstacles. First, the lack of reliable data to measure the cyber-risks makes it hard to calculate the insurance premium. Second, there are legal and procedural hurdles for assessing the organizations security posture deterring insurer for auditing. On the other hand, the blockchain technology has been extensively popularized due to its ability to provide transparency and security. Blockchain applies the distributed ledger to store transaction histories, and the information is stored across a network of computers instead of on a single server. In order to improve the application of the cyber-insurance, in this research, we propose a new framework to insure a cyber-product using the blockchain technology. First, a vendor initiates a request for insuring a cyber-product, then the interested insurers participate in a sealed-bid auction by bidding their preferred premium for the insurance service. The auction winners will be selected as the insurers, and they receive tokens in return of their obligations. In the case of an indemnity request, the auditor checks the validity of a request, then calls the claim function to retrieve the corresponding amount from the funds collected from the insurers. Furthermore, we propose a new method to implement a sealed-bid auction for the insurance crowdfunding in smart contract.
Mark C. Ballandies, Marcus M. Dapp, Evangelos Pournaras
More than 1000 distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems raising $600 billion in investment in 2016 feature the unprecedented and disruptive potential of blockchain technology. A systematic and data-driven analysis, comparison and rigorous evaluation of the different design choices of distributed ledgers and their implications is a challenge. The rapidly evolving nature of the blockchain landscape hinders reaching a common understanding of the techno-socio-economic design space of distributed ledgers and the cryptoeconomies they support. To fill this gap, this paper makes the following contributions: (i) A conceptual architecture of DLT systems with which (ii) a taxonomy is designed and (iii) a rigorous classification of DLT systems is made using real-world data and wisdom of the crowd. (iv) A DLT design guideline is the end result of applying machine learning methodologies on the classification data. Compared to related work and as defined in earlier taxonomy theory, the proposed taxonomy is highly comprehensive, robust, explanatory and extensible. The findings of this paper can provide new insights and better understanding of the key design choices evolving the modeling complexity of DLT systems, while identifying opportunities for new research contributions and business innovation. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10586-021-03256-w.
Italian Abstract: Blockchain puo significare anche riorganizzazione dei sistemi di sicurezza sociale. Di qui l'idea di approfondire l'applicazione possibile della blockchain a alcuni istituti previdenziali, tra cui il distacco europeo, l'invalidita e il REI, per definire il quadro delle potenzialita e delle criticita. Nel saggio si studia anche il concetto di smart contract.
English Abstract: Blockchain technologies and smart contracts can be applied to social security systems. The paper is aimed at investigating the possible social fields of such application, the legal consequences, the critical points. Posting and invalidity benefits regimes are examined in light of the possible application of blockchain.
Fadhlan Hafizhelmi Kamaruzaman, Ahmad Ihsan Mohd Yassin, Azlee Zabidi, Fadhlan Hafizhelmi Kamaru Zaman · 7 authors
In recent years, an individual under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto devised a revolutionary technology called blockchain as the engine behind the first decentralized virtual currency called Bitcoin. A radical concept departing from government-centric controlled currencies, Bitcoin has emerged as a disruptive technology with the power to revolutionize business and its processes. Advantages of the blockchain include decentralized control, immutability, elimination of central authority and solution of concurrency problems in traditional databases. Leveraging on the advantages of blockchain technology defined above, this paper discusses the potential application of blockchain technology for storage of Islamic marriage certificates. Marriage certificates are documents issued to couples to legally recognize their marriage. Due to its paper-based nature, there is significant risk for them to be forged or frauded. These issues can be addressed effective using blockchain. The proposed application was implemented using smart contracts on a simulated Ethereum platform. A smart contract is designed to execute automatically under certain predefined conditions. The use of smart contracts eliminate manipulation by a single party. In addition, the immutable concept of blockchain ensures that data integrity is always preserved, greatly reducing the risk of fraud. Â
Centered on the value of listed banks in investment management, this article proposes an automatic pattern recognition value system based on blockchain. It will be of great value for investors to reasonably estimate the stock value of listed banks. In this way, the investors will make a better investment decision, which will realize the rational allocation of social resources. The new value system includes three layers: (a) production of value; (b) record of value; (c) assessment of value. In the framework, we encapsulate the valuable business processes of listed banks through smart contracts. The cryptographic algorithms and token mechanism ensure the normal operation of the transaction. We record the value of listed banks by distributed ledger technology. Consensus mechanism verifies the validity of records. Meanwhile, the token mechanism completes the value transfer and acts as an incentive measure for network node accounting. Finally, we evaluate the value of listed banks from integration, optimization, control, and value-added satisfaction services. Therefore, the new value system can correctly guide investors in making a rational investment, which will increase investment returns and ultimately realize the rational allocation of social resources.
A blockchain-based smart contract or a "smart contract" for short, is a computer program intended to digitally facilitate the negotiation or contractual terms directly between users when certain conditions are met. With the advance in blockchain technology, smart contracts are being used to serve a wide range of purposes ranging from self-managed identities on public blockchains to automating business collaboration on permissioned blockchains. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of smart contracts with a focus on existing applications and challenges they face.
The advent of Blockchain Technology allows us to develop a Decentralized Application called DApp on peer-to-peer network, which can harden changes of contracts in the DApp and denial of service (DoS) attacks to the DApp. We reengineer an App to a DApp allowing smart contracts, and compare the given legacy App and the target DApp. We conclude that DApp is not a separate application but a complementary application of the current App by comparing their architectures.
François Verdier, Primavera De Filippi, Frédéric Mallet, Philippe Collet · 12 authors
Innovative services induced by blockchain technologies have social, economical, legal and technical impacts. For this reason, the project smart Internet of Things (IoT) for mobility has adopted a transdisciplinary scientific approach to investigate how blockchain technology would enhance confidence in IoT based services. More precisely, it focuses on services whose systems are decentralized, mainly based on the adoption of the execution of Smart Contracts (intelligent contracts), the whole being really adaptable to the rising generation of IoT. The study targets the social impacts of smart contracts’ adoption within IoT. Its aim is to design a smart contract based on a well understanding of its social acceptance and its legal context and prerogatives. In this paper, it is presented the context, the social study, the use cases targeted and finally first analysis
Anton Fedosov, Agon Bexheti, Egor Ermolaev, Marc Langheinrich
Networked digital sharing economy services enable the effective and efficient sharing of vehicles, housing, and everyday objects. However, contemporary online sharing platforms face several challenges related to the establishment of trust among peers, as well difficulties to deal with the growing number of intermediaries (e.g., payment, insurance) needed to ensure an adequate service delivery. We designed and developed "Just Share It" (JSI), an interactive system that enables the sharing of personal physical possessions (e.g., power tools, toys, sports gear) by directly connecting lenders and borrowers, as peers, through mobile technology. The JSI system utilizes a blockchain ledger and smart contracting technologies to improve peer trust and limit the number of required intermediaries, respectively. In this submission, we briefly review emergent challenges in this space, describe the JSI prototype system and its trust model, and reflect on future architectural opportunities for an eventual "in the wild" deployment.