We argue that there is a hierarchy of levels describing to that particular level relevant features of reality behind the content and behavior of blockchain and smart contracts in their realistic deployment.
Choice, design, audit and legal control of these systems could be more informed, easier and raised to a higher level, if research on foundations of these descriptions develops and sets the formalisms, tools and standards for such descriptions.
A blockchain-based smart contract or a "smart contract" for short, is a computer program intended to digitally facilitate the negotiation or contractual terms directly between users when certain conditions are met. With the advance in blockchain technology, smart contracts are being used to serve a wide range of purposes ranging from self-managed identities on public blockchains to automating business collaboration on permissioned blockchains. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of smart contracts with a focus on existing applications and challenges they face.
In this paper, we discuss the integration of blockchain in smart energy systems. We present various blockchain technology solutions, review important blockchain platforms, and several blockchain based smart energy projects in different smart energy domains. The majority of blockchain platforms with embedded combination of blockchain technology solutions are computing- and resource- intensive, and hence not entirely suitable for smart energy applications. We consider the requirements of smart energy systems and accordingly identify appropriate blockchain technology solutions for smart energy ap…
In recent years, Blockchain technology has been highly valued and disruptive. Several researches have presented a merge between blockchain and current application i.e. medical, supply chain, and e-commerce. Although Blockchain architecture does not have a standard yet, IBM, MS, AWS offer BaaS (Blockchain as a Service). In addition to the current public chains i.e. Ethereum, NEO, and Cardeno; there are some differences between several public ledgers in terms of development and architecture. This paper introduces the main factors that affect integration of Artificial Intelligence with Blockchain…
A blockchain framework is presented for addressing the privacy and security challenges associated with the Big Data in smart mobility. It is composed of individuals, companies, government and universities where all the participants collect, own, and control their data. Each participant shares their encrypted data to the blockchain network and can make information transactions with other participants as long as both party agrees to the transaction rules (smart contract) issued by the owner of the data. Data ownership, transparency, auditability and access control are the core principles of the …
In this paper we discuss how conventional business contracts can be converted into smart contracts---their electronic equivalents that can be used to systematically monitor and enforce contractual rights, obligations and prohibitions at run time. We explain that emerging blockchain technology is certainly a promising platform for implementing smart contracts but argue that there is a large class of applications, where blockchain is inadequate due to performance, scalability, and consistency requirements, and also due to language expressiveness and cost issues that are hard to solve. We explain…
The adoption of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and Web 3.0 contributes to the e-government sector by transforming how public administrations provide advanced and innovative services to interact with citizens. Blockchain (BC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) disruptive technologies will reshape how we live, work, and interact with government sectors and industries. This paper presents how Blockchain 3.0 and Artificial Intelligence enhance robust, secure, scalable, and authenticity provenance solutions. Two validation scenarios are analyzed to present how blockchain smart contracts…
With the recent popularity of Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), blockchain enabled smart contract applications has attracted increased research focus. However, the immutability of the blocks, where the smart contracts are stored, causes conflicts with the traditional Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) models usually followed by software engineers. This clearly shows the unsuitability of the application of SDLC in designing blockchain enabled smart contract based applications. This research article addresses this current problem by first exploring the six tradition…
We examine blockchain technologies, especially smart contracts, as a platform for decentralized applications. By providing a basis for consensus, blockchain promises to upend business models that presuppose a central authority. However, blockchain suffers from major shortcomings arising from an over-regimented way of organizing computation that limits its prospects. We propose a sociotechnical, yet computational, perspective that avoids those shortcomings. A centerpiece of our vision is the notion of a declarative, violable contract in contradistinction to smart contracts. This new way of thin…
The agricultural sector is still lagging behind from all other sectors in terms of using the newest technologies. For production, the latest machines are being introduced and adopted. However, pre-harvest and post-harvest processing are still done by following traditional methodologies while tracing, storing, and publishing agricultural data. As a result, farmers are not getting deserved payment, consumers are not getting enough information before buying their product, and intermediate person/processors are increasing retail prices. Using blockchain, smart contracts, and IoT devices, we can fu…
Blockchain has the potential to render the transaction of information more secure and transparent. Nowadays, transportation data are shared across multiple entities using heterogeneous mediums, from paper collected data to smartphone. Most of this data are stored in central servers that are susceptible to hacks. In some cases shady actors who may have access to such sources, share the mobility data with unwanted third parties. A multi-layered Blockchain framework for Smart Mobility Data-market (BSMD) is presented for addressing the associated privacy, security, management, and scalability chal…
Corruption is a major global financial problem with billions of dollars rendered lost or unaccountable annually. Corruption through contract fraud is often conducted by withholding and/or altering financial information. When such scandals are investigated by authorities, financial and legal documents are usually altered to conceal the paper trail. Smart contracts have emerged in recent years and appear promising for applications such as legal contracts where transparency is critical and of public interest. Transparency and auditability are inherent because smart contracts execute operations on…
In this chapter we provide an overview of the concept of blockchain technology and its potential to disrupt the world of banking through facilitating global money remittance, smart contracts, automated banking ledgers and digital assets. In this regard, we first provide a brief overview of the core aspects of this technology, as well as the second-generation contract-based developments. From there we discuss key issues that must be considered in developing such ledger based technologies in a banking context.
