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Finance is the backbone of any Organization. Government is no different. The financial health of the Government is critically dependent on the efficiency with which its banking needs are managed. The Central Bank is generally the banker to the Governments. In India, Reserve Bank of India and Government have been in the forefront of implementing various reforms to strengthen and streamline the processes involved in tax collections and transfer payments. Despite these reforms, some issues still persist and are having detrimental effect on overall efficiency of Government banking. One important factor for existence of these issues is the fact that every government transaction has to pass through a long chain of stakeholders before it is accounted with finality. Blockchain technology is an emerging technology that promises to facilitate speedy and efficient collaboration among all the stakeholders and also facilitates disintermediation to the extent possible. Further, during the crisis like situations (floods, earthquakes or COVID 19 like pandemics), immediate relief is of utmost importance and government aid should reach the vulnerable/affected citizens at a very high speed. However, it is during these stress times that physical access to banking channel gets restricted. Blockchain can facilitate decentralization of last mile delivery channel, by enabling peer-to-peer and cashless transactions even among the unbanked population. This paper identifies the current issues in Government banking ecosystem, analyses the root causes behind such issues, introduces Blockchain based distributed ledger technology, examines the extent to which this emerging technology can address such issues and describes the way forward.

The economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many governments to provide emergency payments to citizens. These one-off and recurring payments revealed the shortcomings of existing financial infrastructures even as electronic payments replaced cash for everyday expenses. Delays in getting government payments to citizens in many countries focused attention on the potential benefits of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This article outlines the social and economic policy choices involved in designing a CBDC and the consequences of these choices for privacy. Priorities including preventing the criminal abuse of the financial system, geopolitical concerns and private sector innovation compete with, and potentially undermine, privacy. We identify and categorize four key privacy risks as ‘losses’ associated with current CBDC models: loss of anonymity, loss of liberty, loss of individual control, and loss of regulatory control.

This study investigates the attitudes and perceptions of businesses and consumers towards the application of Blockchain technology (BCT) to fresh produce supply chains. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups (FG) were performed with fresh produce company managers and consumers, respectively. The fresh produce sector, in this context, concerns the fresh and chill chain, value-added vegetables, fruits and salads and the ingredients of these used in further food value-added processes and products. A total of five themes were identified as factors influencing BCT adoption: the novelty of the technology, supply chain characteristics, open data issues, cost-benefit analysis, and role of public stakeholders. From these, twelve sub-themes were developed and discussed. Findings provide a framework with opportunities and challenges that the fresh produce system must face in adopting decentralised systems for managing supply chain data like BCT.

Governments and public sector entities around the world are actively exploring new ways to keep up with technological advancements to achieve smart governance, work efficiency, and cost optimization. Blockchain technology is an example of such technology that has been attracting the attention of Governments across the globe in recent years. Enhanced security, improved traceability, and lowest cost infrastructure empower the blockchain to penetrate various domains. Generally, governments release tenders to some third-party organizations for different projects. During this process, different competitors try to eavesdrop the tender values of others to win the tender. The corrupt government officials also charge high bribe to pass the tender in favor of some particular third party. In this article, we presented a secure and transparent framework for government tenders using blockchain. Blockchain is used as a secure and immutable data structure to store the government records that are highly susceptible to tampering. This work aims to create a transparent and secure edge computing infrastructure for the workflow in government tenders to implement government schemes and policies by limiting human supervision to the minimal.

In recent years, distributed ledger technologies, and especially blockchain, have gained tremendous interest from academia, government, and industry. Although various blockchain-based solutions were created, the lack of tools to evaluate these complex distributed systems may hinder the development of the field. Many advantages of blockchain systems can be demonstrated only at large scales, e.g., using thousands of nodes. An investigation of different implementations and design choices is complicated and hardly feasible on real systems. Meanwhile, blockchain simulators give the possibility to repeat the complex real-world processes at a low cost. This work provides the first and an up-to-date systematic review and empirical analysis of blockchain simulators. Simulators are easily extensible and can test the performance of distributed ledgers using different settings and parameters on a single computer. The features and limitations of selected simulators are summarized and experimentally validated. Finally, recommendations for potential future research directions in the field are provided.

Artificial intelligence (AI) brings forth many opportunities to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals and the advancement of economies and societies, but also a variety of novel ethical, legal, social, and technological challenges. Trustworthy AI (TAI) bases on the idea that trust builds the foundation of societies, economies, and sustainable development, and that individuals, organizations, and societies will therefore only ever be able to realize the full potential of AI, if trust can be established in its development, deployment, and use. With this article we aim to introduce the concept of TAI and its five foundational principles (1) beneficence, (2) non-maleficence, (3) autonomy, (4) justice, and (5) explicability. We further draw on these five principles to develop a data-driven research framework for TAI and demonstrate its utility by delineating fruitful avenues for future research, particularly with regard to the distributed ledger technology-based realization of TAI.

The transfer of market power in electric generation from utilities to end-users spurred by the diffusion of distributed energy resources necessitates a new system of settlement in the electricity business that can better manage generation assets at the grid-edge. A new concept in facilitating distributed generation is peer-to-peer energy trading, where households exchange excess power with neighbors at a price they set themselves. However, little is known about the effects of peer-to-peer energy trading on the sociotechnical dynamics of electric power systems. Further, given the novelty of the concept, there are knowledge gaps regarding the impact of alternative electricity market structures and individual decision strategies on neighborhood exchanges and market outcomes. This study develops an empirical agent-based modeling (ABM) framework to simulate peer-to-peer electricity trades in a decentralized residential energy market. The framework is applied for a case study in Perth, Western Australia, where a blockchain-enabled energy trading platform was trialed among 18 households, which acted as prosumers or consumers. The ABM is applied for a set of alternative electricity market structures. Results assess the impact of solar generation forecasting approaches, battery energy storage, and ratio of prosumers to consumers on the dynamics of peer-to-peer energy trading systems. Designing an efficient, equitable, and sustainable future energy system hinges on the recognition of trade-offs on and across, social, technological, economic, and environmental levels. Results demonstrate that the ABM can be applied to manage emerging uncertainties by facilitating the testing and development of management strategies.

