Blockchain Papers

Ogami Tomoya, Hiroyuki Inaba

No abstract is available for this record.

Emmanuelle Anceaume, Romaric Ludinard, Maria Potop-Butucaru, Frédéric Tronel

This paper introduces Distributed Ledger Register that mimics the behavior of most popular ledgers such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Our work is the first to make the connection between the Distributed Ledger Register and the classical theory of shared registers. We furthermore, propose an algorithm that emulates the distributed ledger register.

Emmanuelle Anceaume, Romaric Ludinard, Maria Potop-Butucaru, Frédéric Tronel

This paper introduces Distributed Ledger Register that mimics the behavior of most popular ledgers such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Our work is the first to make the connection between the Distributed Ledger Register and the classical theory of shared registers. We furthermore, propose an algorithm that emulates the distributed ledger register.

Tien Tuan Anh Dinh, Ji Wang, Gang Chen, Rui Liu · 6 authors

Blockchain technologies are taking the world by storm. Public blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, enable secure peer-to-peer applications like crypto-currency or smart contracts. Their security and performance are well studied. This paper concerns recent private blockchain systems designed with stronger security (trust) assumption and performance requirement. These systems target and aim to disrupt applications which have so far been implemented on top of database systems, for example banking, finance and trading applications. Multiple platforms for private blockchains are being actively developed and fine tuned. However, there is a clear lack of a systematic framework with which different systems can be analyzed and compared against each other. Such a framework can be used to assess blockchains' viability as another distributed data processing platform, while helping developers to identify bottlenecks and accordingly improve their platforms.

Val A. Red

Existing distributed ledger implementations – specifically, several blockchain implementations – embody a cacophony of divergent capabilities augmenting innovations of cryptographic hashes, consensus mechanisms, and asymmetric cryptography in a wide variety of applications. Whether specifically designed for cryptocurrency or otherwise, several distributed ledgers rely upon modular mechanisms such as consensus or smart contracts. These components, however, can vary substantially among implementations; differences involving proof-of-work, practical byzantine fault tolerance, and other consensus approaches exemplify distinct distributed ledger variations. Such divergence results in unique combinations of modules, performance, latency, and fault tolerance. As implementations continue to develop rapidly due to the emerging nature of blockchain technologies, this paper encapsulates a snapshot of sensor and internet of things (IoT) specific implementations of blockchain as of the end of 2016. Several technical risks and divergent approaches preclude standardization of a blockchain for sensors and IoT in the foreseeable future; such issues will be assessed alongside the practicality of IoT applications among Hyperledger, Iota, and Ethereum distributed ledger implementations suggested for IoT. This paper contributes a comparison of existing distributed ledger implementations intended for practical sensor and IoT utilization. A baseline for characterizing distributed ledger implementations in the context of IoT and sensors is proposed. Technical approaches and performance are compared considering IoT size, weight, and power limitations. Consensus and smart contracts, if applied, are also analyzed for the respective implementations’ practicality and security. Overall, the maturity of distributed ledgers with respect to sensor and IoT applicability will be analyzed for enterprise interoperability.

Sadhu Ram Basnet, Subarna Shakya

One of the major concerns on today's Software-Defined Network (SDN) is to enhance its security. Files sharing in SDN can be made much more secured against fraudulent activities by the implementation of blockchain technology. When the privacy of network's users is increased, the reliability of system increases correspondingly. Blockchain Security over SDN (BSS) is proposed which protects privacy and availability of resources against non-trusting members. Mininet emulator is used for simulating custom SDN network topology. OpenDaylight controller is integrated with OpenStack controller. For cloud data storage, OpenStack platform is used. For testing purpose of Blockchain, Pyethereum tester tool under Ethereum platform is implemented. Serpent programming is used for creating contract in the blockchain. BSS facilitates files sharing among SDN users in distributed peer-to-peer basis using OpenStack as a cloud storage platform.

