Decentralized Ledger Technology Research Articles

A New Framework for Enhancing VANETs through Layer 2 DLT Architectures with Multiparty Threshold Key Management and PETs

This work proposes a new architectural approach to enhance the security, privacy, and scalability of VANETs through threshold key management and Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), such as homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation, integrated with Decentralized Ledger Technologies (DLTs). These advanced mechanisms are employed to eliminate centralization and protect the privacy of transferred and processed information in VANETs, thereby addressing privacy concerns. We begin by discussing the weaknesses of existing VANET architectures concerning trust, privacy, and scalability and then introduce a new architectural framework that shifts from centralized to decentralized approaches. This transition applies a decentralized ledger mechanism to ensure correctness, reliability, accuracy, and security against various known attacks. The use of Layer 2 DLTs in our framework enhances key management, trust distribution, and data privacy, offering cost and speed advantages over Layer 1 DLTs, thereby enabling secure vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. The proposed framework is superior to other frameworks as it improves decentralized trust management, adopts more efficient PETs, and leverages Layer 2 DLT for scalability. The integration of multiparty threshold key management and homomorphic encryption also enhances data confidentiality and integrity, thus securing against various existing cryptographic attacks. Finally, we discuss potential future developments to improve the security and reliability of VANETs in the next generation of networks, including 5G networks.

Blockchain and smart contracts for supply chain transparency and vendor management

Blockchain technology and smart contracts are emerging as transformative tools for enhancing transparency and efficiency in supply chain management and vendor relations. Traditional supply chains often face challenges such as inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and susceptibility to fraud (Kouhizadeh & Sarkis, 2018). Blockchain, a decentralized ledger technology, coupled with smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code, offers promising solutions to these challenges (Wang, Han, & Beynon-Davies, 2019). This paper explores the application of blockchain and smart contracts in these domains, examining their potential to provide immutable records, streamline processes, and mitigate risks (Casado-Vara et al., 2018). Through a comprehensive analysis of current literature and case studies, we identify key benefits including improved transparency, enhanced efficiency, and better risk management (Christidis & Devetsikiotis, 2016; Tian, 2016). Our findings suggest that blockchain and smart contracts can significantly improve supply chain transparency and vendor management, though their implementation requires careful consideration of technical, regulatory, and organizational factors (Saberi et al., 2019). Notable case studies, such as Walmart’s blockchain pilot for food safety and De Beers' diamond tracking initiative, illustrate the practical benefits and challenges of adopting these technologies in real-world scenarios (Casino, Dasaklis, & Patsakis, 2019; Kshetri, 2018). Despite the promising outlook, further research is needed to address scalability, interoperability, and regulatory compliance issues to fully realize the potential of blockchain and smart contracts in supply chain management (Hughes et al., 2019).

Research Survey on Role of Blockchain Technology in Agriculture

Blockchain is a decentralized ledger technology where all the data and information can be stored and shared. They allow accessibility for every network users rather than just a single server and admin. The information in the database can then be accessed and validated by several parties, increasing security and lowering the risk of corruption. Traceability is made possible by blockchain's ability to store and manage data. This feature is used to help develop and execute solutions for index-based crop insurance and intelligent farming. It is an important advance in the fields of modern agriculture. Food safety in agriculture is ensured by blockchain applications in crop certification, information systems, agro-trade, financing, and traceability of origin, among other areas. It offers a trustworthy source of information regarding contracts, inventories, and farm conditions in agriculture, an industry where obtaining such data is frequently exceedingly expensive. Because food traceability can be tracked via blockchain technology, reliable food supply chains and consumer-producer trust can be established. It makes it easier to employ data-driven technology to improve farming because it is a reliable method of storing data. Additionally, when combined with smart contracts, it enables prompt payments between parties that may be brought about by modifications to data that appear in the blockchain. The applications of blockchain technology from a theoretical and practical standpoint in smart farming, food supply chains, agricultural insurance, and agricultural product transactions. With numerous current initiatives in various food items and food-related difficulties, blockchain is a promising technology towards a transparent food supply chain. However, there are still many obstacles and hurdles that prevent its greater appeal among farmers and systems. Technical issues, education, legislation, and regulatory frameworks are all involved in these challenges. Key words: Agriculture, Blockchain, Supply chain, Farming, Traceability

An In-Depth Examination of Blockchain Integration in Supply Chain Optimization, along with Future Directions

The potential of Decentralized Ledger Technology in Supply Chain Management has drawn more and more attention in recent years. This study explores how blockchain technology might improve supply chain operations' efficiency, security, traceability, and transparency. This study clarifies the various advantages that blockchain provides to supply chain stakeholders through qualitative research incorporating in-depth interviews (both in-person and via video conference) with 15 participants. The results highlight how blockchain technology has the power to transform established supply chain procedures, cut expenses, stop fraud, and guarantee that moral principles are followed.

