Recoding Reality:The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism The SAIS Review Editorial Board The 2020s thus far have been defined by a pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, looming climate disaster, and violent conflicts around the world. The culmination of these dire circumstances has led to movements in all forms calling for fundamental change in existing political, economic, and social structures. Technology has been a bulwark and democratizing force in enabling masses of people to express themselves in a transparent and far-reaching manner. Amid these inspiring scenes lingers a more sobering reality. The global shocks already experienced in this decade have exacerbated the fading and inconsistent presence of major democracies on the international stage. State actors responded with repression, state-sponsored violence, and heavy jail sentences levied against prominent dissidents. Alarmingly, technology's potential as a democratizing force is equal if not less than its potential as a tool of repression. As China, Russia, and other one-party states begin to export this form of governance, an analysis of this emerging form of government is crucial. Digital authoritarianism's present threat to democracy is the product of 16 consecutive years of decline in global freedom. As this decade unfolds, allowing this form of governance to take root without critical analysis may be the death nail on democracy itself. This edition of The SAIS Review of International Affairs will address the ways in which state and nonstate actors stifle dissent with digital authoritarianism, defined as the use of information technology by regimes to manipulate, repress, and surveil domestic and international populations. Recoding Reality: The Emergence of Digital Authoritarianism seeks to not only explore this emerging phenomenon, but to juxtapose the emergence of digital authoritarianism with the declining relative influence of major democracies in the face of immense global challenges. The issue begins with an article by Ahmed Abozaid that highlights the growing concern surrounding Egypt's antiterrorism laws, which do not necessarily tackle the state's war against terror, but instead serves the interests of groups such as the armed forces, neoliberal elites, and the old regime. Dr. Abozaid argues that these laws complement other legislation that restrict journalists and reporters from freely expressing themselves online and offline. Egyptian authorities employ cyber and digital counterterrorism measures as [End Page 1] part of their "cyber Baltaga" (digital thuggery) strategy to demonstrate their way of preserving and advancing their domination of the public and cyber spheres. Years of repression have led to Egypt being ranked as one of the world's worst jailers of journalists. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has dominated conversations for the past year, causing many to reassess long held beliefs about power and conflicts, particularly in the digital space. This issue includes two articles focusing on the conflict, each approaching the impacts of Russian digital authoritarianism in different ways. Fabian Burkhardt and MariĂŤlle Wijermars discuss the ways in which externally imposed sanctions have disrupted Russia's digital mechanisms of control. States' reliance on foreign platforms and technology is a byproduct of the integrated nature of the digital sphere. Dr. Burkhardt and Dr. Wijermars argue that this reliance shapes the regime's ability to control and suppress domestically, focusing on the changes to Russia's repressive capabilities as these foreign technologies are restricted by sanctions. In examining the period from February to September of 2022, they find that while Russia has demonstrated enhanced capacity for digital authoritarianism in response to these sanctions, the conflict also threatens the future of the digital infrastructures necessary for repression. Where the prior article looked at the impact of external forces on Russia's capacity for digital repression, Jackie Kerr examines Russian internal digital dynamics. In tracing the relationship between the state and Runet (the Russian Internet), Kerr examines how the conflicts, contradictions, and communities formed as Runet developed affect the regime's actions, both domestically and internationally. She contrasts the Kremlin's repressive efforts with the digital communities that have evolved in response, offering insight into the future of Russian, and perhaps global, internet freedom. Hugh Harsono writes about the potential that Web3 provides for decentralizing the internet and the People's Republic of China's (PRC) attempts to manipulate its...
Web3, the new iteration of the internet, is vying to put power back in the hands of users around the world. Web3 technologies like blockchain hold tremendous promise in enabling this vision with a broad range of applications, from modernizing existing financial systems to changing the way individuals interact with one another in the digital world. While the ethos of Web3 is decentralization, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is shaping its own vision of Web3 according to its principles of authoritarian ruleâoutlawing uncontrollable technologies like cryptocurrencies while simultaneously developing Web3-inspired projects like the Blockchain-based Service Network to influence global technology standards. Despite the promise of Web3 to decentralize the internet, the PRC is using Web3 as a tool for further control.
Soufiane El Moudaa, Youssef Ibrahim, Maha Kadadha, Rabeb Mizouni ¡ 6 authors
In this paper, a blockchain-based management platform, PackChain, for last-mile delivery is proposed. The growing popularity of online shopping has put immense pressure on the supply-chain industry, especially on last-mile delivery. The available solutions suffer from high cost, and lack of transparency. Therefore, assuring traceability of users' actions has become a critical requirement to establish trust between parties. The proposed PackChain framework uses the Ethereum blockchain to offer a crowdsourcing platform for last-mile delivery with autonomous and transparent processes. PackChain provides all the core functions needed for the delivery framework to operate through smart contracts such as managing user information, accepting offers, verifying transactions, and handling payments. In addition, the framework relies on proofs of delivery as an arbitration mechanism between users to release or hold funds. The proposed framework is implemented using Solidity and Web3.js to interact between clients and carriers. The emulation results demonstrate the feasibility and cost-efficiency of the proposed solution11The full code of the smart contract and the related logic is also made publicly available on Github..