Since the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper on Bitcoin in 2008, blockchain has (slowly) become one of the most frequently discussed methods for securing data storage and transfer through decentralized, trustless, peer-to-peer systems. This research identifies peer-reviewed literature that seeks to utilize blockchain for cyber security purposes and presents a systematic analysis of the most frequently adopted blockchain security applications. Our findings show that the Internet of Things (IoT) lends itself well to novel blockchain applications, as do networks and machine visualization, public key cryptography, web applications, certification schemes and the secure storage of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This timely systematic review also sheds light on future directions of research, education and practices in the blockchain and cyber security space, such as security of blockchain in IoT, security of blockchain for AI data, and sidechain security,etc.

Blockchain, a form of distributed ledger technology has attracted the interests of stakeholders across several sectors including healthcare. Its’ potential in the multi-stakeholder operated sector like health has been responsible for several investments, studies, and implementations. Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems traditionally used for the exchange of health information amongst healthcare stakeholders have been criticised for centralising power, failures and attack-points with exchange data custodians. EHRs have struggled in the face of multi-stakeholder and system requirements while adhering to security, privacy, ethical and other regulatory constraints. Blockchain is promising amongst others to address the many EHR challenges, primarily trustless and secure exchange of health information amongst stakeholders. Many blockchain-in-healthcare frameworks have been proposed; some prototyped and/or implemented. This study leveraged the PRISMA framework to systematically search and evaluate the different models proposed; prototyped and/or implemented. The bibliometric and functional distribution of all 143 articles from this study were presented. This study evaluated 61 articles that discussed either prototypes or pilot or implementations. The technical and architectural analysis of these 61 articles for privacy, security, cost, and performance were detailed. Blockchain was found to solve the trust, security and privacy constraints of traditional EHRs often at significant performance, storage and cost trade-offs.

In Internet of Things ecosystems, where various entities trade data and data analysis results, public key infrastructure plays an important role in establishing trust relationships between these entities to specify who trusts whose private keys. The owner of a private key is provided with a public key certificate issued by a certificate authority (CA) representing a trusted third party. Although this certificate ensures the reliability of the ecosystem by verifying the data source and preventing the denial of trading, it often causes an overconcentration of trust in a particular CA. Consequently, if that CA is infringed, all the related trust relationships become compromised. The paper proposes a distributed authentication infrastructure called Meta-PKI that decentralizes such overconcentration via a cross-certification procedure performed by multiple CAs. Although cross-certification is capable of establishing mutual trust relationships, it does not evaluate the trustworthiness of other CAs in a standardized manner. Therefore, this paper also proposes a new cross-certification method using a distributed ledger technology for building trust relationships based on unified criteria. It also describes the implementation of a Meta-PKI system for Hyperledger Fabric as a proof of concept. Once trust relationships have been established, it takes approximately 65.7 ms to validate them using the proposed system, which is secure against CA takeover and spoofing by outsider attackers.

Consensus mechanisms are at the core of any Distributed Ledger Technology. They define how transactions are validated and verified, how the network resolves conflicts and protects against malicious intent, and how multiple devices on a distributed network with no central authority arrive at the same global view of the ledger. Experience with the consensus mechanisms employed in popular blockchain platforms have warranted years of research into more scalable and energy-efficient consensus mechanisms for a green society using constrained devices. Most of the “high-security” consensus mechanisms require the use of computational resources which are simply not available to devices with a constrained nature. Hence, the presence and activity of these devices do not contribute to the security of the ledger, irrespective of how numerous they are on the network. In this paper, we propose a novel consensus scheme, fully dependent on WiFi technology, suitable for constrained devices. Whilst in traditional Blockchain consensus mechanisms, constrained devices do not add to the security of the ledger, the security of our consensus mechanism increases with the number of connected devices.

Blockchain is a novel technology capturing the attention of Central Banks and a technology with significant disruptive potential. However, a gap in research effort between practitioners and academics seems to have emerged. This paper analyses and maps that gap by exploring trends in peer-reviewed research contributions through thematic categorisation of academic literature on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) use-cases for services, operations and functions performed by central banks. Furthermore, this paper provides summaries of opportunities and challenges for central banks arising from blockchain adaptation to each of those use-cases. To achieve this goal, we utilise a Systematic Mapping Study approach. The paper presents an in-depth assessment of statistical and thematic analysis of research maturity and the types of researchers, with specific emphasis on types of central bank use-cases considered for blockchain adaptation. Our work contributes to an understanding of where the most or least attention is directed, allowing for identification of gaps and opportunities for both academics, practitioners and combinations of each. Results show that the research topic is a comparatively new domain. It confirms the gap between depth and volume of the research provision from industry and academia, with industry leading the trend. Our study also found that the most research-intensive use-cases are those for: 1) Central Bank issued Digital Currency (CBDC), 2) Regulatory Compliance and 3) Payment Clearing and Settlement Systems (PCS) operated by central banks; a comparatively low engagement was found in the areas of 4) Assets Transfer/Ownership and 5) Audit Trail. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK

Due to the rapid increase in the total amount of data generated in the world, the need for more computational resources is also increasing dramatically. This trend results in huge data centers and massive server farms being built around the world, which have a negative impact on global carbon emissions. On the other hand, there are many underutilized personal computers around the world that can be used towards distributed computing. To better understand the capacity of personal computers, we have conducted a survey that aims to find their unused computational power. The results indicate that the typical CPU utilization of a personal computer is only 24.5% and, on average, a personal computer is only used 4.5 hours per day. This shows a significant computational potential that can be used towards distributed computing. In this paper, we introduce ChainFaaS with the motivation to use the computational capacity of personal computers as well as to improve developers' experience of internet-based computing services by reducing their costs, enabling transparency, and providing reliability. ChainFaaS is an open, public, blockchain-based serverless platform that takes advantage of personal computers' computational capacity to run serverless tasks. If a substantial number of personal computers were connected to this platform, some tasks could be offloaded from data centers. As a result, the need for building new data centers would be reduced with a positive impact on the environment. We have proposed the design of ChainFaaS, and then implemented and evaluated a prototype of this platform to show its feasibility.

