Public Ledger Research Articles

TOWARDS STANDARDIZED REGULATIONS FOR BLOCK CHAIN SMART CONTRACTS: INSIGHTS FROM DELPHI AND SWARA ANALYSIS

The rise of digital currency and the public ledger Block Chain has led to the development of a new type of electronic contract known as "smart contracts." For these contracts to be considered valid, they must adhere to traditional contract rules and be concluded without any impediments. Once written, encrypted, and signed, smart contracts are recorded in the Block Chain Ledger, providing transparent and secure record-keeping. Smart contracts offer several benefits, including their ability to execute automatically without requiring human intervention, their provision of public visibility of contract provisions on the Block Chain, their avoidance of financial crimes like Money Laundering, and their prevention of contract abuses. However, disputes arising from smart contracts still require human intervention, presenting unique challenges in enforcing these contracts, such as evidentiary issues, enforceability of waivers of defenses, and jurisdictional and choice-of-law considerations. Due to the novel nature of smart contracts, there are currently no standardized regulations that apply to them. Countries that have approved them have turned to customary law to legitimize their use. The Delphi method was used to identify critical success factors for applying blockchain transactions in a manufacturing company. Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) was then utilized to determine the most influential factors. The proposed methodology was implemented, and results show that the most influential factors for the successful application of blockchain transactions as smart contracts in a manufacturing company are: turnover, the counter argument, vision, components for building, and system outcome quality. Conversely, connections with government entities and subcontractors, and the guarantee of quality have the least influence on successful implementation. These findings can contribute to the development of a legal framework for smart contracts in a manufacturing company.

TOWARDS STANDARDIZED REGULATIONS FOR BLOCK CHAIN SMART CONTRACTS: INSIGHTS FROM DELPHI AND SWARA ANALYSIS

The rise of digital currency and the public ledger Block Chain has led to the development of a new type of electronic contract known as "smart contracts." For these contracts to be considered valid, they must adhere to traditional contract rules and be concluded without any impediments. Once written, encrypted, and signed, smart contracts are recorded in the Block Chain Ledger, providing transparent and secure record-keeping. Smart contracts offer several benefits, including their ability to execute automatically without requiring human intervention, their provision of public visibility of contract provisions on the Block Chain, their avoidance of financial crimes like Money Laundering, and their prevention of contract abuses. However, disputes arising from smart contracts still require human intervention, presenting unique challenges in enforcing these contracts, such as evidentiary issues, enforceability of waivers of defenses, and jurisdictional and choice-of-law considerations. Due to the novel nature of smart contracts, there are currently no standardized regulations that apply to them. Countries that have approved them have turned to customary law to legitimize their use. The Delphi method was used to identify critical success factors for applying blockchain transactions in a manufacturing company. Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) was then utilized to determine the most influential factors. The proposed methodology was implemented, and results show that the most influential factors for the successful application of blockchain transactions as smart contracts in a manufacturing company are: turnover, the counter argument, vision, components for building, and system outcome quality. Conversely, connections with government entities and subcontractors, and the guarantee of quality have the least influence on successful implementation. These findings can contribute to the development of a legal framework for smart contracts in a manufacturing company.

Bit Coin and the Challenges for Financial Regulation

Introduction: The main aim of this study is study is to understand the challenges that are faced by Bitcoin in financial regulation. Bitcoin helps to attract investors on a public ledger, which helps them to get back a significant return. Research objectives and research questions are highlighted in this section.
 Literature Review: Based on the research objectives, thematic analysis is highlighted. Therefore, Cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in general have imposed numerous challenges in financial matters. The challenges Bitcoin faces due to its unique characteristics and decentralized phenomenon. Regulators are allowed to balance encouraging innovation in blockchain. Therefore, financial stability has to be maintained which helps to protect customers. After that, a clear tax guideline is required for the investors which help them to ensure compliance.
 Methodology: This study is based on the primary data collection method. Therefore, researchers used quantitative methods for collecting data. In this study, researchers can create a questionnaire set based on the 10 survey questions. In which 3 questions are based on demographic questions and 7 questions are based on variable-related questions. After that, researchers were able to collect information with the aid of 58 respondents.
 Findings: In this study, researchers are allowed to analyze the collected data with the aid of SPSS software. After that, based on the demographic test, researchers are able to identify the response rate of the participants. After that, “descriptive analysis”, and “hypothesis testing” play a significant role within this study 
 Discussion: Overall discussion about the research study is highlighted in this section. Therefore, challenges of Bitcoin transaction process is discussed within this section.
 Conclusion: This research study is based on the analysis of the challenges that are faced by investors during the transaction process. After that, basic knowledge about this study is gained by this study.

