IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-05-07DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12071
Joseph D. Preece, Christopher R. Morris, John M. Easton
{"title":"Leveraging ontochains for distributed public transit ticketing: An investigation with the system for ticketing ubiquity with blockchains","authors":"Joseph D. Preece, Christopher R. Morris, John M. Easton","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12071","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12071","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Transport ticketing systems are crucial for enabling seamless, efficient, and sustainable mobility. However, traditional ticketing systems face limitations such as ticket fraud, lack of interoperability, and the inability to adapt to changes in the dynamic transport networks they issue tickets for. This paper presents new approaches to the system for ticketing ubiquity with blockchains (STUB), a novel smart transport ticketing solution that employs ontochains, a hybrid data structure combining blockchains and ontologies to form a type of distributed knowledge graph. STUB aims to address these limitations by providing a secure, transparent, and flexible platform for ticket issuance, validation, and management. We describe the key components and workflow of the STUB system, highlighting the use of transport network ontologies for modelling complex relationships within transportation systems and blockchain technologies for transport network ontology's state. Additionally, the implementation of Merkle proofs for efficient and secure validation between on-chain and off-chain ontological data is discussed. Finally, a simulated toy example is used as a lightweight proof-of-concept to demonstrate these capabilities. The proposed STUB system has the potential to significantly impact the future of transportation ticketing by offering a more seamless, interoperable, and user-friendly experience whilst addressing the challenges associated with traditional ticketing systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 4","pages":"456-469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12071","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141003526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-03-29DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12072
Fei He, Fei Li, Peili Liang
{"title":"Enhancing smart contract security: Leveraging pre‐trained language models for advanced vulnerability detection","authors":"Fei He, Fei Li, Peili Liang","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/blc2.12072","url":null,"abstract":"The burgeoning interest in decentralized applications (Dapps), spurred by advancements in blockchain technology, underscores the critical role of smart contracts. However, many Dapp users, often without deep knowledge of smart contracts, face financial risks due to hidden vulnerabilities. Traditional methods for detecting these vulnerabilities, including manual inspections and automated static analysis, are plagued by issues such as high rates of false positives and overlooked security flaws. To combat this, the article introduces an innovative approach using the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT)‐ATT‐BiLSTM model for identifying potential weaknesses in smart contracts. This method leverages the BERT pre‐trained model to discern semantic features from contract opcodes, which are then refined using a Bidirectional Long Short‐Term Memory Network (BiLSTM) and augmented by an attention mechanism that prioritizes critical features. The goal is to improve the model's generalization ability and enhance detection accuracy. Experiments on various publicly available smart contract datasets confirm the model's superior performance, outperforming previous methods in key metrics like accuracy, F1‐score, and recall. This research not only offers a powerful tool to bolster smart contract security, mitigating financial risks for average users, but also serves as a valuable reference for advancements in natural language processing and deep learning.","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"44 16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140368230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A trusted and regulated data trading scheme based on blockchain and zero-knowledge proof","authors":"Dongmei Li, Xiaohui Ke, Xiaomei Zhang, Yujin Zhang","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12070","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12070","url":null,"abstract":"<p>To meet the demand for high-quality healthcare services, data trading can effectively promote the circulation of medical data and improve the level of healthcare services. To address the existing problems of data regulation difficulties and data privacy leakage in medical data trading, a trusted and regulated data trading scheme based on blockchain and zero-knowledge proof is proposed. In this scheme, a regulatory institution is introduced to control the issuance of authorized tokens and ensure the controllability of data sharing activities. The blockchain takes over the task of generating public parameters to reduce the computational overhead of the system. Based on homomorphic proxy re-encryption technology, users can perform data analysis in the cloud to ensure data security. Smart contracts and zero-knowledge proof technology can automatically verify the validity of data to protect the rights and interests of data users; at the same time, efficient consensus algorithms can also increase the rate of transactions processed by the blockchain system. Finally, as the security and performance analysis shows, the scheme in this paper has better security, higher efficiency and more comprehensive functions.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 4","pages":"443-455"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12070","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140252141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-02-28DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12069
Cindy Handoko Tantowibowo, Wei-Chuen Yau