Farjana Khanam Nishi, Mahizebin Shams-E-Mofiz, Mohammad Monirujjaman Khan, Abdulmajeed Alsufyani ¡ 7 authors
An electronic health record (EHR) is a technology that allows you to keep track of your health information. It keeps computerized records of several healthcare organizations. Records are exchanged via enterprise-wide data systems as well as other networking technologies and exchanges. Patients nowadays expect immediate access to their health information. However, the health sector comes with immediate access to data, and there are worries about the privacy and security of medical records of patients. As a result, a blockchain-based solution can assist in resolving this issue. The blockchain has the potential to beat the conventional centralized system, which suffers from a severe lack of accessibility. This is a decentralized technology that has recently been presented to provide a new viewpoint on data security and system efficiency. This paper presents a blockchain-based system that helps the patientâs data be managed and secured into a single record held by the patient. This system was developed using the Ethereum network using Ganache, as well as programming languages, tools, and techniques such as Solidity and web3.js. The measured approach suggested in this paper uses this platform to store patientsâ data and execute functions in a decentralized system using blockchain smart contracts. Transactions are communicated through the smart contract once it has been launched, providing security and privacy features. Furthermore, the transactionâs desired alterations can be verified and transmitted to the entire distributed network. There is also a cryptocurrency wallet (MetaMask) that holds a centrally controlled, private information system in which records can be quickly accessed and secured by authorities. Doctors and patients can access the system through the wallet. Moreover, all the data of the doctor and patient will be secured and managed through this system. This proposed system is aimed at doing things such as the following: blockchain technology allows users to obtain the same data at the same time, increasing efficiency, developing credibility, and reducing barriers. It enables the secure storage of data by setting specific access for users. Additionally, this proposed system facilitates the secure transfer of patient medical records. Finally, this paper describes a health-record system and a new protocol that are quick and secure to use. It allows greater openness and ownership of sensitive data to be recorded and secured and also promotes the healthcare sector with blockchain.
Web3 brings an enabling set of technologies that has the potential to completely reshape many different fields, including research and education. Today we are faced with challenges around regulation, data safety and privacy, as well as governance and bureaucracy - to name just a few. As Web3 gains more traction globally it activates new paradigms to engage, govern, create, iterate, and implement around research results in ways that were previously complex and arduous. The Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is one such empowering Web3 utility, and within this framework researchers and experts have the opportunity to implement and test their research results promptly on a small or large scale as required. In this paper, we provide an overview of Web3 technologies and their implications for education and research. Our aim is to introduce researchers, educators, and decision-makers to the potential of using Web3
Md. Amir Hossain Fahad, Redoyan Chowdhury, Hasan-Alâ Shabbir
Web development has greatly advanced from basic static web pages to dynamic, datadriven applications utilizing modern technology. Specifically, this article looks at the past, present, and future of web development, focusing on the importance of artificial intelligence (AI), progressive web apps (PWAs), security measures, and performance improvement. The adoption of contemporary frontend and backend technologies has improved user experience, scalability, and security, while nascent trends like Web3, blockchain integration, and decentralized apps (DApps) are poised to transform the digital environment. Even with these advances, there are still problems, such as cybersecurity risks, accessibility issues, and the need to keep improving online performance. This evaluation shows how important it is to welcome new technologies while also addressing important problems in order to create a safe, effective, and welcoming digital world. Future research must concentrate on enhancing cybersecurity frameworks, refining AI-driven web development, and investigating decentralized computing paradigms. Utilizing advanced technology, web developers may design more intelligent, responsive, and user-centric online apps that satisfy the increasing expectations of the digital age.
Many existing timed-release encryption schemes uses time-lock puzzles to avoid relying on a trusted timeserver or a key holder which could be a weak spot in data security. However, it is unavoidable to consume massive computing power for solving time-lock puzzles and it is difficult for encryptors to predict the amount of time to solve a puzzle by decryptors. In this study, an efficient dual-purpose proof-of-work consensus allows users to release a time-locked content, which is encrypted by an asymmetric key encryption scheme on a blockchain, without trust in any third-party agents. The release time is predictable as the block time in a proof-of-work blockchain is adaptively controlled. The mining work is reproposed so that once a new block was mined on the blockchain network, time-lock puzzles were also solved immediately. No additional work is required to reveal the time-locked contents and the encryption is secured by monetary incentive mechanisms since it would be very costly to arrange an attack attempt, which must overtake the total hash rate of the whole blockchain network.