Stephanos Matsumoto, Raphael M. Reischuk

Despite a great deal of work to improve the TLS PKI, CA misbehavior continues to occur, resulting in unauthorized certificates that can be used to mount man-in-the-middle attacks against HTTPS sites. CAs lack the incentives to invest in higher security, and the manual effort required to report a rogue certificate deters many from contributing to the security of the TLS PKI. In this paper, we present IKP, a platform that automates responses to unauthorized certificates and provides incentives for CAs to behave correctly and for others to report potentially unauthorized certificates. Domains in IKP specify criteria for their certificates, and CAs specify reactions such as financial penalties that execute in case of unauthorized certificate issuance. By leveraging smart contracts and blockchain-based consensus, we can decentralize IKP while still providing automated incentives. We describe a theoretical model for payment flows and implement IKP in Ethereum to show that decentralizing and automating PKIs with financial incentives is both economically sound and technically viable.

Michael Coblenz

Blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum, promise to facilitate transactions on a decentralized computing platform among parties that have not established trust. Recognition of the unique challenges of blockchain programming has inspired developers to create domain-specific languages, such as Solidity, for programming blockchain systems. Unfortunately, bugs in Solidity programs have recently been exploited to steal money. We propose a new programming language, Obsidian, to make it easier for programmers to write correct programs.

Narayan Prusty

Develop real-time practical DApps using Ethereum and JavaScriptAbout This BookCreate powerful, end-to-end applications for Blockchain using EthereumWrite your first program using the Solidity programming languageChange the way you think and design your applications by using the all new database-BlockchainWho This Book Is ForThis book is for JavaScript developers who now want to create tamper-proof data (and transaction) applications using Blockchain and Ethereum. Those who are interested in cryptocurrencies and the logic and database empowering it will find this book extremely useful.What You Will LearnWalk through the basics of the Blockchain technologyImplement Blockchain's technology and its features, and see what can be achieved using themBuild DApps using Solidity and Web3.jsUnderstand the geth command and cryptographyCreate Ethereum walletsExplore consortium blockchainIn DetailBlockchain is a decentralized ledger that maintains a continuously growing list of data records that are secured from tampering and revision. Every user is allowed to connect to the network, send new transactions to it, verify transactions, and create new blocks, making it permission-less.This book will teach you what Blockchain is, how it maintains data integrity, and how to create real-world Blockchain projects using Ethereum. With interesting real-world projects, you will learn how to write smart contracts which run exactly as programmed without any chance of fraud, censorship, or third-party interference, and build end-to-end applications for Blockchain.You will learn about concepts such as cryptography in cryptocurrencies, ether security, mining , smart contracts, solidity, and more. You will also learn about web sockets, various API services for Ethereum, and much more.The blockchain is the main technical innovation of bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for bitcoin transactions.Style and approachThis is a project-based guide that not only gets you up and running with Blockchain, but also lets you create intuitive real-world applications that will make you an independent Blockchain developer.

Aurélien Alvarez

Ethereum represents an important first step in the new vision of a decentralized web. Could this new technology provide tools to invent new forms of democracy?

Joshua Pazvakawambwa

Digital currency platforms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple are slowly but surely revolutionizing trade and commerce alongside their potential to impact people's economic lifestyles immensely. Digital currencies present a unique medium for humanitarian, mission, and more notoriosly arms and terrorism transactions around the globe. Various factors like security, legislature, and infrastructure affect the viability of adopting digital currencies in developing countries such as Zimbabwe. The research study assesses whether this technology's shortcomings outweigh the conventional means of exchange: hard cash, gold, and checks. Therefore, aiding stakeholders in making informed decisions concerning interfacing technology with economics in the developing world.

