Yassin Selouani, Ikram El Hachimi, Driss Ouslimane
Le management de la chaîne logistique connaît aujourd'hui de profondes mutations, dans lesquelles la transformation digitale s'impose comme un levier essentiel pour améliorer la traçabilité, renforcer la résilience et accroître la compétitivité des organisations. Si cette évolution est largement documentée dans les économies développées, les connaissances restent encore limitées en Afrique, où les contextes infrastructurels, institutionnels et socio-économiques présentent des spécificités importantes. Cette étude propose une revue systématique de la littérature afin de dresser un état des lieux des recherches consacrées à la transformation digitale des chaînes logistiques sur le continent. En suivant le protocole PRISMA, une recherche menée dans sept sources de recherche documentaire a permis de retenir 56 études parmi 742 références initialement recensées. Les résultats montrent un champ de recherche encore émergent, principalement centré sur l'Afrique du Sud, le Nigeria, le Ghana et le Kenya, ainsi que sur les secteurs agricole et pharmaceutique. La blockchain et l'Internet des objets dominent les travaux, tandis que l'intelligence artificielle et le big data demeurent encore peu mobilisés. Malgré une accélération de l'adoption sous l'effet de la pression concurrentielle et de la COVID-19, des obstacles persistants, telles que l’insuffisance des infrastructures, les coûts élevés, le déficit de compétences et la faiblesse des cadres réglementaires, limitent les bénéfices attendus. Cette étude fournit ainsi une synthèse structurée en langue française d’un corpus principalement anglophone et met en évidence plusieurs pistes pour la recherche et les politiques de digitalisation des chaînes logistiques africaines.
Este artigo apresenta um esboço estruturado sobre “Migração de Lógica de Negócio para Layer‑2: Desafios de Compatibilidade.”. O objetivo é analisar os fundamentos técnicos e econômicos relacionados à migração de contratos e aplicações da camada base (L1) para soluções de escalabilidade em Layer‑2, discutindo implicações para o ecossistema Web3 e tendências de mercado. A metodologia baseia‑se em revisão bibliográfica e análise de casos práticos, com foco em diferenças entre soluções L2 EVM‑equivalentes e apenas EVM‑compatíveis, modelos de segurança de bridges, padrões de liquidez multi‑chain e impactos em tooling, UX e governança. Argumenta‑se que a migração não é apenas um “lift‑and‑shift” de bytecode, mas um processo que envolve reavaliação de suposições de segurança, dependências de infraestrutura (oráculos, indexadores, sequencers) e design de incentivos em ambientes com finalização e custos distintos da L1. Casos práticos de migração de protocolos de DeFi e indexação evidenciam trade‑offs entre custo por transação, fragmentação de liquidez e complexidade operacional, bem como a importância de padrões de bridging, mensageria cross‑chain e governança multi‑domínio para manter coerência de lógica e de risco entre instâncias L1/L2. Conclui‑se que migrar lógica de negócio para Layer‑2 exige abordagem incremental e consciente de compatibilidade, com atenção especial à equivalência de EVM, à segurança de rollups e bridges, e à coordenação de liquidez e governança em um ecossistema crescentemente modular e multi‑chain.<br>
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have emerged as a new organizational layer of digital exchange, raising questions about how participation, concentration, and community formation are structured within on-chain markets. Understanding whether these structures differ systematically across blockchain ecosystems with distinct asset orientations requires examining ecosystem-level interaction patterns. Most studies focus on specific collections or single platforms, offering limited insight into how connectivity, concentration, and community structure vary across markets with different NFT use cases. This study compares Ethereum and Polygon, two major NFT platforms with distinct dominant asset orientations (investment-oriented vs utility-oriented), to examine how their transaction networks differ at the ecosystem level. Using 3.9 million NFT transactions from May 2022 to May 2024, we apply network analysis to assess connectivity, centralization, community structure, and temporal dynamics. The findings show highly skewed interaction patterns in both ecosystems, with a small subset of addresses accounting for a disproportionate share of activity. Polygon networks exhibit higher modular segmentation and sharper upper-tail dominance, with communities aligning near-perfectly with application-specific boundaries, whereas Ethereum networks display comparatively more integrated, crosscollection interaction structure. These contrasts are interpreted as ecosystem-level structural patterns conditional on each chain's market composition and dominant NFT use cases, offering socio-technical insights into how participation concentrates and communities form across blockchain-based digital markets.
