Blockchain-enabled Platform Research Articles

Blockchain-enabled platform for the quality management of the ready-mixed concrete supply chain

Blockchain-enabled platform for the quality management of the ready-mixed concrete supply chain

Analysis of government subsidy strategies for blockchain-enabled green supply chains under competition

This study uses game-theory to construct a dual-channel green supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, a blockchain-enabled platform, and a non-blockchain-enabled offline retailer, with the aim of comparing two government subsidy strategies: greenness investment cost subsidy and production subsidy, and exploring the impact of blockchain adoption. First, firms without government subsidy should adopt blockchain only when privacy costs are low. Both subsidy strategies can always motivate the manufacturer to increase greenness investment levels and achieve a triple-win situation. Second, when the government controls the greenness investment level, the demand, profits, and subsidy amount under cost subsidy are always lower than those under production subsidy. Third, when the government controls the subsidy amount, the greenness investment level under cost subsidy is always higher than that under production subsidy. The offline demand and retailer’s profit are higher under production subsidy, while the online demand and platform’s profit are higher under cost subsidy. The manufacturer’s profit is higher under cost subsidy only when the subsidy level is low. Additionally, regardless of governmental goals, the platform’s profit is always higher than the retailer’s profit, indicating that downstream firms under government subsidy should always adopt blockchain.

Blockchain meets Internet of Things (IoT) forensics: A unified framework for IoT ecosystems

With the continuously increasing number of security incidents targeting sensors, embedded devices, and other electronics appliances and systems that comprise the so-called Internet of things (IoT), the field of IoT forensics emerged as a branch of digital forensics focusing on the investigation of attacks in the IoT ecosystem. Digital evidence authenticity, integrity, confidentiality, and privacy are among the factors affecting the investigation process in IoT forensics, which can be addressed by employing the blockchain as the means not only for the preservation of digital evidence, but also for other steps of a digital forensics investigation process. The high-level goal of the paper is three-fold: to establish a holistic IoT forensics process as a reference point against which blockchain integration patterns and best practices will be identified in order to yield a robust, widely accepted and scalable architecture of the blockchain-enabled solution; to integrate the blockchain with the proposed IoT forensics process for addressing the above challenges; and to evaluate the overall solution highlighting improvements and potential performance bottlenecks. The proposed blockchain-enabled platform leverages multi-access edge computing and has been implemented with Hyperledger Fabric on an extensive virtualized testbed providing a realistic smart home environment. A thorough evaluation was conducted with real cyber-attacks generating digital evidence at high rates for testing the platform’s behavior at high load. The experimental results showed that the proposed platform achieved high throughput, excessively low latency, and zero error rate in the operation of the blockchain network.

Proof of Work Consensus Based Peer to Peer Energy Trading in the Indian Residential Community

Rooftop solar power generation is becoming more widespread in residential microgrids. As well as new concepts of electricity markets, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) markets, where consumers and prosumers can directly exchange locally generated energy with each other without any intermediary third party for sustainable development. Data security is a big concern with energy trading; therefore, blockchain technology is being used more and more in energy markets. It has the potential to simplify P2P energy trading. In this paper, blockchain is designed to fit into the decentralized nature of the P2P market, securing the payment mechanism and transaction data store. The blockchain-enabled platform is developed using the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm, and is verified with the help of the Postman application programming interface (API). All transactions involving the buying and selling of energy are handled by a miner without the help of any third parties. The study of a five-user residential community, whether the strategy is recommended or not, is validated through simulation findings. An overview of the results revealed that all users benefited from the developed, secure P2P platform.

Collective self-consumption for energy communities in ireland: a blockchain based application

Energy community (EC) presents a pivotal role in engaging energy end-users to reach the decarbonisation target of the energy sector. Collective self-consumption (CSC) is one of the key approaches to empowering end users in EC to boost sharing of local generations. Regulatory frameworks of European Union (EU) member states provide an economic savings model to remunerate shared energy within EC. This paper presents the key elements in the regulatory arrangements concerned with economic savings for shared energy under the CSC mechanism. Furthermore, the paper investigates the possibilities of a real-life EC in Ireland participating in a collective self-consumption scheme. A blockchain-enabled platform has been developed for implementing real-life energy matching in EC to assess the technological, economic and environmental impact of CSC managed by a community energy management platform. Results show the significance of the time dimension in the energy matching algorithm, which affects local energy consumption and, subsequently, the economic savings of EC members.

Design of a Blockchain-Enabled Traceability System Framework for Food Supply Chains.

