We argue that the principal application for blockchain technology will not be in the financial sector, but rather in maintaining decentralized human governance, from archives to transparent policies encoded in the blockchain in the form of smart contracts.. Such decentralized, blockchain-grounded governance comes not a moment too soon, as nation states are dissolving before our eyes. Will blockchain-based communities replace the nation state? What are the prospects and dangers of this development?
Electronic waste (e-waste) is a rapidly growing global problem caused by shorter device lifecycles and rising consumption. India ranks third globally in e-waste generation, producing over 1.7 million tonnes in 2023-24, of which less than half is formally processed. To address this, we propose Green Grid, an integrated AI-powered e-waste management platform combining IoT-enabled smart collection, AI-based device classification, blockchain-based traceability, and gamified citizen engagement. The system features smart recycling bins with sensors for real-time monitoring, deep learning models for device identification and sorting, a blockchain ledger for tamper-proof tracking, and a reward-based mobile or web app to encourage user participation. Additionally, Green Grid offers analytics dashboards and an eco-marketplace to support policymakers and recyclers. By bridging technology, sustainability, and community participation, the platform enhances transparency, increases formal recycling rates, and advances India's transition toward a circular economy.
The rise of Web3 and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has enabled borderless access to financial services empowered by smart contracts and blockchain technology. However, the ecosystem's trustless, permissionless, and borderless nature presents substantial regulatory challenges. The absence of centralized oversight and the technical complexity create fertile ground for financial crimes. Among these, money laundering is particularly concerning, as in the event of successful scams, code exploits, and market manipulations, it facilitates covert movement of illicit gains. Beyond this, there is a growing concern that cryptocurrencies can be leveraged to launder proceeds from drug trafficking, or to transfer funds linked to terrorism financing. This survey aims to outline a taxonomy of high-level strategies and underlying mechanisms exploited to facilitate money laundering in Web3. We examine how criminals leverage the pseudonymous nature of Web3, alongside weak regulatory frameworks, to obscure illicit financial activities. Our study seeks to bridge existing knowledge gaps on laundering schemes, identify open challenges in the detection and prevention of such activities, and propose future research directions to foster a more transparent Web3 financial ecosystem -- offering valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners.
The Metaverse utilizes emerging technologies such as Extended Reality (XR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, and digital twins to provide an immersive and interactive virtual experience. As the Metaverse continues to evolve, it brings a range of security and privacy threats, such as identity management, data governance, and user interactions. This survey aims to provide a comprehensive review of the enabling technologies for the Metaverse. It also aims to provide a thorough analysis of key vulnerabilities and threats that may compromise its sustainability and user safety. We perform a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify key vulnerabilities and their countermeasures in Metaverse platforms. Metaverse offers a much larger attack surface compared to conventional digital platforms. Immersive, decentralized, and permanent characteristics of the Metaverse generate new vulnerabilities. Although there are many countermeasures to these vulnerabilities, most of them are theoretical or have not been tested in real-world environments. Our review highlights current advancements, identifies research gaps, and outlines future directions to ensure a secure, resilient, and ethically governed Metaverse.
Elections are not the only but arguably one of the most important pillars for the proper functioning of liberal democracies. Recent evidence across the globe shows that it is not straightforward to conduct them in a free and fair manner. One constant concern is the role of money in politics, more specifically, election campaign financing. Frequent scandals are proof of the difficulties encountered with current approaches to tackle the issue. Suggestions on how to overcome the problem exist but seem difficult to implement. With the help of blockchain technology we might be able to make a step forward. A separate crypto currency specifically designed to pay for costs of political campaigning and advertising could be introduced. Admittedly, at this stage, there are many open questions. However, under the assumption that blockchain technology is here to stay, it is an idea that deserves further exploration.
Blockchain has been promoted as a remedy for coordination in fragmented, multi-stakeholder ecosystems, yet many projects stall at pilot stage. Using a design-science approach, we develop the Hybrid Cooperative (HC), a digitally native governance architecture that combines smart-contract coordination with a minimal, code-deferent legal interface and jurisdictional modules. This selective decentralization decentralizes rules where programmability lowers agency and verification costs, and centralizes only what is needed for enforceability. A post-case evaluation against two traceability initiatives in supply chains illustrates how the HC improves distributed task management, verifiable information, incentive alignment, institutional interoperability, and scalable, contestable governance. The paper contributes to Information Systems by specifying a socio-technical model for scalable, multi-stakeholder coordination across regulatory and organizational boundaries.
