The increasingly sophisticated environment in which attackers operate makes software security an even greater challenge in open-source projects, where malicious packages are prevalent. Static analysis tools, such as Malcontent, are highly useful but are often incapable of dealing with obfuscated malware. Such situations lead to an unreasonably high rate of false positives. This paper highlights that dynamic analysis, rather than static analysis, provides greater insight but is also more resource-intensive for understanding software behaviour during execution. In this study, we enhance a dynamic analysis tool, package-analysis, to capture key runtime behaviours, including commands executed, files accessed, and network communications. This modification enables the use of container sandboxing technologies, such as gVisor, to analyse potentially malicious packages without significantly compromising the host system.
Bambang Leo Handoko, Arta Moro Sundjaja, Dezie Leonarda Warganegara
The phenomenon of resistance to blockchain technology adoption as an underlying distributed ledger technology independent of cryptocurrency has been widely studied in institutional and auditing contexts, but relatively little attention has been given to its rejection among retail investors. While blockchain is the foundation of cryptocurrencies, paradoxically, some investors exhibit hesitation or resistance toward its broader applications due to perceived risks, uncertainty, and psychological barriers. This paper adapts Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) to investigate resistance to blockchain among cryptocurrency investors. The research employed a descriptive quantitative approach using primary data collected through questionnaires distributed to auditors working in various public accounting firms. The data were analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling technique with the Partial Least Squares (SEM-PLS) method to test the hypothesized relationships. The findings highlight that inertia, perceived susceptibility to threats, and threat severity significantly influence resistance. In contrast, threat of data ownership and switching costs appear to have weaker effects. Understanding these barriers is essential for designing better adoption strategies and building investor trust in blockchain ecosystems. Beyond its empirical findings, this study extends IRT by contextualizing psychological and functional barriers within cryptocurrency investment behavior, integrating behavioral finance and technology resistance perspectives.
This paper investigates the strategic role of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in transforming Africa's financial landscape. It argues that a blockchain-based architecture is a critical tool for addressing two of the continent's most pressing economic challenges: inefficient cross-border payments and the erosion of monetary sovereignty from stablecoin adoption. The analysis moves beyond a domestic retail CBDC model to propose a "Pan-African Payment CBDC Network." This framework leverages a permissioned distributed ledger (DLT) to enable instant, low-cost, and transparent multi-currency settlements, directly supporting the goals of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The paper further details how a sovereign digital currency can defend monetary policy by providing a safe digital alternative to stablecoins, improving policy transmission, and reinforcing the national currency as the primary unit of account. Finally, it critically examines the implementation challenges—including financial disintermediation, technical infrastructure, and political coordination—and offers a phased, collaborative roadmap for achieving regional economic resilience and sovereignty through digital currency innovation.
Zuroqi Mubarok, Himsar Silaban, Pandji Sukmana, T. Herry Rachmatsyah
This study examines the evolution and current challenges of Islamic education policy in Indonesia through qualitative document analysis, a PRISMA guided systematic review, and bibliometric mapping. Legal and regulatory texts, including Law No. 20 of 2003 (SISDIKNAS) and Ministry of Religious Affairs reports, were analyzed using the READ framework to trace thematic shifts. The review targeted 2021-2025 peer-reviewed literature on curriculum, financing, governance, and educator professionalism, with screening per PRISMA. Bibliometrics identified influential works and collaboration patterns. Findings show a shift from centralized control to decentralized, locally adaptive policy. Innovations include integrated curricula, sharia-compliant financing, and strengthened teacher development, yet disparities in administrative capacity and resource allocation persist, yielding uneven quality assurance. The study argues that harmonizing national standards with regional contexts, enhancing inter-ministerial coordination, and embedding maqasid al-Shariah principles are pivotal for equity and accountability. Future research should evaluate digital governance and financing models for scalability and sustained impact. Keywords: Islamic education policy, Qualitative document analysis, PRISMA, Bibliometrics, Curriculum
Grounded into Innovation Diffusion Theory and Technology Acceptance Model, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of AI-powered financial services on financial access in the Saudi Arabian fintech sector. To achieve this aim, the research employed SEM analysis on the collected data from 194employees working in the departments related to AI-based services, staff members of fintech firms, and owners of small enterprises who use digital financial solutions in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam. The results reveal that AI-based robo-advisory platforms, fraud detection, and credit scoring servicessignificantly improved financial access demonstrating that AI adoption in financial services can play a transformative role in promoting inclusion and reducing barriers for underserved populations whereas AI-based personalized banking solutions showed insignificant impact suggesting that while personalization may enhance user satisfaction or loyalty, it does not directly translate into increased access to financial services. In practical terms, the findings imply that fintech companies and financial institutions should prioritize AI-enabled services as a means of expanding access to professional financial advice which requiresa multi-stakeholder approach, where fintech firms, regulators, and policymakers collaborate to maximize the benefits of AI-powered financial services while minimizing associated risks. Furtherresearch should be carried out adopting longitudinal design and mixed methodology to study the role of emerging technologies such as blockchain-based identity verification, AI-driven insurance, or decentralized finance platforms on financial access.