Analytical model for performability evaluation of Practical Byzantine Fault-Tolerant systems

Designing systems tolerant to faults is crucial to assure continuity of service for mission critical applications. However, their implementation may be costly and challenging. In this study, analytical models are presented for performance evaluation of systems equipped with Practical Byzantine Fault-Tolerant consensus protocols. Byzantine Fault Tolerance is particularly compelling, since it can provide a robust consensus mechanism to implement decentralized platforms, like Decentralized Ledger Technology and, notably, blockchains. The performability model is based on continuous-time Markov chains, in which the processes involved follow the exponential distribution. The numerical results presented report an inverse non-linear relation between number of nodes and performability. Performance decreases also as the ratio between break-down rate and repair rate increases.

Self-Sovereign Identity for Consented and Content-Based Access to Medical Records Using Blockchain

Electronic health records (EHRs) and medical data are classified as personal data in every privacy law, meaning that any related service that includes processing such data must come with full security, confidentiality, privacy, and accountability. Solutions for health data management, as in storing it, sharing and processing it, are emerging quickly and were significantly boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic that created a need to move things online. EHRs make a crucial part of digital identity data, and the same digital identity trends—as in self-sovereign identity powered by decentralized ledger technologies like blockchain, are being researched or implemented in contexts managing digital interactions between health facilities, patients, and health professionals. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution enabling secure exchange of EHRs between different parties powered by a self-sovereign identity (SSI) wallet and decentralized identifiers. We also make use of a consortium IPFS network for off-chain storage and attribute-based encryption (ABE) to ensure data confidentiality and integrity. Through our solution, we grant users full control over their medical data and enable them to securely share it in total confidentiality over secure communication channels between user wallets using encryption. We also use DIDs for better user privacy and limit any possible correlations or identification by using pairwise DIDs. Overall, combining this set of technologies guarantees secure exchange of EHRs, secure storage, and management along with by-design features inherited from the technological stack.

Between decentralization and reintermediation: Blockchain platforms and the governance of ‘commons-led’ and ‘business-led’ energy transitions

Digitalization will play a vital role in the achievement of successful transitions towards more flexible, reliable and sustainable energy systems. The progressive availability of data from meters and sensors deployed across end-users and energy supply-chains constitute a first step towards this direction. Leveraging on such cross-sectorial trend, business developers find in decentralized ledger technologies (DLTs) – such as the blockchain – opportunities for value creation across a broad range of participants in energy systems. Peer-to-peer energy trading platforms interconnect legacy and novel participants leveraging renewable and storage capacity (small and utility-scale) with grid operators and within local microgrids or markets. In this way, near real time (bi-directional) exchanges can be secured and validated via tokenization and smart contracting. The proposed configurations enable governance arrangements between legacy and novel participants at the platform and sectorial level. This paper focuses on investigating the decentralized governance characteristics proposed by peer-to-peer energy trading platforms and briefly discusses their implications on legacy systems from a broad ‘relational’ (i.e. actor network, sociotechnical transitions) and ‘normative’ (i.e. energy justice) set of theories. The paper draws upon prior surveys and publicly available whitepapers from business initiatives (start-ups). For the purposes of this study, whitepapers constitute official written texts and potential sources of information for the study of emergent ways of governance and collective action leveraging this technology. Results from ground theory method (qualitative) leveraging an inductive content analysis approach, built four (4) main categories that explain: (1) the digital features of these platforms, (2) the participants and incentives involved (3) the purposes and benefits of the solutions and, (4) the governance dynamics arising from trading tokenized energy via smart contracting. Results reveal complex multi-level socio-technical interrelations at different layers and points towards opportunities for private and community-based solutions, end-user empowerment, democratic energy systems and polycentric governance while considering fractal planning in policy design.

Blockchain and cloud computing-based secure electronic healthcare records storage and sharing.

