Blockchain Papers

Daniela Di Sabato

No abstract is available for this record.

Bingqing Xia, Dongyao Ji, Gang Yao

No abstract is available for this record.

Thomas Osterland, Thomas Rose

S.18-19

Robert Leonhard

No abstract is available for this record.

Anastasia Olegovna Barinova, Sergey Zapechnikov

Currently, business processes become more and more complicated. Data used in these processes circulates mainly through the digital communications. Due to these conditions some kind of electronic contracts for business deals becomes necessary. Smart contracts should describe a set of conditions, implemented through some events in the real world and digital systems. The most important requirement for this technology is privacy ensuring. In this work we have explored existing projects of privacy-preserving smart contracts, defined comparison criteria, compared projects and made a conclusion about options required for smart contract frameworks.

Christopher Burks

No abstract is available for this record.

Zhengjun Liu, Hui Zhao, Wen Chen, Xiaochun Cao · 8 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Efpraxia D. Zamani, Ioannis Babatsikos

In 2008, following the outbreak of the global financial crisis, a new trading system emerged that was made possible by cryptographically-produced currencies. Among them, the most popular digital cryptocurrency is undoubtedly the Bitcoin. This alternative way of trading quickly captured the interest of both businesses and consumers. Combined with a general lack of confidence towards financial institutions, central governments, and the effect of capital controls imposed across several countries, Bitcoins begun being used extensively for funds transfer across borders and general payments. However, it is unclear whether the use of Bitcoins is extensive enough so as to lead to complete or partial disintermediation of monetary transactions, and whether users understand how the technology works and what are the inherit risks of this alternative payment mechanism. This paper addresses these questions through a survey-based study, conducted within the Greek context, where capital controls are still active and awareness regarding cryptocurrencies seems to be on the rise. Our findings show that despite that end-users of Bitcoin are somewhat concerned with regards to security issues, they are nevertheless interested in its use for identifying new business opportunities and bypassing residencybased measures, such as capital controls.

Alessandro Piccolo

This master thesis explores how blockchain technologies can be utilized within the financial sector with focus on how to store both private and public information on the blockchain. The capital market is looking into ways of cutting down administrative work through streamlining the financial process by using blockchain technologies. Public key encryption together with hash functions and a consensus mechanism make up the basis for creating a shared trustless database system. The thesis was conducted by extensive research concerning cryptographic topics, and a literature study was made to compare existing solutions. This was done in order to come up with a new design which suggests how to utilize blockchain technologies in order to create private transactions. The design solves issues regarding key management and how to handle both private and public information on the blockchain. The proposed design is an extension of Visigon's existing permissioned blockchain, and it introduces different roles within the peer to peer network as well as a concept of having regulating nodes that together with the involved bank's nodes handle the process of private transactions. Private transactions are encrypted by using symmetric keys and thereafter recorded on the blockchain. In conclusion blockchain technology might not be the most suitable database system for banks to keep transactions private. Future solutions should consider the best attributes of blockchain technologies and create a new system with the single purpose of being a tool for the financial market.

Ethan Kane

No abstract is available for this record.

A Outchakoucht H Es-Samaali, Nn Van, R Nakagawa S Kodama

No abstract is available for this record.

Nicolas Herbaut, Nicolas Negru

The constant rise of over-the-top video consumption nowadays challenges the current Internet architecture. In this article, we propose a user-centric approach that helps the necessary reshaping of the content delivery ecosystem. We study how blockchain-powered smart contracts and network service chaining can be exploited to support such novel collaboration schemes. Finally, our findings suggest that the proposed solution can complement existing technologies by supporting a wide range of business cases while at the same time significantly reducing costs.

Lockheed Martin, Dallas, TX, USA, Jeff Daniel, Arman Sargolzaei, Mohammed Abdelghani · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Nicholas Jewkowicz

This paper examines the current state of smart homes and proposes an alternative model based on biomimicry. It is argued that a house that is modeled on a basic living organism will be more efficient for the inhabitants, and more effective to insulate them from the unpredictable effects of climate change in the near future. By using an organism as a model, the house will be able to self-organize its systems, and adapt to both its inhabitants as well as environmental perturbations. This can be accomplished with the use of sensors and actuators in a decentralized configuration with artificial life programming. Since organisms are autonomous by definition, off-grid housing systems are infused to create a new housing model that is zero-emission, zerowaste, and can serve as a model for other forms of infrastructure at greater scales.