"Composable Life" is a hybrid project blending design fiction, experiential virtual reality, and scientific research. Through a multi-perspective, cross-media approach to speculative design, it reshapes our understanding of the digital future from AI's perspective. The project explores the hypothetical first suicide of an on-chain artificial life, examining the complex symbiotic relationship between humans, AI, and blockchain technology.
The global financial system stands at an inflection point. Stablecoins represent the most significant evolution in banking since the abandonment of the gold standard, positioned to enable "Banking 2.0" by seamlessly integrating cryptocurrency innovation with traditional finance infrastructure. This transformation rivals artificial intelligence as the next major disruptor in the financial sector. Modern fiat currencies derive value entirely from institutional trust rather than physical backing, creating vulnerabilities that stablecoins address through enhanced stability, reduced fraud risk, and unified global transactions that transcend national boundaries. Recent developments demonstrate accelerating institutional adoption: landmark U.S. legislation including the GENIUS Act of 2025, strategic industry pivots from major players like JPMorgan's crypto-backed loan initiatives, and PayPal's comprehensive "Pay with Crypto" service. Widespread stablecoin implementation addresses critical macroeconomic imbalances, particularly the inflation-productivity gap plaguing modern monetary systems, through more robust and diversified backing mechanisms. Furthermore, stablecoins facilitate deregulation and efficiency gains, paving the way for a more interconnected international financial system. This whitepaper comprehensively explores how stablecoins are poised to reshape banking, supported by real-world examples, current market data, and analysis of their transformative potential.
The convergence of Web3 technologies and AI agents represents a rapidly evolving frontier poised to reshape decentralized ecosystems. This paper presents the first and most comprehensive analysis of the intersection between Web3 and AI agents, examining five critical dimensions: landscape, economics, governance, security, and trust mechanisms. Through an analysis of 133 existing projects, we first develop a taxonomy and systematically map the current market landscape (RQ1), identifying distinct patterns in project distribution and capitalization. Building upon these findings, we further investigate four key integrations: (1) the role of AI agents in participating in and optimizing decentralized finance (RQ2); (2) their contribution to enhancing Web3 governance mechanisms (RQ3); (3) their capacity to strengthen Web3 security via intelligent vulnerability detection and automated smart contract auditing (RQ4); and (4) the establishment of robust reliability frameworks for AI agent operations leveraging Web3's inherent trust infrastructure (RQ5). By synthesizing these dimensions, we identify key integration patterns, highlight foundational challenges related to scalability, security, and ethics, and outline critical considerations for future research toward building robust, intelligent, and trustworthy decentralized systems with effective AI agent interactions.
Stablecoins have become a foundational component of the digital asset ecosystem, with their market capitalization exceeding 230 billion USD as of May 2025. As fiat-referenced and programmable assets, stablecoins provide low-latency, globally interoperable infrastructure for payments, decentralized finance, DeFi, and tokenized commerce. Their accelerated adoption has prompted extensive regulatory engagement, exemplified by the European Union's Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation, MiCA, the US Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, GENIUS Act, and Hong Kong's Stablecoins Bill. Despite this momentum, academic research remains fragmented across economics, law, and computer science, lacking a unified framework for design, evaluation, and application. This study addresses that gap through a multi-method research design. First, it synthesizes cross-disciplinary literature to construct a taxonomy of stablecoin systems based on custodial structure, stabilization mechanism, and governance. Second, it develops a performance evaluation framework tailored to diverse stakeholder needs, supported by an open-source benchmarking pipeline to ensure transparency and reproducibility. Third, a case study on Real World Asset tokenization illustrates how stablecoins operate as programmable monetary infrastructure in cross-border digital systems. By integrating conceptual theory with empirical tools, the paper contributes: a unified taxonomy for stablecoin design; a stakeholder-oriented performance evaluation framework; an empirical case linking stablecoins to sectoral transformation; and reproducible methods and datasets to inform future research. These contributions support the development of trusted, inclusive, and transparent digital monetary infrastructure.