This work proves a formal impossibility theorem stating that no observable behavioral or biometric signal can serve as a cryptographic secret under standard semantic security notions (IND-CPA / IND-CCA), in any computational model admitting machine learning approximation and side-channel observability. The result holds in classical, post-quantum, and hybrid adversarial models. We further derive strict architectural consequences for biometric authentication, fuzzy extractors, and behavioral identification systems, showing that such signals may only function as zero-knowledge liveness proofs, not as entropy sources for cryptographic key material.
R. Krishnan, A.G. Samuelson, Emily Yao, Ethan Cecchetti
Non-Interactive Zero Knowledge (NIZK) proofs, such as zkSNARKS, let one prove knowledge of private data without revealing it or interacting with a verifier. While existing tooling focuses on specifying the predicate to be proven, real-world applications optimize predicate definitions to minimize proof generation overhead, but must correspondingly transform predicate inputs. Implementing these two steps separately duplicates logic that must precisely match to avoid catastrophic security flaws. We address this shortcoming with zkStruDul, a language that unifies input transformations and predicate definitions into a single combined abstraction from which a compiler can project both procedures, eliminating duplicate code and problematic mismatches. zkStruDul provides a high-level abstraction to layer on top of existing NIZK technology and supports important features like recursive proofs. We provide a source-level semantics and prove its behavior is identical to the projected semantics, allowing straightforward standard reasoning.
Abstract Distributed Software Define Network (DSDN) offers to eliminate the single point of failure present in the centralized SDN controller. The main concept is to have numerous controllers that can share the burden on the network, and one controller can take over another controller when it breaks. In this study, we work on an Opendaylight-based completely distributed system to deal with issues of the controller's central processing unit (CPU) consumption being uneven. Every controller administers its own domain therefore sharing the burden across the network's controllers. To update the flow rules and broadcast new rules to all the controllers at once, maintaining the consistency of the controller's rule set, we create an application ledger that maintains a distributed ledger. Results demonstrate that, in addition to ensuring the uniformity of inventory shards across all controllers in the system, our work presented an increase with throughput reaching 40% and the bandwidth of controller's communication is less with almost 31%.