Cyber Physical Trust Systems (CPTS) are Cyber Physical Systems and Internet of Things enriched with trust as an explicit, measurable, testable and verifiable system component. In this paper, we propose to use blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, as the trust enabling system component for CPTS. We propose two schemes for CPTSs driven by blockchain in relation to two typical network model cases. We show that our proposed approach achieves the security properties, such as device identification, authentication, integrity, and non-repudiation, and provides protection against popular attacks, such as replay and spoofing. We provide formal proofs of those properties using the Tamarin Prover tool. We describe results of a proof-of-concept which implements a CPTS driven by blockchain for physical asset management and present a performance analysis of our implementation. We identify use cases in which CPTSs driven by blockchain find applications.

PurposeThis paper presents a systematic literature review, including content and bibliometric analyses, of the impact of blockchain technology (BT) in auditing, to identify trends, research areas and construct an agenda for future research.Design/methodology/approachThe authors include studies from 2010 to 2020 in their structured literature review (SLR), using accounting journals on the Scopus database, which yielded 40 articles with blockchain and auditing at its core.FindingsOne of the contributions of the authors’ analyses is to group the prior research, and therefore also the agenda for future research, into three main research areas: (1) Blockchain as a tool for auditing professionals to improve business information systems to save time and prevent fraud; (2) Smart contracts enabling Audit 4.0 efficiency, reporting, disclosure and transparency; (3) Cryptocurrency and initial coin offerings (ICOs) as a springboard for corporate governance and new venture financing. The authors’ findings have several important implications for practice and theory.Practical implicationsThe results of this study emphasise that (1) the disruption of blockchain in auditing is in a nascent phase and there is a need for compelling empirical studies and potential for the involvement of practitioners; (2) there may be a need to reconsider audit procedures especially suited for digitalisation and BT adoption; (3) standards, guidelines and training are required to pivot towards and confront the challenge BT will represent for auditing; and (4) there are two sides to the BT coin for auditing, enthusiasm about the potential and risk upon implementation. These practical implications can also be seen as a template for future research in a quest to align theory and practice.Originality/valueThe authors’ SLR facilitates the identification of research areas and implications, forming a useful baseline for practitioners, professionals and academics, as they draft the state of the art on the disruption of blockchain in auditing, highlighting how BT is changing auditing activities and traditions.

The use of citizens` and legal entities` personal information is crucial for the protection of human rights at the current stage of society and information technology development. On the one hand, a high-quality system of processing and using this information can increase the level of citizen participation in government-making processes and assist on creating a human-centric approach in public administration, when the state will have all the necessary information to serve citizens (providing of all administrative services online, use of analytics to improve infrastructure, etc.). On the other hand, misuse and unauthorized access to personal data can lead to violations of citizens' rights, corruption and excessive bureaucracy in administrative procedures. At the same time, approaches to the protection of personal data should be not formal, but purely practical. The state policy should be based on the solution of real problems, which often require a complete revision of the systematic approaches, in this case the infrastructure of the state registers. Modern information technologies make it possible to implement large-scale changes in the business processes of collecting, storing and processing personal data of citizens. Moreover, such approaches make it possible to reduce bureaucratic burdens and minimize corruption risks. Distributed registry technology is a popular solution for improving the performance of government processes and enhancing eGovernment in the country. However, its application requires a proper assessment of the problem and its origins, as well as the outcomes that should be achieved

Governance for centralized organizational structures has long roots and well-developed frameworks, including for various specialty areas, such as IT or data governance. However, the introduction of blockchain technology as a supportive tool for implementing decentralized organizations requires a renewed focus for research in the area. The paper utilizes empirical data from blockchain ecosystems in the form of white papers (public communique of intention) to analyze their governance intentions. The empirical findings are based on a review of 241 blockchains and distributed ledger technology white papers, out of which 67 include explicit descriptions of how governance should be organized in the ecosystem. Our empirical research distinguishes between three categories of governance: objectives, mechanisms, and stakeholders. We further identify 28 features for these categories, which are described in an open encoding format. Hence, the paper contributes to the emerging blockchain research field, particularly to the decentralized aspects of blockchain governance research. This research also reveals that blockchain governance does not receive the attention it should as a large majority of ecosystems have not disclosed their governance intentions. The results can be utilized as a framework for future research. The results can also be helpful for industry when designing and developing governance systems.