Public Health perspectives on Cryptocurrency: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Digital currencies like bitcoin utilize encryption to secure financial transactions, verify their legitimacy, and limit supply. Because there is no central authority over it, like a government or bank, we say that it is decentralized. Instead, cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on a public digital ledger called a blockchain, which serves as a decentralized database that records all transactions made with the currency.(1) The use of cryptography ensures that the transactions are secure and anonymous, making it difficult to counterfeit or double-spend the currency. On online exchanges, cryptocurrencies can be purchased and traded, and they can also be used to purchase products and services online.(2) There are risks and hurdles associated with cryptocurrencies, including as their volatility, regulatory ambiguity, and security concerns, even though they have the potential to revolutionize the way we think about money and banking. As with any investment or financial decision, it is important to do your research and consult with experts before investing in cryptocurrencies. There are many different types of cryptocurrencies, with new ones being created regularly.(1) Here are some of the most common types:

Blockchain technology in education: The perspective, challenges, and concerns

Blockchain technology has altered the way transactions are conducted since its introduction. It offers a risk-free and secure way to exchange digital currency that is impervious to manipulation by those with bad intentions. In blocks that store the data, it stores all transactional data. The best example of decentralized, systematic data collection is blockchain technology. By storing the block in many locations across a distributed network arrangement, it offers a public ledger system that combines public key encryption of all transactions to solve the double spending problem, making change impossible and therefore more secure. This article explores the usefulness and benefits of Blockchain technology compared to traditional data management by outlining its fundamental concepts and how it has been adopted in different industries. The writers also discuss the factors that led to the adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as well as the shift to a decentralized crypto ledger. In-depth information on this technology's potential hazards, drawbacks, security features, threats, and vulnerabilities is also included in the article.

A Private and Efficient Triple-Entry Accounting Protocol on Bitcoin

The ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms dominate the auditing market, auditing almost all the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 companies. This leads to people having to accept auditing results even if they may be poor quality and/or for inadequate purposes. In addition, accountants may provide different auditing results with the same financial data. These issues are hard for regulators such as the Financial Reporting Council to identify because of insufficient resources or inconsistent compliance. In this paper, we proposed a triple-entry accounting protocol to allow users to report Bitcoin transactions to a third-party auditor to comply with regulations such as the travel rule. It allows the auditor to easily detect anomalies and identify the non-compliant parties, whilst the blockchain itself provides a transparent and immutable record of these anomalies. Despite building on a public ledger, our solution preserves privacy and offers an interoperability layer for information exchange. Merkle proofs were used to record non-compliant transactions whilst allowing compliant transactions to be pruned from an auditor’s active database.

A blockchain-based privacy-preserving auditable authentication scheme with hierarchical access control for mobile cloud computing

Blockchain-based authentication mode, a fundamental solution to prevent unauthorized access behavior, gradually becomes a focus in future distributed mobile cloud computing (MCC) services. However, due to the transparent and immutable characteristics of blockchain, users’ access behaviors are facing huge security and privacy threats. Storing the encrypted data on chain is an effective way to address these issues, but access permission confirmation and update in the form of ciphertext is the main bottleneck. To this end, this paper proposes a blockchain-based unified authentication and hierarchical access control scheme for the MCC environment, which provides both privacy protection and auditability. In the proposed scheme, users can access multiple MCC services with different access permissions using a single credential. To protect the privacy of both users and service providers, while still supporting auditability, the data on the public ledger is blinded using Pedersen commitments. Besides, the proposed scheme provides flexible dynamic updating in encrypted form. Theoretical analysis indicates that the proposed scheme can meet various security and privacy requirements in the MCC environment. Compared with related schemes, it has better communication efficiency. Therefore, the proposed scheme is more suitable for the actual MCC environment.