The paper applies the Quantum Measurement Units (QMU) ledger and the Aether Physics Model (APM) to a curated set of magnetic anisotropy materials in order to test whether the substrate curl of the aether unit has observable consequences at the materials level. In the APM, the magnetic sector is organized around the Aether-unit curl\[\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{APM}} = \frac{{e_\mathrm{emax}}^{2}}{m_{e}\,\lambda_{C}},\]which quantifies torsional stiffness of distributed charge at the geometric scale set by the electron mass $m_{e}$ and Compton wavelength $\lambda_{C}$. Curl enters the canonical aether ledger through\[A_{u}\,\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{APM}} = {F_q}^{2}\,{\lambda_C}^{2},\]linking the rotating magnetic field stiffness $A_{u}$ to the intrinsic torsional response ${F_q}^{2}\,{\lambda_C}^{2}$ of the substrate. Starting from legacy anisotropy fields $H_{k}^{\mathrm{legacy}}$ and remanent fields $B_{r}^{\mathrm{legacy}}$, the article uses the charge-conversion factor (CCF) rules for singular-to-distributed charge to construct a QMU curl estimator,\[\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{mat}}^{\mathrm{QMU}} = \frac{H_{k}^{\mathrm{QMU}}}{B_{r}^{\mathrm{QMU}}} = \frac{H_{k}^{\mathrm{legacy}}}{B_{r}^{\mathrm{legacy}}}\,\mathrm{ccf}_{e}^{2},\qquad\mathrm{ccf}_{e} = \frac{{e_\mathrm{emax}}^{2}}{e},\]so that the materials-level quantity $\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{mat}}^{\mathrm{QMU}}$ is directly comparable to the substrate curl $\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{APM}}$ in the ledger. Numerically, the separation between hard and soft magnets already resides in the ratio $H_{k}^{\mathrm{legacy}}/B_{r}^{\mathrm{legacy}}$; the QMU mapping interprets this ratio as a dimensionless fraction of Aether-unit torsional stiffness. Using QMU-only processing on a set of 29 materials with well-formed anisotropy and remanence data, the article finds that nearly all hard magnets occupy a high-curl band, while four amorphous soft magnets lie in a much lower curl band, separated by more than an order of magnitude in\[\frac{\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{Hard}}^{\mathrm{QMU}}}{\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{Soft,\,core}}^{\mathrm{QMU}}} \approx 56.\]A single soft cubic alloy, Fe$_{0.47}$Co$_{0.53}$, appears as a notable outlier:\[\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{mat}}^{\mathrm{QMU}} \approx -9.285\times 10^{-30},\]with a magnitude comparable to hard magnets but opposite sign. The article treats this honestly as an open question: it may signal a measurement or curation issue in the legacy data, or it may indicate a distinct geometric phase of the distributed charge, where the torsion sign is flipped while the magnitude remains hard-like. Within the APM, such behavior is consistent with geometry-driven state transitions in tight regimes, as seen when key ledger ratios move between special values (for example, near $16\pi^{2}$). The study defines a QMU hardness index\[H_{\mathrm{curl}} = \frac{\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{mat}}^{\mathrm{QMU}}}{\mathrm{curl}_{\mathrm{APM}}},\]interpreted as a fraction of the aether-unit torsional stiffness. Hard magnets cluster in a narrow band of $H_{\mathrm{curl}}$, soft amorphous magnets lie significantly below this band, and Fe$_{0.47}$Co$_{0.53}$ provides a concrete outlier test of the curl definition. All derivations close in the QMU ledger; no legacy unit systems appear in the main text, and legacy quantities are used only as intermediates for charge-conversion. Beyond reporting this initial pattern, the paper outlines a program of future work: extending the dataset to hundreds of materials, performing QMU-aware measurements of anisotropy and remanence, and scanning families of magnets across geometric thresholds in the APM ledger to search for additional curl sign changes or quantized curl bands. These experiments are fully falsifiable within the QMU framework and provide a direct connection between APM substrate geometry and macroscopically measurable magnetic hardness.
Open access
2 source records
Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials
<p>Document forgery remains a pervasive problem across education, government, and trade sectors. This paper presents a blockchain-based digital document verification system built on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). The approach computes SHA‑256 hashes of documents and anchors them to ICP canister smart contracts, ensuring integrity and non-repudiation without storing document contents. The system manages a registry of approved verifiers so that only trusted institutions can enroll documents. In evaluation with 15 documents (85–3025 KB) and five repeated trials per document, the prototype achieved an average verification time of 1.54 s and an accuracy of 99%. Compared with Ethereum-based baselines in prior work, the ICP-based design avoids gas fees and reduces verification latency. The proposed architecture supports future integration of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to validate authenticity while preserving privacy.</p>
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Big Data and Digital Economy
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
The digitalization of global economic relations has redefined the foundations of consumption, investment, and financial intermediation, positioning e-commerce and digital finance as central pillars of the contemporary economic model. The rapid integration of online trade platforms, fintech ecosystems, and algorithmic payment systems has not only transformed consumer behavior but also reshaped the mechanisms of capital formation and resource distribution. Ecommerce functions as an accelerator of market accessibility and competition, while digital finance provides the structural infrastructure necessary for transactional transparency, financial inclusion, and liquidity circulation in data-driven markets. In emerging economies, these instruments collectively stimulate entrepreneurial activity, reduce transaction costs, and expand cross-border investment flows. The research emphasizes that the synergy between digital trade and financial technologies generates a new consumption–investment paradigm characterized by personalization, real-time decision-making, and decentralized trust mechanisms. At the same time, the sustainability of this paradigm depends on the robustness of digital infrastructure, cybersecurity frameworks, and institutional adaptability to technological disruption. The study concludes that e-commerce and digital finance are not isolated innovations but interdependent drivers of structural modernization that integrate consumer dynamics with investment behavior, forming the analytical nucleus of the digital economy.