Smart contracts upgradeability is a critical requirement for modern decentralized applications based on blockchain technology, but its implementation remains a technical challenge due to the immutable nature of smart contracts. The Proxy Pattern has become the most widely used solution for implementing upgradability into smart contracts, but it comes with some limitations such as implementation complexity and strict memory layout inheritance. This paper introduces an alternative approach based on dynamic routing with Router Contract, which enables modular upgradeability through centralized address management, offering greater flexibility at the cost of requiring external state persistence. Furthermore, a hybrid architecture is proposed, combining both Proxy Pattern and Router Contract approaches to achieve dual-layer upgradeability – supporting both state-preserving updates and full module replacements. The paper offers a comprehensive evaluation of upgradeability strategies and proposes a versatile solution for evolving smart contract systems.
Love Opeyemi David, Marumo Kgomo, Clinton Aigbavboa
Introduction The traditional procurement system in the construction industry has been plagued by inefficiencies, often serving as a significant obstacle to project delivery. Thus, this study examines the dynamics of adopting smart contracts for project procurement for optimal project success and delivery, with insights and recommendations from the South African Construction Industry. Method The study employed a quantitative research approach utilizing descriptive and inferential statistics of Mean Item Score (MIS) and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) for data analysis, based on a purposive sampling technique. Results The MIS results for the benefit, legal &amp; regulatory constraints, and best practices of smart contracts range between 3.73 - 4.41 values, while the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) values were higher than the recommended 0.6 value for the EFA and Cronbach's Alpha value of 0.969 across the indicators. Discussion The study's findings revealed two categorized benefits of adopting smart contracts: administrative and operational efficiency of project procurement and procurement optimization; two components of legal and regulatory constraints: Transactional and legal encumbrance to smart contract implementation and legal gaps and ambiguity and two best practices: smart contract reliability practices for project procurement and consistent stakeholders’ engagement for smart contract protocol standardization. The study concludes that Smart contracts can transform global project procurement within the construction industry. The study recommends the development of a green paper on smart contract adoption and integrating smart contracts into standard forms of construction contracts.
Jun 10, 2025·Intelligent Industry Ecosystems and Manufacturing Renaissance: Designing Autonomous Production, Supply Orchestration, and Connected Retail Infrastructure
Drastic liquidity shortages dovetailing with geopolitical uncertainties have led many organizations to expedite their digital transformation initiatives, making the reinvention of the pivot of business activities — supply chains — a priority. The use of modern IT tools to automate, augment, and reinvent procurement, coupled with the trend to outsource more and more ancillary activities to third parties has led to increased interest in the automation of enablers of procurement activities. However, the answer to the question of how far this automation will go remains uncertain, leading to diverging opinions, from the expected complete commoditization of “spend categories” to the carry-over of the entirely bookable unavailability of procurement professionals. In this chapter we concentrate on the first side of the automation debate, using a specific enabler — sourcing — and a generalization of its application to show the promise of more advanced automation techniques, where the sourcing procedure takes place inside a smart contract negotiating automatically on behalf of a business participant using a variety of available agent negotiating engines.
As the development of Solidity contracts on Ethereum , more developers are reusing them on other compatible blockchains. However, developers may overlook the differences between the designs of the blockchain system, such as the Gas Mechanism and Consensus Protocol , leading to the same contracts on different blockchains not being able to achieve consistent execution as on Ethereum . This inconsistency reveals design flaws in reused contracts, exposing code smells that hinder code reusability, and we define this inconsistency as EVM-Inequivalent Code Smells . In this paper, we conducted the first empirical study to reveal the causes and characteristics of EVM-Inequivalent Code Smells . To ensure the identified smells reflect real developer concerns, we collected and analyzed 1,379 security audit reports and 326 Stack Overflow posts related to reused contracts on EVM-compatible blockchains, such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Polygon . Using the open card sorting method, we defined six types of EVM-Inequivalent Code Smells . For automated detection, we developed a tool named EquivGuard . It employs static taint analysis to identify key paths from different patterns and uses symbolic execution to verify path reachability. Our analysis of 905,948 contracts across six major blockchains shows that EVM-Inequivalent Code Smells are widespread, with an average prevalence of 17.70%. While contracts with code smells do not necessarily lead to financial loss and attacks, their high prevalence and significant asset management underscore the potential threats of reusing these smelly Ethereum contracts. Thus, developers are advised to abandon Copy-and-Paste programming practices and detect EVM-Inequivalent Code Smells before reusing Ethereum contracts.