Alejandro Cuevas, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Nicolas Christin
Online content creators spend significant time and effort building their user base through a long, often arduous process that requires finding the right "niche" to cater to. So, what incentive is there for an established content creator known for cat memes to completely reinvent their channel and start promoting cryptocurrency services or covering electoral news events? We explore this problem of repurposed channels, whereby a channel changes its identity and contents. We first characterize a market for "second-hand" social media accounts, which recorded sales exceeding USD 1M during our 6-month observation period. Observing YouTube channels (re)sold over these 6 months, we find that a substantial number (53%) are used to disseminate policy-sensitive content, often without facing any penalty. Surprisingly, these channels seem to gain rather than lose subscribers. We estimate the prevalence of repurposing using two snapshots of ~1.4M YouTube accounts sampled from an ecologically valid proxy. In a 3-month period, we estimate that ~0.25% channels were repurposed. We experimentally confirm that these repurposed channels share several characteristics with sold channels -- mainly, they have a significantly high presence of policy-sensitive content. Across repurposed channels, we find channels similar to those used in influence operations, as well as channels used for financial scams. Repurposed channels have large audiences; across two observed samples, repurposed channels held ~193M and ~44M subscribers. We reason that purchasing an existing audience and the credibility associated with an established account is advantageous to financially- and ideologically-motivated adversaries. This phenomenon is not exclusive to YouTube and we posit that the market for cultivating organic audiences is set to grow, particularly if it remains unchallenged by mitigations, technical or otherwise.
Lucas Barbosa, Sam Kirshner, Rob Kopel, Eric Tze Kuan Lim · 5 authors
This paper outlines an incentive-driven and decentralized approach to verifying the veracity of digital content at scale. Widespread misinformation, an explosion in AI-generated content and reduced reliance on traditional news sources demands a new approach for content authenticity and truth-seeking that is fit for a modern, digital world. By using smart contracts and digital identity to incorporate 'trust' into the reward function for published content, not just engagement, we believe that it could be possible to foster a self-propelling paradigm shift to combat misinformation through a community-based governance model. The approach described in this paper requires that content creators stake financial collateral on factual claims for an impartial jury to vet with a financial reward for contribution. We hypothesize that with the right financial and social incentive model users will be motivated to participate in crowdsourced fact-checking and content creators will place more care in their attestations. This is an exploratory paper and there are a number of open issues and questions that warrant further analysis and exploration.
With the advancement of digital payment technologies, central banks worldwide have increasingly begun to explore the implementation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). This paper presents a comprehensive review of the latest developments in CBDC system design and implementation. By analyzing 135 research papers published between 2018 and 2025, the study provides an in-depth examination of CBDC design taxonomy and ecosystem frameworks. Grounded in the CBDC Design Pyramid, the paper refines and expands key architectural elements by thoroughly investigating innovations in ledger technologies, the selection of consensus mechanisms, and challenges associated with offline payments and digital wallet integration. Furthermore, it conceptualizes a CBDC ecosystem. A detailed comparative analysis of 26 existing CBDC systems is conducted across four dimensions: system architecture, ledger technology, access model, and application domain. The findings reveal that the most common configuration consists of a two-tier architecture, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and a token-based access model. However, no dominant trend has emerged regarding application domains. Notably, recent research shows a growing focus on leveraging CBDCs for cross-border payments to resolve inefficiencies and structural delays in current systems. Finally, the paper offers several forward-looking recommendations for future research.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) offer a promising mechanism to protect Australian and Indigenous artists' copyright. They represent and transfer the value of artwork in digital form. Before adopting NFTs to protect Australian artwork, we in this paper investigate them empericially. We focus on examining the details of NFT structure. We start from the underlying structure of NFTs to show how they represent copyright for both artists and production owners, as well as how they aim to safeguard or secure the value of digital artworks. We then involve data collection from various types of sources with different storage methods, including on-chain, centralized, and decentralized systems. Based on both metadata and artwork content, we present our analysis and discussion on the following key issues: copyright, security and artist identification. The final results of the evaluation, unfortnately, show that the NFT is NOT ready to protect Australian and Indigenous artists' copyright.
