The application of istiḥsān in the digital economy continues to face challenges related to subjectivity and the lack of methodological transparency. This study aims to formulate a seven-stage istiḥsān operational model as a structured framework for enhancing accountability in Sharia economic legal reasoning. Employing a critical juridical-normative approach grounded in legal coherence theory, the proposed model provides objective criteria to guide mujtahids in determining exceptional legal rulings. The model was validated through two strategic case studies: (1) a retrospective analysis of Sukuk instruments and (2) a prospective analysis of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The findings demonstrate that the model successfully reconstructs the implicit legal reasoning underlying established Sukuk fatwas, thereby confirming its retrospective consistency. Prospectively, when applied to NFTs, the model functions as a rigorous evaluative filter that permits innovation only when the anticipated maṣlaḥah outweighs the potential mafsadah. In cases where secondary harms—such as the environmental costs associated with energy consumption and speculative market bubbles—predominate, the model justifies restricting such innovations. This study makes a significant academic contribution by transforming contemporary istiḥsān from an abstract jurisprudential concept into a replicable, transparent, and auditable analytical framework. It demonstrates that structured ijtihād provides a robust governance mechanism for fostering ethical, accountable, and sustainable Sharia-compliant innovation in global capital markets.
Since the first implementation of a blockchain with Bitcoin in 2009, cryptoassets created and transacted using blockchain technologies have grown and diversified significantly. Because regulatory regimes, which govern cryptoassets, do not have global coverage, criminal actors find opportunities to commit cryptoasset fraud. While it can be difficult to distinguish between cryptoassets that are honest but high risk and cryptoassets that are outright fraudulent, investors seeking significant returns frequently invest in unregulated cryptoassets, namely cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This study provides a crime script analysis to examine the chronological and functional steps offenders use to execute cryptoasset fraud. It considers three types of crypto asset fraud and how they have functioned over time: Ponzi schemes, cryptoasset exit scams, such as cryptocurrency “rug pulls,” and NFT “mint-and-run” schemes, where invested value is stolen from a crypto asset project. By outlining the fundamental crime script of cryptoasset fraud, this study considers the implications for regulators. Of note, this study shows that while the stages of cryptoasset frauds are consistent, the speed at which frauds are executed has, on average, increased significantly. This rapidity of execution provides enduring challenges to regulators, who often cannot respond quickly. This challenge must be considered if regulation is to be effective.
Ethereum sebagai platform smart contract banyak digunakan untuk dApps, namun Ethereum (Layer 1) masih menghadapi kendala skalabilitas ketika aktivitas transaksi meningkat, yang berdampak pada kemacetan jaringan, naiknya latensi, dan biaya transaksi yang tinggi. Makalah ini menyajikan kajian literatur yang berfokus pada rollups sebagai solusi utama Ethereum Layer 2 untuk mengurangi beban pemrosesan transaksi pada Layer 1. Metode yang digunakan adalah literature review terarah dengan sintesis tematik terhadap literatur yang membahas: sumber masalah skalabilitas di Ethereum Layer 1, konsep dan arsitektur rollups, perbedaan Optimistic Rollups dan Zero-Knowledge Rollups, serta tantangan implementasi rollups pada kondisi nyata. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa rollups menjadi pendekatan dominan karena menggabungkan transaksi dalam batch untuk diproses di Layer 2, lalu melaporkan ringkasan/bukti ke Layer 1 sehingga efisiensi biaya dan kapasitas transaksi meningkat. Namun, efektivitas rollups bergantung pada aspek operasional dan keamanan seperti ketersediaan data, mekanisme penarikan dana, serta risiko ketergantungan pada operator/penyedia infrastruktur. Secara keseluruhan, rollups efektif sebagai solusi skalabilitas Ethereum, tetapi memerlukan penguatan desain keamanan dan keandalan operasional agar dapat diadopsi lebih luas.