This record contains the official verified source code evidence for the LitiumLIC (LIC) smart contract deployed on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC). The file includes the Verified Source extract from BscScan, timestamped and hashed using SHA256, confirming that the published source code exactly matches the on-chain bytecode. This record serves as an independent timestamped publication for exchange due diligence, compliance, and authenticity verification.
Azz-eddine Meafa, Abla Chaouni Benabdellah, Kamar Zekhnini, Surajit Bag
The automotive supply chain (ASC) in Northern Africa faces many challenges related to traceability, trust deficits, data integrity, heavy workloads and intermediary involvement in its sourcing process (SP). These challenges can hinder this process’s efficiency and sustainability while sourcing suitable suppliers for the supply chain (SC). Thus, digitalization stands as a powerful facilitator in managing complex processes and blockchain technology (BT) is promoted to effectively address similar issues. In this regard, this article aims to build a smart SP model guided by lean practices and green principles using BT and smart contracts to achieve operational excellence (OE) in the automotive SP in the Northern Africa context. To do so, this study conducts interviews with experts to investigate contextual issues and identify the main challenges faced by the current automotive SP. Then, it proposes the smart SP as a solution for these challenges. The proposed solution uses an algorithmic approach to develop the smart contract algorithms for six sub-processes of the smart SP. Furthermore, the study offers multiple business implications on the digitalization of the SP to reduce higher workloads of the sourcing team, cost related to intermediary elimination and decentralized data management to deal with integrity, traceability and trust challenges while searching for potential partners.
The rise of counterfeit medicines poses serious health risks to the public and threatens the credibility of pharmaceutical companies. Blockchain technology is gaining attention for its potential to enhance the security and transparency of the pharmaceutical supply chain. This study compares the performance of two blockchain platforms, Ethereum and Nexus, in detecting and preventing counterfeit drugs. A virtual observation system was used to examine how Ethereum and Nexus addressed major challenges in counterfeit drug prevention. Two specialists with expertise in both blockchain technology and healthcare evaluated the platforms using two assessment tools: The Global Quality Scale (GQS) to measure overall effectiveness and the modified DISCERN scale to assess credibility of the information. Nexus outperformed Ethereum in both effectiveness and credibility. Evaluator 1 reported median GQS scores of 4.5 for Nexus and 3.8 for Ethereum, while Evaluator 2 reported scores of 4.2 and 3.8, respectively. These findings indicate that Nexus demonstrated higher efficiency in detecting fake drugs and ensuring supply chain integrity. Blockchain technology shows promise in strengthening pharmaceutical supply chain security. Between the two platforms studied, Nexus was found to be more effective than Ethereum in preventing counterfeit drugs. These results provide valuable insights for pharmaceutical stakeholders and policymakers seeking to implement blockchain-based solutions for drug tracking and security.
