Yihan Liu, Ke Li, Zihao Huang, Bowen Li · 6 authors
The predominant centralized paradigm in educational data management currently suffers from several critical issues such as vulnerability to malicious tampering, a high prevalence of diploma counterfeiting, and the onerous cost of certificate authentication. Decentralized blockchain technology, with its cutting-edge capabilities, presents a viable solution to these pervasive problems. In this paper, we illuminate the inherent limitations of existing centralized systems and introduce EduChain, a novel heterogeneous blockchain-based system for managing educational data. EduChain uniquely harnesses the strengths of both private and consortium blockchains, offering an unprecedented level of security and efficiency. In addition, we propose a robust mechanism for performing database consistency checks and error tracing. This is achieved through the implementation of a secondary consensus, employing the pt-table-checksum tool. This approach effectively addresses the prevalent issue of database mismatches. Our system demonstrates superior performance in key areas such as information verification, error traceback, and data security, thereby significantly improving the integrity and trustworthiness of educational data management. Through EduChain, we offer a powerful solution for future advancements in secure and efficient educational data management.
Befekadu G. Gebraselase, Bjarne E. Helvik, Yuming Jiang
Bitcoin has become the leading cryptocurrency system, but the limit on its transaction processing capacity has resulted in increased transaction fees and delayed transaction confirmation. As such, it is pertinent to understand and probably predict how transactions are handled by Bitcoin such that a user may adapt the transaction requests and a miner may adjust the block generation strategy and/or the mining pool to join. To this aim, the present paper introduces results from an analysis of transaction handling in Bitcoin. Specifically, the analysis consists of two-part. The first part is an exploratory data analysis revealing key characteristics in Bitcoin transaction handling. The second part is a predictability analysis intended to provide insights on transaction handling such as (i) transaction confirmation time, (ii) block attributes, and (iii) who has created the block. The result shows that some models do reasonably well for (ii), but surprisingly not for (i) or (iii).
The exponential growth of digital transactions and regulatory requirements has necessitated the development of robust, transparent, and tamper-proof recordkeeping systems that can withstand the scrutiny of modern audit processes. This comprehensive study investigates the implementation and effectiveness of blockchain-based architectures for regulatory recordkeeping systems, with particular emphasis on achieving real-time audit readiness across multiple industry sectors. The research examines how distributed ledger technology can address the fundamental challenges of data integrity, transparency, and immutability that traditional centralized recordkeeping systems have struggled to resolve effectively. The investigation encompasses a thorough analysis of existing blockchain frameworks, consensus mechanisms, and smart contract implementations specifically designed for regulatory compliance applications. Through systematic evaluation of various blockchain architectures, including permissioned networks, hybrid systems, and consortium blockchains, this study identifies optimal configurations for different regulatory environments. The research methodology combines theoretical framework analysis with practical implementation case studies from financial services, healthcare, supply chain management, and energy sectors to provide comprehensive insights into the practical applications and limitations of blockchain-based regulatory systems. Key findings reveal that blockchain-based architectures demonstrate significant improvements in data integrity verification, audit trail transparency, and compliance monitoring capabilities compared to traditional systems. The study identifies critical success factors including proper node governance structures, appropriate consensus mechanisms, integration with existing enterprise systems, and compliance with data privacy regulations. However, the research also highlights substantial challenges including scalability limitations, energy consumption concerns, regulatory uncertainty, and the complexity of legacy system integration that must be addressed for successful implementation. The research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by proposing a comprehensive framework for evaluating blockchain suitability for specific regulatory environments, developing implementation guidelines for different industry contexts, and identifying best practices for maintaining audit readiness in distributed ledger systems. The study concludes that while blockchain technology offers transformative potential for regulatory recordkeeping, successful implementation requires careful consideration of technical, regulatory, and organizational factors to ensure both compliance and operational efficiency.
