Blockchain-Research and Applications最新文献

{"title":"Unlocking the power of blockchain in education: An overview of innovations and outcomes","authors":"Amr El Koshiry ,&nbsp;Entesar Eliwa ,&nbsp;Tarek Abd El-Hafeez ,&nbsp;Mahmoud Y. Shams","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100165","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100165","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to revolutionize various industries, including finance, supply chain management, healthcare, and education. Its decentralized, secure, and transparent nature makes it ideal for use in industries where trust, security, and efficiency are of paramount importance. The integration of blockchain technology into the education system has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency, security, and credibility of the educational process. By creating secure and transparent platforms for tracking and verifying students' academic achievements, blockchain technology can help to create a more accessible and trustworthy education system, making it easier for students to showcase their skills and knowledge to potential employers. While the potential benefits of blockchain in education are significant, there are also several challenges that must be addressed in order to fully realize the potential of this technology in the educational sector. Some of the major challenges include adoption, technical knowledge, interoperability, regulation, cost, data privacy and security, scalability, and accessibility. The necessary equipment for the implementation of blockchain technology in education is diverse and critical to the success of this innovative technology. Organizations should carefully consider this equipment when planning their implementation of blockchain technology in education to ensure the efficient and secure transfer of educational data and transactions within the blockchain network. Blockchain technology has the potential to play a significant role in promoting sustainability education and advancing the sustainability goals of both individuals and organizations. Organizations should consider incorporating blockchain technology into their sustainability education programs, in order to enhance the transparency, verifiability, and efficiency of their sustainability-related activities. While the use of blockchain technology in education is still in its early stages, the available data suggest that it has significant potential to transform the education sector and improve the efficiency and transparency of educational systems.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 4","pages":"Article 100165"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000404/pdfft?md5=cd97ade3a6e2f24bee393bddcd3c7235&pid=1-s2.0-S2096720923000404-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135412440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unveiling vulnerable smart contracts: Toward profiling vulnerable smart contracts using genetic algorithm and generating benchmark dataset","authors":"Sepideh HajiHosseinKhani ,&nbsp;Arash Habibi Lashkari ,&nbsp;Ali Mizani Oskui","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100171","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100171","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Smart contracts (SCs) are crucial in maintaining trust within blockchain networks. However, existing methods for analyzing SC vulnerabilities often lack accuracy and effectiveness, while approaches based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) struggle with detecting complex vulnerabilities due to limited data availability. This paper proposes a novel approach for analyzing SC vulnerabilities. Our method leverages an advanced form of the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and includes the development of a comprehensive benchmark dataset consisting of 36,670 Solidity source code samples. The primary objective of our study is to profile vulnerable SCs effectively. To achieve this goal, we have devised an analyzer called SCsVulLyzer based on GAs, designed explicitly for profiling SCs. Additionally, we have carefully curated a new dataset encompassing a wide range of examples, ensuring the practical validation of our approach. Furthermore, we have established three distinct taxonomies that cover SCs, profiling techniques, and feature extraction. These taxonomies provide a systematic classification and analysis of information, improving the efficiency of our approach. Our methodology underwent rigorous testing through experimentation, and the results demonstrated the superior capabilities of our model in detecting vulnerabilities. Compared to traditional and DNN-based approaches, our approach achieved higher precision, recall, and F1-score, which are widely used metrics for evaluating model performance. Across all these metrics, our model showed exceptional results. The customization and adaptations we implemented within the GA significantly enhanced its effectiveness. Our approach detects SC vulnerabilities more efficiently and facilitates robust exploration. These promising results highlight the potential of GA-based profiling to improve the detection of SC vulnerabilities, contributing to enhanced security in blockchain networks.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"5 1","pages":"Article 100171"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000465/pdfft?md5=3d59e17ff3aef14044707e48b0743a5f&pid=1-s2.0-S2096720923000465-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139295384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Decentralized Proof-of-Burn auction for secure cryptocurrency upgrade","authors":"Mariia Rodinko ,&nbsp;Roman Oliynykov ,&nbsp;Andrii Nastenko","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100170","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100170","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We propose a new approach for a secure, decentralized, and censorless upgrade of existing cryptocurrencies to newly created tokens without interaction with any external information sources (oracles). The proposed scheme is based on the burning of existing cryptocurrency tokens and implemented via the multi-currency auction. The auction is carried out on the blockchain of the new token and implemented using a smart contract that processes participants' bids of burnt tokens of other cryptocurrencies and supports a new token price discovery algorithm for each cryptocurrency with no oracles or any other trusted source of information. Contrary to traditional ways of getting the new asset, like centralized and decentralized exchanges, our method