Blockchain Papers

Mohsen Attaran, Angappa Gunasekaran

No abstract is available for this record.

Clara Brekke

Blockchain technology is, in part, a proposal to resolve ‘the political’ through technical means: decentralised networks to solve the problem of authority; cryptography to coordinate and secure the network; and game theory and incentive design to solve network behaviour. This PhD thesis draws on theoretical work by Karen Barad (2007) and Jacques Rancière (Rancière, 2010) to ask the question of what matters politically in blockchain technology – both in the sense of matter as becoming material of a new mediation of the political, but also mattering in the sense of being of political importance to engineers, developers and communities forming around blockchain as a potential. Rather than treating blockchain as coherent thing to be either celebrated or criticised, this thesis proposes and attempts to draw out the ways in which the potentials of blockchain are negotiated as part of its political effects, looking towards these negotiations to understand how political differences are made and sought materialised. Three approaches to the political are articulated to analyse Bitcoin and Ethereum as case studies and shift their terms of debate. Firstly, addressing the question of algorithmic determinacy, an approach is proposed for critically understanding a blockchain proposition that does not immediately revert to a competition of control between ‘human’ and ‘machine’ through the notion of the insensible, drawing on work by geographer of the inhuman Yusoff (2013a). Secondly, drawing on political theorist Rancière (2010) a particular blockchain sensibility is articulated, addressing the question of the particular kind of ‘disruption’ that blockchain presents. Its specific provenance in political histories of decentralised network computation opens up political significance beyond its intersections with financial capitalism. Finally, addressing the question of blockchain as a resolution to the political, the thesis introduces the concept of dissensible as an ongoing potential for incompatible sensibilities and their negotiation.

Meiqi He, Gongxian Zeng, Jun Zhang, Linru Zhang · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Anh Thi Van Nguyen

Blockchain has been around for over a decade, however, the technology does not seem to have been adopted after a long time being in existence. The goal of this thesis was to get to study what are the barriers of the blockchain adoption. Furthermore, the thesis also indicated one use case that seems to stand out from the rest, smart contract, by implementing one specific example for demonstration purpose.
\n The thesis went through an in-depth concept of blockchain technology, studied the most well-known use cases being, including cryptocurrency, initial coin offering and smart contract and figured out their limitations particularly and blockchain’s generally. Finally, one example of Ethereum smart contract was implemented to indicate how this particular use case could fit what is needed nowadays.
\n As a result, the studies showed that blockchain is promising and can be applied through developing decentralized applications by smart contracts but the use cases must be chosen very carefully due to the problems of privacy and data protection. Otherwise, the main obstacle for the adoption is the lack of serious regulations, resulting the lack of trust, therefore, as long as blockchain-related businesses are not clearly regulated, the mass adoption is probably still far away since no one gets fully protected in the game, neither the companies nor the customers.

Ashish Rajendra Sai, Andrew Le Gear, Jim Buckley

Attaining consensus with no constraints on the consensus participation is a fundamental feature of decentralized blockchain solutions such as Bitcoin (Nakamoto, 2008) and Ethereum (Buterin et al., 2013). Unrestricted consensus participation removes the possibility of censorship and a potential single point of failure, but this design has led to a new concern: that of centralization. Centralization in decentralized blockchain refers to the concentration of a large portion of computing resources to a select few participants. In this paper, we identify the restriction on new participation as a critical contributor to the centralization of consensus power towards commercial and large-scale entities. We also examine the cause of the indirect restriction on participation and propose a metric to identify the degree of these indirect restrictions. This new metric may be used as a threat indicator to identify the centralization of decentralized blockchain caused by indirect participation restrictions.

Xiwei Xu, Ingo Weber, Mark Staples

No abstract is available for this record.

Georgios Palaiokrassas, Αντώνιος Λίτκε, Georgios Fragkos, Vasileios Papaefthymiou · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Praneeth Babu Marella, Matea Milojkovic, Jordan Mohler, Gaby G. Dagher

No abstract is available for this record.

I. Kopytin, A. Maslennikov, S. Zhukov

No abstract is available for this record.

Asma Salman

No abstract is available for this record.

José Guilherme Fontes de Azevedo Costa, Leonardo Albuquerque Marques

No abstract is available for this record.

Tan, Sean Jun Yu

This project focuses on making it easy for both developers and non-developers to develop smart contracts for solidity on the Ethereum blockchain. Our tool, LATTE, visually represents and simplifies the concepts in blockchain, which is still in its infancy. Graphical objects and diagrams are used to represent code and logic, which will allow quicker prototyping of smart contracts. LATTE also allows easy deployment of smart contract code on to the blockchain with the click of a button. We also examine the performance and gas usage of smart contracts generated using LATTE and compare it to reference smart contracts. This document summarises all design issues, challenges faced and the steps taken to complete the project.

Theodor Schnitzler, Markus Dürmuth, Christina Pöpper

No abstract is available for this record.

Pengfei Wang, Wenjuan Cui, Jianhui Li

No abstract is available for this record.

Mathias Fromberger, Lars Haffke

No abstract is available for this record.

Hyeongcheol An, Rakyong Choi, Kwangjo Kim

No abstract is available for this record.