ABSTRACT This paper introduces LOCQ, a novel, decentralized post-quantum blockchain architecture and asset tokenization ecosystem engineered to address the systemic ineffi-ciencies of early-stage deep tech financing and the structural vulnerabilities of legacy distributed ledgers to quantum decryption threats. Globally, institutional capital centralization restricts retail access to early-stage scientific R&D, while traditional Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization models—primarily Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)—fail to provide robust decentralized audit trails, making them inherently prone to compliance failures and security exploits. To circumvent these paradigms, we propose the Chain Reaction Protocol (CRP), a novel asset distribution layer that executes Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance viaa semi-on-chain information distribution logic and enforces fractional property attribution through an entangled reverse position model. Operating natively on a post-quantum encrypted distributed ledger, the architecture effectively mitigates "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" cryptographic attacks, safeguarding long-term property rights. The underlying macroeconomic framework utilizes a multi-layer mechanism, transitioning from an initial utility layer (KEY) to a native quantum-resistant coin (QEY), engineered to maximize capital efficiency, secure network circulation, and incentivize cross-boundary liquidity routing through automated staking and protocol-level fee distribution. Backed by verified, peer-reviewed computational methodologies in multi-modal life sciences and space-time cryptographic modeling, LOCQ provides a secure, regulatory compliant, and democratized infrastructure for global high-impact asset tokenization.
Ben Hawkins, Joshua Levett, Siamak F. Shahandashti
We present a longitudinal measurement study on the adoption of detectable, second-generation anonymisation protocols in the Bitcoin network, including CoinJoin, CoinSwap, CoinShuffle and Stealth Addresses. By implementing and refining a suite of heuristic filters, we identify over 5.94 million CoinJoin and 23.3 million CoinSwap transactions. Besides, the use of CoinShuffle was unexpectedly found to be closely aligned with the Wasabi wallet operation period. Our analysis reveals consistently low adoption rates, with these protocols constituting less than 1% of network transactions, and a sharp decline in detectable usage following key regulatory events. Furthermore, we find no evidence of standardised Stealth Address adoption, indicating a failure to converge on a common privacy standard. This study provides a comprehensive picture of a niche ecosystem whose on-chain visibility has been largely suppressed, strongly suggesting the migration of privacy-seeking users to less transparent and less detectable methods.
Harlequin is a blockchain protocol in which the right to take part in consensus,governance and adjudication comes solely from reputation earned by verifiable acts— never from capital (proof of stake) or expended computation (proof of work).Reputation is a four-dimensional quantity ("the four suits"), computeddeterministically from a public evidence record by a damped trust-propagationfunction, aggregated conservatively (a strong dimension cannot buy authority in aweak one), and subject to time decay so that standing must be continuallyre-earned. Block authorship and committee/jury membership are assigned byreputation-weighted cryptographic sortition; finality is provided by aByzantine-safe gadget over signed votes; disputes are judged by sortitioned jurieswith interest-exclusion, and the only enforced consequence is reputational — theprotocol applies no coercive force. We give the system model, the consensus and justice mechanisms, and a securityanalysis against a state-level adversary whose goal is capture, censorship orde-anonymization rather than direct theft. Two results are emphasized for theirhonesty. First, steady-state Sybil resistance is strong: a Sybil farm withoutearned evidence obtains about 0% of consensus power (17/17 adversarial tests).Second, the cold-start window is not unconditionally safe: a competent adversarypresent at genesis can capture the bootstrap; we show the security of that windowis a race between honest onboarding and adversary mass — bounded, not eliminated,by non-operator personhood verification, an automatic ceiling-halt and theonboarding rate, with the residual risk declared. We report an implementation inRust (dependency-free cores cross-validated against FRAME pallets) and areproducible validation record spanning unit tests and multi-node hardware runs.