Background In the era of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT), digital data have become essential for our everyday functioning and in health care services. The sensitive nature of health care data presents several crucial issues such as privacy, security, interoperability, and reliability that must be addressed in any health care data management system. However, most of the current health care systems are still facing major obstacles and are lacking in some of these areas. This is where decentralized, secure, and scalable databases, most notably blockchains, play critical roles in addressing these requirements without compromising security, thereby attracting considerable interest within the health care community. A blockchain can be maintained and widely distributed using a large network of nodes, mostly computers, each of which stores a full replica of the data. A blockchain protocol is a set of predefined rules or procedures that govern how the nodes interact with the network, view, verify, and add data to the ledger. Objective In this article, we aim to explore blockchain technology, its framework, current applications, and integration with other innovations, as well as opportunities in diverse areas of health care and clinical research, in addition to clarifying its future impact on the health care ecosystem. We also elucidate 2 case studies to instantiate the potential role of blockchains in health care. Methods To identify related existing work, terms based on Medical Subject Headings were used. We included studies focusing mainly on health care and clinical research and developed a functional framework for implementation and testing with data. The literature sources for this systematic review were PubMed, Medline, and the Cochrane library, in addition to a preliminary search of IEEE Xplore. Results The included studies demonstrated multiple framework designs and various implementations in health care including chronic disease diagnosis, management, monitoring, and evaluation. We found that blockchains exhibit many promising applications in clinical trial management such as smart-contract application, participant-controlled data access, trustless protocols, and data validity. Electronic health records (EHRs), patient-centered interoperability, remote patient monitoring, and clinical trial data management were found to be major areas for blockchain usage, which can become a key catalyst for health care innovations. Conclusions The potential benefits of blockchains are limitless; however, concrete data on long-term clinical outcomes based on blockchains powered and supplemented by AI and IoT are yet to be obtained. Nonetheless, implementing blockchains as a novel way to integrate EHRs nationwide and manage common clinical problems in an algorithmic fashion has the potential for improving patient outcomes, health care experiences, as well as the overall health and well-being of individuals.

Recently, a new generation of P2P systems capable of addressing data integrity and authenticity has emerged for the development of new applications for a "more" decentralized Internet, i.e., Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and Decentralized File Systems (DFS). However, these technologies still have some unanswered issues, mostly related to data lookup and discovery. In this paper, first, we propose a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) system that efficiently manages decentralized keyword-based queries executed on data stored in DFS. Through a hypercube logical layout, queries are efficiently routed among the network, where each node is responsible for a specific keywords set and the related contents. Second, we provide a framework for the governance of the above network, based on a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) implementation. We show how the use of smart contracts enables organizational decision making and rewards for nodes that have actively contributed to the DHT. Finally, we provide experimental validation of an implementation of our proposal, where the execution of the same protocol for different logical nodes of the hypercube allows us to evaluate the efficiency of communication within the network.

We implemented the automation of a real-world Bilateral Derivatives Over-The-Counter Post Trade Confirmation financial transaction model adopting the Corda permissioned blockchain technology; this kind of transaction is currently performed manually by specialized clerks in most private banking organizations. The proposed solution design is an innovative certified sequence of the workflow states of the transaction, based on the asynchronized interaction among two parties through a smart contract coordinated and validated by the notary node. We show the business logic model of the application and the flow diagrams compatible with the current Corda R3 distribution.

Blockchains combine other technologies, such as cryptography, networking, and incentive mechanisms, to enable the creation, validation, and recording of transactions between participating nodes. A consensus algorithm is used in a blockchain system to determine the shared state among distributed nodes. An important component underlying any blockchain-based system is its consensus mechanism, which principally determines the performance and security of the overall system. As the nature of peer-topeer(P2P) networks is open and dynamic, the security risk within that environment is greatly increased mostly because nodes can join and leave the network at will. Thus, it is important to have a system that can check against malicious behaviour. In this work, we propose a reputation-based consensus mechanism for blockchain-based systems, Proof-of-Reputation(PoR) where the nodes with the highest reputation values eventually become part of a consensus group that determines the state of the blockchain.

Major maritime carriers are globally demanding improvements in the efficiency of port operations. Cargo carried by ships must be loaded and unloaded quickly with minimal stopover time in the port. This requirement mandates seaports to deploy cutting-edge technology to the port area so that logistic processes are increasingly efficient and reliable. In this scenario, the attack surface of such critical infrastructure is growing very rapidly and advanced security techniques must be deployed to enforce a high attack resilience. A Distributed Ledger-based Credential Management System exploiting a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to enable transparent and real-time tracking of logistic vehicles and cargos within a terminal is presented in this paper. Based on a customization of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) security standards, the proposed scheme provides authentication, authorization, and revocation capabilities to promptly exclude misbehaving logistic vehicles from the system, while maintaining an immutable record of all the logistic vehicles’ activity. The laboratory validation demonstrates that the delay of the devised scheme is not dependent on the quay area capacity, thus being applicable in seaports of any size. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the solution is demonstrated with the field trial results obtained with the EU Horizon 2020 COREALIS project testbed deployed in the Port of Livorno

Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is emerging as a new mechanism for settling the exchange of energy between renewable energy generators and consumers. P2P provides a mechanism for local balancing when it is facilitated through distributed ledgers (‘blockchains’). Energy communities across Europe have uncovered the potential of this technology and are currently running pilots to test its applicability in P2P energy trading. The aim of this paper is to assess, using legal literature and legislation, whether the legal forms available to energy communities in the United Kingdom (UK) can help resolve some of the uncertainties around the individual use of blockchain for P2P energy trading. This includes the legal recognition of ‘prosumers’, the protection of their personal data, as well as the validity of ‘smart contracts’ programmed to trade energy on the blockchain network. The analysis has shown that legal entities, such as Limited Liability Partnerships and Co-operative Societies, can play a crucial role in providing the necessary framework to protect consumers engaging in these transactions. This is particularly the case for co-operatives, given that they can hold members liable for not respecting the rules set out in their (compulsory) governing document. These findings are relevant to other European countries, where the energy co-operative model is also used.