{"title":"ArtProtect: Blockchain and NFC-based anti-counterfeit system for physical art","authors":"Cindy Handoko Tantowibowo, Wei-Chuen Yau","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12069","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12069","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Counterfeit artwork presents a significant risk to copyright holders and the economy. Without expertise in art, it is not straightforward to distinguish an artwork counterfeit from a genuine piece. This work designs and implements a reliable solution that enables users with near-field communication-enabled Android smartphones to verify artwork authenticity by accessing its respective certificate of authenticity stored in the Ethereum blockchain. To represent a physical artwork, the artwork image and metadata are stored in an inter-planetary file system and minted as an ERC721 non-fungible token to a smart contract deployed in Ethereum Rinkeby Testnet. The mobile app ArtProtect was developed to generate certificate of authenticity based on each non-fungible token fetched through OpenSea Testnet API. Users access this information by scanning an near-field communication tag embedded into the artwork. The content of the tag is signed by the respective artwork's artist and responsible agent by using Ethereum signing with their Ethereum wallet accounts. Through testing and analysis, the implemented work is secure, tamper-evident, usable, flexible, and inexpensive to be applied to a real-world scenario.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 4","pages":"423-442"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12069","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140419886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blockchain for finance: A survey","authors":"Hanjie Wu, Qian Yao, Zhenguang Liu, Butian Huang, Yuan Zhuang, Huayun Tang, Erwu Liu","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12067","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12067","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As an innovative technology for enhancing authenticity, security, and risk management, blockchain is being widely adopted in trade and finance systems. The unique capabilities of blockchain, such as immutability and transparency, enable new business models of distributed data storage, point-to-point transactions, and decentralized autonomous organizations. Here, the authors focus on blockchain-based securities trading, in which blockchain technology plays a vital role in financial services as it ultimately lifts trust and frees the need for third-party verification by using consensus-based verification. The 12 most popular blockchain platforms are investigated and 6 platforms that are related to finance are elaborated on, seeking to provide a panorama of securities trading practices. Meanwhile, this survey provides a comprehensive summary of blockchain-based securities trading applications. Numerous practical applications of blockchain-based securities trading are gathered and they are categorized into four distinct categories. For each category, a typical example is introduced and how blockchain contributes to solving the key problems faced by FinTech companies and researchers explained. Finally, interesting observations are provided ranging from mainstream blockchain-based financial institutions to security issues of decentralized finance applications, aiming to picture the current blockchain ecosystem in finance.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 2","pages":"101-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12067","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140425324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-02-26DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12068
Himani Saraswat, Mahesh Manchanda, Sanjay Jasola
{"title":"An efficient secure predictive demand forecasting system using Ethereum virtual machine","authors":"Himani Saraswat, Mahesh Manchanda, Sanjay Jasola","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/blc2.12068","url":null,"abstract":"Predictive demand forecasting plays a pivotal role in optimizing supply chain management, enabling businesses to effectively allocate resources and minimize operational inefficiencies. This paper introduces a novel approach to enhancing demand forecasting processes by leveraging the Ethereum virtual machine within a blockchain framework. The proposed system capitalizes on the inherent security, transparency, and decentralized nature of blockchain technology to create a secure and efficient platform for predictive demand forecasting. The system leverages the Ethereum virtual machine to establish a secure, decentralized, and tamper‐resistant platform for demand prediction while ensuring data integrity and privacy. By utilizing the capabilities of smart contracts and decentralized applications within the Ethereum ecosystem, the proposed system offers an efficient and transparent solution for demand forecasting challenges. The current research focused on Ethereum virtual machine characteristics, features, components, and implementation details. A secured framework for the prediction of demand forecasting systems is proposed. Finally, the authors tried to validate and optimize the gas cost by using distinguished statistics and analysis.","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"28 30","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140430098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-02-13DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12066
Minghao Lee, Binhao Ma, Di Han, Dejun Wang, Bo Meng
{"title":"ISTVP: Independent single transaction verification protocol for light node using fraud proofs without collaborator","authors":"Minghao Lee, Binhao Ma, Di Han, Dejun Wang, Bo Meng","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12066","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12066","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Most blockchain users run light nodes on mobile devices. Due to limited storage and computation, light nodes cannot perform transaction validation. This shortage makes opportunities for malicious nodes to produce blocks containing invalid transactions, which results in the loss of funds for light nodes. Fraud proofs play a significant role in ensuring transaction security for light nodes. However, existing fraud proof schemes require honest collaborators and the processing of entire blocks. To address these limitations, Independent Single Transaction Verification Protocol for Light node Using Fraud Proofs without Collaborator called ISTVP is proposed that enables light nodes to independently verify transactions and generate fraud proofs without relying on collaborators or processing the entire block. To support ISTVP, SVST is introduced, an efficient block structure for single-transaction verification. SVST not only efficiently indexes historical transaction outputs to improve verification efficiency, but also significantly reduces the storage requirements for verifying transactions to <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>O</mi>\u0000 <mo>(</mo>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>h</mi>\u0000 <mo>+</mo>\u0000 <mi>log</mi>\u0000 <mi>n</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <mo>)</mo>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation>${mathrm{O}}( {{mathrm{h}} + log {mathrm{n}}} )$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math>. Furthermore, the authors analyze the security of ISTVP and demonstrate that it satisfies both persistence and liveness, while maintaining the level of security of full node.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 2","pages":"209-221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12066","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139840002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-02-04DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12065