requires no user registration (as well as no KYC — “know your customer” procedure that requires obligatory client identification) and provides a predicted supply level of the new asset for an adequate price within a model with economically rational participants. We provide the results of decentralized auction simulations implemented for several strategies of user behavior (based on bid prices with normal and log-normal distribution laws), both under the normal operation and in the presence of an adversary who follows specific strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"5 1","pages":"Article 100170"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000453/pdfft?md5=db85e4c2af2921213ed1b36ead8ae0c7&pid=1-s2.0-S2096720923000453-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139301375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Promoting rigor in blockchain energy and environmental footprint research: A systematic literature review","authors":"Ashish Rajendra Sai ,&nbsp;Harald Vranken","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100169","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100169","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>There is a growing interest in understanding the energy and environmental footprint of digital currencies, specifically in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. These cryptocurrencies are operated by a geographically distributed network of computing nodes, making it hard to estimate their energy consumption accurately. Existing studies, both in academia and industry, attempt to model cryptocurrency energy consumption often based on a number of assumptions, for instance, about the hardware in use or the geographic distribution of the computing nodes. A number of these studies have already been widely criticized for their design choices and subsequent over- or under-estimation of energy use.</p><p>In this study, we evaluate the reliability of prior models and estimates by leveraging existing scientific literature from fields cognizant of blockchain, such as social energy sciences and information systems. We first design a quality assessment framework based on existing research, and we then conduct a systematic literature review examining scientific and non-academic literature demonstrating common issues and potential avenues of addressing these issues.</p><p>Our goal with this article is to advance the field by promoting scientific rigor in studies focusing on blockchain energy footprint. To that end, we provide a novel set of codes of conduct for the five most widely used research methodologies: Quantitative energy modeling, literature reviews, data analysis and statistics, case studies, and experiments. We envision that this code of conduct would assist in standardizing the design and assessment of studies focusing on blockchain-based systems' energy and environmental footprint.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"5 1","pages":"Article 100169"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000441/pdfft?md5=ec518e8f1a94419b79ef4c284293228d&pid=1-s2.0-S2096720923000441-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135615189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Governance of decentralized autonomous organizations that produce open source software","authors":"Paul van Vulpen ,&nbsp;Jozef Siu ,&nbsp;Slinger Jansen","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100166","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100166","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have found use in the governance of open source software (OSS) projects. However, the governance of an OSS producing DAO should match the particularities of OSS production while also overcoming the existing challenges of decentralized governance. The existing decentralized governance frameworks do not include all the governance activities of OSS projects. Therefore, this study presents a governance framework for DAOs that produce OSS. The framework is built upon a total of 34 articles on DAO and OSS governance. The framework was evaluated in three leading DAOs that produce OSS. The evaluation underscores the significance of the framework and proves the potential of the systematic categorization of governance mechanisms. Finally, we list emerging governance practices in various governance domains in this developing field.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"5 1","pages":"Article 100166"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000416/pdfft?md5=c52dda3836a3c81f10a1c9da2144a0f6&pid=1-s2.0-S2096720923000416-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135566440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Conditions for advantageous quantum Bitcoin mining","authors":"Robert R. Nerem ,&nbsp;Daya R. Gaur","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100141","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Our aim is to determine the conditions for quantum computing technology to give rise to the security risks associated with quantum Bitcoin mining. Specifically, we determine the speed and energy efficiency a quantum computer needs to offer an advantage over classical mining. We analyze the setting in which the Bitcoin network is entirely classical except for a single quantum miner with a small hash rate compared to the network. We develop a closed-form approximation for the probability that the quantum miner successfully mines a block, with this probability dependent on the number of Grover iterations the quantum miner applies before making a measurement. Next, we show that for a quantum miner that is “peaceful”, this success probability is maximized if the quantum miner applies Grover iterations for 16 ​min before measuring, which is surprising, as the network mines blocks every 10 ​min on average. Using this optimal mining procedure, we show that the quantum miner outperforms a classical computer in efficiency (cost per block) if the condition <em>Q</em> ​&lt; ​<em>Crb</em> is satisfied, where <em>Q</em> is the cost of a Grover iteration, <em>C</em> is the cost of a classical hash, <em>r</em> is the quantum miner's speed in Grover iterations per second, and <em>b</em> is a factor that attains its maximum if the quantum miner uses our optimal mining procedure. This condition lays the foundation for determining when quantum mining and the known security risks associated with it will arise.