Web3 is introduced in 2014 to undo all the problems that came about in Web 2.0. This next generation of the internet is focused on shifting power away from big technology companies and towards individual users by Decentralization â instead of relying on a single centralized server, Web3 is built on top of blockchain-powered crypto networks that enable data to be stored across distributed devices worldwide. Ultimately, these distributed nodes can be anything, such as computers, laptops, or even bigger servers. They assist as the framework of the blockchain, collaborating with each other to enable the storage, spread, and safeguarding of data without the need for a trusted third party.
Today, the majority of the webâs content and user data is controlled by a few large tech companies. There is a growing movement to devolve this control evenly across the entire internet, representing the transition to Web3. In order for this movement to be successful, technologies and protocols must be developed to enable web users to use the web securely without trusting any other user. That is, todayâs web is structured so that users must trust these companies, so trustless alternatives havenât already been developed. Broadly, this movement emphasizes developing peer-to-peer networks, blockchains, and distributed storage systems. These systems make use of cryptographic primitives to guarantee security.
While the primary focus of 5G has been on industry verticals, future 6G mobile networks are anticipated to become more human-centered. Emerging cyber-physical-social systems (CPSSs) aim at functionally integrating human beings into today's cyber-physical systems at the social, cognitive, and physical levels. CPSSs are instrumental in realizing the human-centered Society 5.0 vision. Society 5.0 envisions human beings increasingly interacting with social robots and embodied artificial intelligence in their daily lives. In this article, we build on our recent work on robonomics in the 6G era. Robonomics is an emerging field that investigates social human-robot interaction and its sociotechnical impact as well as blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, not only coins but - more interestingly - also tokens. Specifically, we study the tokenization process of creating tokenized digital twins of assets and access rights in the physical and digital world, paying close attention to its central role in ushering in the future Web3 and its underlying token economy, the successor of today's information and platform economies. After introducing our CPSS-based bottom-up multilayer token engineering framework for Society 5.0, we experimentally demonstrate how the collective human intelligence of a blockchain-enabled decentralized autonomous organization can be enhanced via purpose-driven tokens.
Many implementations of smart contracts available in NFT marketplaces today allow the modification of NFT token attributes, without any specific mechanism to control the consistency with off-chain metadata. We believe this is a weakness in overall design of NFTs today. We propose a computation model called the Asset Proxy NFT that guarantees the consistency between the NFT token (on-chain) and its corresponding asset metadata (off-chain). In general, the proposed model can be applied to any type of NFT that requires immutability or controlled mutability of metadata. A second contribution of this paper is the notion of the NFT design patterns which recognizes that a coherent framework for dealing with hybrid assets is required, and that for specific hybrid-asset deployments, suitable technological components must be utilized under the framework.
Centralization has dominated classic scientific, social, and economic developments. Decentralization has also received increasing attention in management, decision, governance, and economics, despite its incomparability in AI. Going beyond centralized and distributed AI, this article reviews and delineates the conceptual map, research issues, and technical opportunities of decentralized AI and edge intelligence. The complementarity and metasynthesis between centralized and decentralized AI are also elaborated. We further assess where decentralized AI and edge intelligence can enable and promote smart blockchain, Web3, metaverse and decentralized science disciplinarily, technically, practically, and more broadly.
This exploration paper is about the conception of a World Wide Web grounded for the conception grounded around machine-readability, also called Web3.0. Web3.0 will review how we interact with the digital world and the change won't just be for individualities. The effect of Web3.0 blockchain on businesses â both traditional and disruptive will be inversely massive. The transition from Web2.0 to Web3.0 still, won't be overnight. This means businesses will have time to look back at their process and see where they fit on the decentralization and translucency radar. But indeed though Web3.0 is in the future, the reality of the moment is that businesses need to start preparing. Let our Blockchain experts help you. Some technologists and intelligencers have varied it with Web2.0, wherein they say data and content are consolidated in a small group of companies occasionally appertained to as"Big Tech". The term"Web3" was chased in 2014 by Ethereumco- founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency suckers, large technology companies, and adventure capital enterprises. Some experts argue that web3 will give increased data security, scalability, and sequestration for druggies and combat the influence of large technology companies. Others have raised enterprises about a decentralized web, citing the eventuality of low temperance and the proliferation of dangerous content, the centralization of wealth to a small group of investors and individualities, or a loss of sequestration due to further extensive data collection. Crucial Words World Wide Web; Web3.0; Big Tech; cryptocurrency; decentralized web
Internet technologies, new era of advancements, have changed inter-connectivity among people at an incredible scale over the last decade. The next revolution is projected towards creation of connectivity among diverse things, resulting in a smart environment. The need for data-on- demand continues to rise as we advance from World Wide Web to web2 i.e. social networking web. The world has now advanced to web3 i.e. ubiquitous computing or web of things. There is no doubt that IoT is progressing more and more, while offering a wide range of smart solutions and innovative applications. However, with such advancements in IoT, some vulnerabilities are also there. The expanding trend of cyber assaults such as DoS, sniffing attack, port scanning etc., on systems core, along with system underlying flaws, is a subject of worry for both the companies as well as customers. The goal of this research is to quantify the category of various system related flaws that compromise IoT infrastructure and leads to cybercrime, as well as to create a justification for more research into this developing technology. This paper also presents a detailed overview of attacks in IoT along with security requirements that will be helpful for securing IoT from threats and attacks.