Solving blockchain trilemma using off‐chain storage protocol

AbstractTrilemma in blockchain refers to the infamous problem of simultaneously not delivering the three critical aspects of a ledger: security, scalability, and decentralisation. While security and scalability hinder decentralisation, security is jeopardised if the scalability is escalated. This deficiency of not maintaining a balance among these three crucial factors restricts the broader adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the industries. This paper proposes a solution to the blockchain trilemma by implementing a public ledger using The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and a newly introduced strategy called the double‐chain technique. The scalability and decentralisation features are guaranteed by the distributed file system of IPFS and the public nature of the blockchain suggested in this study. Although any consensus can be plugged into our system, the proof‐of‐work consensus is utilised to ensure that the security is not compromised while stabilising scalability and decentralisation.

Reinforcement learning with smart contracts on blockchains

In recent years Machine Learning and Blockchain technologies have been at the spearhead of innovation, both in the research and application fields. Machine Learning is predominantly used to enable data knowledge extraction while Blockchain excels in providing a ‘public ledger’ upon which data are securely, consistently and irreversibly recorded. Machine Learning may use data stored on Blockchains and pursue to exploit distributed computing resources. On the other hand, Blockchain may exploit Machine Learning and capitalize user data and establish marketplaces for Machine Learning models. In this work we propose a combination of Machine Learning and in particular Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Imitation Learning (IL) with Blockchain. RL allows a software agent to interact with its environment and learn – via ‘trial and error’ techniques – based exclusively on its own activity, experiences and observations. The software agent will learn via an interactions’ reward/ penalize set of measures, immediately received from its own environment. Designing an interactions’ reward/penalize mechanism is challenging as designers need to draw focused techniques securing that agents’ immediate environment will consistently recognize and reward desirable agent behaviour and that the rewarding mechanism cannot be tapped, corrupted or circumvented. In this work, we have approached this via a coordinated collaboration of RL and IL. A Trainer Agent takes on the task of training Trainee agents using RL/IL via recording its own environmental behaviour in demonstration files. In this respect trainees may imitate trainers’ good practices and get effectively trained. This work proposes the concept of an expert trainer software agent (the Trainer Agent) who records its own behaviour in demonstration files and distributes these files via Blockchain to other (receiving) software agents (Trainee agents). Trainees’ training is applied using RL techniques (i.e. reward/ penalize) in conjunction with IL (based on demo files). Demo files are ‘stored’ on smart contract Blockchains, who in the end get to reward Trainer Agents; pro-rated according to the level with which the Trainer has assisted to the improvement of the Trainee agent models. The invariant Blockchain structure with its unmodifiable smart contracts’ nature secure the demo files and nurture credible all interactions among stakeholders involved. The developed application (dApp) fully automates the workflow of trading demonstration files and of training the Trainee agents.

NFTs AND COPYRIGHT LAW

NFT stands for “non-fungible token” and refers to a cryptographically protected asset that represents a unique object, work of art, real estate, ticket, or certificate. Like cryptocurrencies, each NFT contains ownership data to facilitate identification and transfer between token holders. By purchasing a token, the owner gets ownership of an asset in the digital or real world. NFTs are often minted by artists and creatives, but collectors and investors who purchase and use them may have a different perspective on who owns the copyrights to the content associated with the NFTs. Attorneys specializing in art law, although they have not yet fully explored it, are developing a familiarity with the current crypto community and future metaverse in order to understand how a public ledger registration tool has created scarcity and value for digital assets, such as digital artwork.