Caimei Wang, Yudong Ren, Zhize Wu
{"title":"Multi-hop anonymous payment channel network based on onion routing","authors":"Caimei Wang, Yudong Ren, Zhize Wu","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12065","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12065","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Payment channel networks (PCNs) are one of the most promising off-chain solutions to the blockchain scalability problem. However, most current payment channel schemes suffer from overly ideal routing assumptions or fail to provide complete path privacy protection. To address the above problems, the multi-hop anonymous and privacy-preserving PCN scheme are analyzed and a multi-hop anonymous PCN based on onion routing is proposed based on it. The scheme removes the routing assumptions of the original scheme, designs an onion routing-based payment channel network, and modifies the way relay nodes construct elliptic curve discrete logarithmic problems to resist wormhole attacks. Finally, the security analysis shows that the scheme in this paper has atomicity, relational anonymity and resistance to wormhole attacks. The latest bilinear pairing anonymous multi-hop payment (EAMHL+) scheme is used to compare communication and computing overhead. The results show that the scheme in this paper requires less communication overhead and is more efficient in terms of computational overhead when the average hop number of the payment channel network is 3 hops and the network diameter is 6 hops.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 2","pages":"197-208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12065","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139807242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12063
Surbhi Sharma, Rudresh Dwivedi
{"title":"A survey on blockchain deployment for biometric systems","authors":"Surbhi Sharma, Rudresh Dwivedi","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12063","DOIUrl":"10.1049/blc2.12063","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Blockchain technology has become an emerging area in recent years due to its capacity to improve the security, dependability, and resilience of distributed systems. Research based on this technique has impacted several firms, including banking, healthcare, data processing, remote sensing, and many others. The key characteristics of blockchain technology that make it appealing are data immutability, transparency, privacy, decentralization, and distributed ledgers. However, there is a chance of a privacy breach with sensitive biometric data. The purpose of this investigation is to examine blockchain-based biometric applications research. It begins by determining the myriad ways that biometrics and blockchain may work together, including the storage and protection of biometric templates, identity management, and biometric authentication systems. Different biometric applications with respect to blockchain technology are also identified, along with the types of biometric data taken into account, features and capabilities of blockchain technology exploited, and blockchain technology frameworks employed. Finally, the authors seek to investigate blockchain concepts in the biometric domain by evaluating their pros and cons and summarizing the methods developed on blockchain for diverse biometric applications. Additionally, the applications of blockchain-based biometric systems are highlighted before moving on to open research questions and potential future research areas.</p>","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"4 2","pages":"124-151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/blc2.12063","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139877877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IET BlockchainPub Date : 2024-01-26DOI: 10.1049/blc2.12062
James Cunningham, Nigel Davies, Sarah Devaney, Søren Holm, Mike Harding, Victoria Neumann, John Ainsworth
{"title":"The application of distributed autonomous organization governance mechanisms to civic medical data management","authors":"James Cunningham, Nigel Davies, Sarah Devaney, Søren Holm, Mike Harding, Victoria Neumann, John Ainsworth","doi":"10.1049/blc2.12062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/blc2.12062","url":null,"abstract":"Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a novel governance mechanism that operates through distributed ledgers and smart contracts, enabling members to direct an organization's actions. The widespread adoption of DAOs has occurred in response to their utility in managing emergent semi‐structured projects and has led to the development of various innovative governance mechanisms. The mechanisms employed by DAOs has the potential to be generalized beyond their core financial domain to a wide range of use cases. In the medical field the use of blockchain and DAOs can provide secure and transparent access to medical data, while ensuring patient privacy. Civic access to medical data is a growing area of interest, where individuals have control over their own medical data and can share it with healthcare providers, researchers, and other stakeholders. DAOs can facilitate this civic access, enabling individuals to share their data securely and selectively with authorized parties for research and other purposes. This paper explores the use of DAOs to medical data sharing, with a focus on ownership, governance, and transaction models. An application framework and API that enables the deployment of DAO‐like organizations is derived and this approach is applied to the patient‐centric management of medical data.","PeriodicalId":100650,"journal":{"name":"IET Blockchain","volume":"54 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139594066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}