Introduction 2021 was the year that NFTs got bigânot just in value but also in terms of the cultural consciousness. When digital artist Beeple sold the portfolio of his 5,000 daily images at Christieâs for US$69 million, the art world was left intrigued, confused, and outraged in equal measure. Depending on who you asked, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seemed to be either a quick cash-grab or the future of the art market (Bowden and Jones; Smee). Following the Beeple sale, articles started to appear indicating that the film industry was abuzz for NFTs. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith was quick to announce that he planned to release his horror film Killroy Was Here as an NFT (Alexander); in September 2021 the James Bond film No Time to Die also unveiled a series of collectibles to coincide with the filmâs much-delayed theatrical release (Natalee); the distribution and collectible platforms Vuele, NFT Studios, and Mogul Productions all emerged, and the industry rumour mill suggests more start-ups are en route (CurrencyWorks; NFT Studios; NewsBTC). Blockchain disciples say that the technology will solve all the problems of the Internet (Tewari; Norton; European Business Review); critics say it will only perpetuate existing accessibility and equality issues (Davis and Flatow; Klein). Those more circumspect will doubtless sit back until the dust settles, waiting to see what parts of so-called web3 will be genuinely integrated into the architecture of the Internet. Pamela Hutchinson puts it neatly in terms of the arts sector: âthe NFT may revolutionise the art market, film funding and distribution. Or it might be an ecological disaster and a financial bubble, in which few actual movies change hands, and fraudsters get rich from other peopleâs intellectual propertyâ (Hutchinson). There is an uptick in the literature around NFTs and blockchain (see Quiniou; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel); however, the technology remains unregulated and unstandardised (Yeung 212-14; Dimitropoulos 112-13). Similarly, the sheer amount of funding being put into fundamental technical, data, and security-related issues speaks volumes to the nascency of the space (Ossinger; Livni; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel 52-6). Put very briefly, NFTs are part of a given blockchain system; think of them, like cryptocurrency coins, as âunits of valueâ within that system (Roose). NFTs were initially rolled out on Ethereum, though several other blockchains have now implemented their own NFT frameworks. NFTs are usually not the artwork itself, but rather a unique, un-copyable (hence, non-fungible) piece of code that is attached, linked, or connected to another digital file, be that an image, video, text, or something else entirely. NFTs are often referred to as a digital artworkâs âcertificate of authenticityâ (Roose). At the time of writing, it remains to be seen how widely blockchain and NFT technology will be implemented across the entertainment industries. However, this article aims to outline the current state of implementation in the film trade specifically, and to attempt to sort true potential from the hype. Beginning with an overview of the core issues around blockchain and NFTs as they apply to film properties and adjacent products, current implementations of the technology are outlined, before finishing with a hesitant glimpse into the potential future applications. The Issues and Conversation At the core of current conversations around blockchain are three topics: intellectual property and ownership, concentrations of power and control, and environmental impact. To this I would like to add a consideration of social capital, which I begin with briefly here. Both the film industry and âcryptoâ â if we take the latter to encompass the various facets of so-called âweb3â â are engines of social capital. In the case of cinema, its products are commodified and passed through a model that begins with exclusivity (theatrical release) before progressing to mass availability (home media, streaming). The cinematic object, i.e., an individual copy of a film, is, by virtue of its origins as a mass product of the twentieth century, fungible. The film is captured, copied, stored, distributed, and shared. The film-industrial model has always relied on social phenomena, word of mouth, critical discourse, and latterly on buzz across digital social media platforms. This is perhaps as distinct from fine art, where â at least for dealers â the content of the piece does not necessarily matter so much as verification of ownership and provenance. Similarly, web3, with its decentralised and often-anonymised processes, relies on a kind of social activity, or at least a recorded interaction wherein the chain is stamped and each iteration is updated across the system. Even without the current hype, web3 still relies a great deal on discourse, sharing, and community, particularly as it flattens the existing hierarchies of the Internet that linger from Web 2.0. In terms of NFTs, blockchain systems attach scarcity and uniqueness to digital objects. For now, that scarcity and uniqueness is resulting in financial value, though as Jonathan Beller argues the notion of value could â or perhaps should â be reconsidered as blockchain technology, and especially cryptocurrencies, evolve (Beller 217). Regardless, NFT advocates maintain that this is the future of all online activity. To questions of copyright, the structures of blockchain do permit some level of certainty around where a given piece of intellectual property emerged. This is particularly useful where there are transnational differences in recognition of copyright law, such as in France, for instance (Quiniou 112-13). The Berne Convention stipulates that âthe subsistence of copyright does not