Blockchain-Research and Applications最新文献

{"title":"Digital assets rights management through smart legal contracts and smart contracts","authors":"Enrico Ferro ,&nbsp;Marco Saltarella ,&nbsp;Domenico Rotondi ,&nbsp;Marco Giovanelli ,&nbsp;Giacomo Corrias ,&nbsp;Roberto Moncada ,&nbsp;Andrea Cavallaro ,&nbsp;Alfredo Favenza","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100142","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100142","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Intellectual property rights (IPR) management needs to evolve in a digital world where not only companies but also many independent content creators contribute to our culture with their art, music, and videos. In this respect, blockchain has recently emerged as a promising infrastructure, providing a trustworthy and immutable environment through the use of smart contracts, which may enable more agile management of digital rights and streamline royalty payments. However, no widespread consensus has been reached on the ability of this technology to adequately manage and transfer IPR. This paper presents an innovative approach to digital rights management developed within the scope of an international research endeavour co-financed by the European Commission named MediaVerse. The approach proposes the combined usage of smart legal contracts and blockchain smart contracts to take care of the legally binding contractual aspects of IPR and, at the same time, the need for notarization, rights transfer, and royalty payments. The work being conducted represents a contribution to advancing the current literature on IPR management that may lead to an improved and fairer monetization process for content creators as a means of individual empowerment.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100142"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42901488","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 cost of privacy on blockchain: A study on sealed-bid auctions","authors":"Menelaos Kokaras ,&nbsp;Magda Foti","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100133","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100133","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In order to preserve privacy in a blockchain ecosystem, the main objective is to keep a transaction's data private, such as the sender, the receiver, and the amount transferred. The current work studies the cryptographic tools commonly used to achieve this type of privacy, primarily focusing on the Ethereum blockchain. Such tools usually require many computational and storage resources, leading to additional fees. An anonymous auction protocol was developed as a case study to explore these costs, where hiding the identity and the amount of the bids utilizes a variety of cryptographic primitives. The proposed implementation was compared against three sealed-bid auction protocols, which utilize similar cryptographic tools for preserving privacy throughout the auction process. The results show that providing an additional level of anonymity, such as hiding someone's identity, can increase the gas cost significantly, up to 2.5 times, depending on the choice of the cryptographic tools, which determine the usage of the blockchain's storage and computational resources. By adjusting the level of decentralization on the application level by moving some operations off-chain and maintaining the role of the auctioneer, we show that we can maintain anonymity while reducing the gas cost by 40%.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100133"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45589467","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":"ADEFGuard: Anomaly detection framework based on Ethereum smart contracts behaviours","authors":"Malaw Ndiaye ,&nbsp;Thierno Ahmadou Diallo ,&nbsp;Karim Konate","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100148","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100148","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Smart contracts are the building blocks of blockchain systems that enable automated peer-to-peer transactions and decentralized services. Smart contracts certainly provide a powerful functional surplus for maintaining the consistency of transactions in applications governed by blockchain technology. Smart contracts have become lucrative and profitable targets for attackers because they can hold a large amount of money. Formal verification and symbolic analysis have been employed to combat these destructive scams by analysing the codes and function calls, yet each scam's vulnerability should be discreetly predefined. In this work, we introduce ADEFGuard, a new anomaly detection framework based on the behaviour of smart contracts, as a new feature. We design a learning and monitoring module to determine fraudulent smart contract behaviours.</p><p>Our framework is advantageous over basic algorithms in three aspects. First, ADEFGuard provides a unified solution to different genres of scams, relieving the need for code analysis skills. Second, ADEFGuard's inference is orders of magnitude faster than code analysis. Third, the experimental results show that ADEFGuard achieves high accuracy (85%), precision (75%), and recall (90%) for malicious contracts and is potentially useful in detecting new malicious behaviours of smart contracts.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100148"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43158165","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":"Assessing the impact of network factors and Twitter data on Ethereum's popularity","authors":"Sarah Bouraga","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100150","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100150","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In March 2021, we witnessed a surge in Bitcoin price. The cause seemed to be a tweet by Elon Musk. Are other blockchains as sensitive to social media as Bitcoin? And more precisely, could Ethereum's popularity be explained using social media data?</p><p>This work aims to explore the determinants of Ethereum's popularity. We use both data from Etherscan to retrieve the relevant historic Ethereum factors and Twitter data. Our sample consists of data ranging from 2015 to 2022. We use Ordinary Least Squares to assess the relationship between these factors (Ethereum characteristics and Twitter data) and Ethereum's popularity.</p><p>Our findings show that Ethereum's popularity—translated here by the number of daily new addresses—is related to the following elements: the Ether (ETH) price, the transaction fees, and the polarity of tweets related to Ethereum.