Abstract Since their 1994 uprising, Zapatista communities have built social, political, and economic alternatives within autonomous territories, setting an example for multiple Transformation Initiatives and social movements globally. Focusing on economic solidarity through coffee distribution, this article investigates how the boundaries between being inside, beyond, or against the state and the market are relationally conceived and performed by autonomous peasants and European activist networks. The study is based on multiple fieldworks between Europe and Chiapas and years of engaged research. Beyond dual rationalizations between silent and loud resistance, I argue that anticapitalist worlds surrounding Zapatismo connect everyday forms of struggle with broader, structural hopes for change through transnational alliances. It is the existence of an organized infrastructure that allows this form of trade to reproduce its own antagonism, in constant tension against the state, reified as the ultimate perpetrator of the neoliberal order. Revisiting informality through the lenses of anti-systemic movements allows us to decentralize resistance, encompassing non-hegemonic processes from below (and to the left) that cannot be reduced to Western categories nor trivialized as the sole weapons in the hands of voiceless and powerless societies. Articulating Marxist anthropology with decolonial thought through the framework of Zapatista autonomy suggests that it is not enough to categorize resistance as visible or invisible, formal or informal. The study of economic solidarity surrounding the Zapatista experience provides an understanding of the complex realities of anticapitalist resistances today, where collective organization is as much about survival as it is about reimagining power and economy.
Abstract Although decentralization is frequently used to improve service delivery and development, the impact of symmetrical fiscal decentralization on local government authorities ( lga s) and fair development has not been thoroughly investigated. Whilst symmetrical decentralization allows lga s to collect revenue and finance development projects, there are disparities among lga s in their ability to collect sufficient revenue and implement development projects. This study goes beyond prior research by investigating the way differences in the financial capacity of lga s affect development in various regions of Tanzania using a review of recent audit reports and studies. Results indicate that while certain lga s have shown a strong ability to collect revenue, others struggle considerably, due to factors such as historical background, revenue sources, population variations, urban-rural divides, and citizen awareness. Furthermore, the intergovernmental transfers, intended as an equalization strategy, have led to lga s remaining highly dependent on the central government and subject to the central government’s financial capacity. This study concludes that symmetrical fiscal decentralization in Tanzania has not achieved its intended goals. Despite some lga s over-collecting revenue, most remain heavily dependent on intergovernmental transfers, which are inconsistently distributed and often politically influenced, thus intensifying uneven development trends. The study recommends updating the 1998 policy to integrate asymmetrical decentralization, amending the Local Government Acts of 1982, building capacity to lga s, and shifting the central government’s role from controller to supporter.
The rapid rise of the gig economy has reshaped modern labour markets, offering flexibility but also exposing workers to instability, low protection, and algorithmic control. This paper explores how Blockchain technology and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can address these structural challenges by decentralizing trust, governance, and value distribution. Drawing upon institutional theory, transaction cost economics, and network governance frameworks, the study analyses how blockchain’s core features—immutability, transparency, and smart contracts—enable fairer, more autonomous work environments. DAOs, as digital cooperatives, allow workers to participate directly in decision-making and profit-sharing, reducing dependence on centralized platforms. The literature reviewed highlights both opportunities and limitations: while blockchain can ensure transparent payments and portable reputations, issues of scalability, regulation, and digital inclusion persist. Overall, the analysis suggests that blockchain-enabled DAOs represent an emerging paradigm for equitable and trust-based digital labour, redefining how work, ownership, and governance operate in the gig economy.
Thanmai Mandala, Cora Zeger, Tessa E Andersen, Gaby G. Dagher · 5 authors
Blockchain technology is a promising innovation to store information online while being secure and transparent at the same time. Despite the benefits, the immutable nature of blockchain makes it prone to vulnerabilities as any smart contract uploaded onto the blockchain cannot be modified later. Thus, it is imperative to design secure smart contracts during development stages and incorporate effective vulnerability detection mechanisms. Large-Language-Models (LLMs) are a propitious approach to automate vulnerability detection. However, recent attempts at using LLMs to detect vulnerabilities have resulted in high false positive rates and seem prone to obsolescence due to evolving Solidity code. Moreover, existing research often conflate weaknesses with vulnerabilities, despite their apparent differences, and all prior works only focus on vulnerability detection based on broad categories rather than their exact vulnerability identifiers (VIDs). To address these gaps, we propose a novel framework, VulnDetective, of fine-tuned LLM agents and a CWE-VID database to map weaknesses to their corresponding vulnerability, thereby increasing detection accuracy. Our findings show that pre-trained base models struggle significantly with detecting exact vulnerabilities, while VulnDetective shows significant improvement over base models.