Healthcare information is essential for both service providers and patients. Further secure sharing and maintenance of Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) are imperative. EHR systems in healthcare have traditionally relied on a centralized system (e.g., cloud) to exchange health data across healthcare stakeholders, which may expose private and sensitive patient information. EHR has struggled to meet the demands of several stakeholders and systems in terms of safety, isolation, and other regulatory constraints. Blockchain is a distributed, decentralized ledger technology that can provide secured, validated, and immutable data sharing facilities. Blockchain creates a distributed ledger system using techniques of cryptography (hashes) that are consistent and permit actions to be carried out in a distributed manner without needing a centralized authority. Data exploitation is difficult and evident in a blockchain network due to its immutability. We propose an architecture based on blockchain technology that authenticates the user identity using a Proof of Stake (POS) cryptography consensus mechanism and Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA256) to secure EHR sharing among different electronic healthcare systems. An Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is used to verify EHR sensors to assemble and transmit data to cloud infrastructure. Results indicate that the proposed solution performs exceptionally well when compared with existing solutions, which include Proof-Of-Work (POW), Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1), and Message Digest (MD5) in terms of power consumption, authenticity, and security of healthcare records.

Legal Regulation of Cybersecurity of the Circulation of Digital Financial Assets

The key feature of digital financial assets and other crypto assets is that their circulation is carried out within the framework of an information system based on decentralized ledger technology. In this regard, for the purposes of stability and protection of the rights of investors, ensuring the cybersecurity of such a system is of great importance. The purpose of this article is to study the provisions of Russian legislation in the field of cybersecurity of information systems through which the circulation of crypto assets is carried out, and their comparison with the legislation of foreign countries, primarily France and Malta. As a result, the author concludes that the existing legal regulation in Russia is of a general nature, which hinders the formation and development of the market for digital financial assets in Russia. In this case, the question inevitably arises regarding the specification of legal requirements. In particular, how detailed should the legislation establish technological requirements? It seems that regulation should follow the principle of technological neutrality, that is, establish general requirements and goals, but not provide for the use of any specific technology.

A Comparative Analysis on Blockchain versus Centralized Authentication Architectures for IoT-Enabled Smart Devices in Smart Cities: A Comprehensive Review, Recent Advances, and Future Research Directions.

Smart devices have become an essential part of the architectures such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), and Internet of Everything (IoE). In contrast, these architectures constitute a system to realize the concept of smart cities and, ultimately, a smart planet. The adoption of these smart devices expands to different cyber-physical systems in smart city architecture, i.e., smart houses, smart healthcare, smart transportation, smart grid, smart agriculture, etc. The edge of the network connects these smart devices (sensors, aggregators, and actuators) that can operate in the physical environment and collects the data, which is further used to make an informed decision through actuation. Here, the security of these devices is immensely important, specifically from an authentication standpoint, as in the case of unauthenticated/malicious assets, the whole infrastructure would be at stake. We provide an updated review of authentication mechanisms by categorizing centralized and distributed architectures. We discuss the security issues regarding the authentication of these IoT-enabled smart devices. We evaluate and analyze the study of the proposed literature schemes that pose authentication challenges in terms of computational costs, communication overheads, and models applied to attain robustness. Hence, lightweight solutions in managing, maintaining, processing, and storing authentication data of IoT-enabled assets are an urgent need. From an integration perspective, cloud computing has provided strong support. In contrast, decentralized ledger technology, i.e., blockchain, light-weight cryptosystems, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solutions, are the areas with much more to explore. Finally, we discuss the future research challenges, which will eventually help address the ambiguities for improvement.

Neuroscience and Blockchain

Our brain is made of thousands of neurons that create a chain of different episodes stored in the human brain in a decentralized manner that shapes human conscious experience just like blockchain technology. Although the human brain can voluntarily delete some episodes stored by the mechanism of distributed neurons, this ability is limited. Thus, each episode is open to access and saved securely so that we do not confuse our childhood memories with movie characters same as blocks in a decentralized ledger (Allegri, 2021). In this paper, it is investigated that some properties of the human brain can be to some extent analogical to blockchain and that certain blockchain concepts can be applied to the development of neuroscience as knowledge of the workings of the human brain and memories. At the same time, the latest advancements in blockchain technology can be fruitful in the development of neuroscience. To closely examine the correlation between neuroscience and blockchain, decentralized ledger technology concepts and neuroscience basics are presented [1].

A blockchain based approach for the authorization policies delegation in emergency situations

AbstractThere are many facets to implementing security within an organization and one such measure is the authorization or the access control process. The recent rise of decentralized file systems such as interplanetary file system (IPFS) allow for decentralized storage of resource using content addressing. Naturally, the authorization process for handling these resources needs to be decentralized as well and decentralized ledger technologies, such as the blockchain with the support of smart contracts can be used to manage the authorization process. In this article, we propose an approach which allows for decoupling authorization logic from the core capabilities of a smart contract and providing advance authorization capabilities, such as contextual delegation, to be readily available. The proposed approach is expressive and can handle many aspects related to authorization such as role‐based access control, conflicts, and redundancy reduction. We have used an efficient and modular approach for designing smart contracts. This makes them easier to manage and redeploy, if needed. The data structures used in the smart contracts are carefully chosen to minimize the gas cost, as evident from performance evaluation results.

