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The metaverse, as an emerging technical term, conceptually aims to construct a virtual digital space that runs parallel to the physical world. Due to human behaviors and interactions being represented in the virtual world, security in the metaverse is a challenging issue in which the traditional centralized service model is one of the threat sources. To conquer the obstacle caused by centralized computing, blockchain-based solutions are potential problem-solving methods. However, it is difficult for a single blockchain to support large-scale data and business services in the metaverse, due to the scalability restrictions. Moreover, multi-chain settings also encounter the interoperability issues. In this work, we propose a Relay chain and Asynchronous consensus-based Consortium blockchain cross-Chain model, which realizes message transmission and cross-chain transactions in multiple chains by adopting the relay chain and cross-chain gateways. All nodes of the application chains and the relay chain execute cross-chain transactions in sequence and reach a consensus on transactions at any transmission delay. Our experiment evaluations demonstrate that our approach performs well in atomicity, security, and functionality (cross-chain transactions), such that the performance of blockchain scalability in the metaverse can be improved, compared with the traditional relay chain schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border payments, especially between different currency areas, are still more expensive, slower and less transparent than domestic transactions. In addition to attempts to facilitate interoperability by harmonising message standards or legal frameworks, there is also the vision of using multilateral platforms to reduce existing inefficiencies. A particular focus here is on distributed ledger technology (DLT), which could create additional benefits beyond payment transactions, for example by facilitating broader economic activity by means of tokenised assets. Some private sector players, as well as international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, have already developed concepts for DLT-based multilateral platforms. However, their realisation faces broader policy challenges that are unlikely to be solved per se with the help of new technologies. Although a global multilateral platform does indeed harbour great potential for efficiency gains, regional solutions are more likely to emerge that could be linked together to achieve efficiency gains at a global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the hands-on experience of HSBC in implementing distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based solutions through building its own proprietary tokenisation platform, HSBC Orion, and participating in various industry initiatives such the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA)'s inaugural tokenised green bond issuance. The paper highlights key considerations for building DLT-based solutions and provides a view of the future state of digital assets as the ecosystem continues to grow and evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the hands-on experience of HSBC in implementing distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based solutions through building its own proprietary tokenisation platform, HSBC Orion, and participating in various industry initiatives such the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA)'s inaugural tokenised green bond issuance. The paper highlights key considerations for building DLT-based solutions and provides a view of the future state of digital assets as the ecosystem continues to grow and evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a series of structured and adaptive processes aimed at tracking and verifying transactions recorded on the blockchain. Permissioned blockchains are employed across diverse enterprises for various purposes, including data recording, management, the utilization of blockchain services, and authentication. However, the processes of data tracking and transactions incur substantial resource and time expenditure. Furthermore, there is potential for information asymmetry within the blockchain ledger due to data breach attacks. Consequently, we propose a contract structured as a hash chain to mitigate resource and time consumption in the tracking and verification processes by organizing transaction hash values and content in a hash chain format based on cryptography. We generate a hash chain for the recorded transactions along the process line and expedite the tracking and verification process by navigating the relevant hash chain. This approach achieves faster and more accurate tracking procedures compared to conventional transaction tracking processes, simultaneously maintaining data symmetry within the blockchain ledger. We conduct a comparative analysis of a contract-based hash-chain-employing structure and two contracts related to tracking in terms of tracking time, CPU usage, and network traffic, among other metrics. The findings suggest that structuring transaction data in the form of a hash chain significantly enhances the efficiency and integrity of the data-tracking and verification processes. Consequently, in this study, we advocate for the adoption of contracts based on the hash chain format when leveraging the blockchain for tracking and verification purposes across various institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial law and crypto are colliding. Against the backdrop of explosive growth (and discord) in the digital asset market, there has been a series of recent revisions to American commercial law aimed at addressing new and emerging technologies. These changes to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) are designed to facilitate the buying and selling of digital assets as well as their use as collateral. However, to date, the literature exploring these changes has mainly focused on understanding the basics of the new regime. This Essay moves beyond that baseline by showing how the UCC amendments can be used to structure more complex secured credit arrangements that tap into the borrowed capital potential of blockchain technology. Specifically, this study explains how these recent law reforms--in concert with the inherent capabilities of distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and cryptography--can be used to create a floating lien (the quintessential financing device in American commercial law) over crypto inventory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trustworthiness and product traceability are