Security Awareness in Iot for Industrial Applications Using Blockchain

Abstract: The internet of things is the ability to mechanically transfer knowledge over a network. IIoT has been wide enforced in industries like manufacturing and F&B. To meet the difficult paradigms of wireless device networks like Energy potency and accommodative mechanism, the device nodes are increased with IoT support. IoT allows streamlining of information that may manage and monitor the industrial activities within the sensing space. Security issues arise within the space wherever IoT is used. There is a need for a information sharing system which should be directly implemented on the required field of the IoT system. The functions to be performed between the individual and the IOT system are generated as a set of functions in the IOT information sharing system. In order for the users to share the transactions within the system a storage database called a blockchain is used, this blockchain stores all the processed transactions and keep them safe from any adversaries. These information’s are stored and are available for each and every user or the nodes in the network. These informations are stored in the form of a public ledger which in turn can be easily modified and restored by all the user that are using ths system. as the intermediate proxies are used as a result secutity issues with the CoAP messages will rise which can be nullified by the use of Object Security of CoAP (OSCoAP) an IETF draft

Blockchain technology, methodology behind it, and its most extensively used encryption techniques.

Blockchain is an innovative type of information technology (IT). It has the potential to revolutionize various sectors. Since its inception, Blockchain technology(BC) has been a novel technique in IT. Blockchains are public ledger of chronologically-connected transactions or occurrences. Blocks retain their hash code. Due to distributed consensus, it records cryptographic transactions in a public ledger. Thus, Blockchain may resist fraud and hacking, and the secure transmission of information has been provided using these cutting-edge encryption technologies, contributing to Blockchain's rising popularity and demand. Blockchain employs encryption at multiple points throughout the process. Blockchain technology resists various harmful attacks and eliminates many associated dangers, but not all.Distributed consensus, cryptography, and anonymity these mechanisims , in some cases, which may weaken its resilience to various frauds and maliciousness. This research aims to provide a comprehensive study of Blockchain technology, its architecture definition, its most important components, elements, and types, and to clarify the technologies that are considered the basis of its work and integration. Among these techniques is encryption; then, we discuss the most important encryption algorithms (Aes, Des, and Bluefish) currently used with Blockchain to solve the security problems they are exposed to and provide full protection for their data.

Donation based System using Blockchain

A donation-based system using blockchain technology can provide transparency and accountability in charitable giving, addressing concerns about the misuse of donated funds. The system would allow donors to contribute directly to specific causes or organizations, with each transaction recorded on a public blockchain ledger, ensuring that funds are used as intended. Smart contracts could be used to automate the distribution of funds according to predetermined rules and conditions, reducing administrative overhead and ensuring that funds are distributed fairly. In addition, the use of cryptocurrency could eliminate the need for intermediaries such as banks, reducing transaction fees and increasing the speed of transfers. The system would also allow for real-time tracking of donations and impact, providing donors with greater visibility into how their contributions are being used and the overall effectiveness of the charitable organizations they support. Overall, a blockchain-based donation system has the potential to improve transparency, efficiency, and accountability in charitable giving, ultimately helping to create a more equitable and sustainable world.

Cryptocurrency Tracker Using ReactJs

It is a web-application developed by using ReactJS, in this application we can see the cryptocurrency live stats and all the cryptocurrency market cap, We can also see the change of price in last 24 hours. This app can convert the change into graphical representation it will also tell the ranking of each cryptocurrency according to their price. The Cryptocurrency tracker is a cross platform application, which tracks the crypto currency. The app is developed using Vscode, ReactJs, Git, Coingecko, and News data.dev. firebase cryptocurrency flutter fire base authfigma fire store cryptocurrency-tracker coingecko-api. Cryptocurrency is a digital payment system that doesn't rely on banks to verify transactions. It’s a peer-to-peer system that can enable anyone anywhere to send and receive payments. Instead of being physical money carried around and exchanged in the real world, cryptocurrency payments exist purely as digital entries to an online database describing specific transactions. When you transfer cryptocurrency funds, the transactions are recorded in a public ledger. Cryptocurrency is stored in digital wallets. Cryptocurrency received its name because it uses encryption to verify transactions. This means advanced coding is involved in storing and transmitting cryptocurrency data between wallets and to public ledgers. The aim of encryption is to provide security and safety. The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, which was founded in 2009 and remains the best known today. Much of the interest in cryptocurrencies is to trade for profit, with speculators at times driving prices skyward

Research on the Investment Value of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology

Blockchain fundamentally alters the digital world by introducing fresh ideas on efficiency, security, and safety. Data and system stability. Blockchain is a digital public ledger that is decentralized, unchangeable, and open to all stakeholders. Blockchain has many applications, including NFT, cryptocurrency, metaverse, Defi, etc. Cryptocurrency is a type of digital money that operates independently from the government or banks and is intended to be used as a medium of exchange across computer networks. This paper introduces blockchain technology, discusses whether there are bubbles inside the cryptocurrency, and gives investment advice based on cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Decentralised Finance’s timocratic governance: The distribution and exercise of tokenised voting rights

Ethereum’s public distributed ledger can issue tokenised voting rights that are tradable on crypto-asset exchanges by potentially anyone. Ethereum thus enables global, unincorporated associations to conduct governance experiments. Such experiments are crucial to Decentralised Finance (DeFi). DeFi is a nascent field of unlicensed, unregulated, and non-custodial financial services that utilise public distributed ledgers and crypto-assets rather than corporate structures and sovereign currencies. The inaugural Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index, launched in August 2021, included nine Ethereum-based projects – non-custodial exchanges as well as lending and derivatives platforms. Each project is governed, at least in part, by unregistered holders of tokenised voting rights (also known as governance tokens). Token-holders typically vote for or against coders’ improvement proposals that pertain to anything from the allocation of treasury funds to a collateral’s risk parameters. DeFi’s governance thus depends on the distribution and exercise of tokenised voting rights. Since archetypal DeFi projects are not managed by companies or public institutions, not much is known about DeFi’s governance. Regulators and law-makers from the United States recently asked if DeFi’s governance entails a new class of “shadowy” elites. In response, we conducted an exploratory multiple-case study that focused on the tokenised voting rights issued by the nine projects from Bloomberg’s inaugural Galaxy DeFi index. Our mixed methods approach drew on Ethereum-based data about the distribution, trading, staking, and delegation of voting rights tokens, as well as project documentation and archival records. We discovered that DeFi projects’ voting rights are highly concentrated, and the exercise of these rights is very low. Our theoretical contribution is a philosophical intervention: minority rule, not “democracy”, is the probable outcome of token-tradable voting rights and a lack of applicable anti-concentration laws. We interpret DeFi’s minority rule as timocratic.

USE OF BLOCKCHAIN IN VOTING SYSTEM

What is blockchain technology?since its invention in 2008. The first decentralized by Satoshi Nakamoto. He improved the overall design using a Hashcash like method. The design was implemented as a core component of the cryptocurrency bitcoin where its serves as the public ledger for all transaction on the entire network. It is a digital ledger technology that allows for secure and transparent record-keeping of transactions.In a blockchain, every participant has a copy of the ledger, and all transactions are verified and recorded in a decentralized and transparent manner. The security of the blockchain comes from the fact that once a block is added to the chain, it cannot be altered or deleted without the consensus of the network.Besides its original use case in digital currencies, blockchain technol- ogy has been applied to various industries, such as supply chain management, healthcare, real estate, and voting systems. Its po- tential benefits include increased security, transparency, effi- ciency, and decentralization. One of the key benefits of using blockchain technology in voting is the ability to create a trans- parent and decentralized system. This means that anyone can verify the accuracy of the results, and there is no need for a centralized authority to oversee the process. The blockchain acts as a distributed ledger, with each node on the network hold- ing a copy of the transaction history. Key Words: Blockchain, Voting