A Blockchain Footprint for Authentication of IoT-Enabled Smart Devices in Smart Cities: State-of-the-Art Advancements, Challenges and Future Research Directions

The mechanisms based on the distributed environment have become an obvious choice for solutions, while they have not been limited only to a specific domain (i.e., crypto-currency). Rather, it has influenced other industries to develop robust privacy and security solutions, such as smart houses, smart electrical grids, smart agriculture, smart health care, smart transportation, etc. These Cyber-Physical Systems heavily depend on IoT-based smart devices that constitute a networked system of devices dependent on each other for the smooth operation of the overall system. Hence, security and privacy have become an integral part of all the architectural frameworks they operate in. The adoption of these architectures, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Cyber-Physical Things (IoCPT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), and Internet of Everything (IoE), has reinforced the need to develop solutions based on a distributed environment. Distributed ledger technology, i.e., Blockchain, has taken the lead and may support the development of solutions with robust privacy and security. We provide an updated review of authentication mechanisms developed on blockchain technology that enforce decentralized architectures. We discuss the security issues regarding the authentication of these IoT-enabled smart devices. We evaluate and analyze the study of the proposed literature schemes that pose authentication challenges in terms of computational costs, communication overheads, and models applied to attain robustness. Hence, lightweight solutions for managing, maintaining, processing, and storing authentication data of IoT-enabled assets are a must. From an integration perspective, cloud computing has provided strong support. In contrast, decentralized ledger technology, i.e., Blockchain, and lightweight cryptosystems are the areas for much more to explore. Finally, we discuss the future research challenges, which present an improvement standpoint to help address the ambiguities.

Do-It-Yourself Recommender System: Reusing and Recycling With Blockchain and Deep Learning

Due to aggressive urbanization (with population size), waste increases exponentially, resulting in environmental damage. Even though it looks challenging, such an issue can be controlled if we can reuse them. To handle this, in our work, we design a machine learning and blockchain-oriented system that identifies thewaste objects/products and recommends to the user multiple ’Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY) ideas to reuse or recycle. Blockchain records every transaction in the shared ledger to enable transaction verifiability and supports better decision-making. In this study, a Deep Neural Network (DNN) trained on about 11700 images is developed using ResNet50 architecture for object recognition (training accuracy of 94%).We deploy several smart contracts in the Hyperledger Fabric (HF) blockchain platform to validate recommended DIY ideas by blockchain network members. HF is a decentralized ledger technology platform that executes the deployed smart contracts in a secured Docker container to initialize and manage the ledger state. The complete model is delivered on a web platform using Flask, where our recommendation system works on a web scraping script written using Python. Fetching DIY ideas using web-scraping takes nearly 1 second on a desktop machine with an Intel Core-i7 processor with 8 cores, 16 GB RAM, installed with Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit operating system, and Python 3.6 package. Further, we evaluate blockchain-based smart contracts’ latencies and throughput performances using the hyperledger caliper benchmark. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that integrates blockchain technology and deep learning for the DIY recommender system.

A Systematic Review on Blockchain in Education: Opportunities and Challenges

This study focuses on blockchain as an emerging technology regarding its use to restructure the systems and advance education upon quality outcomes. What are the benefits of integrating blockchain in education concerning system reformation and advancement in developing better educational processes for all-encompassing learning outcomes? With the recent developments of blockchain applications across multiple domains, the education industry seems to be benefited from this technology to a considerable degree. Transcripts and certificates play a vital role in an individual’s life so it needs to be stored in a tamper-proof and long-term available ledger. In pursuant to addressing the aforestated question, this study brings information regarding what blockchain technology is, how it functions and what its uses are if it comes to integrating with education at different levels. This may include reviewing the conceptual/knowledge bases, research and development studies, and sources that introduce blockchain including its features but with a special highlight on how it has been integrated into the education sector especially in an innovative situations. To this end, this study was designed to provide a systematic review of all the literature focused on decentralized ledger technology. Multiple sources were reviewed following a systematic pattern that allows selection of relevant sources, sorting out information being guided by the research question, and making the final selection of required information that connects with what and how of Blockchain in education. Keywords: Blockchain, Education, Ledgers, Certificate, Decentralized technology