Authors unavailable

IntroductionDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, originally published in 1975, provided a genealogical analysis of prison as a model for disciplinary society, focusing on fundamental shift from sovereign disciplinary power. This new kind of that displaces liberal juridico-political theory of sovereignty also marks modernity in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is historically witnessed by demise of torture as a public spectacle and rise of a legal-scientific complex and its continuous effects as a distributed form of public power. exposed disciplinary as birth of humane sciences focused on greater humanity, reform and humanization of penalties that obscured workings of as a set of techniques for coercion of individuals operating directly on training of body. By appealing Bentham's panopticum also analyzed dominant institutions of prison, military, school, and factory in terms of disciplinary technologies that at once house, compartmentalize, distribute, normalize, and individualize bodies in creation of modern subjects. The carceral archipelago makes these penitentiary techniques central disciplinary society. In Society Must be Defended (and later works) given as a series of lectures in 1976 confirms his aim discuss theory of right in terms of a methodology that does not analyze as rule-governed and legitimate forms of with a single center but to understand by looking at it extremities (p. 27) where it operates in institutions as capillary where it transgresses rules of right and is embodied in techniques and exercised in networks - as a microphysics of power. Disciplinary was necessary correlate of industrial capitalism and cannot be justified in terms of juridical theory of sovereignty. Against Hobbes and Leviathan model of State he goes on develop his conception of biopower as power over life - from as body man as species - and correct his earlier overemphasis on disciplinary power.Gilles Deleuze (1992) comments: Foucault located disciplinary in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their height at outset of twentieth. They initiate organization of vast spaces of enclosure. He acknowledges Foucault's brilliant analysis of institutions of but also comments how recognizes that just as disciplinary succeeded of sovereignty, so too of control began replace disciplinary as all spaces of enclosure experienced a generalized crisis due cybernetic epistemology that developed in post-war period. Deleuze (1992), by reference William Burroughs, goes on name of control as emerging form of society replacing disciplinary where open rather than closed forms of enclosure support a free-floating logic of modulation based on dominance of computers that opens schools and other institutions directly market forces of global capitalism. I will argue that within societies of control, if we are adopt Deleuze's term, or what I prefer call the epoch of digital reason, education rather than prison becomes primary model institution of social control that breaks mold of spatial enclosure of classroom or lecture hall, adopt different forms of digital logic that turn classroom and lecture hall inside out. The spatial enclosure becomes spatialized in a different manner as loose, scaleable and connected networks that take on global proportion that in every way exceeds State and its territory. This process of digital logic opening up spaces of enclosure provides a very different institutional setting, much decentralized and autonomous within network but linked in such a way that constitutes a system for data harvest of all behavioral characteristics. …

Shachar Lovett, Jiapeng Zhang

No abstract is available for this record.

Sean Bowe, Ariel Gabizon, Matthew Green

Recent efficient constructions of zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs), require a setup phase in which a common-reference string (CRS) with a certain structure is generated. This CRS is sometimes referred to as the public parameters of the system, and is used for constructing and verifying proofs. A drawback of these constructions is that whomever runs the setup phase subsequently possesses trapdoor information enabling them to produce fraudulent pseudoproofs.