Valentina Villa, Luca Gioberti, Marco Domaneschi, F. Necati Çatbaş
The civil engineering sector operates within a complex ecosystem of stakeholders, requiring efficient management and maintenance of structural and infrastructural assets. In this context, there is an increasing need for robust tools to track critical events (e.g., alerts, unusual behaviors) and support decision-making processes related to maintenance and interventions. At the same time, ensuring secure and prompt payments is essential for timely and effective responses. This paper investigated the potential of smart contracts, integrated with blockchain technology, to automate and optimize asset management and maintenance processes. The proposed framework examines how these technologies can enhance operational efficiency, security, and event traceability, providing a structured approach for both routine operations and emergency interventions. Although smart contracts have been widely applied in the construction phase of infrastructure projects, their use in long-term asset management remains largely unexplored. As a conceptual study, this work does not present a quantitative analysis but instead lays the groundwork for future research and real-world applications of blockchain-based smart contracts in infrastructure management and safety procedures.
Vulnerabilities in EOSIO smart contracts have caused significant economic losses. Although some approaches have been proposed to detect these vulnerabilities, they often face several limitations, such as inefficiency in path exploration, insufficient diversity of test cases, and path explosion, which col-lectively reduce code coverage and detection accuracy. Currently, there is a lack of hybrid fuzzing techniques specifically designed for EOSIO smart contracts to address these issues. To fill this gap, we propose a coordination-driven hybrid fuzzing approach for discovering vulnerabilities in EOSIO smart contracts. Our method employs a scheduling strategy using an online linear regression model based on stochastic gradient descent to reduce the edge redundancy detection in hybrid fuzzing and enhance the efficiency of path exploration during symbolic execution. Additionally, a synchronization strategy based on constraint domain abstraction and random walk sampling ensures uniform sam-pling in simplified scenarios, thus improving code coverage and mitigating path explosion. Furthermore, we design a function-level mutation strategy to rapidly diversify test cases in the seed pool, facilitating the efficiency of detecting vulnerabilities. We implement our method in a tool named CDHF and evaluate it on 3,440 smart contracts. Experimental results indicate that CDHF can detect vulnerabilities more precisely and efficiently, achieving an approximate 20 % improvement in code coverage compared to WASAI.
Unyime Ufok Ibekwe, Uche M. Mbanaso, Nwojo Agwu Nnanna, Umar Adam Ibrahim
Smart contracts have emerged as a transformative technology within the blockchain ecosystem, facilitating the automated and trustless execution of agreements. Their adoption spans diverse sectors such as education, agriculture, healthcare, government, real estate, transportation, supply chain, and global initiatives like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). However, the security of smart contracts has become a significant concern, as vulnerabilities in their design and implementation can lead to severe consequences such as financial losses and system failures. This systematic review consolidates findings from 78 selected research articles, identifying key vulnerabilities affecting smart contracts and categorizing them into a taxonomy encompassing code-level, environment-dependent, and user-related vulnerabilities. It also examines the threats that exploit these vulnerabilities and the most effective detection techniques. The domain-based classification presented in this review aims to assist researchers, software engineers, and developers in identifying and mitigating significant security flaws related to the design, implementation, and deployment of smart contracts. A comprehensive understanding of these issues is essential for enhancing the security and reliability of the blockchain ecosystem, ultimately fostering the development of more secure and robust decentralized applications for end users.