Tracing food products along the entire supply chain is important for achieving better management of food products. Traditionally, centralized traceability systems have been developed for such purposes. One major drawback of this approach is that different users of the supply chain have their own systems with their own complexities and distinct features; thus, the interaction among them creates challenges when implementing a single centralized system. Therefore, a decentralized traceability system is favorable for tracing food products along the supply chain. In this study, we develop a supply chain traceability system framework based on blockchain and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The system consists of a decentralized blockchain-enabled data storage platform for data management and an RFID system at the packaging level for data collection and storage. We applied a consortium blockchain to the application. Fabric 2.0 in Hyperledger was chosen as the development platform. The proposed blockchain-enabled platform can provide decentralized data management and its underlying algorithm can guarantee data security. The system includes a creatively designed blockchain-enabled data structure in the RFID tag. When people scan the tag, the relevant information is written in the tag as a block linked to the previous blocks; simultaneously, the information is transmitted to the blockchain platform and recorded on the platform. No battery is required and the system works when there is an RFID reader nearby. The usage conditions included shipment, stocking, and storage. The RFID tag can be directly attached to paper packaging. This approach embeds the blockchain technique into the RFID tag and develops a corresponding system. The new traceability system has the potential to simplify the tracking of products and can be scaled for industrial use.

Understanding users' trust transfer mechanism in a blockchain-enabled platform: A mixed methods study

This study aims to identify and investigate the various trust targets and their transfer mechanism in a blockchain-enabled healthcare mutual aid platform. We first conduct a qualitative online interview toward initial users in the platform and identify three types of trust (i.e., trust in technology, trust in members, and trust in platform) that play salient roles in promoting users' usage intentions. We then develop a preliminary theoretical model based on the interview findings and conduct a survey to test our research model. The empirical results suggest that three platform mechanisms, namely member credibility, blockchain certificate, and structural assurance, significantly facilitate the three trust targets, which subsequently enhance individuals' behavioral intentions. A mediation analysis further demonstrates that the three trust targets partially or fully mediate the influences of three platform mechanisms on behavioral intentions through different path relationships. Our study contributes to the extant literature by uncovering the nomological network among three specific trust targets and explicating their antecedents as well as behavioral outcomes in the emerging context of blockchain-enabled applications.

A blockchain-enabled platform for VAT settlement

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.

Log-flock: A blockchain-enabled platform for digital asset valuation and risk assessment in E-commerce logistics financing

E-commerce retail sales have seen significant growth in the past decade with its proliferation into the consumer markets at unprecedented rates. This has led to the rise of logistics companies (LC) and the advent of Logistics financing as a tool used by them to attain business expansion. The current climate in e-commerce that is characterized by an upswing in sales requires the LCs to equip themselves with sufficient capital to elevate or modernize their operational capabilities. But, these small and medium-sized enterprises tend to overlook their business expansion opportunities due to the unfavorable financing environment created due to their: (i) limited tangible assets (ii) lack of clarity on operating capability, and (iii) lack of reliable information-sharing mechanism. To address these problems, this study aims to utilize the digital assets of the LC to aid logistics financing. This study introduces a logistics financing platform (Log-Flock), that leverages the abilities of the Internet of Things (IoT), cyber-physical system (CPS), and blockchain technologies to support the utilization of digital assets of the LC for logistics financing. The IoT and CPS are combined to support the generation of the digital assets whereas the core constructs of blockchain technology, such as the tokens and smart contracts, are used to (i) introduce incentivized rewarding mechanisms to motivate the engagement of users and, (ii) to perform the digital asset valuation and risk assessment in logistics financing. Some of the expected benefits from the study include: (i) This novel platform if implemented, would significantly reduce the time for financing. (ii) It communicates the operating capability of the LCs in the form of credit rating which is easily comprehensible for the financing institutions.

The token\u2019s secret: the two-faced financial incentive of the token economy

Multi-sided platforms are omnipresent in today’s digital world. However, establishing a platform includes challenges: The platform utility usually increases with the number of participants. At an early stage, potential participants expect the platform utility to be low and lack an incentive to join (i.e., “chicken and egg” problem). Blockchain-enabled utility tokens hold the promise to overcome this problem. They supposedly provide a suitable financial incentive for their owners to join the platform as soon as possible. In the first half of 2018, investors seemed to believe in the presumption and spent more than US$ 17.6 billion in token sales. To date, we know little about this financial incentive in the context of the token economy. For this purpose, we model the token value development and the associated incentives in a multi-sided blockchain-enabled platform. The resulting findings suggest that blockchain-enabled utility tokens can help to overcome the “chicken and egg” problem. However, these tokens lead to contradictory incentives for platform participants, and can even inhibit platform usage. The contribution of our work is twofold: First, we develop one of the first models for token value development. Second, our research contributes to a deeper understanding of the utility token’s financial incentive.