Anna Zhu

<p>Background </p><p> Human resources for health are crucial for health system strengthening and achieving sustainable development goals and universal health coverage, but the shortage and maldistribution of health workers have been critical concerns in the Asia Pacific region. This study aimed to identify the key interventions on attracting and retaining rural health workers, understand their management structure, examine the effectiveness and analyze the contexts in the Asia Pacific region.</p><p>Methods </p><p> This mixed-method study used systematic review and country case studies to synthesize and analyze the available data. A systematic review on attraction and retention of rural health workers in the Asia Pacific region was conducted. Thirty-five, fourteen and nineteen studies were included for the interventions and their management structure, effectiveness and contexts, respectively. In-depth interviews of twenty-two key informants and gray literature recommended from the key informants in China, Vietnam and Cambodia were used to gather information for the country case studies. Narrative synthesis was applied to review and synthesize the extracted data from the systematic review and qualitative analysis using Nvivo 11 was conducted for the interviews.</p><p>Results </p><p> Five categories of interventions, involving education, regulation, financial incentives, personal and professional support and bundled interventions were implemented to attract and retain rural health workers in the Asia Pacific region. Regulatory interventions, such as MRBS, task shifting and compulsory rural services, were the key interventions reported in the systematic review. Although financial incentives were scarce in the systematic review, they were the key strategies in the country case studies of China, Vietnam and Cambodia. Asian Pacific countries also had their distinctive interventions, such as a system of compulsory rural services in Thailand, training on community health workers in Afghanistan, and a government midwifery incentive scheme in Cambodia. Geographically, the Pacific island countries were neglected. </p><p> Six categories of management structure of implementation were summarized. Decentralization from the central to the regional government was the dominant management structure. The regional government was responsible for program implementation in the decentralized programs, program development and implementation in the regional initiatives, which were more likely to be discovered in the countries and regions with strong economies. International donors were significant stakeholders for the low-income and post-conflict countries through providing financial and technical assistance. Several challenges emerged during implementation, including lack of rural eligible candidates, low and unsustainable financial incentives, complicated recruitment, poor management and deployment of HRH.</p><p> Although the majority of interventions lacked rigorous effectiveness evaluation or were without evaluation, most evaluated interventions demonstrated effectiveness in attracting and retaining rural health professionals. Some of the interventions also reported effectiveness in expanding health service coverage and improving health status. The regulatory interventions seemed to be more effective in attracting and retaining rural health workers through administrative and legislative enforcement. Bundled interventions were expected to be more effective and be more often recommended by the researchers and interviewees. </p><p> Various contexts, including political, economic and social factors and health system related issues, directly and indirectly impacted the attraction and retention of rural health workers. The political issues, economic development and social culture influenced rural HRH strengthening at the macro level while the health system reform pulled or pushed rural health workers. The promotion of rural health workers to be civil servants in Vietnam and Cambodia was a good motivation for rural health workers. The post mechanism in China, abolition of the referral system and increasing financial autonomy in the hospitals in Vietnam, the popular private sector, limited physical and human resources all served to push the health workers out of rural positions.</p><p>Conclusion </p><p> Due to great variation in economic development, Asian Pacific countries implemented three different patterns of interventions: 1) comprehensive packages in the high-income countries; 2) one or two categories of interventions in the low- and middle-income countries; and 3) training of community health workers in the post-conflict countries. Economic variation was also reflected in the differences of the management structure of implementation. The upper-middle- and high-income countries were likely to initiate regional interventions while the low-income countries partly relied on donations for HRH development and implementation, especially for the post-conflict countries. Although decentralization was widely applied to implementation, its implications were neglected and unclear. Based on the exclusive mechanism, effectiveness of each category of interventions varied. However, the regulatory interventions seemed be better. The socio-economic development significantly influenced interventions on attracting and retaining rural health workers. Rural HRH strengthening required strong economic support. Health financing reform for universal health coverage did impact the capacity building of rural health workforce. Further research was needed.</p>

Marc Sel, Henning Diedrich, Sander Demeester, Harald Stieber

This paper explains the main features of and motivation for the “report once” demonstrator1 shown at the 2017 Data For Policy conference. It shows how Ethereum2 smart contracts, based on the semantics and algorithmic representations defined in ACTUS3 can implement “digital doppelgängers” of financial contracts. <br> <br> The implementation makes use of a private4 Ethereum blockchain, with smart contracts written in Solidity.5 The limitations of using ACTUS in a semi real-time scenario are explored, as well as how to overcome these limitations. <br> <br> The major innovation, visualized by the demonstrator, is that compliance reports can be generated in semi realtime, using the information present in the “digital doppelgängers”, residing in the blockchain. <br> <br> The demonstrator supports various use cases, illustrated through the narration of stories. In these stories, Alice, Bob and Eve are contracting parties, Romeo acts as regulator, and the narrator tells the stories. The stories cover trading a Bond, trading an Interest Rate Swap (IRS), the defaulting of a party (i.e. a payment stop), and various types of regulatory reports. <br>