Recently, blockchain technology accumulates and stores all transactions. Therefore, in order to verify the contents of all transactions, the data itself is compressed, but the scalability is limited. In addition, since a separate verification algorithm is used for each type of transaction, the verification burden increases as the size of the transaction increases. Existing blockchain cannot participate in the network because it does not become a block sink by using a server with a low specification. Due to this problem, as the time passes, the data size of the blockchain network becomes larger and it becomes impossible to participate in the network except for users with abundant resources. Therefore, in this paper, we studied the zero knowledge proof algorithm for general operation verification. In this system, the design of zero-knowledge circuit generator capable of general operation verification and optimization of verifier and prover were also conducted. Also, we developed an algorithm for optimizing key generation. Based on all of these, the zero-knowledge proof algorithm was applied to and tested on the virtual machine so that it can be used universally on all blockchains.
operates on a blockchain full node maintained directly by the DApp owner (i.e., an in-house RPC node) or a set of nodes hosted by a third party (i.e., a third-party RPC service) intended to ease DApp deployment. Given the ever-growing blockchain states (e.g., 130 GB and 1.8 TB for a fully synced and an archived Ethereum node, respectively, as of 2018), the RPC service plays an increasingly important role in the DApp ecosystem, scaling DApp clients to low-end mobile devices and web browsers. Major blockchains today flock to roll out RPC supports, which spawn a good number of services in practice, including nine service providers (as is evaluated in this work) supporting the Ethereum's JSON-RPC interface [16], blockchain.info [5] with Bitcoin's JSON-RPC [2], dfuse.io [13] and greymass.com [39] with EOSIO's Chain API [6], stellar.org [46] with Stellar Horizon [23], etc. These services host the majority of DApps; for instance, at least 63% of Ethereum based DApps use one RPC service [10]. DApp clients RPC service JSON-RPC Block/tx synchronization Blockchain peers
Muhammad Imran Sarwar, Muhammad Waseem Iqbal, Tahir Alyas, Abdallah Namoun · 7 authors
When designed, technologies and frameworks are not created to be as dynamic and flexible as to cater to the requirements of other domains, and so is the case with Blockchain technology. Specifically designed for cryptocurrency, Blockchain was not intended to be used in other domains. However, during the past few years, critics argued that Blockchain has the potential to deal with some unique requirements like confidentiality and immutability and can therefore be deployed in several areas other than cryptocurrency. The use of Blockchain to support Accounting Information Systems (AIS) through enterprise resource planning (ERP) is another motivating domain to investigate in this research. ERP is another promising technology that has gained significant attention across the globe. In this research, a hybrid solution is proposed to ensure AIS data integrity against any deliberate attempt or mala-fide intention for alteration or deletion from the database that can be verified at any later stage. Since Blockchain can be used to prevent any mutability in the stored data, the proposed solution presents a concept of Data Vaults backed by the Blockchain. To this end, we apply cryptographic primitives like SHA256 on the data inside the block and then chain that block to secure data vaults. So far, Blockchain has not yet proven itself as an alternative to any traditional database system. However, it can be applied in conjunction with the Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) to provide cost-effective yet robust solutions. This research demonstrates the application of a simple and lean version of Blockchain to assist enterprises in storing their financial and accounting data into data vaults, ensuring their data integrity against any alterations. The suggested cost-effective framework can be easily integrated into AIS and ERP systems to identify data breaches.
Jan 1, 2021·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Johannes Sedlmeir, Philipp Ross, André Luckow, Jannik Lockl · 6 authors
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) promise to revolutionize business ecosystems by permitting secure transactions without intermediaries. A widely recognized challenge that inhibits the uptake of DLT is scalability and performance. Hence, quantifying key metrics such as throughput and latency is crucial for designing DLT-based infrastructures, applications, and ecosystems. However, current benchmarking frameworks for blockchains do not cover the whole benchmarking process; impeding transparent comparisons of different DLT networks. In this paper, we present the Distributed Ledger Performance Scan (DLPS), an open-source framework for end-to-end performance characterizations of blockchains, addressing the need to transparently and automatically evaluate the performance of highly customizable configurations. We describe our new framework and argue that it significantly improves existing DLT benchmarking solutions. To demonstrate the capabilities of the DLPS, we also summarize the main results obtained from a series of experiments that we have conducted with it, giving a first comprehensive comparison of essential scalability properties of several commonly used enterprise blockchains.