rest on the compliance with formal requirements: rights will exist if the work meets the requirements for protection set out by national law and treatiesâ (Guadamuz 1373). However, there are still no legal structures underpinning even the most transparent of transactions, when an originator goes out of their way to transfer rights to the buyer of the accompanying NFT. The minimum requirement â even courtesy â for the assignment of rights is the identification of the work itself; as Guadamuz notes, this is tricky for NFTs as they are written in code (1374). The blockchainâs openness and transparency are its key benefits, but until the code can explicitly include (or concretely and permanently reference) the âcontentâ of an NFT, its utility as a system of ownership is questionable. Decentralisation, too, is raised consistently as a key positive characteristic of blockchain technology. Despite the energy required for this decentralisation (addressed shortly), it is true that, at least in its base code, blockchain is a technology with no centralised source of truth or verification. Instead, such verification is performed by every node on the chain. On the surface, for the film industry, this might mean modes of financing, rights management, and distribution chains that are not beholden to multinational media conglomerates, streamers like Netflix, niche intermediaries, or legacy studios. The result here would be a flattening of the terrain: breaking down studio and corporate gatekeeping in favour of a more democratised creative landscape. Creators and creative teams would work peer-to-peer, paying, contracting, servicing, and distribution via the blockchain, with iron-clad, publicly accessible tracking of transactions and ownership. The alternative, though, is that the same imbalances persist, just in a different form: this is outlined in the next section. As Hunter Vaughan writes, the film industryâs environmental impact has long been under-examined. Its practices are diverse, distributed, and hard to quantify. Cinematic images, Vaughan writes, âdo not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air: they have always been generated by the earth and sun, by fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them has material consequencesâ (3). We believe that by watching a âgreenâ film like Avatar we are doing good, but it implicates us in the dirty secret, an issue of âignorance and of voluntary psychosisâ where âwe do not see who we are harming or how these practices are affecting the environment, and we routinely agree to accept the virtual as realâ (5). Beyond questions of implication and eco-material conceptualisation, however, there are stark facts. In the 1920s, the Kodak Park Plant in New York drew 12 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day to produce film stock. As the twentieth century came to a close, this amount â for a single film plant â had grown to 35-53 million gallons per day. The waste water was perfunctorily âcleanedâ and then dumped into surrounding rivers (72-3). This was just one plant, and one part of the filmmaking process. With the shift to digital, this cost might now be calculated in the extraction of precious metals used to make contemporary cameras, computers, or storage devices. Regardless, extrapolate outwards to a global film industry and one quickly realises the impact is almost beyond comprehension. Considering â let alone calculating â the carbon footprint of blockchain requires outlining some fundamentals of the technology. The two primary architectures of blockchain are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), both of which denote methods of adding and verifying new blocks to a chain. PoW was the first model, employed by Bitcoin and the first iteration of Ethereum. In a PoW model, each new block has a specific cryptographic hash. To confirm the new block, crypto miners use their systems to generate a target hash that is less than or equal to that of the block. The systems process these calculations quickly, as the goal is to be âthe first miner with the target hash because that miner is the one who can update the blockchain and receive crypto rewardsâ (Daly). The race for
Ian Rogers, Dave Carter, Benjamin A. Morgan, Anna Edgington
Introduction In a 2019 report for the International Journal of Communication, Baym et al. positioned distributed blockchain ledger technology, and what would subsequently be referred to as Web3, as a convening technology. Riffing off Barnett, a convening technology âinitiates and serves as the focus of a conversation that can address issues far beyond what it may ultimately be able to address itselfâ (403). The case studies for the Baym et al. researchâearly, aspirant projects applying the blockchain concept to music publishing and distributionâare described in the piece as speculations or provocations concerning musicâs commercial and social future. What is convened in this era (pre-2017 blockchain music discourse and practice) is the potential for change: a type of widespread, broadly discussed, reimagination of the 21st-century music industries, productive precisely because near-future applications suggest the realisation of what Baym et al. call dreams. In this article, we aim to examine the Web3 music field as it lies some years later. Taking the latter half of 2021 as our subject, we present a survey of where music then resided within Web3, focussing on how the dreams of Baym et al. have morphed and evolved, and materialised and declined, in the intervening years. By investigating the discourse and functionality of 2021âs current crop of music NFTsâjust one thread of music Web3âs far-reaching aspiration, but a potent and accessible manifestation nonethelessâwe can make a detailed analysis of concept-led application. Volatility remains throughout the broader sector, and