</p><p>The results could have multiple practical implications for both researchers and practitioners. First of all, we believe that it will enable readers to better understand the technology of Ethereum and its stake. Secondly, it will help the community identify pointers for anticipating or explaining the popularity of existing or future platforms. And finally, the results could help in understanding the factors facilitating the design of future platforms.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100150"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48089163","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":"A comprehensive research framework for Bitcoin’s energy use: Fundamentals, economic rationale, and a pinch of thermodynamics","authors":"Horst Treiblmaier","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100149","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100149","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The energy use of Bitcoin is fiercely debated among academics, practitioners, and the general public. This debate is often biased and characterized by a lack of understanding. Therefore, I start this paper with a discussion of the fundamentals of Bitcoin, which includes the clarification of widely held misconceptions. Next, I illustrate how Bitcoin is related to energy and describe the underlying incentive mechanism. In the main body of the paper, I discuss various components of Bitcoin’s energy use, including the amount, composition, and geographical distribution of the energy, as well as emerging positive and negative effects. These components are then combined into a comprehensive framework that provides a solid foundation for future academic research and presents practitioners with the big picture of how and why Bitcoin requires energy and whether this can be justified from an environmental point of view.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 3","pages":"Article 100149"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42271403","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":"Care4U: Integrated healthcare systems based on blockchain","authors":"Randa Kamal,&nbsp;Ezz El-Din Hemdan,&nbsp;Nawal El-Fishway","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100151","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100151","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>During the COVID-19 crisis, the need to stay at home has increased dramatically. In addition, the number of sick people, especially elderly persons, has increased exponentially. In such a scenario, home monitoring of patients can ensure remote healthcare at home using advanced technologies such as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The IoMT can monitor and transmit sensitive health data; however, it may be vulnerable to various attacks. In this paper, an efficient healthcare security system is proposed for IoMT applications. In the proposed system, the medical sensors can transmit sensed encrypted health data via a mobile application to the doctor for privacy. Then, three consortium blockchains are constructed for load balancing of transactions and reducing transaction latency. They store the credentials of system entities, doctors' prescriptions and recommendations according to the data transmitted via mobile applications, and the medical treatment process. Besides, cancelable biometrics are used for providing authentication and increasing the security of the proposed medical system. The investigational results show that the proposed system outperforms existing work where the proposed model consumed less processing time by values of 18%, 22%, and 40%, and less energy for processing a 200 ​KB file by values of 9%, 13%, and 17%. Finally, the proposed model consumed less memory usage by values of 7%, 7%, and 18.75%. From these results, it is clear that the proposed system gives a very reliable and secure performance for efficiently securing medical applications.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 4","pages":"Article 100151"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209672092300026X/pdfft?md5=202a0f7cbd27881ada6306652d0573b0&pid=1-s2.0-S209672092300026X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47846829","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":"Benefits for the bunker industry in adopting blockchain technology for dispute resolution","authors":"Daniel Adam,&nbsp;Dante Benjamin Matellini,&nbsp;Anna Kaparaki","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100128","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100128","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The bunker industry has faced negative perception to their trust and credibility in recent times. This is further compounded by the need for the industry to answer new challenges to meet the requirement of the International Maritime Organization 2020. The aim of this work is to illustrate how blockchain technology may be adopted for aiding in bunker dispute resolution.</p><p>To demonstrate how blockchain may aid in disputes within the bunker industry, this paper first examines the existing bunker supply process, which involves the formation of contracts under English law, the Bunker Delivery Notes, the different types of disputes that may arise during a bunker transaction and the methods of dispute resolution utilised by the industry. Furthermore, the current literature in relation to blockchain technology and blockchain smart contracts is examined. Finally, interviews and surveys within the industry have been conducted to identify the benefits and challenges in adopting blockchain technology.</p><p>The research found that blockchains may benefit the bunker supply chain offering the effective resolution of bunker quality disputes. Furthermore, blockchains may also serve as a verification tool for electronic bunker delivery notes, which may aid quality and quantity bunker disputes as well as compliance with the new International Maritime Organisation 2020 requirements. As a result, despite the research having shown blockchain to be situationally dependent and having an element of legal uncertainty, blockchain does offer a solution to aid in bunker disputes and for improving the trust and credibility within the bunker industry.