ABSTRACT Objective Collaborative edge computing (CEC) addresses the service quality issues that arise from the limited resources of a single node in traditional edge computing architectures by integrating resources from multiple edge nodes. However, ensuring reliable task offloading in this collaborative environment remains a significant challenge. Existing solutions often struggle to balance the intelligence and trustworthiness of offloading decisions effectively. This imbalance can lead to poor performance and reduced task success rates, especially if tasks are offloaded to malicious nodes. Methods To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes a trust‐enabled decentralized task offloading scheme that combines blockchain technology and deep reinforcement learning (DRL). First, we introduce a blockchain‐based reputation mechanism within the CEC architecture to facilitate trusted collaboration among nodes, utilizing smart contracts for reputation management. Next, we propose a beta distribution‐based three‐factor reputation update (BTRU) algorithm to enhance the accuracy of reputation evaluation. Finally, we present a decentralized and trust‐enabled task offloading (DTTO) algorithm based on DRL, which uses on‐chain reputation data to guide agents in learning trustworthy task offloading policies, thereby maximizing offloading trustworthiness and task success rates. Result To thoroughly assess the effectiveness and practicality of our proposed scheme, we develop a testbed for CEC task offloading based on Kubernetes and Ethereum. Experimental results demonstrate that the BTRU algorithm effectively distinguishes malicious nodes, reducing their average reputation by 97.54%, with an improvement of 9.94% compared to competitive algorithms. Meanwhile, the DTTO algorithm significantly enhances the efficiency and reliability of task offloading, raising the task success rate by at least 3.04%, especially when the proportion of malicious nodes reaches 40%, its task success rate is at least 5.41% higher than that of competitive algorithms. Conclusion The proposed trust‐enabled decentralized task offloading scheme successfully combines blockchain‐based reputation management with DRL to achieve both intelligent and trustworthy task offloading in the CEC environments. The experimental validation confirms the scheme's effectiveness in identifying malicious nodes and improving task success rates under various system conditions.
The Fusion Civilization Research Institute (FCRI) presents this foundational white paper introducing the Proof-of-Justice (PoJ) protocol — a novel framework linking cryptographic truth, jurisprudence, and decentralized governance. Built upon the Synaptic Economics model, PoJ enables verifiable justice transactions across AI, finance, and civic systems. This paper outlines the theoretical basis, algorithmic architecture, and ethical rationale for building a civilizational operating system that merges law, logic, and consciousness into a unified framework for human and machine societies.
<p>Este boletim quinzenal gratuito visa analisar o comportamento do Bitcoin, um ativo financeiro digital, oferecendo notícias, análises gráficas e informações sobre as mais recentes novidades, softwares e aplicativos relacionados a essa criptomoeda. Nosso objetivo é enriquecer as discussões em torno da cultura do Bitcoin, colaborando com a Amauta, uma instituição de economia criativa que busca disseminar conhecimento sobre inovação, educação e finanças na comunidade acadêmica e empresarial. Esperamos que este trabalho represente uma contribuição valiosa para o debate.</p> <p>Reconhecemos a importância do Bitcoin e seu impacto na economia global, motivo pelo qual nos dedicamos a fornecer informações atualizadas aos nossos leitores. Acreditamos que ao promover discussões e compreensão sobre o Bitcoin, podemos incentivar a adoção e o uso responsável dessa tecnologia disruptiva.</p> <p>Para além das análises e informações sobre o Bitcoin, incentivamos ativamente nossos leitores a se educarem sobre finanças pessoais e investimentos. Acreditamos que, munidos do conhecimento adequado, todos podem tomar decisões financeiras inteligentes e bem informadas.</p> <p>Comprometemo-nos a fornecer informações de alta qualidade e precisas, esforçando-nos para manter nossos leitores atualizados sobre as últimas tendências e desenvolvimentos no mundo do Bitcoin. Esperamos que este relatório seja do seu agrado e contribua para uma compreensão mais aprofundada do Bitcoin e das finanças pessoais em geral.</p>