V zadnjem desetletju je zanimanje za kriptovalute močno naraslo. S tem je prišlo tudi do porasta kapitala, zaklenjenega v pametnih pogodbah, kar pa je hkrati povečalo tveganje za napade. Za preprečevanje napadov na pametne pogodbe je potrebna analiza programerskih vzorcev in okolja, v katerem se pametne pogodbe izvajajo. V prispevku obravnavamo varnost omrežja Ethereum in njegovo vlogo v razvoju decentraliziranih aplikacij (angl. decentralised Applications - dApps). Pregledamo uporabo Ethereumovega Virtualnega stroja (EVM), programskega jezika Solidity in zbirnika pri gradnji pametnih pogodb. Poleg tega opišemo varnostne izzive, s katerimi se sooča Ethereumov ekosistem, in analiziramo tri pretekle napade na decentralizirane platforme. Prispevek prinaša tudi konkreten primer napada na pametno pogodbo, ki izkorišča ranljivost v njeni implementaciji. Rezultat prispevka je prikaz pametne pogodbe, ki ob standardni uporabi deluje pravilno, vendar vsebuje ranljivost, ki jo je mogoče izkoristiti za neavtorizirano spreminjanje njenega stanja.
Mohd Amirul Helmi Ismail, Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon, Mohd Noor Abdul Hamid, Siti Irna Mustajap · 5 authors
This study investigates how consumer perceptions affect decision-making in the purchase of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), providing a detailed analysis of the factors driving consumer behavior in this emerging market. Using a mixedmethods approach, this study conducted surveys and interviews with NFT purchasers to capture a comprehensive view of their decision-making processes. Our findings reveal that factors such as perceived value, trust in blockchain technology, and the influence of community engagement significantly impact purchasing intentions. These insights contribute to the existing literature by delineating specific consumer behaviors and motivations in the NFT space, highlighting the importance of community trust and perceived technological robustness. Additionally, the study offers practical implications for businesses in the NFT sector, suggesting that establishing strong, credible relationships within the NFT community, and staying abreast of technological advancements are pivotal strategies for maintaining a competitive advantage. By integrating with NFT communities and leaders, businesses can glean trends and collaborative opportunities, fostering innovation, and market leadership in the dynamic NFT landscape
S. Vijayakumar Bharathi, Arif Perdana, T. S. Vivekanand, V. G. Venkatesh · 6 authors
This study integrates technology-organisation-environment (TOE) theory with situation-actor-process (SAP) and learning-action-performance (LAP) models to provide a comprehensive evaluation of complex seafood supply chain management (SCM) systems. We present a framework based on Blockchain technology that facilitates the transformation of the seafood supply chain ecosystem from its current state to a more streamlined one in the future. This framework offers the potential for driving transformation and delivering advantages that encompass improved data efficiency, sustainable practices, and streamlined integration across the seafood supply chain. Our research highlights the importance of accurate data management, stakeholder involvement, regulatory compliance, cybersecurity, cost-effectiveness, transparency, and sustainability for the successful integration of Blockchain in seafood SCM systems. This allows stakeholders to make informed decisions and optimise spending. Furthermore, we emphasise the significant value of transparency provided by Blockchain, which enables stakeholders to make well-informed decisions and optimise their spending.
This teaching case describes, based on publicly available material, the transition of the A. P. Moller Maersk shipping company from a logistics-based organization to an information and technology-based organization. Multiple digital technologies, including distributed ledger, robotic automation, digital platforms, and big-data analytics offered opportunities for Maersk. Although the company was a relatively late starter in digital transformation, its journey so far has been successful. The challenge is how to enact sustained digital transformation in an environment of rapid technology change. Some theoretical lenses are offered to assist with analyzing and framing Maersk’s digital strategy, including business models, organizational ambidexterity, and dynamic capabilities.