all of the projects listed here could be read as conditionally short-term and untested, but what they represent is a series of clearly evolved case studies of the dream, rich precisely because of what is assumed and disregarded. WTF Is an NFT? Non-fungible tokens inscribe indelible, unique ledger entries on a blockchain, detailing ownership of, or rights associated with, assets that exist off-chain. Many NFTs take the form of an ERC-721 smart-contract that functions as an indivisible token on the Ethereum blockchain. Although all ERC-721 tokens are NFTs, the inverse is not true. Similar standards exist on other blockchains, and bridges allow these tokens to be created on alternative networks such as Polygon, Solana, WAX, Cardano and Tezos. The creation (minting) and transfer of ownership on the Ethereum networkâby far the dominant chainâcomes with a significant and volatile transaction cost, by way of gas fees. Thus, even a âfreeâ transaction on the main NFT network requires a currency and time investment that far outweighs the everyday routines of fiat exchange. On a technical level, the original proposal for the ERC-721 standard refers to NFTs as deeds intended to represent ownership of digital and physical assets like houses, virtual collectibles, and negative value assets such as loans (Entriken et al.). The details of these assets can be encoded as metadata, such as the name and description of the asset including a URI that typically points to either a file somewhere on the Internet or a file hosted via IPFS, a decentralised peer-to-peer hosting network. As noted in the standard, while the data inscribed on-chain are immutable, the asset being referred to is not. Similarly, while each NFT is unique, multiple NFTs could, in theory, point to a single asset. In this respect ERC-721 tokens are different from cryptocurrencies and other tokens like stable-coins in that their value is often contingent on their accurate and ongoing association with assets outside of the blockchain on which they are traded. Further complicating matters, it is often unclear if and how NFTs confer ownership of digital assets with respect to legislative or common law. NFTs rarely include any information relating to licencing or rights transfer, and high-profile NFTs such as Bored Ape Yacht Club appear to be governed by licencing terms held off-chain (Bored Ape Yacht Club). Finally, while it is possible to inscribe any kind of data, including audio, into an NFT, the ERC-721 standard and the underpinning blockchains were not designed to host multimedia content. At the time of writing, storing even a low-bandwidth stereo audio file on the ethereum network appears cost-prohibitive. This presents a challenge for how music NFTs distinguish themselves in a marketplace dominated by visual works. The following sections of this article are divided into what we consider to be the general use cases for NFTs within music in 2021. Weâve designated three overlapping cases: audience investment, music ownership, and audience and business services. Audience Investment Significant discourse around NFTs focusses on digital collectibles and artwork that are conceptually, but not functionally, unique. Huge amounts of money have changed hands for specificâoften celebrity brand-ledâcreations, resulting in media cycles of hype and derision. The high value of these NFTs has been variously ascribed to their high novelty value, scarcity, the adoption of NFTs as speculative assets by investors, and the lack of regulatory oversight allowing for price inflation via practices such as wash-trading (Madeline; Das et al.; Cong et al.; Le Pennec, Fielder, and Ante; Fazil, Owfi, and Taesiri). We see here the initial traditional split of discourse around cultural activity within a new medium: dual narratives of utopianism and dystopianism. Regardless of the discursive frame, activity has grown steadily since stories reporting the failure of Blockchain to deliver on its hype began appearing in 2017 (Ellul). Early coverage around blockchain, music, and NFTs echoes this capacity to leverage artificial scarcity via the creation of unique digital assets (cf Heap; Tomaino). As NFTs have developed, this discourse has become more nuanced, arguing that creators are now able to exploit both ownership and abundance. However, for the most part, music NFTs have essentially adopted the form of digital artworks and collectibles in editions ranging from 1:1 or 1:1000+. Grimesâs February 2021 Mars NFT pointed to a 32-second rotating animation of a sword-wielding cherubim above the planet Mars, accompanied by a musical cue (Grimes). Mars sold 388 NFTs for a reported fixed price of $7.5k each, grossing $2,910,000 at time of minting. By contrast, electronic artists Steve Aoki and Don Diablo have both released 1:1 NFT editions that have been auctioned via Sothebyâs, Superrare, and Nifty Gateway. Interestingly, these works have been bundled with physical goods; Diabloâs Destination Hexagonia, which sold for 600 Eth or approximately US$1.2 million at the time of sale, proffered ownership of a bespoke one-hour film hosted online, along with âa unique hand-crafted box, which includes a hard drive that contains the only copy of the high-quality file of the filmâ (Diablo). Aokiâs Hairy was much less elaborate but still promised to provide the winner of the $888,888 auction with a copy of the 35-second video of a fur-covered face shaking in time to downbeat electronica as an Infinite Objects video print (Aoki). In the first half of 2021, similar projects from high-profile artists including Deadmau5, The Weekend, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Blondie, and 3Lau have generated an extraordinary amount of money leading to a significant, and understandable, appetite from musicians wanting to engage in this marketplace. Many of these artists and