Santiago Palladino

In the previous chapter, we addressed user onboarding challenges, one of the two main issues for Ethereum mass adoption. The second of them, which we will tackle in this chapter, is scalability. The Ethereum network, as it is today, can handle about 15 transactions per second – this throughput must be shared among all Ethereum applications globally. This has led to single applications cluttering the entire network due to a spike in their usage to the point of rendering all dapps unusable for brief periods. In this chapter, we will introduce state channels and sidechains, two of the most widely used scalability solutions.

Authors unavailable

Cryptocurrency marked its presence with the inception of bitcoin in the year 2009. Bitcoin was created as a medium for peer to peer exchange. Cryptocurrency can be defined as money in digital form which can be used for exchange of goods and services. The cryptocurrency was designed to discover a type of currency which is not government regulated or in simpler terms currency whose demand and supply cannot be regulated by authorities. Cryptocurrency use cryptography to generate and allocate currency. The process of cryptography requires different verification of transactions without involving any king of centralized authority. To verify that no currency unit is spent twice, transaction verification authenticates the amount of transaction as well as the ownership of the currency. This step by step process is known as mining. The transaction record of cryptocurrency is stored in a ledger called blockchain. Blockchain can be defined as a distributed ledger which forms the basis for cryptocurrency market but its implication is not restricted to only cryptocurrency, blockchain technology can be used in financial services, supply chain management, government documentation. Mining algorithms in most of the cryptocurrency are public. Cryptocurrency presence was not felt only because of its concept but the controversies associated with it like the money laundering and terrorism activities being funded through its mechanism. The cryptocurrency market has shown turbulent with significant growth as well as downfalls. Since the main purpose of cryptocurrency was to replace real currency the question arises whether it has been able to impact the value of real currency in any significant way or not. This research aims at studying the correlation between cryptocurrencies namely Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Neo, Ripple, Ethereum, Tron, Litecoin, Dash, Monero, IOTA and real currencies namely Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro, Pound sterling, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan and commodities namely gold, silver keeping united states dollar as base for all conversions.

Andrés Pardo Mesa, Fabián Ardila Rodríguez, Daniel Díaz López, Félix Gómez Mármol

No abstract is available for this record.

Ilya Grishchenko, Matteo Maffei, Clara Schneidewind

No abstract is available for this record.

Santiago Palladino

Smart contracts are the key component in Ethereum. They hold the logic to be executed on the network, keep track of their own state, and can interact with other smart contracts as well. However, they have some limitations, such as limited computation per transaction and expensive storage costs. They also cannot initiate new transactions – they depend on external accounts to trigger them. And since they run on the Ethereum network, they cannot directly interact with anything outside it. In this chapter, we will

José Augusto Fontoura Costa, Leonardo Albuquerque Marques

portuguesO artigo expoe e discute os cenarios possiveis de interpretacao de contratos em ambiente de computacao descentralizada em blockchain. Parte-se de um caso ocorrido em 2016 no ambiente de transacoes do Ethereum, no qual a aplicacao de um contrato inteligente poderia ter levado a consequencias contraintuitivas e desastrosas, capazes de causar um prejuizo de cerca de cento e sessenta milhoes de dolares a investidores. Nesse caso, o potencial prejuizo foi contornado a luz de uma “intervencao humana” na codificacao de um contrato inteligente. Abordam-se as limitacoes dos contratos inteligentes (smart contracts) e das OAD a partir do argumento do quarto chines de John Searle, segundo o qual o modus operandi da computacao de maquinas e diverso da interpretacao humana. Em um segundo momento, procura-se fazer uma reflexao sobre como essa ideia pode ser confrontada com o principio contratual da autonomia da vontade em um cenario em que soberanias estatais praticamente nao tem como agir em ambientes de transacao em computacao descentralizada e outra reflexao sobre que tipo de consequencias podem ser esperadas a partir dai. Em seguida, a partir da Nova Economia Institucional e da eficiencia adaptativa, avaliam-se os caminhos possiveis para a decidibilidade de conflitos contratuais em computacao descentralizada, que se encontram em ambientes quase imunes a soberania estatal. EnglishThe article discusses the interpretation of contracts in the blockchain decentralized computing environment. To do so, it does analyse a 2016 case on a transaction that took place in the Ethereum environment. In this instance, the use of smart contracts would have led to counter-intuitive and disastrous consequences, particularly a loss of about one hundred and sixty million dollars. The potential loss was circumvented thanks to “human intervention” to a codified smart contract. The limits of smart contracts and DAO are addressed through the John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, according to which there is an essential gap between machine computing and human understanding. It also seeks to challenge the Principles of Private Autonomy and Freedom of Contract in an environment marked by the decentralization of operations and their deleterious consequences to state control. As it is concluded, the New Institutional Economics and the concept of adaptive efficiency may help to understand and set possible ways to settling private controversies backed by contracts in an almost stateless scenario.

Santiago Palladino

After a not-so-brief interruption about writing smart contracts, we will review in-depth the different ways to connect to the Ethereum network to retrieve data. We will cover different connection methods, as well as patterns for listening to changes, and put it all together in a sample application for monitoring transactions of an ERC20 token.

Nikolaus Lipusch, Dominik Dellermann, Philipp Ebel, Ahmad Ghazawneh · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.