Ms. Sanskruti Pawaskar, Mr. Harsh Shinde, Mr. Ruturaj Laad, Vaishali Gatty
Decentralized finance has disrupted the lending process by transferring the intermediary role from institutionally-led balance sheets into a public ledger framework of smart contracts, pooled liquidity, and tokenized governance. The relevance of such a change in the lending paradigm is more of a question of different trust mechanisms, where the solvency of actors can be maintained through the imposition of collateral and automated processing [1][3]. A qualitative comparison is made below through a literature-constrained synthesis of five sources on DeFi architecture, flash loan exploits, lending protocol structure, decentralized governance flaws, and extractable value [1]-[5]. The two protocols of Aave and Compound have been selected for being representative DeFi lending cases, as per the allowed literature that points them out to be the top loanable funds protocols, having liquidity pools and variable rates [1][3]. This comparison is made against CeFi as an institution-driven reference point rather than other DeFi lending protocols owing to the asymmetry of the evidence base. Three conclusions are drawn.Second, the risk architecture of DeFi lending is structurally different from other financial institutions in that flash loans, dependence on oracle feeds, smart contract weakness, composable nature, extractable value, and governance capture are not mere flaws in DeFi but inherent aspects of open and highly coupled financial systems [2][4][5]. Third, governance in DeFi is an additional security mechanism, as the governance of protocol control, parameters and responses to emergencies rests on the robustness of token-based decision-making mechanisms [4].
Digital identity remains structurally rigid when it is bound to provider accounts, mutable handles, single social contexts, and local wallet schemes. This paper defines an accountable hash-anchor tier above wallets and credential schemes. Building on a companion model of legal identity assurance, the tier binds an inert root anchor to an event-backed Entity Actor Identity (EAID) assurance state, supports unlinkable profile anchors for distinct contexts, and lets relying parties evaluate gate-specific assurance-at-time over disclosed independent confirmation-event clusters. The formal model states the identifier and capability separation invariant, defines root and profile anchors, models disclosure and lawful resolution as constraints, and gives a two-layer erasure construction for retained commitments and off-chain personal linkage. It also models trust as a reliance event in which pseudonymous interaction becomes rational when a presentation satisfies the requested gate and recourse can reach the legally relevant imputation point. The result is a scheme-agnostic aggregation layer that complements national wallets, supports natural, juridical, and machine actor constellations, and states conditions under which pseudonymity, lawful access, data erasure, and retention can be jointly satisfied.
Permissioned ledgers are commonly treated as centralised because admission is restricted. This paper separates permissioning from control distribution and proposes identity-staked consensus as a trust model for accountable settlement ledgers operated by chartered validators. The model treats validator identity as externally costly collateral: public legal identity, charter state, institutional reputation, liability, attributable audit exposure, a phase-indexed conditional identity-loss floor, and loss-realisation channels outside the protocol. It distinguishes this construct from proof-of-authority by formalising validator acts as actor constellations, public validator anchoring, affiliation-aware voting caps, threshold class coverage, per-member collusion margins, observer-supported detectability, bootstrap claim discipline, and a consensus/application enforcement boundary. The paper connects the model to a broader identity-infrastructure series: the actor-assurance paper supplies capability-gate evidence, the trust-anchor paper supplies public validator anchoring and assurance-at-time, and the delegated-authority paper can consume the ledger evidence record for mandate and model-attribution records.
Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) operating in industrial and critical environments require secure, auditable, and efficient data management. This paper proposes a hybrid architecture that combines ROS/ROS2 robotic middleware, an industrial context platform, and a distributed ledger layer to provide tamper-evident event recording while preserving operational flexibility. A bridging component maps robot states and events into NGSI context entities, which can then be anchored in Hedera Hashgraph or IOTA Shimmer, while a conventional FIWARE/MongoDB deployment is used as an off-chain reference baseline. The proposed architecture is evaluated experimentally using a Raspberry Pi as an AGV emulator under controlled laboratory conditions. Results show that Hedera Hashgraph achieves lower ledger confirmation latency than IOTA Shimmer, with mean DLT-only confirmation times of 4.02 s and 5.01 s, respectively, while the FIWARE/MongoDB baseline provides substantially lower latency (1.52 s) but without immutable auditability. Energy measurements indicate that IOTA exhibits low local device-side energy consumption, though they do not capture the full energy cost of the distributed ledger network. Overall, the study highlights trade-offs among latency, throughput, energy consumption, and auditability in hybrid on-chain/off-chain architectures for industrial AGV systems and provides guidance on ledger selection and deployment design for security-critical industrial applications. Keywords: AGV, DLT, Hashgraph, IOTA, FIWARE, FIROS, IoT, Industrial Robotics, Auditability, Industry, ROS, Industrial Platform
Distributed certification is a set of mechanisms that allows an all-knowing prover to convince the units of a communication network that the network's state has a desired property, such as being 3-colorable or free of a predefined subgraph. Classical mechanisms, such as proof labeling schemes (PLS), consist of a message from the prover to each unit, followed by one round of communication among neighbors. Later works consider extensions, called distributed interactive proofs, where the prover and the units can have multiple rounds of communication before the communication among the units. Recently, Bick, Kol, and Oshman (SODA '22) defined a zero-knowledge version of distributed interactive proofs, where the prover convinces the units that the network satisfies the property without revealing any additional information about the network's state or structure.
We study distributed zero-knowledge proofs, introduced by Bick, Kol, and Oshman (SODA 2022). While distributed interactive proofs have advanced rapidly in recent years, general-purpose techniques for distributed zero-knowledge remain scarce and mostly problem-specific. We address this gap by introducing distributed statistical zero-knowledge, requiring that each node's view be simulatable up to negligible statistical distance, and by lifting the robust Sumcheck protocol (Lund, Fortnow, Karloff, and Nisan; FOCS 1990) into a modular primitive for distributed zero-knowledge proofs.
Web3Compass is presented as a novel search engine tailored to the decentralized Web, integrating multiple blockchain-based name services (ENS, UNS, BNB NS) and content storage networks (IPFS, Arweave, Swarm). Our work describes a real-time monitoring architecture: blockchain registries are queried continuously for new domain registrations and updates, content hashes (e.g. IPFS CIDs) are retrieved and fetched, and website data is parsed and indexed for keyword search. We emphasize the system’s novelty in unifying diverse name systems and content networks under one private search interface. A comprehensive literature review covers previous decentralized search efforts (e.g. DEWS 1, DeScan 2, Krypton 3), blockchain naming services (Namecoin 4, ENS 5, Unstoppable 6, Space ID’s .bnb 7), and content- addressed storage (IPFS 8, Arweave 9, Swarm 10). We include an architecture diagram and discuss implementation details (event log watchers, IPFS HTTP retrieval, indexing pipeline, privacy layers). Evaluation uses scalability and latency metrics, compares with existing solutions, and includes ethical/privacy analysis (e.g. query privacy via Hexens 11, censorship resistance 4). Our results show that real-time blockchain- based domain resolution is feasible and complements Web3 infrastructure, while highlighting trade-offs in data completeness and user privacy.
Web3 represents the next-generation value-driven Internet built on blockchain technology, whose realization heavily relies on mobile devices. However, the limited resources of these devices significantly restrict their ability to participate in transaction verification and ledger maintenance in blockchain networks. Existing offloading schemes often overlook storage offloading or adopt oversimplified joint strategies, failing to adequately consider the synergistic effects of storage and computation offloading on network performance. To address this issue, this paper proposes MEChain, a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)-aided blockchain network that implements a two-layer joint computation-storage offloading mechanism involving edge service providers (ESPs) and cloud service providers (CSPs). The joint computation offloading, ledger storage, and resource pricing problem is formulated as a three-stage Stackelberg game to capture the complexity of multi-party interactions. An iterative algorithm based on backward induction is designed to efficiently solve the Nash equilibrium, thereby ensuring system stability. Theoretical analysis and numerical experiments demonstrate that the MEChain framework not only significantly improves the profit per unit time of mobile devices by 11.3% but also exhibits rapid convergence of the proposed algorithm, providing a practical and theoretical foundation for resource optimization in mobile blockchain systems.