the platforms that have enabled their sales have lauded the potential for NFTs to address an alleged poor remuneration of artists from streaming and/or bypassing âindustry middlemenâ (cf. Sounds.xyz); the millions of dollars generated by sales of these NFTs presents a compelling case for exploring these new markets irrespective of risk and volatility. However, other artists have expressed reservations and/or received pushback on entry into the NFT marketplace due to concerns over the environmental impact of NFTs; volatility; and a perception of NFT markets as Ponzi schemes (Poleg), insecure (Goodin), exploitative (Purtill), or scammy (Dash). As of late 2021, increased reportage began to highlight unauthorised or fraudulent NFT minting (cf. TFL; Stephen), including in music (Newstead). However, the number of contested NFTs remains marginal in comparison to the volume of exchange that occurs in the space daily. OpenSea alone oversaw over US$2.5 billion worth of transactions per month. For the most part, online NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Solanart oversee the exchange of products on terms not dissimilar to other large online retailers; the space is still resolutely emergent and there is much debate about what products, including recently delisted pro-Nazi and Alt-Right-related NFTs, are socially and commercially acceptable (cf. Pearson; Redman). Further, there are signs this trend may impact on both the willingness and capacity of rightsholders to engage with NFTs, particularly where official offerings are competing with extant fraudulent or illegitimate ones. Despite this, at the time of writing the NFT market as a whole does not appear prone to this type of obstruction. What remains complicated is the contested relationship between NFTs, copyrights, and ownership of the assets they represent. This is further complicated by tension between the claims of blockchainâs independence from existing regulatory structures, and the actual legal recourse available to music rights holders. Music Rights and Ownership Baym et al. note that addressing the problems of rights management and metadata is one of the important discussions around music convened by early blockchain projects. While they posit that âour point is not whether blockchain can or canât fix the problems the music industries faceâ (403), for some professionals, the blockchainâs promise of eliminating the need for trust seemed to provide an ideal solution to a widely acknowledged business-to-business problem: one of poor metadata leading
Storage is a promising application for permission-less blockchains. Before blockchain, cloud storage was hosted by a trusted service provider. The centralized system controls the permission of the data access. In web3, users own their data. Data must be encrypted in a permission-less decentralized storage network, and the permission control should be pure cryptographic. Proxy re-encryption (PRE) is ideal for cryptographic access control, which allows a proxy to transfer Aliceâs ciphertext to Bob with Aliceâs authorization. The encrypted data are stored in several copies for redundancy in a permission-less decentralized storage network. The redundancy suffers from the outsourcing attack. The malicious resource provider may fetch the content from others and respond to the verifiers. This harms data integrity security. Thus, proof-of-replication (PoRep) must be applied to convince the user that the storage provider is using dedicated storage. PoRep is an expensive operation that encodes the original content into a replication. Existing PRE schemes cannot satisfy PoRep, as the cryptographic permission granting generates an extra ciphertext. A new ciphertext would result in several expensive replication operations. We searched most of the PRE schemes for the combination of the cryptographic methods to avoid transforming the ciphertext. Therefore, we propose a new PRE scheme. The proposed scheme does not require the proxy to transfer the ciphertext into a new one. It reduces the computation and operation time when allowing a new user to access a file. Furthermore, the PRE scheme is CCA (chosen-ciphertext attack) security and only needs one key pair.
Digital media is one of the most shared, influenced and highly used forms of the medium in the 21stcentury. Its presence ranges from simple images, shared in a Peer-to-Peer network to a world-renowned newspaper that provides second to second update on events around the world at the comfort zone. With this ease-of-access and anonymity it is easier than ever to copy and claim someone elseâs work as their own. This nefarious practice of copyright infringement has high stakes when monetization is involved, especially in a high-stake venture such as NFT (Non-fungible Token) based artworks that are not only meant to be unique but also should benefit the artists not the people who masquerades as the true owner of the said art. To avoid such malpractices, watermarking is one of the oldest yet most used methods of authentication techniques for images. It is more effective if itâs hidden in plain sight (most of the times within the imageâs meta-data,) so that it wouldnât affect the appearance of the image but provides the impact, nonetheless. Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) algorithm based hidden image watermarking is implemented to focus more on domain frequency. Furthermore, Domain Frequency is extracted to transform the original image and to add the watermark. DCT is implemented to enhance the rate of watermark processing. The whole project, in their individual modules discuss Image processing, encoding the said output with the watermark image and decrypting the said resultant to verify the watermark. As said before, the applications are vast with the emerging technology of Web3 and blockchain backed projects.