Vendor capabilities development has been an important research stream in the information systems (IS) sourcing literature. The existing research, which was based on the context of implementing centralized enterprise systems, focused on the adoption of deliberate learning and implicit learning, with the assumption that effective selection between these two learning approaches is sufficient for service providers to acquire vendor capabilities. However, this assumption may not hold in implementing a decentralized system based on enterprise blockchain. Because an enterprise blockchain system affords a new way of governing transactions and demands a new governance mode, it creates an uncertain and complex landscape in which the mere selection between deliberate learning and implicit learning becomes insufficient. Addressing this gap is crucial because many enterprise blockchain projects fail due to the incompetence of service providers. By conducting an in-depth case study of a successful blockchain service provider, our study reveals a new mechanism for developing vendor capabilities: parallel play. As with parallel play by preschoolers, the service provider combines a set of learning approaches featuring borrowing from peers and learning through experimentation. Our study extends the IS sourcing literature on vendor capabilities development from the context of implementing centralized enterprise systems to the context of implementing decentralized enterprise blockchain systems. Our findings also provide guidelines for blockchain service providers to follow when acquiring vendor capabilities and for clients to use when selecting service providers.
Elton Farias de Oliveira, David Barbosa de Alencar, Jean Mark Lobo de Oliveira
Este artigo explora o desenvolvimento de smart contracts e tokens na rede Ethereum, destacando os benefícios de automação de acordos, eliminação de intermediários, transparência e segurança proporcionados pela tecnologia blockchain. São discutidos desafios como escalabilidade, privacidade e segurança, e são abordadas as possibilidades de construção de aplicativos descentralizados inovadores. A pesquisa adotou uma abordagem de coleta de dados primários e secundários, incluindo entrevistas com especialistas e análise de contratos inteligentes existentes.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are scarce digital assets, whose limited supply significantly affects consumers’ product perception and purchase behavior. Few studies have examined consumers’ cognitive evaluations and purchase intention towards NFTs in the context of Chinese luxury fashion brands. This paper aims to close this gap by investigating the impact of consumers’ cognitive perceptions (i.e., perceived scarcity, perceived uniqueness, and perceived value) and personality trait (i.e., need for uniqueness) on their purchase intention towards luxury fashion NFTs. The mediating effect of perceived value between perceived uniqueness and purchase intention was also tested. A total of 251 valid questionnaires were collected via purposive sampling and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Drawing on the commodity theory, significant relationships were found between scarcity, need for uniqueness, the resulting cognitive factors (perceived uniqueness and perceived value) and purchase intention. Chinese consumers perceive the NFTs of luxury brands to be scarce and need uniqueness, which enhances their perception of uniqueness and consequently, their perception of value. Perceived value then positively affects purchase intention, which supports the mediating role of perceived value. This study validates the importance of scarcity for NFTs from luxury fashion brands in China, providing valuable references for luxury brand marketers and academicians.
Digital transformation plays a key role in improving information sharing and information processing in supply chains. Specifically, maritime supply chains require numerous data and document exchanges and can significantly benefit from digital information sharing (DIS). This notable potential has attracted attention and has resulted in a growing number of studies on blockchain platforms, cloud-based platforms, and other digital technology platforms. However, DIS adoption and execution is a complex process as it depends on various success factors and barriers and affects numerous capabilities and performance outcomes. Moreover, various information systems and management theories can be utilised to underpin these relationships. Our study aims to conduct a systematic literature review that uncovers dynamic capabilities, barriers, enablers and outcomes of DIS with blockchain and cloud-based platforms, illustrates the relationship between them, and discloses methods and theories applied in supply chains. We discuss different use cases of blockchain and cloud-based platforms for DIS in various business functions in supply chains. Particularly, we reveal six DIS-powered capabilities, five performance outcomes improved by the DIS, eight main barriers, and nine enablers of DIS implementation. The lack of theoretical underpinning and causal empirical studies is identified as an important gap in the literature. This study also presents precise future research directions that can help address these gaps.
A smart contract is a computerized protocol running on the blockchain, which provides a reliable environment for transactions among trustless participants. The business of maritime transportation is usually with multifarious participants and burdensome paperwork. Blockchain-based smart contract systems are promising to improve the efficiency and transparency of the transactions. However, due to the gap between domain experts and programmers, and the diversity of maritime business scenarios, it is challenging to efficiently develop reliable smart contracts for this domain. In this paper, we propose MariSmart, a novel development framework for maritime transportation smart contracts, which consists of a business logic model and a set of Solidity templates. The templates are designed based on the business logic model extracted from the domain knowledge. We carry out case studies on three real-world maritime transportation systems to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the framework.