Victoria L. Lemieux, Rosa Gil, Faith Molosiwa, Qizheng Zhou · 8 authors
As archives turn to artificial intelligence to manage growing volumes of digital records, privacy risks inherent in current AI data practices raise critical concerns about data sovereignty and ethical accountability. This paper explores how privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and Web3 architectures can support archives to preserve control over sensitive content while still being able to make it available for access by researchers. We present Clio-X, a decentralized, privacy-first Web3 digital solution designed to embed PETs into archival workflows and support AI-enabled reference and access. Drawing on a user evaluation of a medium-fidelity prototype, the study reveals both interest in the potential of the solution and significant barriers to adoption related to trust, system opacity, economic concerns, and governance. Using Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory, we analyze the sociotechnical dimensions of these barriers and propose a path forward centered on participatory design and decentralized governance through a Clio-X Decentralized Autonomous Organization. By integrating technical safeguards with community-based oversight, Clio-X offers a novel model to ethically deploy AI in cultural heritage contexts.
Wallets are access points for the digital economys value creation. Wallets for blockchains store the end-users cryptographic keys for administrating their digital assets and enable access to blockchain Web3 systems. Web3 delivers new service opportunities. This chapter focuses on the Web3 enabled release of value through the lens of wallets. Wallets may be implemented as software apps on smartphones, web apps on desktops, or hardware devices. Wallet users request high security, ease of use, and access of relevance from their wallets. Increasing connectivity, functionality, autonomy, personal support, and offline capability make the wallet into the user's Universal Access Device for any digital asset. Through wallet based services, the owner obtains enhanced digital empowerment. The new Web3 solutionareas, Identity and Decentralisation, enable considerable societal effects, and wallets are an integral part of these. One example is self sovereign identity solutions combined with wallet borne AI for personalised support, empowering the enduser beyond anything previously known. Improved welfare is foreseen globally through enlarged markets with collaborative services with drastically lowered transaction costs compared to today, the expected vastly increased levels of automation in society necessitate enhanced enduser protection. As wallets are considered a weak spot for security, improving overall security through blockchains is essential.
South Korea's City P illustrates how lofty goals of digital solidarity can falter when challenged by local governance realities. Drawing on Hansmann's ownership theory, collaborative governance concepts, and platform cooperativism, we conducted a qualitative case study involving policy documents, independent assessments, and 11 in-depth interviews with residents, officials, and technology developers. Findings reveal a marked disconnect between the initiative's stated emphasis on community co-ownership and the actual power dynamics that largely favored government agencies and external firms. Although blockchain and integrated digital tools were meant to enhance transparency and inclusivity, stakeholders--especially elderly residents--experienced confusion and mistrust. We argue that genuine collaboration in digital solidarity economies requires not only robust technical designs but also culturally resonant ownership structures, substantive inclusion of local voices, and transparent governance mechanisms. The City P case underscores the necessity of addressing heterogeneous digital capacities, aligning funding and incentives with grassroots empowerment, and mitigating performative participation to ensure meaningful and sustainable outcomes in community-based digital innovation.
Immutability is a core design goal of permissionless public blockchain systems. However, rewrites are more common than is normally understood, and the risk of rewrite, cyberattack, exploit, or black swan event is also high. Taking the position that strict immutability is neither possible on these networks nor the observed reality, this paper uses thematic analysis of node operator interviews to examine the limits of immutability in light of rewrite events. The end result is a qualitative definition of the conditional immutability found on these networks, which we call Practical Immutability. This is immutability contingent on the legitimate governance demands of the network, where network stakeholders place their trust in the governance topology of a network to lend it legitimacy, and thus manage ledger state.
The blockchain oracle problem, which refers to the challenge of injecting reliable external data into decentralized systems, remains a fundamental limitation to the development of trustless applications. While recent years have seen a proliferation of architectural, cryptographic, and economic strategies to mitigate this issue, no one has yet fully resolved the fundamental question of how a blockchain can gain knowledge about the off-chain world. In this position paper, we critically assess the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in tackling the oracle problem. Drawing from both academic literature and practitioner implementations, we examine how AI techniques such as anomaly detection, language-based fact extraction, dynamic reputation modeling, and adversarial resistance can enhance oracle systems. We observe that while AI introduces powerful tools for improving data quality, source selection, and system resilience, it cannot eliminate the reliance on unverifiable off-chain inputs. Therefore, this study supports the idea that AI should be understood as a complementary layer of inference and filtering within a broader oracle design, not a substitute for trust assumptions.
