We introduce economic research on blockchains and its recent advances. In particular, we highlight the (i) unifying concepts on blockchain as a decentralized consensus and its core benefits, (ii) equilibrium characterizations and allegedly irreducible tensions among consensus formation, decentralization, and scalability, (iii) major issues including network security, overconcentration, energy consumption and sustainability, adoption, multi-party computation and encryption, smart contracting, and information distribution and aggregation, and (iv) future directions concerning blockchains and their applications such as informational and agency issues, as well as game-theoretical and mechanism design approaches to blockchain protocols.
Jan 1, 2019·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that challenges existing business models and theories by shifting the trust from institutions towards algorithms. However, the number of successfully developed blockchain-based systems remains low. This points towards a research gap between blockchain applications and technical blockchain characteristics. We answer the research question: What application areas fit blockchains with what technical characteristics? We develop a taxonomy, which comprises six blockchain application areas that are classified across eight technical dimensions. We demonstrate the utility of the taxonomy on ninety-nine blockchain-based systems. We contribute to the scientific literature by delimiting blockchain application areas, identifying new technical dimensions, and linking application and technical knowledge on blockchain to guide development of blockchain-based systems. For practitioners, we present an overview of current blockchain-based systems.
The blockchain is still new and unfamiliar. But blockchain appears to shake an entire technology innovation system. Blockchain is rapidly drawing attention in that it will be able to fundamentally revolutionize industry ecosystem. While cryptocurrency transactions and market capitalization have been popular in mass media, several platform operators in non-cryptocurrency areas such as jewelry, social networks, and entertainment, are also moving to introduce blockchain technology in full swing. In this brief note, we intend to present integrated theoretical strands to summarize various prospects for blockchain technology. Further, we want to provide a reflection as to whether this new technology gives opportunities, challenges, or risks to future society. Particularly, we point out one of its alternative and promising adoption that gives way to new forms of decentralized and autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Shantanu Kumar Rahut, Razwan Ahmed Tanvir, Sharfi Rahman, Shamim Akhter
In general, peer reviewing is known as an inspection of a work that is completed by one or more qualified people from the same profession and from the relevant field to make the work more error-free, readable, presentable, and adjustable according to the pre-published requirements and also considered as the primary metric for publishing a research paper, accepting research grants, or selecting award nominees. However, many recent publications are pointing to the biasness and mistreatment in the peer-review process. Thus, the scientific community is involved to generate ideas to advance the reviewing process including standardizing procedures and protocols, blind and electronic reviewing, rigorous methods in reviewer selection, rewarding reviewers, providing detailed feedback or checklist to reviewers, etc. In this chapter, the authors propose a decentralized and anonymous scientific peer-reviewing system using blockchain technology. This system will integrate all the above concern issues and eliminate the bias or trust issues interconnected with the peer-reviewing process.
Nikos Fotiou, Vasilios A. Siris, Spyros Voulgaris, George C. Polyzos · 5 authors
We address the limitations of existing information security solutions when applied to the cyber-physical world. In particular, we consider the case of Internet of Things (IoT) actuation and we argue that it is hard to secure such a process. To this end, we propose a "damage control" approach, where service time is divided into slots and users perform microservice transactions, paying essentially in advance for each one, corresponding to one service slot. Under these circumstances, in the case of service disruption, a user, in the worst case, may lose the amount of money that corresponds to a single micro-service transaction in a single time slot. We implement our solution by leveraging blockchain-based smart contracts, off-chain payments, and one-time Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) passwords. Our solution supports IoT devices with limited processing capabilities and which are not necessarily connected to the Internet. Moreover, with our solution, IoT devices do not interact directly with the blockchain. In fact, they are oblivious to the use of blockchain technology. They do not store any usersensitive information, neither are payments made to or is value stored on the devices.
The global crypto marketplace has an impact on the functioning of financial markets and has huge implications for entire economies. The article discusses the functioning of the global cryptocurrency market, and based on the analysis of the history of the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, an attempt was made to determine possible development prospects. The aim of the article is to assess the development of the current crypto marketplace in the world and to present possible development prospects. The foresight method was used to implement the research objective, in particular trend analysis (quantitative data) and discrete event system (qualitative and expert data). This allows us to learn about the regularity of the cryptocurrencies in the sphere of investment management from the investors' point of view and the creation of an appropriate legal framework by the supervisory authorities and ensuring the social security of the financial system.