Ballot Blockchain System Design and Development on Ethereum Platform

Ballots are often hold for fair decisions such as party theme selecting, however, the existing traditional ballot has some problems involving amount of human resources, cost of places, equipment, time and traffic, and repeated procedures. In order to solve the issues aforementioned, a ballot blockchain system is designed and implemented based on the smart contract of Ethereum. It is designed on the core blockchain technologies of the decentralized ledger technology, using a secure hash algorithm, anonymous user, incorruptible data, and adopting a public blockchain. The ballot blockchain system is implemented based on the MetaMask verification and the Remix interface development environment. The smart contract plays the role of the decision-maker for controlling ballot activities instead of numerous human tasks. All ballot transactions are recorded in the ballot blockchain permanently when the ballot completed. The aim of the ballot blockchain system is to achieve a fair, less time-consuming, secured, and transparent environment.

An Executable Axiomatization of the REA2 Ontology

ABSTRACT The formalization of the REA2 ontology presented in this paper offers a minimal set of operationalized semantics for a single white-box model relevant to all business stakeholders independent of their role or involvement in economic activities. This paper's theoretical innovations are the use of MERODE to model increment and decrement semantics as fundamental stand-alone concepts that simultaneously affect economic resources, event, agents, and the semantics of the stock-flow, participation, and ownership associations and the formalization of the REA axioms as executable finite state machines. MERODE's possibilities for model execution through fast prototyping allowed validation through the modeling of an archetypical exchange scenario. Both innovations contribute to the reliability of a generic semantic model for finance and logistics in both the traditional, as well as the sharing, economy, thus promoting traceability and accountability in value networks and supply chains supported by both centralized and decentralized ledger technologies.

Using Secure Multi-Party Computation to Protect Privacy on a Permissioned Blockchain

The development of information technology has brought great convenience to our lives, but at the same time, the unfairness and privacy issues brought about by traditional centralized systems cannot be ignored. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer and decentralized ledger technology that has the characteristics of transparency, consistency, traceability and fairness, but it reveals private information in some scenarios. Secure multi-party computation (MPC) guarantees enhanced privacy and correctness, so many researchers have been trying to combine secure MPC with blockchain to deal with privacy and trust issues. In this paper, we used homomorphic encryption, secret sharing and zero-knowledge proofs to construct a publicly verifiable secure MPC protocol consisting of two parts—an on-chain computation phase and an off-chain preprocessing phase—and we integrated the protocol as part of the chaincode in Hyperledger Fabric to protect the privacy of transaction data. Experiments showed that our solution performed well on a permissioned blockchain. Most of the time taken to complete the protocol was spent on communication, so the performance has a great deal of room to grow.

“Code is Law” and Smart Contracts. Embedding Ethics in Decentralized Ledger Systems

“Smart Contracts” are tools based on distributed ledger technologies deployed in order to increase the efficiency of transactions. Their adoption is growing at an exponential scale due to the undisputable advantages brought by their property of self-executing tasks, yet on the opposite it raises concerns since it does not require any sort of moral scrutiny. In our paper we first address how the current ethical discussion can be framed in Decentralized Ledger Technologies, then we unfold the evolution in legal theory of a decentralized approach – epitomized by the motto “code is law” – finally we focus on “smart contracts” discussing the application of “engineering ethics” or the implementation of “ethical oracles”. At the end we conclude with a few remarks and some perspectives for future research.

A MILP Model for a Byzantine Fault Tolerant Blockchain Consensus

Mixed-integer mathematical programming has been widely used to model and solve challenging optimization problems. One interesting feature of this technique is the ability to prove the optimality of the achieved solution, for many practical scenarios where a linear programming model can be devised. This paper explores its use to model very strong Byzantine adversaries, in the context of distributed consensus systems. In particular, we apply the proposed technique to find challenging adversarial conditions on a state-of-the-art blockchain consensus: the Neo dBFT. Neo Blockchain has been using the dBFT algorithm since its foundation, but, due to the complexity of the algorithm, it is challenging to devise definitive algebraic proofs that guarantee safety/liveness of the system (and adjust for every change proposed by the community). Core developers have to manually devise and explore possible adversarial attacks scenarios as an exhaustive task. The proposed multi-objective model is intended to assist the search of possible faulty scenario, which includes three objective functions that can be combined as a maximization problem for testing one-block finality or a minimization problem for ensuring liveness. Automated graphics help developers to visually observe attack conditions and to quickly find a solution. This paper proposes an exact adversarial model that explores current limits for practical blockchain consensus applications such as dBFT, with ideas that can also be extended to other decentralized ledger technologies.