Yogesh N. Patil, Arvind W. Kiwelekar, Laxman D. Netak, S. B. Deosarkar
Administering standardized examinations is a challenging task, especially for those universities for which colleges affiliated to it are geographically distributed over a wide area. Some of the challenges include maintaining integrity and confidentiality of examination records, preventing mal-practices, issuing unique identification numbers to a large student population and managing assets required for the smooth conduct of examinations. These challenges aggravate when colleges affiliated to universities demand academic and administrative autonomy by demonstrating best practices consistently over a long period. In this chapter, we describe a model for decentralized and autonomous examination system to provide the necessary administrative support. The model is based on two emerging technologies of Blockchain Technology and Internet of Things (IoT). We adopt a software architecture approach to describe the model. The prescriptive architecture consists of {\em architectural mappings} which map functional and non-functional requirements to architectural elements of blockchain technology and IoT. In architectural mappings, first, we identify common use-cases in administering standardized examinations. Then we map these use-cases to the core elements of blockchain, i.e. distributed ledgers, cryptography, consensus protocols and smart-contracts and IoT. Such kind of prescriptive architecture guide downstream software engineering processes of implementation and testing
Remigijus Paulavičius, Saulius Grigaitis, Ernestas Filatovas
In recent years, distributed ledger technologies, and especially blockchain, have gained tremendous interest from academia, government, and industry. Although various blockchain-based solutions were created, the lack of tools to evaluate these complex distributed systems may hinder the development of the field. Many advantages of blockchain systems can be demonstrated only at large scales, e.g., using thousands of nodes. An investigation of different implementations and design choices is complicated and hardly feasible on real systems. Meanwhile, blockchain simulators give the possibility to repeat the complex real-world processes at a low cost. This work provides the first and an up-to-date systematic review and empirical analysis of blockchain simulators. Simulators are easily extensible and can test the performance of distributed ledgers using different settings and parameters on a single computer. The features and limitations of selected simulators are summarized and experimentally validated. Finally, recommendations for potential future research directions in the field are provided.
Nowadays, data are generated in a continuous streaming manner as the inputs of various applications. The sources of such generated data can be wired or wireless sensor networks commonly used in various fields of geographical, traffic, Internet of Things (IoT), financial tickers, Web2 and Web3, e-commerce, social networks, and online communities. The high volume, high variety, and high velocity of data have recently posed the challenge of 3Vs to this field, also known as the Big Data Problem. The 3Vs dimensions of complexities for the big data entails high-speed storage, scalability of database systems, suitable data models, real-time responsiveness and so on. Data model, as the representation schema of data is an essential issue since many others (e.g., DBMS systems’ design, DB languages, etc.) rely on. So, the study of data models is a key and fundamental aspect in structuring, organizing, storing, and manipulating big data. It is also the essence in various areas of cloud migration, web-scale, and so forth. In this paper, we have systematically reviewed different types of data models, the rationale behind them, their applications and support capabilities, and the technologies to switch from one model to another. To address the user needs in various fields, a systematic review method is adopted to classify and present different types and characteristics of data models.
Blockchain technology is considered the most relevant technology after the internet that revolutionizes many application domains. The first generation of BC technology, BC 1.0, is used for cryptocurrency purposes; the second generation, BC 2.0, as represented by Ethereum, is an open and decentralized platform empowering the running of decentralized applications (DApps) on top of BC as a new computing paradigm. Ethereum as a BC 2.0 leader has a large development community. Its open-source feature leads to the development of several emulation tools, simulators, TestNets, and security verification tools dedicated to Ethereum-based system performance analysis. Making an adequate decision regarding the choice of the most appropriate Ethereum tool responding to the requirement of a specific system or application still requires more investigation from researchers. In this regard, this chapter presents the characteristics of the most-used Ethereum simulators, emulators, and TestNets and provides comparative studies between Ethereum simulators, TestNets, and security verification tools.
Xueping Liang, Sachin Shetty, Deepak K. Tosh, Peter Foytik · 5 authors
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) provides decentralised services by removing the need of trust among distributed nodes in the distributed system. Transactions across the network are visible to a...