A project on the use of distributed registry technology to improve funding for start-ups in Japan has been considered. The project is based on the application of distributed registry technology, smart contracts, a big database of start-ups credit risk (in Japan CRDS), a local investment fund, a unified marketing and trading platform. The model of investor behavior (taking into account risk and profitability) has made it possible to show, that with growing investor confidence (individuals and households) and a certain level of profitability of startups, investing in startups will be more preferable, than a bank deposit. The features of the project have been highlighted and a conclusion has been made, that under certain conditions, the adduced scheme for financing start-ups can be used in Russia, for example, by the Industry Development Fund.

As blockchain platforms are becoming increasingly noticeable in financial services and beyond, questions arise regarding their suitability to compete with or replace existing payment systems and marketplaces and redesign the financial infrastructures of the future. Prominent among these concerns are issues around governance and control in distributed ledgers: How are distributed ledger technologies governed? Can blockchains address complex administration problems? What key issues of note for practitioners and academics have emerged thus far? In this paper we aim to review the existing governance practices of established or popular blockchain and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) systems with a view to understanding how they hold up in times of crises. What questions are raised when they are compromised or faced consensus challenges in coordinating action especially around control and accountability? We use a translational process, generating focal insights about present concerns from the reference point of completed academic studies and extensive practitioner consultation. Rather than adopting a declarative approach attempting to provide all the answers, we draw insights from the IT platform governance literature to offer a critical perspective for asking the right questions around key governance issues in financial infrastructure such as decision rights, control mechanisms, and incentives.

Blockchain is a shared distributed digital ledger technology that can better facilitate data management, provenance and security, and has the potential to transform healthcare. Importantly, blockchain represents a data architecture, whose application goes far beyond Bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain and has popularized the technology. In the health sector, blockchain is being aggressively explored by various stakeholders to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient outcomes, enhance compliance, and enable better use of healthcare-related data. However, critical in assessing whether blockchain can fulfill the hype of a technology characterized as ‘revolutionary’ and ‘disruptive’, is the need to ensure that blockchain design elements consider actual healthcare needs from the diverse perspectives of consumers, patients, providers, and regulators. In addition, answering the real needs of healthcare stakeholders, blockchain approaches must also be responsive to the unique challenges faced in healthcare compared to other sectors of the economy. In this sense, ensuring that a health blockchain is ‘fit-for-purpose’ is pivotal. This concept forms the basis for this article, where we share views from a multidisciplinary group of practitioners at the forefront of blockchain conceptualization, development, and deployment.

Previous research studies mostly focused on enhancing the security of radio frequency identification (RFID) protocols for various RFID applications that rely on a centralized database. However, blockchain technology is quickly emerging as a novel distributed and decentralized alternative that provides higher data protection, reliability, immutability, transparency, and lower management costs compared with a conventional centralized database. These properties make it extremely suitable for integration in a supply chain management system. In order to successfully fuse RFID and blockchain technologies together, a secure method of communication is required between the RFID tagged goods and the blockchain nodes. Therefore, this paper proposes a robust ultra-lightweight mutual authentication RFID protocol that works together with a decentralized database to create a secure blockchain-enabled supply chain management system. Detailed security analysis is performed to prove that the proposed protocol is secure from key disclosure, replay, man-in-the-middle, de-synchronization, and tracking attacks. In addition to that, a formal analysis is conducted using Gong, Needham, and Yahalom logic and automated validation of internet security protocols and applications tool to verify the security of the proposed protocol. The protocol is proven to be efficient with respect to storage, computational, and communication costs. In addition to that, a further step is taken to ensure the robustness of the protocol by analyzing the probability of data collision written to the blockchain.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has emerged as one of the most disruptive technologies in the last decade. It promises to change the way people do their business, track their products, and manage their personal data. Though the concept of DLT was first implemented in 2009 as Bitcoin, it has gained significant attention only in the past few years. During this time, different DLT enthusiasts and commercial companies have proposed and developed several DLT platforms. These platforms are usually categorized as public vs private, general purpose vs application specific and so on. As a growing number of people are interested to build DLT applications, it is important to understand their underlying architecture and capabilities in order to determine which DLT platform should be leveraged for a specific DLT application. In addition, the platforms need to be evaluated and critically analyzed to assess their applicability, resiliency and sustainability in the long run. In this paper, we have surveyed several leading DLT platforms and evaluated their capabilities based on a number of quantitative and qualitative criteria. The comparative analysis presented in this paper will help the DLT developers and architects to choose the best platform as per their requirement(s).

Advancement of consensus protocols in recent years has enabled distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) to find its application and value in sectors beyond cryptocurrencies. Here we reviewed 66 known consensus protocols and classified them into philosophical and architectural categories, also providing a visual representation. As a case study, we focus on the public sector and highlighted potential protocols. We have also listed these protocols against basic features and sector preference in a tabular format to facilitate selection. We argue that no protocol is a silver bullet, therefore should be selected carefully, considering the sector requirements and environment.

In recent years, there has been growing research attention and practitioner interest in exploring the suitability of Blockchain technology for decentralised applications in multiple domains. This paper investigates the application of Blockchain technology to address some of the key challenges in the domain of Social Business (SB). SB is a business model for investments in social causes for the socio-economic development of under-privileged communities. In this paper, we have identified and discuss principles and applications of Blockchain that enhance trust, transparency, and auditability in SB activities. We outline the challenges related to creating a native cryptocurrency for SB, and barriers to infrastructure and technology adoption by different SB stakeholders.

Our proposal aims to help solving a trust problem between licensors and licensees that occurs during the active life of license agreements. We particularly focus on licensing of proprietary intellectual property (IP) that is embedded in Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services (e.g. patented technologies). To achieve this we propose to encode the logic of license agreements into smart licenses (SL). We define a SL as a ‘digital twin’ of a licensing contract, i.e. one or more smart contracts that represent the full or relevant parts of a licensing agreement in machine readable and executable code. As SL are self enforcing, the royalty computation and execution of payments can be fully automated in a tamper free and trustworthy way. This of course, requires to employ a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Such an Automated Licensing Payment System (ALPS) can thus automate an established business process and solve a longstanding trust issue in licensing markets. It renders traditional costly audits obsolete, lowers entry barriers for those who want to participate in licensing markets, and enables novel business models too complex with traditional approaches.