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Abstract: The electronic voting has emerged over time as a replacement to the paper-based voting to reduce the redundancies and inconsistencies. The historical perspective presented in the last two decades suggests that it has not been so successful due to the security and privacy flaws observed over time. This project is about decentralizing authority to record, count and verify votes and the voters, rather than having a central authority. We are using blockchain technology which is a distributed database. With its immutability property and decentralized architecture, it can run and support a voting scheme that is open, fair and independently verifiable. The project will be developed in Ethereum framework which primarily uses Solidity as a language. Ethereumâs backbone is its decentralized virtual machine called Ethereum Virtual Machine. The application will be deployed on the thirdweb(web3.0). Overall this project is a potential roadmap for blockchain technologies developing in the nation to support complex applications. Keywords: Blockchain, Cryptography, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum Framework, Solidity, Decentralization, Hashing, Dapp, Web3, Digitalizing.
This paper examines the effects of inherent risks in the emerging technology of non-fungible tokens and proposes an actionable set of solutions for stakeholders in this ecosystem and observers. Web3 and NFTs are a fast-growing 300 billion dollar economy with some clear, highly publicized harms that came to light recently. We set out to explore the risks to understand their nature and scope, and if we could find ways to mitigate them. In due course of investigation, we recap the background of the evolution of the web from a client-server model to the rise of Web2.0 tech giants in the early 2000s. We contrast how the Web3 movement is trying to re-establish the independent style of the early web. In our research we discover a primary set of risks and harms relevant to the ecosystem, and classify them into a simple taxonomy while addressing their mitigations with solutions. We arrive at a set of solutions that are a combination of processes to be adopted, and technological changes or improvements to be incorporated into the ecosystem, to implement risk mitigations. By linking mitigations to individual risks, we are confident our recommendations will improve the security maturity of the growing Web3 ecosystem. We are not endorsing, or recommending specifically any particular product or service in our solution set. Nor are we compensated or influenced in any way by these companies to list these products in our research. The evaluations of products in our research have to simply be viewed as suggested improvements.
In der Serie wird eine Unterrichtsreihe fßr die Digitale Grundbildung auf Grundlage des Frankfurt Dreieck vorgeschlagen. Das exemplarische Thema der Unterrichtsreihe ist die Nutzung der Internetprotokolle als Web3. In diesem Beitrag werden die pädagogischen Grundlagen des Konzepts und der verwendete Stack vorgestellt.
BACKGROUND: Recent advancements in digital pathology resulting from advances in imaging and digitization have increased the convenience and usability of pathology for disease diagnosis, especially in oncology, urology, and gastroenteric diagnosis. However, despite the possibilities to include low-cost diagnosis and viable telemedicine, digital pathology is not yet accessible owing to expensive storage, data security requirements, and network bandwidth limitations to transfer high-resolution images and associated data. The increase in storage, transmission, and security complexity concerning data collection and diagnosis makes it even more challenging to use artificial intelligence algorithms for machine-assisted disease diagnosis. We designed and prototyped a digital pathology system that uses blockchain-based smart contracts using the nonfungible token (NFT) standard and the Interplanetary File System for data storage. Our design remediates shortcomings in the existing digital pathology systems infrastructure, which is centralized. The proposed design is extendable to other fields of medicine that require high-fidelity image and data storage. Our solution is implemented in data systems that can improve access quality of care and reduce the cost of access to specialized pathological diagnosis, reducing cycle times for diagnosis. OBJECTIVE: The main objectives of this study are to highlight the issues in digital pathology and suggest that a software architecture-based blockchain and the Interplanetary File System create a low-cost data storage and transmission technology. METHODS: We used the design science research method consisting of 6 stages to inform our design overall. We innovated over existing public-private designs for blockchains but using a 2-layered approach that separates actual file storage from metadata and data persistence. RESULTS: Here, we identified key challenges to adopting digital pathology, including challenges concerning long-term storage and the transmission of information. Next, using accepted frameworks in NFT-based intelligent contracts and recent innovations in distributed secure storage, we proposed a decentralized, secure, and privacy-preserving digital pathology system. Our design and prototype implementation using Solidity, web3.js, Ethereum, and node.js helped us address several challenges facing digital pathology. We demonstrated how our solution, which combines NFT smart contract standard with persistent decentralized file storage, solves most of the challenges of digital pathology and sets the stage for reducing costs and improving patient care and speed of diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: We identified technical limitations that increase costs and reduce the mass adoption of digital pathology. We presented several design innovations using NFT decentralized storage standards to prototype a system. We also presented the implementation details of a unique security architecture for a digital pathology system. We illustrated how this design can overcome privacy, security, network-based storage, and data transmission limitations. We illustrated how improving these factors sets the stage for improving data quality and standardized application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to such data.
This brief aims to give policymakers an overview of cryptoâs core concepts, and highlight some of the policy questions raised by its increasing adoption by citizens and organisations. It begins with a short explanation of the crypto movementâs ideological origins, offers basic primers in cryptocurrencies, blockchain, web3, NFTs, and the metaverse, and concludes with a discussion of the policy implications and suggestions for further reading. Short case studies and a glossary of crypto terminology (denoted by italics) are interspersed throughout. References are made by means of hyperlinks.