Ethereum is an open source, decentralized blockchain platform with computational capabilities that reconstructs an elementary currency exchange into a transfer of value between users via a scripting language. Ethereum is widely recognized as a successor to the Bitcoin protocol, generalizing the original ideas and enabling a more diverse array of applications to be built on top of the blockchain technology. Ethereum has two essential components. First, there is a Turing-complete virtual processor that can load resources and execute scripts called the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The second component is a token of value called ether, which is the currency of the network and is used for user-to-user transactions or compensation to miners of the network. In this chapter, we begin our journey with an overview of Ethereum’s architecture in comparison to Bitcoin, focusing on the EVM and Turing-completeness properties. Following the overview of its architecture, there is a short discussion of the accounts model in Ethereum and account representation with Merkle-Patricia trees. This will lead us to the topics of global state representation in Ethereum, account storage, and gas, which is a spam prevention mechanism in the network. Then, we deconstruct the notion of a smart contract enabled by the EVM, the security concerns revolving around sandboxing executable code, and how the EVM pushes executable code (bytecode) to the blockchain. After that, we provide an introduction to Solidity and Vyper, two programming languages used for writing smart contracts in Ethereum. We explore the syntax of Solidity and Vyper, as well as the popular integrated development environments (IDEs) being used, and provide a brief list of key developer resources. Next, we focus on the world computer model proposed in Ethereum and introduce supporting decentralized technologies such as IPFS and Whisper. Then, we look at the state of decentralized apps (DApps) along the publishing platform called Mist available in Ethereum. This allows us to transition into talking about the Layer 2 updates to Ethereum—the major technical focus of this chapter and the maturation of the Ethereum ecosystem beyond 2020. Then, we will introduce the enterprise aspect of Ethereum, Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) deployed on the Azure cloud by Microsoft. The chapter will conclude with an overview of recent technical proposals in Ethereum, the status of Layer 2 upgrades, and exciting changes on the horizon.
Verifying the integrity of IoT data in cloud-based IoT architectures is crucial for building reliable IoT applications. Traditional data integrity verification methods rely on a Trusted Third Party (TTP) that has issues of risk and operational cost by centralization. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has a high potential to verify IoT data integrity and overcome the problems with TTPs. However, the existing DLTs have low transaction throughput, high computational and storage overhead, and are unsuitable for IoT environments, where a massive scale of data is generated. Recently, Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based DLTs have been proposed to address the low transaction throughput of linear DLTs. However, the integration of IoT Gateways (GWs) into the peer to peer (P2P) DLT network is challenging because of their low storage and computational capacity. This paper proposes Lightweight and Scalable DAG based distributed ledger for IoT (LSDI) that can work with resource-constrained IoT GWs to provide fast and scalable IoT data integrity verification. LSDI uses two key techniques: Pruning and Clustering, to reduce 1) storage overhead in IoT GWs by removing sufficiently old transactions, and 2) computational overhead of IoT GWs by partitioning a large P2P network into smaller P2P networks. The evaluation results of the proof of concept implementation showed that the proposed LSDI system achieves high transaction throughput and scalability while efficiently managing storage and computation overhead of the IoT GWs.
Mikel Cortes-Goicoechea, Luca Franceschini, Leonardo Bautista-Gomez
Scalability is a common issue among the most used permissionless blockchains, and several approaches have been proposed accordingly. As Ethereum is set to be a solid foundation for a decentralized Internet web, the need for tackling scalability issues while preserving the security of the network is an important challenge. In order to successfully deliver effective scaling solutions, Ethereum is on the path of a major protocol improvement called Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2), which implements sharding. As the change of consensus mechanism is an extremely delicate matter, this improvement will be achieved through different phases, the first of which is the implementation of the Beacon Chain. For this, a specification has been developed and multiple groups have implemented clients to run the new protocol. In this work, we analyse the resource usage behaviour of different clients running as Eth2 nodes, comparing their performance and analysing differences. Our results show multiple network perturbations and how different clients react to it.