essential factors in the apparel industry 4.0 for establishing successful business relationships among stakeholders such as customers, manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers. Each stakeholder has implemented different technology-based systems to record and track product transactions. However, these systems work in silos, and there is no intra-system communication, leading to a lack of complete supply chain traceability for all apparel stakeholders. Moreover, apparel stakeholders are reluctant to share their business information with business competitors; thus, they involve third-party auditors to ensure the quality of the final product. Furthermore, the apparel manufacturing industry faces challenges with counterfeit products, making it difficult for consumers to determine the authenticity of the products. Therefore, in this paper, a trustworthy apparel product traceability framework called ChainApparel is developed using the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain to address these challenges of authenticity and traceability of apparel products. specifically, multiple smart contracts are designed and developed for registration, process execution, audit, fault, and product traceability to authorize, validate, and trace every business transaction among the apparel stakeholders. Further, the real-time performance analysis of ChainApparel is carried out regarding transaction throughput and latency by deploying the compute nodes at different geographical locations using Hyperledger Fabric. The results conclude that ChainApparel accomplished significant performance under diverse workloads while ensuring complete traceability along the complex supply chain of the apparel industry. Thus, the ChainApparel framework helps make the apparel product more trustworthy and transparent in the market while safeguarding trust among the industry stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usage of Large Language Models (LMMs) and their exponential progress has created a Cambrian Explosion in the development of new tools for almost every field of science and technology, but also presented significant concerns regarding the AI ethics and creation of sophisticated malware and phishing attacks. Moreover, several worries have arisen in the field of dataset collection and intellectual property in that many datasets may exist without the license of the respective owners. Triple-Entry Accounting (TEA) has been proposed by Ian Grigg to increase transparency, accountability, and security in financial transactions. This method expands upon the traditional double-entry accounting system, which records transactions as debits and credits in two separate ledgers, by incorporating a third ledger as an independent verifier via a digitally signed receipt. The utilization of a digital signature provides evidentiary power to the receipt, thus reducing the accounting problem to one of the presence or absence of the receipt. The integrity issues associated with double-entry accounting can be addressed by allowing the parties involved in the transaction to share the records with an external auditor. This manuscript proposes a novel methodology to apply triple-entry accounting records on a publicly accessed distributed ledger technology medium to control the queries of LLMs in order to discourage malicious acts and ensure intellectual property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last half century, the concept of shared ledger systems that offer a single source of truth has challenged traditional bookkeeping, leading to innovations such as the resource-event-agent (REA) accounting framework, triple-entry accounting (TEA), and blockchain. Despite these advancements, the historical development of shared ledger systems remains under-researched and unclear, with the influence of REA on TEA particularly overlooked. This study aims to fill this gap by conducting a genealogical analysis of shared ledger systems, with a focus on tracing the development of TEA and its historical byproduct of the REA framework designed by McCarthy. Through a comprehensive literature review and interviews with pioneers in REA, TEA, and blockchain, we uncover the missing link between REA and TEA. Our findings suggest that the current explosion of shared ledger systems results from the convergence of three parallel research streams, occasionally interacting with each other. We correct common misconceptions, acknowledge the influence of key individuals, and map out the overlapping paths of REA, TEA, and blockchain. By elucidating the historical evolution of shared ledger systems, this study contributes to the academic debate and fosters further discourse among researchers in REA, TEA, and blockchain, thereby enhancing the potential applications within these fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central bank digital currency (CBDC) is generally defined as the digital form of a country's fiat currency. Based on the distributed ledger technology and other financial technology, CBDC could improve the efficiency of domestic and cross-border payments, increase payment safety and soundness, and promote financial inclusion. However, it is argued that the introduction of CBDC would threaten data security and invade personal privacy. Currently, this issue has received growing concern, and some recommendations are proposed by countries or international organizations, like privacy design, restrictions on public authorities and payment intermediaries, and establishing independent supervisory authority. Other suggestions include getting countries involved in international coordination and promoting the formation of unified standards. Among major economies, China is the first to launch CBDC, which is known as e-CNY. Based on an overview of the privacy protection legislation in China, this article attempts to describe the rules that should be followed when dealing with personal data generated in e-CNY circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raising capital for a project from a crowd of retail investors has become established as a practice in the last decade. A practice mainly driven by the lack of alternatives for startup entrepreneurs, and the various positive features and functionalities of these models, allowing for more audience engagement, proof of concept, marketing, etc. With the proliferation of blockchain technologies (also known as distributed ledger technologies), there is a technical opportunity for these processes to be refined and for equity crowdfunding to enter a new stage of development. This study proposes a model for the application of blockchain aimed in this direction – addressing the problems and deficits of current models by implementing technological solutions based on distributed ledger technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Guangxi Normal University - Natural Science Edition is the property of Gai Kan Bian Wei Hui and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article addresses a research agenda of the regulatory challenges of digital financial platforms. After approaching the nature of digital-financial piattbrms, the decentralissedfinances that arise with distributed ledger technologies are analysed. These are phenomena that converge towards business models with a tendency towards concentration that generate risks for the stability of thejinancial system and user's protection. In order to respond to these regulatory challenges, an improvement in the governance of financial platforms is proposed, combining the traditional rules oj good governance with the internal governance of business models based on distributed ledger technologies. It is also proposed to take advantage of the platform regime on open banking, crowdfunding and crypto assets to formulate global standards thatfacilitate the regulation of digitalfinancial piat, forms. In turn, regulatory sandbox. facilitates the learning of regulators and the legd colonisation of financial platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent market turmoil, distributed ledger technology (DLT) is expected to accelerate its transformation of the financial services industry. Assets made available for investment using DLT will extend beyond cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the like to embrace assets of all kinds, including equity and fixed income securities, loans, real estate and others that today generally are supported by highly fragmented legacy proprietary frameworks. DLT offers the prospect of a safer, more cost-efficient, more widely adopted operating environment across all types of assets and transactions. However, legal and regulatory frameworks for financial services have taken time to adapt to this sea change. While certain regulatory and legislative developments have grabbed headlines, less appreciated is the state of play of so-called 'private law'. Private property law addresses ownership rights in digital assets as well as whether and how these rights may be asserted indirectly through intermediaries, requisites for transfer of ownership, rulesets for resolution of disputes regarding ownership and whether and how interests in such assets may be secured by collateral arrangements. More broadly, and more fundamentally, as the UK Law Commission has recently noted, 'property law is default law' and is particularly useful because, in principle, property rights 'are recognised against the whole world, whereas other — personal — rights are recognised only against someone who has assumed a relevant legal duty'.1 This distinction is especially important where a party having responsibility for an asset becomes insolvent. Within individual legal systems, digital assets and methods for their transfer have struggled to integrate themselves with existing laws such as the law regarding property rights and laws addressing the impact of insolvency. Each legal system by and large has addressed this challenge in its own way and in its own time, complicating prospects for a broad, scalable take-up of DLT as a replacement for current inefficiencies and fragmentation as well as for new types of assets. This is likely to be especially problematic in the context of cross-border investments, holdings and dispositions — especially if the law of more than one jurisdiction might apply to the same investment. This paper argues that it is essential that legal systems grappling with digital assets are mindful of the risks and pitfalls of inconsistency with other legal systems and that in this respect consistent application of governing law and choice of forum especially should be considered. In particular, the efforts of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) should be supported in order to establish a conceptually sound set of principles for all jurisdictions to apply, regardless of the peculiarities of their respective legal systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covert communication was widely studied in recent years in terms of keeping the communication of entities on the Internet secret from the point of view of information security. Due to the anonymity of accounts and the publicness of the ledger, blockchain is a natural and ideal channel for helping users establish covert communication channels. Senders can embed secret messages into certain fields in transactions, and receivers can extract those messages from the transactions without attracting the attention of other users. However, to the best of our knowledge, most existing works have aimed at designing blockchain-based covert communication schemes. Few studies concentrated on the recognition of transactions used for covert communication. In this paper, we first analyze convolutional neural network (CNN)-based and attention-based covert transaction recognition schemes, and we explore the deep relationship between the appropriate extraction of features and the embedded fields of covert transactions. We further propose a multi-dimensional covert transaction recognition (M-CTR) scheme. It can simultaneously support both one-dimensional and two-dimensional feature extraction to recognize covert transactions. The experimental results show that the precision and recall of the M-CTR in recognizing covert transactions outperformed those of existing covert communication schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The blockchain technology has been gaining an increasing popularity for the last years, and smart contracts are being used for a growing number of applications in several scenarios. The execution of smart contracts on public blockchains can be invoked by any user with a transaction, although in many scenarios there would be the need for restricting the right of executing smart contracts only to a restricted set of users. To help deal with this issue, this article proposes a system based on a popular access control framework called RT, Role-based Trust Management, to regulate smart contracts execution rights. The proposed system, called Layer 2 DecentrAlized Role-based Trust management (L2DART), implements the RT framework on a public blockchain, and it is designed as a layer-2 technology that involves both on-chain and off-chain functionalities to reduce the blockchain costs while keeping blockchain auditability, i.e., immutability and transparency. The on-chain costs of L2DART have been evaluated on Ethereum and compared with a previous solution implementing on-chain all the functionalities. The results show that the on-chain costs of L2DART are relatively low, making the system deployable in real-world scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a noted rise in research examining the influence of digital transformation--specifically the application of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) on the progression of the financial sector. This paper presents conclusions from a study on participants' awareness, understanding, and intentions regarding cryptocurrencies and the Digital Euro. Participants have a relatively high awareness of digital assets and Digital Euro, but better understanding is needed through effective communication and educational initiatives. While recognizing cryptocurrencies as valuable investments, participants are skeptical about their use for payments due to concerns about illicit activities. Regulatory frameworks are deemed important to address these concerns. Participants support the introduction of the Digital Euro and intend to use it for various purposes, suggesting potential demand. Desired characteristics include privacy, ease of use, and cross-border usability. These findings inform the strategies for introducing and accepting the Digital Euro, promoting financial inclusion, and enhancing accessibility in Europe's digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group-buying is an intriguing e-commerce model that aims to recruit more participants to generate sufficient orders to establish a low-price foundation. It appears to be a good model for both sellers and buyers; however, most online group-buying websites have failed. Many academics believe that reputation-sharing across multiple platforms is the way to solve the industry's dilemma. RS-Chain is a blockchain-based decentralized reputation-sharing framework, has been proposed in this paper. It is a hybrid blockchain comprising multiple public chains that store transaction ledgers and a consortium chain that stores reputation ledgers. It employs a trusted execution environment as a data verification component. We introduce the framework and describe the reputation operations. For the public chain, we propose proof of reputation (PoR), a new consensus protocol. The comparison experiment demonstrates that the PoR protocol outperforms the proof of work protocol in terms of fairness, orphan blocks, throughput, and latency. RS-Chain is the first reputation-sharing framework based on blockchain technology in the group-buying industry. It could be applied to similar reputation-sensitive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although many studies have been devoted to integrating blockchain into IoT device management, access control, data integrity, security, and privacy, blockchain-facilitated IoT communication is still much less studied. Blockchain has great potential in decentralizing and securing IoT communications. In this paper, we propose an innovative IoT service platform powered by the consortium blockchain technology. The proposed platform abstracts machine-to-machine (M2M) and human-to-machine (H2M) communications into services provided by IoT devices. Then, it materializes the data exchange of the IoT network through smart contracts and blockchain transactions. Additionally, we introduce the auxiliary storage layer to the proposed platform to address various off-chain data storage needs. Our proof-of-concept implementation was tested against various workloads and connection sizes under different block configurations to evaluate the platform's transaction throughput, latency, and hardware utilization. The experimental results demonstrate that our solution can maintain high performance with a throughput of approximately 800 reads per second (RPS), 50–80 transactions per second (TPS), and a latency of 50 ms–2 s under light to moderate workloads. Our extensive evaluation of the performance impact of batch size, batch timeout, and connection size also provides valuable insights into the optimization of blockchain configuration for achieving high performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional banking functions of lending, deposit-taking and payment intermediation are being unbundled in the new frontiers of money that extend from virtual currencies to crypto-assets and from shadow payments to quasi-money. The possibility for digital-centred change in the financial industry is illustrated by distributed ledger technology, of which 'blockchain' is the most prominent example of automated decision-making. Other forms of decentralised supply of money, payment services, and funding processes may allow households and businesses to obtain loans and pool risks without having recourse to financial intermediaries. This article examines the alternative provision of access to low-cost zero-friction payments from the perspective of the underbanked. Promoting innovation through alternatives to credit means integrating vulnerable and excluded customers into mainstream financial systems. Blockchain technology backed by a possible modification of the law on the recognition and transfer of property rights might prove instrumental in unlocking the value of the assets possessed by the underbanked or even the unbanked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Economist / Novi Ekonomist is the property of University of East Sarajevo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The consistent trend towards dematerialisation and business process automation that has been developing around the world over recent years has also shaped the recent evolution of securities markets. The emergence of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) has the poten tial to disrupt the present day business model of security markets based on cen tral securities depositories (CSDs). The transition from centralised analogic infrastructures (such as CSDs) to more distributed digital and pro to colbased infrastructures (such as DLTs) has a variety of implications that have only recently started to emerge and raises new questions and unexplored issues. This paper analyses the impact that technological innovations in the field of DLTs have on the business of CSDs, assesses the nature of that impact and figures out what lies ahead for CSDs in an age of technological revolution and transformative changes. It high lights that current infrastructure is functional but complex, fragmented and limited in scale and scope and mainly zooms in on Custody and CSDs whose roles are evolving. The paper discusses how DLTs and digital assets are transforming the securities end to end process. On the one hand, the DLT disruption is challenging current constraints of traditional settlement times, operating hours and also national boundaries. The paper discusses how as DLTs disintermediate and 'decentralise' the role played by CSDs, the oper a Journaltional and counterparty risks are also reduced. As a result, market participants, while maintaining their critical roles in ensur ing fair and effec tive mar kets, can now trans form them selves and embrace a new operational, technological and regulatory framework. On the other hand, the paper also discusses how this disintermediation can introduce novel types of operational, technological and regulatory risks in security markets and post trade too. These new aspects introduce fur ther recentralisation and reinter mediation in the industry, mainly in the form of custodians, which are increas ing their relevance within a DLT ecosystem to address novel technological and operational risks. More generally, the work discusses how hierarchical, closed and permissioned governance structures are naturally more suited to reduce novel regulatory, technological and operational risks, together with the contextual definition of industry wide stan dards, which ensure interoperability between old and new systems, regulatory harmonisation and compliance. In sum, while the decentralisation and disintermediation potentially fostered by DLTs can contribute to the reduction of certain types of risks in post trade the emergence of brandnew risks requires other forms recentralisation and reinter mediation. This requires the emer gence of novel actors and novel archi tectural solutions. Ultimately, the paper outlines how the collaboration between reg u la tory authorities and indus try participants is becoming a key enabler for wider DLT adoption, especially in heavily regulated indus tries. This has a direct impact on finan cial mar ket infra struc tures (FMIs) that are chal lenged to become more client oriented, to be able to cope with increasing com petition and to take advantage of new opportunities to grow through novel business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public international law faces new challenges. So far, several countries have signed dozens of FinTech Cooperation Agreements (CAs), which aim to promote closer cooperation in the field of FinTech but also to promote innovation in financial services. States interested in moving forward in this area are keen to deepen bilateral and multilateral FinTech cooperation to facilitate trade, investment and ecosystem development in the FinTech market sector. At the international level, the focus is on supporting the mutual establishment (between states) of FinTechs that want to expand globally to help the industry navigate its evolution. Another purpose of the FinTech treaties is to standardise information about emerging market trends and the sharing of experience from each jurisdiction. This includes collaboration in areas such as blockchain and distributed ledger technology, digital identities, cross-border data connectivity, data portability and the application of FinTech to promote sustainable finance. Within the European Union, new financial technologies underline the objective already set out in the Treaty of Rome - to achieve a single market for capital under the corollary of financial stability and security and consumer protection. This modern type of treaty continues the tradition of concluding trade agreements and supports the economic environment with local, regional and global opportunities arising from the digital boom that is crossing borders, reshaping industries and transforming economies in the region. In the face of these challenges, public international law is performing its regulatory function. To produce this article, we have used a prospective and feature-identifying method that promotes consistency of hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies are set to disrupt the real estate sector in all areas: ownership, sale, management and investment. Tokenization moves physical real estate to the digital space and could result in substantial cost savings in the pre- and post-tokenization process. This article discusses whether real estate as an asset class is ready for digitalization in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Design/methodology/approach: Globally, the APAC region has the highest digital adaptation/adoption rates. Regulators in the region are also moving fast to clarify their stance on digital assets. This article adopts a holistic view, from trends, regulations, and technology, to discuss the benefits and challenges of digitalizing real estate in APAC. Findings: Real estate tokenization is a nascent market but platforms like BrickX, KASA, ADDX, and Minterest have successfully launched real estate tokens in Australia, South Korea, and Singapore, respectively. Tokenization may prove to be a viable funding source for those relatively poorly capitalized financial markets in the APAC region. Practical implications: This paper discusses the current regulatory and business contexts in relation to the pace of tokenization of real estate in APAC. Opportunities and difficulties are outlined in a concise manner to facilitate more discussion in this area. Originality/value: Existing reports and research articles tend to focus on the western markets. This article provides a new perspective on tokenization, specifically in the APAC context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at how the securities industry can better manage coexistence between different message formats along with realising the many opportunities presented by available data. This is with a view to arriving at greater efficiency, profitability and interoperability within securities and across financial services. It begins with an overview of the quantities and types of data produced by the industry, discussing the costs and risks this poses if it is not sufficiently well managed. It then moves into a discussion of the need for a common language for all parts of financial services, including securities, to agree on in order to communicate more effectively. The paper focuses on using the global ISO 20022 standard for this purpose. It covers the question of migrating to it as a message format, for which there is little appetite within the securities industry in the short to medium term. ISO 20022's central repository and data dictionary provide a solution, creating the common language that can help to ensure interoperability between entities. It includes discussion of the many benefits of using ISO 20022 in this way, such as reduced costs, risks and timeframes. It highlights how ISO 20022 as a data model can be applied to developing standardised application programming interfaces and building connections with emerging technologies and industries such as distributed ledger technology and crypto assets. The paper also looks at the risks and limitations posed by a prolonged period of coexistence. The use of a common data dictionary can enable firms to interoperate without having to align data exchanges at the syntax level; however, there are still associated costs, risks and inefficiencies. The conclusion is that securities market participants should collaborate to adopt a common data dictionary that can be integrated into their systems, their software and their processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain technology has the potential to reduce transaction errors and enhance the quality of reporting significantly. This article proposes a conceptual blockchain‐based protocol, labelled Smart Ledger, as a replacement for the traditional accounting information recording system. A smart ledger is a computerized algorithm that utilizes blockchain technology to perform accounting ledger functions. Its validity is based on two mechanisms within the blockchain architecture: Fractional Accounting Transactions (FAT) and Hierarchical Accounting Transaction Execution (HATE). As such, the smart ledger is a hybrid protocol that combines accounting information recording principles with the immutability of blockchain technology. If widely implemented, it could have a significant impact on accounting practices and the accounting profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research by political economists typically highlights policymakers, regulators, economists and consultants as the makers of economies. This paper foregrounds a different actor entirely, what I call the 'hacker-engineer' as an important protagonist in the making of decentralised digital network economies that are forged through the emerging field of 'cryptoeconomics' and blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. Responding to critical literature stating that blockchain and 'cryptoeconomics' merely extend neoliberal processes of economisation, the paper recovers the neglected hacker culture of cypherpunk and histories of peer-to-peer decentralised networks in order to foreground concerns that depart from the continuation of economics and economies as usual. Hacker-engineers are dedicated to decentralisation as a 'disruptive' response to network control and surveillance, and share a pragmatist sensibility that seeks to make decentralised networks 'work' in order to provide informational security and privacy. While further broadening the range of agents that provide the focus for political economy research into the production of economies, the paper also draws attention to the technical decisions of hacker-engineers that attempt to reconfigure the material infrastructures of digital economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista del ICDT is the property of Instituto Colombiano de Derecho Tributario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Today, Data Driven Marketing is challenged by the supply of vague data, inconsistencies between them and fraud through advertising in the digital marketing ecosystem. Through three basic concepts like open ledger, distributed ledger, and miners, BlockChain (BC) is a perfectly positioned technology, restoring not only trust and transparency, but ensuring a greater uniformity of transactions within a largely fragmented sector. BC makes DDM more directly and reliable, validating and analyzing each customer's movement in advertising campaigns. In BlockChain the traditional principle that creates the positive correlation between fee and delivery time through the "Third Trust Party" becomes null because transparency is one of the basic properties of this technology, which on the other hand for DDM is the Achilles heel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In recent years Bitcoin has revolutionized the financial world. Its birth was made possible thanks to an innovative combination of certain pre-existing technology in computer networks and cryptography, which led to the existence of a transparent, reliable and immutable record of transactions, a large shared ledger: Blockchain. Several studies analyse the application or future application of Blockchain in different industries. The application of Blockchain in accounting is one of the most debated, since it is a shared accounting record and it is anticipated that its application could change the mission of accountants or even auditors. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to analyze the existing literature on the importance of Blockchain and its possible impact on accounting. Design/methodology: The review of the literature on blockchain and its importance was carried out. Also we have analyzed the Triple Entry and the so-called accounting ledger, trying to clarify some existing terminological confusion, and we have faced what could be the future of this technology. Findings: The review of the literature implies that Blockchain, after technical improvement and development, will involve an important transformation of the traditional accounting system, with the consequent modification of the work of accountants and auditors. Originality/value: One of the main contributions of this study is its importance for academic literature, being one of the first to analyze the impact of Blockchain in traditional accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain is distributed ledger technology praised by many tech-savvy executives to disrupt and change many businesses in the future, including the accounting and assurance profession. This study critically assesses the disruptive potential of the technology for modern accounting information systems and accounting professionals. It summarizes limitations and constraints of the technology through qualitative research of academic literature, professional documents and tech websites. The study discusses scalability, transaction costs, interoperability and confidentiality issues as most significant constraints for accelerated adoption and deployment of blockchain based accounting information systems. The economic case of blockchain based accounting information system, real cases of practical implementation and appropriate governance structures are suggested as important areas for future research efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American corporate law contains a seemingly innocuous mandate. Corporations must maintain appropriate books and records, including a stock ledger with the corporation's shareholders and stock ownership. The importance of accurate stock ownership records is obvious. Corporations must know who owns each of its outstanding shares at any point in time. Among other things, this allows corporations to determine who receives dividends and who is entitled to vote. In theory, keeping accurate records of stock ownership should be a simple matter. But despite diligent efforts, serious share discrepancies plague corporations, and reconciliation is often functionally impossible. Doing so may require the examination of records from millions of trades, including records from hundreds of participant brokers and custodial banks (not to mention records from their individual clients). So, when disputes arise, there is frequently no easy answer. This Article charts the use of blockchain technology as a potential solution to the systemic issues hindering efforts to maintain accurate records of stock transactions. In doing so, this Article accomplishes three goals. First, it establishes that federal efforts to resolve the "paperwork crisis" of the 1970's created a concomitant problem--the lack of reliable records of stock ownership, which now threatens the exercise of shareholder rights. Second, it demonstrates that practical constraints, not legal barriers, stand as the most significant impediment to the application of blockchain technology to corporate recordkeeping and global capital markets. Third, it argues that despite reasons for skepticism, states should proactively amend corporate codes to authorize the use of blockchain technology because it enables corporate choice and facilitates efforts by private actors to assess the viability of innovative solutions. This Article concludes by drawing transferable lessons to improve law and policy as new applications of blockchain technology continue to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed ledgers are becoming commonly used technologies to trace agrifood supply chains in view of their safety, immutability, transparency, and scalability. In the present review, we discuss the most relevant case studies of agrifood supply chain traceability using blockchain (BC) and other distributed ledgers technologies. Considering that each supply chain actually has specific requests of traceability, we here suggest a logical scheme in order to favor the identification of the BC structure that is more appropriate for each agrifood supply chain, including the identification of supply chains where complex BC technologies are actually not necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-chain transactions between heterogeneous blockchain systems pose various challenges, encompassing atomicity, security, and fairness of the transactions. While Traditional Hash Time Lock Contracts (HTLCs) can achieve atomic cross-chain transactions, they exhibit fairness deficiencies in two aspects: firstly, the transaction initiator benefits from an American Option (AO) advantage, and secondly, the transaction responder may be incentivized to launch a Draining Attack (DA), both of which impact the fairness of cross-chain transactions. Because of significant fluctuations in the exchange rate of tokens held by both parties, cross-chain transactions often face timeout rollbacks, resulting in a diminished probability of successful transactions. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel atomic cross-chain exchange protocol— H T 2 R E P. This protocol integrates Time Released Encryption (TRE), ShangMi 3 Hash function (SM3), and scalable smart contract technologies to enhance fairness within the traditional HTLCs protocol. Additionally, H T 2 R E P ensures atomicity, security, and a heightened probability of success for cross-chain exchanges. Finally, we demonstrate that H T 2 R E P is Universally Composable (UC) secure. [Display omitted] • A novel cross-chain exchange protocol H T 2 R E P is constructed. • A new blockchain hierarchy and a new data structure are proposed. • The security of the H T 2 R E P is formally proved in UC paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevention of food fraud is becoming more difficult in globalized supply chains that are increasing in their complexity. Information asymmetry is the major root cause of food fraud and especially problematic in products with value adding credence attributes, such as organic foods. Therefore, vulnerability mitigation is an important task for participants of the supply chain. As statistics show a rise in food fraud cases, certification schemes such as organic farming, fairtrade, or animal welfare are adapting their standards accordingly and can cause barriers to participation in such schemes. Distributed ledger technologies (DLT), such as Blockchains, hold the potential to supervise and manage supply chains and hold promising potential for reducing risk of food fraud from different angles. However, targeted orchestration of the different functionalities is to date missing in the organic food supply chain. This gap is addressed by this study, focusing on the extent to which DLTs can help prevent food fraud in organic-certified supply chains. The findings show that the technological capacity is further advanced than the readiness of industry stakeholders regarding technology adoption. Yet stakeholders approve of the potential benefits of introducing DLTs in their supply chains, which are scarcely used today. Policy schemes hold the potential to overcome current obstacles such as legal prerequisites and financials by fostering technology dissemination through different measures. • The capacity of DLT for food fraud prevention in organic food was found suitable. • Orchestration and further research are needed to provide solutions to the organic industry. • Policy is best to foster technology advancement due to intrinsic interests for policy implementation and control and the means to support. • Further research in law, business models, finance and transformation, consumer behavior, and digital infrastructure design is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processing of block lifecycles is essential to the efficiency of a blockchain, which consists of four steps: creation, execution, consensus, and validation. The permissionless blockchain systems typically had very limited transaction throughput because of the performance bottleneck of consensus protocols. With recent advances in consensus protocols, the execution and validation of transactions have become the new performance bottleneck. We propose a novel framework, called FastBlock , to speed up the execution and validation steps by introducing fine-grained concurrency. Our early design of FastBlock supported three key modules: (1) a symbolic execution-based analyzer that automatically identifies minimal atomic sections in each transaction; (2) a concurrent execution step that executes possibly conflicting transactions in parallel using hardware transactional memory; (3) a concurrent validation step that introduces a happen-before relation to deterministically re-execute transactions. The improved FastBlock presented in this article supports the nonce mechanism to schedule concurrent transactions from the same account. Moreover, we empirically study the impact of concurrency on Ethereum except for performance and shed light on potential optimizations of FastBlock. Finally, we implemented FastBlock and then evaluated the performance of FastBlock. Our result shows that the FastBlock outperforms state-of-art solutions significantly in performance: the execution step and validation step speed up to 3.0x and 2.3x on average over the original serial model, respectively, with eight concurrent threads. In addition, we evaluated the impact of the nonce mechanism, and the result shows that the performance loss caused by this mechanism is acceptable in practice. • We present FastBlock to speed up the execution and validation steps of blockchains by introducing fine-grained concurrency. • We improve the security and functionality of FastBlock by introducing the nonce mechanism into concurrent transactions. • We empirically study the impact of concurrency on Ethereums. • The FastBlock outperforms state-of-art solutions significantly in performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive manufacturing has brought about an innovative change to the 4th industrial revolution based technology in combination with blockchain distributed ledger, which guarantees reliability, safety, and security, and mining-based intelligence information technology. In addition, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning technologies are combined in processes for logistics, equipment, distribution, manufacturing, and quality management, so that an optimized intelligent manufacturing system is developed. This study proposes a topic mining process in blockchain-network-based cognitive manufacturing. The proposed method exploits the highly universal Fourier transform algorithm in order to analyze the context information of equipment and human body motion based on a variety of sensor input information in the cognitive manufacturing process. An accelerometer is used to analyze the movement of a worker in the manufacturing process and to measure the state energy of work, movement, rest, and others. Time is split in a certain unit and then a frequency domain is analyzed in real time. For the vulnerable security of smart devices, a side-chain-based distributed consensus blockchain network is utilized. If an event occurs, it is processed according to rules and the blocking of a transaction is saved in a distributed database. In the blockchain network, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) based topic encapsulation is used for the mining process. The improved blockchain distributed ledger is applied to the manufacturing process to distribute the ledger of information in a peer-to-peer blockchain network in order to jointly record and manage the information. Further, topic encapsulation, a formatted statistical inference method to analyze a semantic environment, is designed. Through data mining, the time-series-based sequential pattern continuously appearing in the manufacturing process and the correlations between items in the process are found. In the cognitive manufacturing, an equalization-based LDA method is used for associate-clustering the items with high frequency. In the blockchain network, a meaningful item in the manufacturing step is extracted as a representative topic. In a cognitive manufacturing process, through data mining, potential information is extracted and hidden rules are found. Accordingly, in the cognitive manufacturing process, the mining process makes decision-making possible, especially advanced decision-making, such as potential risk, quality prediction, trend prediction, production monitoring, fault diagnosis, and data distortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent wave of appraisal litigation has highlighted costly flaws in Delaware's appraisal law. The genesis of the problems stems from dilapidated assumptions about stock ownership and corporate record keeping baked into the Delaware General Corporation Law. Technological advancements, namely distributed ledgers and blockchain technology, promise to bring Delaware's appraisal law into the twenty-first century while remaining consistent with existing appraisal law. Distributed ledgers and blockchain technology promise lightning fast clearing times, infallible record keeping, and cost-efficient modes of transfer. States, private actors, and laypersons are already recognizing the litany of benefits offered by these technologies. This Note explores the flaws in the current appraisal system, discusses the benefits offered by distributed ledgers and blockchain technology, and demonstrates how blockchain technology can modernize not only corporate record keeping but appraisal litigation as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain is becoming popular as a distributed and reliable ledger which allows distrustful parties to transact safely without trusting third parties. Emerging blockchain systems like Ethereum support smart contracts where miners can run arbitrary user-defined programs. However, one of the biggest concerns about the blockchain and the smart contract is privacy, since all the transactions on the chain are exposed to the public. In this paper, we present ShadowEth, a system that leverages hardware enclave to ensure the confidentiality of smart contracts while keeping the integrity and availability based on existing public blockchains like Ethereum. ShadowEth establishes a confidential and secure platform protected by trusted execution environment (TEE) off the public blockchain for the execution and storage of private contracts. It only puts the process of verification on the blockchain. We provide a design of our system including a protocol of the cryptographic communication and verification and show the applicability and feasibility of ShadowEth by various case studies. We implement a prototype using the Intel SGX on the Ethereum network and analyze the security and availability of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]