Background Adverse drug event reporting is critical for ensuring patient safety; however, numbers of reports have been declining. There is a need for a more user-friendly reporting system and for a means of verifying reports that have been filed. Objective This project has 2 main objectives: (1) to identify the perceived benefits and barriers in the current reporting of adverse events by patients and health care providers and (2) to develop a distributed ledger infrastructure and user interface to collect and collate adverse event reports to create a comprehensive and interoperable database. Methods A review of the literature will be conducted to identify the strengths and limitations of the current UK adverse event reporting system (the Yellow Card System). If insufficient information is found in this review, a survey will be created to collect data from system users. The results of these investigations will be incorporated into the development of a mobile and web app for adverse event reporting. A digital infrastructure will be built using distributed ledger technology to provide a means of linking reports with existing pharmaceutical tracking systems. Results The key outputs of this project will be the development of a digital infrastructure, including a backend distributed ledger system and an app-based user interface. Conclusions This infrastructure is expected to improve the accuracy and efficiency of adverse event reporting systems by enabling the monitoring of specific medicines or medical devices over their life course while protecting patients’ personal health data. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/28616

Demand response (DR) services have the potential to enable large penetration of renewable energy by adjusting load consumption, thus providing balancing support to the grid. The success of such load flexibility provided by industry, communities, or prosumers and its integration in electricity markets, will depend on a redesign and adaptation of the current interactions between participants. New challenges are, however, bound to appear with the large scale contribution of smaller assets to flexibility, including, among others, the dispatch coordination, the validation of delivery of the DR provision, and the corresponding settlement of contracts, while assuring secured data access among interested parties. In this study we applied distributed ledger (DLT)/blockchain technology to securely track DR provision, focusing on the validation aspect, assuring data integrity, origin, fast registry, and sharing within a permissioned system, between all relevant parties (including transmission system operators (TSOs), aggregators, distribution system operators (DSOs), balance responsible parties (BRP), and prosumers). We propose a framework for DR registry and implemented it as a proof of concept on Hyperledger Fabric, using real assets in a laboratory environment, in order to study its feasibility and performance. The lab set up includes a 450 kW energy storage system, scheduled to provide DR services, upon a system operator request and the corresponding validations and verifications are done, followed by the publication on a blockchain. Results show the end to end execution time remained below 1 s, when below 32 requests/sec. The smart contract memory utilization did not surpass 1% for both active and passive nodes and the peer CPU utilization, remained below 5% in all cases simulated (3, 10, and 28 nodes). Smart Contract CPU utilization remained stable, below 1% in all cases. The performance of the implementation showed scalable results, which enables real world adoption of DLT in supporting the development of flexibility markets, with the advantages of blockchain technology.

The rapid development of digital technologies such as blockchain and distributed ledger-based systems holds transformative potential for the financial sector. Promising applications include asset management as well as peer-to-peer networks for the transparent exchange of data and information. International climate finance stands to benefit in particular ways from these new opportunities in financial technology. Distributed ledger technologies could be leveraged to support climate action, for example by facilitating transparent and standardized transactions, or by enabling more efficient monitoring and accreditation processes. In view of these promising opportunities, we focus our inquiry on the case of the Green Climate Fund to explore how distributed ledger technologies can be used for innovative climate finance. Based on our analysis of different digital system models and potential use cases, we then discuss some of the technical and political challenges that may arise, for example with regard to standards and safeguards, governance processes, country ownership, and further capitalization. Our findings show that distributed ledger-based systems could benefit the work of the fund in key areas such as multi-stakeholder coordination and impact assessment. However, our analysis also points to the concrete limitations of technology driven solutions. Digital technologies are not a standalone solution to persistent resource allocation and governance challenges in international climate finance, especially because the design and deployment of these digital systems is inherently political.

Governments may unintentionally impose heavy administrative burdens on companies as they want to ensure the flow of tax revenue. Drawing on an engagement involving the Danish Business Authority and following a design science research (DSR) approach, this paper develops a prototype of a platform for value-added tax (VAT) settlement that is enabled by distributed ledger technology (DLT) and design principles for designing DLT platforms. The proposed prototype and design principles demonstrate how accounting information systems, DLT, and public governance may be interrelated to enhance social welfare. Regarding its practical implications, this paper provides a use case for governments seeking to reduce administrative burdens on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) while still ensuring the flow of tax revenue.

This paper reports on end users' perspectives on the use of a blockchain solution for private and secure individual “omics” health data management and sharing. This solution is one output of a multidisciplinary project investigating the social, data, and technical issues surrounding application of blockchain technology in the context of personalized healthcare research. The project studies potential ethical, legal, social, and cognitive constraints of self-sovereign healthcare data management and sharing, and whether such constraints can be addressed through careful design of a blockchain solution.

The conventional education system in developing countries has been enhanced recently by implementing the latest technology of distributed ledger. Disruptive technology is a fundamental requirement for greater accountability and visibility. We explored the key factors affecting the intentions of educational institutions to use blockchain technology for e-learning. This study proposed an expanded model of Technology Acceptance Model by integrating the diffusion of innovation theory. Based on an online survey, the conceptual model was tested and validated using structural equation modeling. The results showed that compatibility had a significant impact on blockchain use in smart learning environments. Other significant effects were also found on adoption of blockchain technology. This study offers an expanded Technology Acceptance Model for implementing blockchain that could assist decision makers in building a smart learning environment for the educational institutes for the emerging economies.