Non Fungible Tokens have changed digital ownership and how creators earn money. Between 2021 and 2024, the market value exceeded 40 billion. However, the fast growth of the NFT ecosystem has revealed serious issues in managing intellectual property rights. There is a lot of confusion about the difference between owning an NFT and owning the copyright for the underlying content. This research looks at the gap between traditional copyright laws and blockchain-based transactions. We use a mixed methods approach to analyze this disconnect. We create a new IP rights matrix that clearly shows how copyright law relates to NFT ownership structures. Additionally, we include a business model taxonomy that sorts new commercial applications by their IP risk and sustainability factors. By examining important legal cases, smart contracts, and interviews with stakeholders, we find key problems in enforcing laws across different regions, standardizing licenses, and assessing business opportunities.
This paper develops a formal game-theoretic model to examine how protocol mutability disrupts cooperative mining behaviour in blockchain systems. Using a repeated game framework with stochastic rule shocks, we show that even minor uncertainty in institutional rules increases time preference and induces strategic deviation. Fixed-rule environments support long-term investment and stable equilibrium strategies; in contrast, mutable protocols lead to short-termism, higher discounting, and collapse of coordinated engagement. Simulation results identify instability zones in the parameter space where rational mining gives way to extractive or arbitrage conduct. These findings support an Austrian economic interpretation: calculability requires rule stability. Institutional noise undermines the informational basis for productive action. We conclude that protocol design must be treated as a constitutional economic constraint, not a discretionary variable, if sustainable cooperation is to emerge in decentralised systems.
This paper reconceptualises peer review as structured public commentary. Traditional academic validation is hindered by anonymity, latency, and gatekeeping. We propose a transparent, identity-linked, and reproducible system of scholarly evaluation anchored in open commentary. Leveraging blockchain for immutable audit trails and AI for iterative synthesis, we design a framework that incentivises intellectual contribution, captures epistemic evolution, and enables traceable reputational dynamics. This model empowers fields from computational science to the humanities, reframing academic knowledge as a living process rather than a static credential.
Initially introduced to Ethereum via Flashbots' MEV-boost, Proposer-Builder Separation allows proposers to auction off blockspace to a market of transaction orderers, known as builders. PBS is currently available to validators through the aforementioned MEV-boost, but its unregulated and relay-dependent nature has much of the Ethereum community calling for its enshrinement. Providing a protocol-integrated PBS marketspace and communication channel for payload outsourcing is termed PBS enshrinement. Although ePBS potentially introduces native MEV mitigation mechanisms and reduces validator operation costs, fears of multiparty collusion and chain stagnation are all too real. In addition to mitigating these potential drawbacks, PBS research pursues many tenets revered by Web3 enthusiasts, including but not limited to, censorship resistance, validator reward equity, and deflationary finance. The subsequent SoK will identify current PBS mechanisms, the need for enshrinement, additions to the ePBS upgrade, and the existing or potential on-chain socioeconomic implications of each.
The democratization of generative AI introduces new forms of human-AI interaction and raises urgent safety, ethical, and cybersecurity concerns. We develop a socio-technical explanation for how generative AI enables and scales cybercrime. Drawing on affordance theory and technological amplification, we argue that generative AI systems create new action possibilities for cybercriminals and magnify pre-existing malicious intent by lowering expertise barriers and increasing attack efficiency. To illustrate this framework, we conduct interrupted time series analyses of two large datasets: (1) 464,190,074 malicious IP address reports from AbuseIPDB, and (2) 281,115 cryptocurrency scam reports from Chainabuse. Using November 30, 2022, as a high-salience public-access shock, we estimate the counterfactual trajectory of reported cyber abuse absent the release, providing an early-warning impact assessment of a general-purpose AI technology. Across both datasets, we observe statistically significant post-intervention increases in reported malicious activity, including an immediate increase of over 1.12 million weekly malicious IP reports and about 722 weekly cryptocurrency scam reports, with sustained growth in the latter. We discuss implications for AI governance, platform-level regulation, and cyber resilience, emphasizing the need for multi-layer socio-technical strategies that help key stakeholders maximize AI's benefits while mitigating its growing cybercrime risks.