Adam Hahn, Rajveer Singh, Chen‐Ching Liu, Sijie Chen

Transactive energy paradigms will enable the exchange of energy from a distributed set of prosumers. While prosumers have access to distributed energy resources, these resources are intermittently available. There is a need for distributed markets to enable the exchange of energy in transactive environments, however, the large number of potential prosumers introduces challenges in the establishment of trust between prosumers. Markets for transactive environments create other challenges, such as establishing clearing prices for energy and exchanging money between prosumers. Blockchains provide a unique technology to address this distributed trust problem through the use of a distributed ledger, cryptocurrencies, and the execution of smart contracts. This paper introduces a smart contract that implements a transactive energy auction that operates without the need for a trusted entitys oversight. The auction mechanism implements a Vickrey second price auction, which guarantees bidders will submit honest bids. The contract is implemented on transactive agents on the WSU campus interacting with a 72kW PV array and the Ethereum blockchain. The contract is then used to execute auctions based on the energy from the the PV array and simulated building loads to demonstrate the auctions operations.

Hui Wang, Yuanyuan Cen, LI Xue-feng

Cross-chain communication is one of the major design considerations in current blockchain systems [4-7] such as Ethereum[8]. Currently, Blockchain operates like information isolated island, they cannot obtain external data or execute transactions on their own.

Neil McNaughton

Crowdfunding evolves to enterprise smart contract system. Can blockchain carry CAD models?

Navneet Kaur, Nidhi Chahal, Ritu Dewan, Shikha Singh · 7 authors

Distributed ledger technology, a method of storing and maintaining the integrity of multiple copies of critical data using a massively redundant network of participating machines, has found a “killer application” in blockchain, a type of distributed ledger. A blockchain consists of sequential blocks that may never be modified or reordered, leaving a public, auditable record that is consistent and highly resistant to tampering and deletion. These qualities make blockchain eminently suitable for its most common use, cryptocurrency, and its occasional variants in the form of cryptocurrency tokens, used to represent ownership or some other right to virtual or physical goods and capabilities. Blockchain also enables smart contracts, discrete bodies of software written to serve both as the memorial and the means of execution of an agreement between parties. Smart contracts can have all the elements of a traditional contract, and as jurisdictions legislate or jurists rule on the fine points of enforceability and the acceptability of smart contracts as traditional contracts, applications in nearly every area of commerce have emerged. Digital lawyers may not need to become software developers, but deepening their understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the technology, developing a keen awareness of the issues at the intersection between code and the law, as well as the law’s readiness in this area, will be of great advantage to them and their clients in this rapidly evolving area at the intersection of technology, commerce and law.

Chris Dannen

Learn how to use Solidity and the Ethereum project second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization. Blockchain protocols are taking the world by storm, and the Ethereum project, with its Turing-complete scripting language Solidity, has rapidly become a front-runner. This bookpresents the blockchain phenomenon in context; then situates Ethereum in a world pioneered by Bitcoin. See why professionals and non-professionals alike are honing their skills in smart contract patterns and distributed application development. You'll review the fundamentals of programming and networking, alongside its introduction to the new discipline of crypto-economics. You'll then deploy smart contracts of your own, and learn how they can serve as a back-end for JavaScript and HTML applications on the Web. Many Solidity tutorials out there today have the same flaw: they are written for advanced JavaScript developers who want to transfer their skills to a blockchain environment. Introducing Ethereum and Solidityis accessible to technology professionals and enthusiasts of all levels. Youll find exciting sample code that can move forward real world assets in both the academic and the corporate arenas. Find out now why this book is a powerful gateway for creative technologists of all types, from concept to deployment. What Youll LearnSee how Ethereum (and other cryptocurrencies) work Compare distributed apps (dapps) to web appsWrite Ethereum smart contracts in Solidity Connect Ethereum smart contracts to your HTML/CSS/JavaScript web applications Deploy your own dapp, coin, and blockchain Work with basic and intermediate smart contracts Who This Book Is For Anyone who is curious about Ethereum or has some familiarity with computer science Product managers, CTOs, and experienced JavaScript programmers Experts will find the advanced sample projects in this book rewarding because of the power of Solidity

Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Ville Viitasaari

Bitcoin is an application that runs on blockchain technology. Blockchain is a foundational technology that is bringing in the second era of the Internet – the era where value can be transferred, rather than just information. Blockchain is developing along a four-stage path similar to that which TCP/IP took. Both are foundational technologies. TCP/IP brought the Internet, and eventually brought significant (transformational) technological changes in business like Amazon.com and Skype. These are changes that could not have been forecast at the beginning of the Internet age. Blockchain is an immutable distributed ledger. It replaces the inefficient use of multiple centralized ledgers. It will support smart contracts that automatically make payments, adjust accounts, and coordinate records among multiple organizations. A payroll application on blockchain’s distributed ledger will allow employees to be paid, and all related deductions and deposits to be made in real-time. It will allow multiple government agencies to immediately have audit-level access to all employee records, and all employer matching-payments. With a fiat crypto-currency a payroll application on the blockchain will allow immediate global payroll compliance at a fraction of the cost of current payroll compliance. Based on the trajectory of ITP/IP’s development it is reasonable to assume that a payroll application will be seen on a blockchain (most likely Quorum, a private/permissioned blockchain based on the Ethereum platform) by 2018-2021. The first one will be constructed either by a government (Finland or Estonia) or by a private company (in the USA). Costs will be so low that the industry will consolidate (picture the arrival of Amazon.com among the group of brick and mortar books stores that preceded it in the late 1990’s). A traditional payroll service provider today needs to prepare for this change by developing a pilot program internally that will educate its workforce to the advantages and operational intricacies of a service based in the blockchain.

Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Ville Viitasaari

Bitcoin is an application that runs on blockchain technology. Blockchain is a foundational technology that is bringing in the second era of the Internet – the era where value can be transferred, rather than just information. Blockchain is developing along a four-stage path similar to that which TCP/IP took. Both are foundational technologies. TCP/IP brought the Internet, and eventually brought significant (transformational) technological changes in business like Amazon.com and Skype. These are changes that could not have been forecast at the beginning of the Internet age. Blockchain is an immutable distributed ledger. It replaces the inefficient use of multiple centralized ledgers. It will support smart contracts that automatically make payments, adjust accounts, and coordinate records among multiple organizations. A payroll application on blockchain’s distributed ledger will allow employees to be paid, and all related deductions and deposits to be made in real-time. It will allow multiple government agencies to immediately have audit-level access to all employee records, and all employer matching-payments. With a fiat crypto-currency a payroll application on the blockchain will allow immediate global payroll compliance at a fraction of the cost of current payroll compliance. Based on the trajectory of ITP/IP’s development it is reasonable to assume that a payroll application will be seen on a blockchain (most likely Quorum, a private/permissioned blockchain based on the Ethereum platform) by 2018-2021. The first one will be constructed either by a government (Finland or Estonia) or by a private company (in the USA). Costs will be so low that the industry will consolidate (picture the arrival of Amazon.com among the group of brick and mortar books stores that preceded it in the late 1990’s). A traditional payroll service provider today needs to prepare for this change by developing a pilot program internally that will educate its workforce to the advantages and operational intricacies of a service based in the blockchain.

Emanuele Di Pascale, Jasmina McMenamy, Irene Macaluso, Linda Doyle

The disruptive power of blockchain technologies represents a great opportunity to re-imagine standard practices of telecommunication networks and to identify critical areas that can benefit from brand new approaches. As a starting point for this debate, we look at the current limits of infrastructure sharing, and specifically at the Small-Cell-as-a-Service trend, asking ourselves how we could push it to its natural extreme: a scenario in which any individual home or business user can become a service provider for mobile network operators, freed from all the scalability and legal constraints that are inherent to the current modus operandi. We propose the adoption of smart contracts to implement simple but effective Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between small cell providers and mobile operators, and present an example contract template based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Tien Tuan Anh Dinh, Ji Wang, Gang Chen, Rui Liu · 6 authors

Blockchain technologies are taking the world by storm. Public blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, enable secure peer-to-peer applications like crypto-currency or smart contracts. Their security and performance are well studied. This paper concerns recent private blockchain systems designed with stronger security (trust) assumption and performance requirement. These systems target and aim to disrupt applications which have so far been implemented on top of database systems, for example banking, finance applications. Multiple platforms for private blockchains are being actively developed and fine tuned. However, there is a clear lack of a systematic framework with which different systems can be analyzed and compared against each other. Such a framework can be used to assess blockchains' viability as another distributed data processing platform, while helping developers to identify bottlenecks and accordingly improve their platforms. In this paper, we first describe BlockBench, the first evaluation framework for analyzing private blockchains. It serves as a fair means of comparison for different platforms and enables deeper understanding of different system design choices. Any private blockchain can be integrated to BlockBench via simple APIs and benchmarked against workloads that are based on real and synthetic smart contracts. BlockBench measures overall and component-wise performance in terms of throughput, latency, scalability and fault-tolerance. Next, we use BlockBench to conduct comprehensive evaluation of three major private blockchains: Ethereum, Parity and Hyperledger Fabric. The results demonstrate that these systems are still far from displacing current database systems in traditional data processing workloads. Furthermore, there are gaps in performance among the three systems which are attributed to the design choices at different layers of the software stack.

Massimo Bartoletti, Salvatore Carta, Tiziana Cimoli, Roberto Saia

Ponzi schemes are financial frauds which lure users under the promise of high profits. Actually, users are repaid only with the investments of new users joining the scheme: consequently, a Ponzi scheme implodes soon after users stop joining it. Originated in the offline world 150 years ago, Ponzi schemes have since then migrated to the digital world, approaching first the Web, and more recently hanging over cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Smart contract platforms like Ethereum have provided a new opportunity for scammers, who have now the possibility of creating "trustworthy" frauds that still make users lose money, but at least are guaranteed to execute "correctly". We present a comprehensive survey of Ponzi schemes on Ethereum, analysing their behaviour and their impact from various viewpoints.

Laurie Butgereit, Chris Martinus

Throughout history, currencies or money have three different uses: means of exchange, unit of accounting, and store of wealth. People have used different types of currencies at different times throughout history. Commodity currencies represented items which are either mined from the Earth or produced by agriculture such as gold or salt. Fiat currencies are created by decree by a sovereign nation or groups of nations. Complementary currencies have been created by much smaller groups of people to solve problems which cannot be solved by commodity currencies or fiat currencies. For example, in times of economic depression when people attempt to hoard money (store wealth) there is often not enough currency to accommodate a means of exchange. With the advent of blockchains and crypto-currencies, it is now possible to easily create complementary currencies to attempt to solve problems which can not be solved using commodity currencies or fiat currencies. This paper discusses and compares two different architectures which are being used in two independent projects in South Africa to create complementary currencies by using the Ethereum blockchain and crypto-currency in order to encourage corporate excellence. It is important to note that this paper is not about the underlying success or failure of the complementary currencies created by the architectures. The paper is about the architectures themselves.

Kieron O’Hara

Increasingly in e-commerce, smart contracts have relied on the code as the contract. But code can be hacked and fail, leaving multiple parties potentially exposed to legal gray areas, great financial loss, and little recourse. Here, Kieron O'Hara considers the ramifications of such contracts by exploring what happened when the Ethereum platform was hacked in the summer of 2016.

Stanislav Ponomarev, A. E. Voronkov

Multi-agents systems communication is a technology, which provides a way for multiple interacting intelligent agents to communicate with each other and with environment. Multiple-agent systems are used to solve problems that are difficult for solving by individual agent. Multiple-agent communication technologies can be used for management and organization of computing fog and act as a global, distributed operating system. In present publication we suggest technology, which combines decentralized P2P BOINC general-purpose computing tasks distribution, multiple-agents communication protocol and smart-contract based rewards, powered by Ethereum blockchain. Such system can be used as distributed P2P computing power market, protected from any central authority. Such decentralized market can further be updated to system, which learns the most efficient way for software-hardware combinations usage and optimization. Once system learns to optimize software-hardware efficiency it can be updated to general-purpose distributed intelligence, which acts as combination of single-purpose AI.