Local 5G Operator (L5GO) concept is one of the most prominent versatile applications of the 5G in the near future. The popularity of L5GOs will trigger a greater number of roaming and offloading events between mobile operators. However, existing static and the operator-assisted roaming and offloading procedures are inefficient for L5GO ecosystem due to poor service quality, data privacy issues, data transferring delays, excessive costs for intermediary parties and existence of roaming fraud. To address these challenges, we propose a blockchain / Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based service platform for L5GOs to facilitate efficient roaming and offload services. As the key contribution, blockchain-based smart contract scheme is proposed to establish dynamic and automated agreements between operators. By using smart contracts, we introduce several novel features such as universal wallet for subscribers, service quality based L5GO rating system, user-initiated roaming process and the roaming fraud prevention system to improve the operational quality of a L5GO. A prototype of the proposed platform is emulated with the Ethereum blockchain platform and Rinkeby Testnet to evaluate the performance and justify the feasibility of the proposal. Upon an extensive evaluation on the prototype, it was observed that the proposed platform offered benefits such as cost effective, more secure and reliable experience.

Access control is a fundamental component of the design of distributed ledgers, influencing many aspects of their design, such as fairness, efficiency, traditional notions of network security, and adversarial attacks such as Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. In this work, we consider the security of a recently proposed access control protocol for Directed Acyclic Graph-based distributed ledgers. We present a number of attack scenarios and potential vulnerabilities of the protocol and introduce a number of additional features which enhance its resilience. Specifically, a blacklisting algorithm, which is based on a reputation-weighted threshold, is introduced to handle both spamming and multi-rate malicious attackers. The introduction of a solidification request component is also introduced to ensure the fairness and consistency of network in the presence of attacks. Finally, a timestamp component is also introduced to maintain the consistency of the network in the presence of multi-rate attackers. Simulations to illustrate the efficacy and robustness of the revised protocol are also described., Comment: Submitted for consideration for publication in IEEE IoT Journal

Smart contracts are seen as the major building blocks for future autonomous blockchain- and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based applications. Engineering such contracts for trustless, append-only, and decentralized digital ledgers allows mutually distrustful parties to transform legal requirements into immutable and formalized rules. Previous experience shows this to be a challenging task due to demanding socio-technical ecosystems and the specificities of decentralized ledger technology. In this paper, we therefore develop an integrated process model for engineering DLT-based smart contracts that accounts for the specificities of DLT. This model was iteratively refined with the support of industry experts. The model explicitly accounts for the immutability of the trustless, append-only, and decentralized DLT ecosystem, and thereby overcomes certain limitations of traditional software engineering process models. More specifically, it consists of five successive and closely intertwined phases: conceptualization, implementation, approval, execution, and finalization. For each phase, the respective activities, roles, and artifacts are identified and discussed in detail. Applying such a model when engineering smart contracts will help software engineers and developers to better understand and streamline the engineering process of DLTs in general and blockchain in particular. Furthermore, this model serves as a generic framework which will support application development in all fields in which DLT can be applied.

There is significant research interest in new energy trading mechanisms based on peer-to-peer or community-based markets, which are more consumer-centric and direct compared to traditional electricity retail markets. Such trading mechanisms require an electricity trading platform that can manage and settle energy transactions from vast numbers of small distributed energy resources, and therefore scalability and interoperability are major challenges. The hardware, communications and software required for implementing local energy trading platforms needs to be designed, tested and demonstrated in a real-time environment. Accordingly, this paper presents a design for an open-source laboratory demonstrator, which allows testing of the hardware and software required for peer-to-peer local energy trading using distributed ledger technology.

During the last decade Internet of Things has become one of the key technologies in supporting digital transformation of several ecosystems such urban or industry ones. The huge amount of data generated in such contexts as well as the imperative requirements in terms of trustworthiness, authenticity and integrity make compulsory the adoption of the proper solutions fitting those requirements. This paper presents the design, implementation and validation of a distributed ledger technology architecture emphasizing services linked to data valorization. This work is supported by the TOKEN Project: “Transformative Impact Of BlocKchain tEchnologies iN Public Services”, Grant Agreement 870603, belonging to the H2020 Framework Program. The authors want to acknowledge the valuable work carried out by the colleagues participating in this initiative.

Blockchain technology and distributed ledger technology (DLT) offer a secure, distributed, and tamper-proof way to store and exchange information. However, apart from standard cryptocurrency-based networks, innovations and process improvements based on the blockchain technology have mostly remained on the conceptualizing stage and have not yet reached mass adoption. There is a high demand for practical experiences from developing blockchain and DLT based systems in various domains outside FinTech. This work seeks to contribute to this gap by presenting real-world experiences from developing a proof of concept for automatizing conditional payments in social benefits and healthcare domains. We found that the key conditions for making these blockchain-based solutions viable are (1) attaining technological maturity and competences, (2) ecosystem thinking and adequate governance of these ecosystems, and finally (3) achieving legal and regulatory predictability. Furthermore, we discuss technological choice, business, and ethical considerations relevant to practitioners and research communities. peerReviewed

As plataformas de crowdfunding são cada vez mais utilizadas como meio de captação de investimento, donativos ou empréstimos para financiar projetos, empresas, organizações e causas. No equity crowdfunding o investidor adquire uma participação de uma empresa ou projeto e é remunerado consoante o sucesso deste. Este artigo pretende demonstrar como a Distribuited Ledger Technology (Blockchain) pode ajudar a mitigar alguns dos problemas associados às plataformas de equity crowdfunding ou mesmo adicionar-lhe funcionalidades e valências, tornando-as mais apelativas para os fundraisers e investidores. Através do desenho e modelação de uma plataforma de equity crowdfunding que utiliza um ledger desconcentrado para o registo das transações aí ocorridas, com capacidade para carregar e executar smart contracts, foi possível constatar que a tecnologia blockchain pode criar valor neste tipo de plataforma, podendo mitigar ou mesmo resolver alguns dos problemas associados a este tipo de crowdfunding. info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