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 2","pages":"Article 100128"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49583194","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":"A decision model for decentralized autonomous organization platform selection: Three industry case studies","authors":"E. Baninemeh ,&nbsp;S. Farshidi ,&nbsp;S. Jansen","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100127","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Context</h3><p>Decentralized autonomous organizations are a new form of smart contract-based governance. Decentralized autonomous organization platforms, which support the creation of such organizations, are becoming increasingly popular, such as Aragon and Colony. Selecting the best fitting platform is challenging for organizations, as a significant number of decision criteria, such as popularity, developer availability, governance issues, and consistent documentation of such platforms, should be considered. Additionally, decision-makers at the organizations are not experts in every domain, so they must continuously acquire volatile knowledge regarding such platforms.</p></div><div><h3>Objective</h3><p>Supporting decision-makers in selecting the right decentralized autonomous organization platforms by designing an effective decision model is the main objective of this study. We aim to provide more insight into their selection process and reduce time and effort significantly by designing a decision model.</p></div><div><h3>Method</h3><p>This study presents a decision model for the decentralized autonomous organization platform selection problem. The decision model captures knowledge regarding such platforms and concepts systematically. This model is based on an existing theoretical framework that assists software engineers with a set of multi-criteria decision-making problems in software production.</p></div><div><h3>Results</h3><p>We conducted three industry case studies in the context of three decentralized autonomous organizations to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the decision model in assisting decision-makers. The case study participants declared that the decision model provides significantly more insight into their selection process and reduces time and effort.</p></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>We observe in the empirical evidence from the case studies that decision-makers can make more rational, efficient, and effective decisions with the decision model. Furthermore, the reusable form of the captured knowledge regarding decentralized autonomous organization platforms can be employed by other researchers in their future investigations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 2","pages":"Article 100127"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49845636","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":"TSCS: A blockchain-based tokenized subtitling crowdsourcing system","authors":"Huijian Han ,&nbsp;Peidong Chen ,&nbsp;Feng Yang ,&nbsp;Brekhna Brekhna ,&nbsp;Rui Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100132","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100132","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The language barrier is the biggest obstacle for users watching foreign-language videos. Because of this, videos cannot be famous across borders, and their viewership is limited to a single language and culture. The easiest way to solve this problem is to add subtitles in the language of the viewer. However, the current subtitling system lacks incentives, the ability to build a secure transaction environment, and a trusting relationship between video creators and subtitling makers. In response to the above situation, a tokenized subtitling crowdsourcing system (TSCS) based on blockchain and smart contract technologies is proposed. The source files for the subtitles are stored on the inter-planetary file system (IPFS) in the proposed system. Based on the ERC-721 standard, the returned corresponding address and subtitling-related information are made into a non-fungible token (NFT). At the same time, depending on the expected revenue from video view counts, the video token (VT), based on the ERC-777 standard and endorsed by the video platform, will be used as the payment token. The TSCS has two payment strategies: one-time and dividend. Through such a settlement mechanism, the subtitling maker’s revenue is also guaranteed by the code invariance and rule certainty of smart contract deployment. On the other hand, introducing an incentive mechanism for viewers to audit subtitles enables community autonomy, thus increasing the applicability of subtitles and the activity of users.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 2","pages":"Article 100132"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41791744","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":"Blockchain-as-a-Service and Blockchain-as-a-Partner: Implementation options for supply chain optimization","authors":"Paolo Bottoni ,&nbsp;Claudio Di Ciccio ,&nbsp;Remo Pareschi ,&nbsp;Domenico Tortola ,&nbsp;Nicola Gessa ,&nbsp;Gilda Massa","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2022.100119","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2022.100119","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Smart contracts show a high potential to make supply chain management strategies epochally leap towards higher levels of productivity, not only in the functioning of production processes but also in terms of product innovation and overall economic returns. This article illustrates the principle of Income Sharing as a highly performing economic strategy for supply chains with a natural implementation in blockchain smart contracts. It proposes a blockchain-based architecture that uses smart contracts to implement various algorithmic versions of the Income Sharing principle among companies participating in a supply chain. The formation of the total income and its consequent redistribution are calculated taking into account the role of the technological platform automating these procedures, which therefore becomes a party to the inter-company business project of a supply chain in the alternative roles, as feasible in business practice, of Blockchain-as-a-Service and Blockchain-as-a-Partner. The approach is implemented on Hyperledger Fabric, the most widespread platform for private and consortium blockchains. We compare and justify this design choice with the alternative given by public blockchains, with specific attention to Ethereum.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"4 2","pages":"Article 100119"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46009293","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}