The blockchain constitutes a technology-based, rather than social or regulation based, means to lower uncertainty about one another in order to exchange value. However, its use may very well also lead to increased complexity resulting from having to subsume work that displaced intermediary institutions had performed. We present our perspective that smart contracts may be used to mitigate this increased complexity. We further posit that smart contracts can be delineated according to complexity: Smart contracts that can be verified objectively without much uncertainty belong in an inter-organiza…
A variety of mobile devices and applications have spread the usability of blockchain solutions to over 5.27 billion unique mobile phone users. The rising of Bitcoin price up to USD 50,000 in March 2021 has made many blockchain mobile wallets and smart contracts DApps popular for current and future investment of cryptocurrency and digital-asset managements. To understand the trend, this chapter will present the design and implementation of mobile blockchain DApps using Android Studio together with Ethereum smart contract as the digital-asset management tool. Java Android and Ethereum Web3-Java …
Blockchain-driven technologies are considered disruptive because of the availability of dis-intermediated, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof digital platforms of distributed trust. Among these technologies, smart contract platforms have the potential to take over functions usually done by intermediaries like banks, escrow or legal services. In this paper, we introduce a novel protocol aiming to execute smart contracts as part of a blockchain transaction validation. We enable extensions in the execution of smart contracts while guaranteeing their privacy, correctness and verifiability. Man-…
There is increased interest in smart vehicles acting as both data consumers and producers in smart cities. Vehicles can use smart city data for decision-making, such as dynamic routing based on traffic conditions. Moreover, the multitude of embedded sensors in vehicles can collectively produce a rich data set of the urban landscape that can be used to provide a range of services. Key to the success of this vision is a scalable and private architecture for trusted data sharing. This paper proposes a framework called SpeedyChain, that leverages blockchain technology to allow smart vehicles to sh…
With technological advances and the establishment of e-commerce models, business challenges have shifted to online platforms. The promise of embedding self-executing and autonomous programs into blockchain technologies has attracted increased interest and its use in niche solutions. Using qualitative interviews, this paper sought the opinions of the eleven industry leaders regarding smart contracts. Findings reveal that the technology is gaining momentum in e-commerce, particularly in financial transfer, record-keeping, real estate, and property management, insurance, mortgage, supply chain ma…
Blockchain technology has enjoyed a massive adoption in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Following the success, many people have started to explore the possibility of implementing blockchain technology in different fields. We propose smart stamp duty, a system which can revolutionize the way stamp duty is managed and paid. The smart stamp duty offers significant improvements on the convenience when paying stamp duty. At the same time, the blockchain technology also provides the auditability of the transaction data. Smart stamp duty enables the expansion of the existing electronic stamp duty a…
Blockchain technology has piqued the interest of businesses of all types, while consistently improving and adapting to developers and business owners requirements. Therefore, several blockchain platforms have emerged, making it challenging to select a suitable one for a specific type of business. This paper presents a classification of over one hundred blockchain platforms. We develop smart contracts for detecting healthcare insurance frauds using two blockchain platforms selected based on our proposed decision-making map approach for the selection of the top two suitable platforms for healthc…
Electricity is an essential comfort to support our daily activities. With the competitive increase and energy costs by the industry, new values and opportunities for delivering electricity to customers are produced. One of these new opportunities is electric vehicles. With the arrival of electric vehicles, various challenges and opportunities are being presented in the electric power system worldwide. For example, under the traditional electric power billing scheme, electric power has to be consumed where it is needed so that end-users could not charge their electric vehicles at different poin…