Can social movements mobilize market devices to challenge the politicalâeconomic order? Focusing on Bitcoin, we argue that an effective anti-state market device needs to be durably âcounterearmarkedâ, to use Viviana Zelizerâs term, with radical meaning. This durability, however, requires that the movement build alliances with holders of political and economic power who also embrace the deviceâs radical meaning, lest those actors reformat the device to suit their purposes. To make this case, we locate Bitcoinâs radical origins in a performative project built on elements of Austrian monetary theory. We then track Bitcoinâs dual transformation between 2009 and 2014: the anti-state movement gave way to a market featuring big financial players, and the Internal Revenue Service officially redefined the bitcoin currency as property. Understanding this dual transformation requires joining Zelizerian conceptions of money with theories of markets-and-movements on the one hand, and symbolic-cultural conceptions of the classificatory state on the other.
Disorientation and instability characterize the globalized context in which the relations of corporate governance are carried out today. Suffocated by the huge numerical and qualitative dimension of data to be analysed, companies need organizational systems and tools that allow them to interface with this reality. Through the creation of decentralized and more efficient systems able to process information at a higher speed than any human, Blockchain and artificial intelligence are the answer to these renewal requests. This paper aims to analyse the possible implications of the adoption of these technologies within the corporate governance relations, supporting how they can constitute effective and necessary support to the current organizational systems and, at the same time, how they are not yet able to replace them completely. Such a hypothesis would lead to the constitution of information oligarchies, would expose the shareholders to AIâs errors or manipulations by removing any management responsibility and, ultimately, to the creation of autonomous markets driven exclusively by economic purposes of the IT protocols that constitute them
Now that you have seen how Smart Contract works and how to interact with them through the use of the web3.js APIs, it is now a good time to explore an application from end to end â from the Smart Contract to the front end, and perhaps give you some ideas for building your own decentralized applications.
Our study on smart contracts, self-executing agreements based on blockchain technology, can be placed in the field of inquiry within law and economics of contracts which explores new modes of contract enforcement as sources of market creation. We lay the foundations by characterising contract enforcement and trust mechanisms underlying contracts. Considering that trust reduces risks in economic exchange, we explain how the particular trust mechanism underlying smart contractsâ enforcement (no-party trust) provides opportunities for creating new markets and changing existing ones. We explore, among other things, whether using smart contracts could be a path to increasing the autonomy of consumers and offering a solution for democratising trade.
The paper considers the technical and legal challenges impacting recent proposals for healthcare applications of blockchain and smart contracts. Healthcare blockchain data and actors are rather different to cryptocurrency data and actors, resulting in a different emphasis on blockchain features. Technical issues with healthcare blockchain implementation and trust are considered, as well as a variety of potential legal issues. Conclusions and recommendations are proposed for open source and standardization efforts to reduce technical and legal risks for healthcare blockchains and smart contracts.
Cryptocurrencies employ different consensus protocols to verify transactions. While the Proof-of-Work consensus protocol is the most energy consuming protocol, Proof-of-Stake and Hybrid consensus protocols have been introduced which consume considerably less energy. We employ portfolio analysis to explore whether energy is a fundamental economic factor affecting cryptocurrency prices. Surprisingly, our results suggest that, on average, cryptocurrencies employing Proof-of-Work consensus protocols do not generate returns that are significantly different from those that incorporate Proof-of-Stake consensus protocols. Even more surprising is that our results show that cryptocurrencies that incorporate Hybrid consensus protocols generated significantly higher average return than the other groups. A possible explanation for that phenomenon may be that investorsâ demand for cryptocurrencies that they perceive as offering more trust is larger than for those that carry potential risks of blockchain manipulation.
If you have been following the previous chapters, you should now have a pretty good understanding of Ethereum Smart Contracts and how to interact with them through the web3.js APIs.
In the previous chapter, you saw how to use web3.js to interact with your deployed Smart Contract. Using web3.js, you were able to connect to an Ethereum node (through MetaMask, or directly to an Ethereum node such as Ganache running locally on your computer). Using the document notarizer example, you were able to
Henry Kim, Marek Laskowski, Michael Zargham, Hjalmar Turesson · 6 authors
The study of setting up cryptocurrency incentive mechanisms and operationalizing governance is called token economics. Given the US$250 billion market cap for cryptocurrencies, there is compelling need to investigate it. In this article, we present facets of the token engineering process for a Swiss blockchain startup.