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100141"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49809824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Identifying malicious accounts in blockchains using domain names and associated temporal properties","authors":"Rohit Kumar Sachan ,&nbsp;Rachit Agarwal ,&nbsp;Sandeep Kumar Shukla","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100136","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The rise in the adoption of blockchain technology has led to increased illegal activities by cybercriminals costing billions of dollars. Many machine learning algorithms are applied to detect such illegal behavior. These algorithms are often trained on the transaction behavior and, in some cases, trained on the vulnerabilities that exist in the system. In our approach, we study the feasibility of using the Domain Name (DN) associated with the account in the blockchain and identify whether an account should be tagged malicious or not. Here, we leverage the temporal aspects attached to the DN. Our approach achieves 89.53% balanced-accuracy in detecting malicious blockchain DNs. While our results identify 73769 blockchain DNs that show malicious behavior at least once, out of these, 34171 blockchain DNs show persistent malicious behavior, resulting in 2479 malicious blockchain DNs over time. Nonetheless, none of these identified malicious DNs were reported in new officially tagged malicious blockchain DNs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100136"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49809868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ins and outs of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) unraveling the definitions, characteristics, and emerging developments of DAOs","authors":"Olivier Rikken ,&nbsp;Marijn Janssen ,&nbsp;Zenlin Kwee","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100143","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100143","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite the increase in the number of blockchain-based Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), there is no consensus on what constitutes a DAO. This paper provides an in-depth study of DAOs by analyzing their definitions, characteristics, and emerging developments. Existing definitions in the literature hardly recognize common functionalities and intermingle coded DAOs, DAO deployment platforms, and blockchain DAOs. We developed a comprehensive DAO definition by reviewing the literature and empirically analyzing 1,859 DAOs. The findings show that many DAOs were inactive and that a threshold of 20 tokenholders is a tipping point for DAOs to survive over time and maintain sustained levels of activity. Finally, based on an empirical analysis of 9,845 perceived DAOs, we identified the emerging development of off-chain voting. This emerging development challenges the autonomous nature of DAOs. We recommend further research to investigate the effect of governance structures on their long-term sustainability and viability for both on-chain and off-chain DAOs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100143"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42967823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Security challenges and defense approaches for blockchain-based services from a full-stack architecture perspective","authors":"Hongsong Chen ,&nbsp;Xietian Luo ,&nbsp;Lei Shi ,&nbsp;Yongrui Cao ,&nbsp;Yongpeng Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100135","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100135","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>As an advantageous technique and service, the blockchain has shown great development and application prospects. However, its security has also met great challenges, and many security vulnerabilities and attack issues in blockchain-based services have emerged. Recently, security issues of blockchain have attracted extensive attention. However, there is still a lack of blockchain security research from a full-stack architecture perspective, as well as representative quantitative experimental reproduction and analysis. We aim to provide a security architecture to solve security risks in blockchain services from a full-stack architecture perspective. Meanwhile, we propose a formal definition of the full-stack security architecture for blockchain-based services, and we also propose a formal expression of security issues and defense solutions from a full-stack security perspective. We use ConCert to conduct a smart contract formal verification experiment by property-based testing. The security vulnerabilities of blockchain services in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) and China Nation Vulnerability Database (CNVD) are selected and enumerated. Additionally, three real contract-layer real attack events are reproduced by an experimental approach. Using Alibaba's blockchain services and Identity Mixer in Hyperledger Fabric as a case study, the security problems and defense techniques are analyzed and researched. At last, the future research directions are proposed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100135"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47364378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Smart contract-enabled consortium blockchains for the control of supply chain information distortion","authors":"Corban Allenbrand","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100134","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100134","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Conflicts between supply chain members emerge because individual strategic actions may not be jointly optimal. Efforts to forecast consumer demand represent a source of conflict. The coordination of forecasts requires a powerful incentive alignment approach. This work proposes a smart contract equipped consortium blockchain system that creates an incentive structure that makes coordination with respect to forecasts economically appealing. Distortions of demand information due to uncoordinated forecasting are captured by a bullwhip measure that factors both forecast error and variance. Cooperation under the system is shown to help minimize this bullwhip measure, thus generating new outcomes for the participants that allow for a higher reward. Under a fixed payout structure, the system achieves credibility of continued cooperation, thus promoting an optimally coordinated equilibrium between the retailer and supplier. Blockchain technology represents a novel information system and consensus formation mechanism that can intermediate the behavior of a supply chain network.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100134"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45701827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}