Oleksii Drozd, Yaroslav Lazur, Ruslan Serbin

The aim of this article is to study the theoretical, methodological, and legal possibilities of application of certain types of legal responsibility to the relations, which are connected with cryptocurrency (bitcoin). Some types of liability in the field of cryptocurrency relations make the subject of the study. Methodology. The research is based on a comparison of legal regulation of the sphere of cryptocurrency in Ukraine and in foreign countries. Advantages and disadvantages of different modes of cryptocurrency turnover are determined: from direct prohibition to granting the status of the official payment system. It is made on the basis of the analysis of peculiarities of the circulation of virtual money in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, China, the Russian Federation, Bolivia, Ecuador, Thailand, Vietnam, the USA, Japan, Spain, and some other countries. On the basis of the comparative legal study of certain provisions of the civil, administrative, tort, and criminal legislation of Ukraine, the possibilities and limits of the application of certain types of legal responsibility to violations in the field of cryptocurrency are determined. The results of the comparative legal study have shown that, unlike most foreign countries, in Ukraine, there is no legislative consolidation of the legal status of the virtual currency. In this regard, today in the national legislation, there are no direct rules that would predict the occurrence of administrative, criminal or civil liability for the offenses in the field of cryptocurrency relations. Practical impact. Since guarantees of compulsory restoration or protection of violated law play an important role in the legal regulation of any social relations, the proper legislative regulation of public relations in the sphere of crypto currency circulation is an urgent problem today, including with the help of establishing liability for the offenses in this field. Correlation/Authenticity. Comparative and legal research of legal regulation of the sphere of crypto currency gives us a better understanding of the most promising directions of development of administrative, criminal, and civil liability in this field.

Antonio T. F. Lou, Eldon Y. Li

Financial technology (FinTech) is the new business model and technology which aims to compete with traditional financial services and blockchain is one of most famous technology use of FinTech. Blockchain is a type of distributed, electronic database (ledger) which can hold any information (e.g. records, events, transactions) and can set rules on how this information is updated. The most well-known application of blockchain is bitcoin, which is a kind of cryptocurrencies. But it can also be used in many other financial and commercial applications. A prominent example is smart contracts, for instance as offered in Ethereum. A contract can execute a transfer when certain events happen, such as payment of a security deposit, while the correct execution is enforced by the consensus protocol. The purpose of this paper is to explore the research and application landscape of blockchain technology acceptance by following a more comprehensive approach to address blockchain technology adoption. This research is to propose a unified model integrating Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) model and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to investigate continuance intention to adopt blockchain technology.

V. S. Dhillon, David Metcalf, Max Hooper

In Chapter 5 , we discussed the concept of decentralized organizations and the modus operandi of a DAO. Here, we want to highlight a historic moment leading to the creation of the first DAO, and how it eventually got hacked. Our discussion begins with a fresh perspective on decentralized organizations from Buterin, and leads into the story of Slock.it, the company at the heart of the DAO revolution. Then, we present some code that made The DAO dysfunctional: pieces of the smart contract relevant to the vulnerability, the conditions that allowed repetitive withdrawals from The DAO, and the exploit itself. We conclude the chapter by talking about the consequences of this hack: the debate about hard versus soft forks, and the creation of Ethereum Classic.

Markus Klems, Jacob Eberhardt, Stefan Tai, Steffen Härtlein · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Chris Reed, Uma M Sathyanarayan, Shuhui Ruan, Justine K. Collins

Blockchain technology allows the creation of distributed ledgers. These distribute control among the players rather than requiring a centralized database, and so can reduce costs and speed-up transactions. However, when it is used for assets which exist outside the blockchain itself, an unmodified adoption of the technology would bypass legal and regulatory requirements which, for these kinds of assets, cannot be bypassed without fundamental change to the law. Building those requirements into any blockchain-based system introduces features which are not necessary for performing its core functions, and we call these ‘legal impurities’. The most important legal impurities required are those relating to identification of the parties, and introducing the ability of a trusted third party to make modifications to the ledger. Not only does introducing these legal impurities make fundamental changes to the concept behind blockchain, but it is also essential that they are implemented in ways which do not threaten the integrity of the blockchain as evidence. This article has been produced by members of the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre, a collaboration between the Cloud Legal Project, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London and the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. The authors are grateful to members of the MCCRC team and to attendees at the fourth Annual MCCRC Symposium (Windsor, September 2017) for helpful comments and to Microsoft for the generous financial support that has made this project possible. Responsibility for views expressed, however, remain with the authors.