We have entered an era where the importance of decentralized solutions has become more obvious. Blockchain technology and its derivatives are distributed ledger technologies that keep the registry of data between peers of a network. This ledger is secured within a successive over looping cryptographic chain. The accomplishment of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency proved that blockchain technology and its derivatives could be used to eliminate intermediaries and provide security for cyberspace. However, there are some challenges in the implementation of blockchain technology. This chapter first explains the concept of blockchain technology and the data that we can store therein. The main advantage of blockchain is the security services that it provides. This section continues by describing these services.. The challenges of blockchain; blockchain anomalies, energy consumption, speed, scalability, interoperability, privacy and cryptology in the age of quantum computing are described. Selected solutions for these challenges are given. Remarkable derivatives of blockchain, which use different solutions (directed acyclic graph, distributed hash table, gossip consensus protocol) to solve some of these challenges are described. Then the data storage in blockchain and evolving data solutions are explained. The comparison of decentralized solutions with the lcentralized database systems is given. A multi-platform interoperable scalable architecture (MPISA) is proposed. In the conclusion we include the evolution assumptions of data storage in a decentralized world

The aim of this study is to determine the essence of blockchain technology and its capabilities to be utilized in business operations. The paper discusses the importance of blockchain technology and practical possibilities of its application. Based on industry reports, statistics on investments of enterprises in blockchain technology and attitudes of their senior executives towards this technology, as well as the validity of its implementation, have been presented. In addition, the most important advantages of blockchain technology in relation to existing information technology (IT) systems have been specified. The article describes organizational barriers hindering investments in blockchain technology and its actual applications in companies. Performed analyses show that companies around the world are actively investing in blockchain technology. This technology has been found to be positively recognized in business by executives, however companies, while planning its implementation, face numerous barriers which mainly arise from a lack of legal regulations, and technical problems. On the other hand, blockchain technology can be used in many areas of company activities, especially in the supply chain.

This paper presents the value proposition of blockchain for Port Community Systems (PCS) by dissecting the business processes in port logistics and unfolding functionalities of blockchain in lowering the transaction cost. This paper contributes to the research by a detailed technical assessment of the plethora of currently available blockchain platforms and consensus mechanisms, against the identified requirements in this specific use case. The results of this technical assessment highlight the central value proposition of blockchain for landlord ports, which is independency from a central authority as the controlling agent. Bridging between two research domains of Information Technology and Logistics, this paper proposes the preferred architectural design requirements of a blockchain-based PCS, including provisioning private sidechains, modular design with inter-chain interoperability, and encrypted off-chain data storage. Availability&mdash, the readiness for correct service, and reliability&mdash, the continuity of correct service, are heavily reliant on the right choice being made for blockchain design for such a complex use case. A preliminary comparative analysis among different decentralisation levels in this paper suggests that a permissioned public blockchain offers the best trade-off in performance measures for this use case. This technical review identifies six research agenda from a design perspective.

Electronic health record (EHR) management systems require the adoption of effective technologies when health information is being exchanged. Current management approaches often face risks that may expose medical record storage solutions to common security attack vectors. However, healthcare-oriented blockchain solutions can provide a decentralized, anonymous and secure EHR handling approach. This paper presents PREHEALTH, a privacy-preserving EHR management solution that uses distributed ledger technology and an Identity Mixer (Idemix). The paper describes a proof-of-concept implementation that uses the Hyperledger Fabric&rsquo, s permissioned blockchain framework. The proposed solution is able to store patient records effectively whilst providing anonymity and unlinkability. Experimental performance evaluation results demonstrate the scheme&rsquo, s efficiency and feasibility for real-world scale deployment.

The article presents the concept of application DLT (distributed ledger technologies) for building the electronic clinical documentation tracking system. After a short introduction to block chain issues, and discussion about the attempts of its application on various fields of everyday human life, including healthcare, basic requirements for tracking of clinical documentation system are presented, followed by the proposition of its architecture leveraging the distributed ledger technologies. The paper is concluded with a discussion about the possibilities of running such a system, regarding constraints coming from local legal regulations and general data protection regulation (GDPR), but also economic and social conditions, including ecological ones, which are part of the sustainable development trend.

We introduce a permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) design for crowdsourced smart mobility applications. This architecture is based on a directed acyclic graph architecture (similar to the IOTA tangle) and uses both Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Position mechanisms to provide protection against spam attacks and malevolent actors. In addition to enabling individuals to retain ownership of their data and to monetize it, the architecture also is suitable for distributed privacy-preserving machine learning algorithms, is lightweight, and can be implemented in simple internet-of-things (IoT) devices. To demonstrate its efficacy, we apply this framework to reinforcement learning settings where a third party is interested in acquiring information from agents. In particular, one may be interested in sampling an unknown vehicular traffic flow in a city, using a DLT-type architecture and without perturbing the density, with the idea of realizing a set of virtual tokens as surrogates of real vehicles to explore geographical areas of interest. These tokens, whose authenticated position determines write access to the ledger, are thus used to emulate the probing actions of commanded (real) vehicles on a given planned route by "jumping" from a passing-by vehicle to another to complete the planned trajectory. Consequently, the environment stays unaffected (i.e., the autonomy of participating vehicles is not influenced by the algorithm), regardless of the number of emitted tokens. The design of such a DLT architecture is presented, and numerical results from large-scale simulations are provided to validate the proposed approach., A short version of this paper was submitted to ICCVE 2019: The 8th IEEE International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo