Pub Date : 2019-05-16DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2019.00003
Horst Treiblmaier
About a decade ago the fundamental operating principle of the Blockchain was introduced. It took several years before the technology gained widespread recognition in industry and academic communities outside of the computer science sphere. Since then many academic communities have taken up the topic, but so far no well-defined research agenda has emerged: research topics are scattered and rigorous approaches are scarce. More often than not, use cases implemented by industry apply a trial and error approach and there exists a dearth of theory-based academic papers on the topic following robust methodologies. Being a nascent research topic, case studies on Blockchain applications are a suitable approach to systematically transfer industry experience into research agendas which benefit both theory development and testing as well as design science research. In this paper I offer guidelines and suggestions on how to design and structure Blockchain case studies to create value for academia and the industry. More specifically, I describe Blockchain characteristics and challenges, present existing Blockchain case studies, and discuss various types of case study research and how they can be useful for industry and academic research. I conclude with a framework and a checklist for Blockchain case study research.
{"title":"Toward More Rigorous Blockchain Research: Recommendations for Writing Blockchain Case Studies","authors":"Horst Treiblmaier","doi":"10.3389/fbloc.2019.00003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00003","url":null,"abstract":"About a decade ago the fundamental operating principle of the Blockchain was introduced. It took several years before the technology gained widespread recognition in industry and academic communities outside of the computer science sphere. Since then many academic communities have taken up the topic, but so far no well-defined research agenda has emerged: research topics are scattered and rigorous approaches are scarce. More often than not, use cases implemented by industry apply a trial and error approach and there exists a dearth of theory-based academic papers on the topic following robust methodologies. Being a nascent research topic, case studies on Blockchain applications are a suitable approach to systematically transfer industry experience into research agendas which benefit both theory development and testing as well as design science research. In this paper I offer guidelines and suggestions on how to design and structure Blockchain case studies to create value for academia and the industry. More specifically, I describe Blockchain characteristics and challenges, present existing Blockchain case studies, and discuss various types of case study research and how they can be useful for industry and academic research. I conclude with a framework and a checklist for Blockchain case study research.","PeriodicalId":158641,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers Blockchain","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123351652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-11DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2019.00024
T. Hardjono, Ned M. Smith
There is a growing interest today in blockchain technology as a possible foundation for the future global financial ecosystem. However, in order for this future financial ecosystem to be truly global, with a high degree of interoperability and stability, a number challenges need to be addressed related to infrastructure security. One key aspect concerns the security and robustness of the systems that participate in the blockchain peer-to-peer networks. In this paper we discuss the notion of the decentralized trusted computing base as an extension of the TCB concept in trusted computing. We explore how a decentralized TCB can be useful to (i) harden individual nodes and systems in the blockchain infrastructure, and (ii) be the basis for secure group-oriented computations making within the P2P network of nodes that make-up the blockchain system.
{"title":"Decentralized Trusted Computing Base for Blockchain Infrastructure Security","authors":"T. Hardjono, Ned M. Smith","doi":"10.3389/fbloc.2019.00024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00024","url":null,"abstract":"There is a growing interest today in blockchain technology as a possible foundation for the future global financial ecosystem. However, in order for this future financial ecosystem to be truly global, with a high degree of interoperability and stability, a number challenges need to be addressed related to infrastructure security. One key aspect concerns the security and robustness of the systems that participate in the blockchain peer-to-peer networks. In this paper we discuss the notion of the decentralized trusted computing base as an extension of the TCB concept in trusted computing. We explore how a decentralized TCB can be useful to (i) harden individual nodes and systems in the blockchain infrastructure, and (ii) be the basis for secure group-oriented computations making within the P2P network of nodes that make-up the blockchain system.","PeriodicalId":158641,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers Blockchain","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128028735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-03-15DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2019.00001
Philipp G. Sandner, Philipp M. Schulden
The distributed ledger technology promises to change many long-standing economic and financial concepts through its unique properties of transparency, immutability, and distribution. Not only universities and other research institutions have identified this potential resulting from these characteristics, but also most business sectors are investigating the implications of this new technology (Zhao et al., 2016). Due to the enormous dynamics and the accompanying rapid development of the technology, research and economic interests are closely interdependent. While research institutions depend on the practical implementation of their research results, the business sector relies on the theoretical implications and the development of new fields of application. However, there is still a significant disparity between the academic implications and the actual practical execution. Risius and Spohrer (2017) argue that research predominately focused on technological questions, rather than on application, value creation, and governance. Despite the great interest of the business sector to integrate blockchain technology into business processes, there is still a lack of answers to central questions regarding the meaningful and effective use of blockchain technology in practice. Consequently, the scarcity of adequate solutions concerning scalability, governance, security, and regulation—among other critical attributes—impedes the diffusion and adoption of the blockchain technology in field applications. This circumstance certainly has a significant influence on the reluctance of the German economy to adopt the blockchain technology. While the majority of German companies are aware of the potential benefits of crypto assets, up until now no financial resources have been made available for its implementation (PwC, 2018). Irrespective of the rapid development at the technological level, a major challenge for the research community will be to also examine in more detail the application-related implications such as scalability, governance, integration with IoT, regulation, and security. This requires research institutions and industry to work closely together to address the following challenges collectively.
分布式账本技术通过其独特的透明性、不变性和分布式特性，有望改变许多长期存在的经济和金融概念。不仅大学和其他研究机构已经发现了这些特征带来的这种潜力，而且大多数商业部门也在研究这种新技术的影响(Zhao et al.， 2016)。由于巨大的动态和随之而来的技术的快速发展，研究和经济利益是密切相互依存的。研究机构依赖于其研究成果的实际实施，而商业部门依赖于理论含义和新应用领域的发展。然而，理论意义与实际执行之间仍有很大差距。Risius和Spohrer(2017)认为，研究主要集中在技术问题上，而不是应用、价值创造和治理。尽管商业部门对将区块链技术整合到业务流程中非常感兴趣，但关于区块链技术在实践中有意义和有效使用的核心问题仍然缺乏答案。因此，在可扩展性、治理、安全性和监管等关键属性方面缺乏足够的解决方案，阻碍了区块链技术在现场应用中的传播和采用。这种情况无疑对德国经济不愿采用区块链技术产生了重大影响。虽然大多数德国公司都意识到加密资产的潜在好处，但到目前为止，还没有为其实施提供财政资源(普华永道，2018年)。尽管在技术层面上发展迅速，但研究界面临的一个主要挑战将是更详细地研究与应用相关的影响，如可扩展性、治理、与物联网的集成、监管和安全。这需要研究机构和工业界密切合作，共同应对以下挑战。
{"title":"Speciality Grand Challenges: Blockchain","authors":"Philipp G. Sandner, Philipp M. Schulden","doi":"10.3389/fbloc.2019.00001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00001","url":null,"abstract":"The distributed ledger technology promises to change many long-standing economic and financial concepts through its unique properties of transparency, immutability, and distribution. Not only universities and other research institutions have identified this potential resulting from these characteristics, but also most business sectors are investigating the implications of this new technology (Zhao et al., 2016). Due to the enormous dynamics and the accompanying rapid development of the technology, research and economic interests are closely interdependent. While research institutions depend on the practical implementation of their research results, the business sector relies on the theoretical implications and the development of new fields of application. However, there is still a significant disparity between the academic implications and the actual practical execution. Risius and Spohrer (2017) argue that research predominately focused on technological questions, rather than on application, value creation, and governance. Despite the great interest of the business sector to integrate blockchain technology into business processes, there is still a lack of answers to central questions regarding the meaningful and effective use of blockchain technology in practice. Consequently, the scarcity of adequate solutions concerning scalability, governance, security, and regulation—among other critical attributes—impedes the diffusion and adoption of the blockchain technology in field applications. This circumstance certainly has a significant influence on the reluctance of the German economy to adopt the blockchain technology. While the majority of German companies are aware of the potential benefits of crypto assets, up until now no financial resources have been made available for its implementation (PwC, 2018). Irrespective of the rapid development at the technological level, a major challenge for the research community will be to also examine in more detail the application-related implications such as scalability, governance, integration with IoT, regulation, and security. This requires research institutions and industry to work closely together to address the following challenges collectively.","PeriodicalId":158641,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers Blockchain","volume":"333 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122742998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-23DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2019.00017
Geoffrey Goodell, T. Aste
Current architectures to validate, certify, and manage identity are based on centralised, top-down approaches that rely on trusted authorities and third-party operators. We approach the problem of digital identity starting from a human rights perspective, asserting that individual persons must be allowed to manage their personal information in a multitude of different ways in different contexts and that to do so, each individual must be able to create multiple unrelated identities. Therefore, we first define a set of fundamental constraints that digital identity systems must satisfy to preserve and promote human rights. With these constraints in mind, we then propose a decentralised, standards-based approach, using a combination of distributed ledger technology and thoughtful regulation, to facilitate many-to-many relationships among providers of key services. Our proposal for digital identity differs from others in its approach to trust in that we do not seek to bind credentials to each other or to a mutually trusted authority to achieve strong non-transferability. Because the system does not implicitly encourage its users to maintain a single aggregated identity that can potentially be constrained or reconstructed against their interests, individuals and organisations are free to embrace the system and share in its benefits.
{"title":"A Decentralized Digital Identity Architecture","authors":"Geoffrey Goodell, T. Aste","doi":"10.3389/fbloc.2019.00017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00017","url":null,"abstract":"Current architectures to validate, certify, and manage identity are based on centralised, top-down approaches that rely on trusted authorities and third-party operators. We approach the problem of digital identity starting from a human rights perspective, asserting that individual persons must be allowed to manage their personal information in a multitude of different ways in different contexts and that to do so, each individual must be able to create multiple unrelated identities. Therefore, we first define a set of fundamental constraints that digital identity systems must satisfy to preserve and promote human rights. With these constraints in mind, we then propose a decentralised, standards-based approach, using a combination of distributed ledger technology and thoughtful regulation, to facilitate many-to-many relationships among providers of key services. Our proposal for digital identity differs from others in its approach to trust in that we do not seek to bind credentials to each other or to a mutually trusted authority to achieve strong non-transferability. Because the system does not implicitly encourage its users to maintain a single aggregated identity that can potentially be constrained or reconstructed against their interests, individuals and organisations are free to embrace the system and share in its benefits.","PeriodicalId":158641,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers Blockchain","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132570133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-26DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2018.00001
C. Clack
Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) research encompasses use cases ranging from social innovation to banking, and technical developments ranging from cryptography to semantics of legal text. Research in both academia and industry is highly interdisciplinary across domains such as computer science, linguistics, law, cryptography, banking, economics, and social sciences. The growing complexity of blockchain science and use cases, coupled with the interdisciplinary nature of the research, poses new challenges to our community. Research publication plays a key role in supporting this highly interdisciplinary work: supporting the need for rapid and reliable dissemination of preliminary and final results, and the need for longevity of results beyond the end of financial or management support for a research project. Industry teams rarely have subscriptions to academic journals, and an open access journal adds substantial value in supporting the research community. The field is young, with many research challenges to be addressed. One “grand challenge” for our research community is the implementation of high-value, long-lived, financial derivatives transactions running as smart contracts on DLT (“smart financial derivatives”). This is currently being explored by academia, banking practitioners, trade associations and technology vendors, and is driving research across a wide range of research groups, each focusing on a different aspect. What makes this a “grand” challenge is the need for a large number of diverse research problems to be solved simultaneously. The following outlines a few of the major research questions being investigated: some of these are general research problems that affect blockchain/DLT development broadly, whereas others are very specific to financial derivatives, but all of these aspects must be solved, and their solutions combined effectively, to provide efficient and resilient solutions to the grand challenge.
{"title":"A Blockchain Grand Challenge: Smart Financial Derivatives","authors":"C. Clack","doi":"10.3389/fbloc.2018.00001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2018.00001","url":null,"abstract":"Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) research encompasses use cases ranging from social innovation to banking, and technical developments ranging from cryptography to semantics of legal text. Research in both academia and industry is highly interdisciplinary across domains such as computer science, linguistics, law, cryptography, banking, economics, and social sciences. The growing complexity of blockchain science and use cases, coupled with the interdisciplinary nature of the research, poses new challenges to our community. Research publication plays a key role in supporting this highly interdisciplinary work: supporting the need for rapid and reliable dissemination of preliminary and final results, and the need for longevity of results beyond the end of financial or management support for a research project. Industry teams rarely have subscriptions to academic journals, and an open access journal adds substantial value in supporting the research community. The field is young, with many research challenges to be addressed. One “grand challenge” for our research community is the implementation of high-value, long-lived, financial derivatives transactions running as smart contracts on DLT (“smart financial derivatives”). This is currently being explored by academia, banking practitioners, trade associations and technology vendors, and is driving research across a wide range of research groups, each focusing on a different aspect. What makes this a “grand” challenge is the need for a large number of diverse research problems to be solved simultaneously. The following outlines a few of the major research questions being investigated: some of these are general research problems that affect blockchain/DLT development broadly, whereas others are very specific to financial derivatives, but all of these aspects must be solved, and their solutions combined effectively, to provide efficient and resilient solutions to the grand challenge.","PeriodicalId":158641,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers Blockchain","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130222615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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