Quantum-resistance in blockchain networks

The advent of quantum computing threatens blockchain protocols and networks because they utilize non-quantum resistant cryptographic algorithms. When quantum computers become robust enough to run Shor’s algorithm on a large scale, the most used asymmetric algorithms, utilized for digital signatures and message encryption, such as RSA, (EC)DSA, and (EC)DH, will be no longer secure. Quantum computers will be able to break them within a short period of time. Similarly, Grover’s algorithm concedes a quadratic advantage for mining blocks in certain consensus protocols such as proof of work. Today, there are hundreds of billions of dollars denominated in cryptocurrencies and other digital assets that rely on blockchain ledgers as well as thousands of blockchain-based applications storing value in blockchain networks. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based applications require solutions that guarantee quantum resistance in order to preserve the integrity of data and assets in these public and immutable ledgers. The quantum threat and some potential solutions are well understood and presented in the literature. However, most proposals are theoretical, require large QKD networks, or propose new quantum-resistant blockchain networks to be built from scratch. Our work, which is presented in this paper, is pioneer in proposing an end-to-end framework for post-quantum blockchain networks that can be applied to existing blockchain to achieve quantum-resistance. We have developed an open-source implementation in an Ethereum-based (i.e., EVM compatible) network that can be extended to other existing blockchains. For the implementation we have (i) used quantum entropy to generate post-quantum key pairs, (ii) established post-quantum TLS connections and X.509 certificates to secure the exchange of information between blockchain nodes over the internet without needing a large QKD network, (iii) introduced a post-quantum second signature in transactions using Falcon-512 post-quantum keys, and (iv) developed the first on-chain verification of post-quantum signatures using three different mechanisms that are compared and analyzed: Solidity smart-contracts run by the validators for each transaction, modified EVM Opcode, and precompiled smart contracts.

Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake in Cryptocurrency

This research document demonstrates the understanding of two key elements: Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) within cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is often misunderstood as just volatile and risky but many investors do not understand what it even is. What is proof of work (BTC)? What is proof of stake (ETH)? How are they similar and how are they different? Cryptocurrency is actually more relatable that originally imagined once a person understands digital currency, money, it’s origins, and how they hold similar monetary value within their own wallets. Cryptocurrency in PoW involves complicated mathematical equation solving via mining from a large growing pool of miners. These miners receive rewards such as bitcoin/tokens/etc. from their mined hash blocks verified, and blocks added to the blockchain. Challenges are that there are many miners and there may be a computational limit per core of each PC to be able to mine since Bitcoin has increased its difficulty 70 billion times since it started. BTC or Bitcoin is still widely trusted due to its increasing difficulty to race to the finish line to finish the advanced math computations. Whereas within PoS this is not a race between the masses and advanced math computations, but a validator that generally has more put in their stake vs. gained by receiving the processing fees associated. ETH or Ethereum has shifted from PoW to PoS for its better energy efficiency in resources. It has employed many other additional checks from Casper to Gasper which is the combination of Casper (fork-choice algorithm), LMD-GHOST (heavest observed subtree), and finality which requires 2/3rd agreement as well as once a block is justified it is upgraded to a finalized block. the similarities between the two PoW and PoS are that they are consensus-driven algorithms. They are designed to reach an agreement between the systems in place before each block is placed in the blockchain. Additionally, they also have a shared public ledger that operates on a global if not international scale. With blockchains, there is always only one true version and this is relying on a network rather than a governing authority like a bank/government entity to provide security and to prevent fraudulent transactions. It is still widely contested which is better than these two well-known consensus algorithms and it is still widely contested. The best answer is suited on a per investor per business basis in terms of the willingness of taking a risk just like any investment. This document serves to help provide guidance in the understanding of cryptocurrency of two main consensus algorithms, its similarities, differences, and help identify see what a potential investor the reader may be.

AgriOnBlock: Secured data harvesting for agriculture sector using blockchain technology

The existing agriculture system is having several components such as supply chain management, crop insurance, the shipment of goods, and it involves numerous untrusted stakeholders such as users (farmers, retailers, customers, wholesalers, etc.), agencies (bank, insurance company) and regulators (assessor, surveyors). Due to the active engrossment of the middle man (mostly human beings or agencies operated by human beings) some key issues are raised such as transparency, timeliness, traceability, security, and immutability resulting in financial loss, crop contamination, and spoilage. Secure distributed public ledger technology and decentralized computing paradigm make Blockchain an appropriate alternative to resolve these issues and to achieve profitability & trust for all its stakeholders. In this research, we intend to propose a Blockchain-based mechanism viz. AgriOnBlock which would address the issues mentioned in the agriculture sector by connecting various stakeholders through the usage of IoT devices and smart contracts in Ethereum. We further discuss implications, constraints (methodological, awareness related, regulatory, etc.), and potential for actual adoption of AgriOnBlock.