ABCDE -- Agile Block Chain Dapp Engineering

Cryptocurrencies and their foundation technology, the Blockchain, are reshaping finance and economics, allowing a decentralized approach enabling trusted applications with no trusted counterpart. More recently, the Blockchain and the programs running on it, called Smart Contracts, are also finding more and more applications in all fields requiring trust and sound certifications. Some people have come to the point of saying that the "Blockchain revolution" can be compared to that of the Internet and the Web in their early days. As a result, all software development revolving around the Blockchain technology is growing at a staggering rate. The feeling of many software engineers about such huge interest in Blockchain technologies is that of unruled and hurried software development, a sort of competition on a first-come-first-served basis which does not assure neither software quality, nor that the basic concepts of software engineering are taken into account. This paper tries to cope with this issue, proposing a software development process to gather the requirement, analyze, design, develop, test and deploy Blockchain applications. The process is based on several Agile practices, such as User Stories and iterative and incremental development based on them. However, it makes also use of more formal notations, such as some UML diagrams describing the design of the system, with additions to represent specific concepts found in Blockchain development. The method is described in good detail, and an example is given to show how it works.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures, 8 table

Decentralizing Science: Towards an Interoperable Open Peer Review Ecosystem using Blockchain

Science publication and its Peer Review system strongly rely on a few major industry players controlling most journals (e.g. Elsevier), databases (e.g. Scopus) and metrics (e.g. JCR Impact Factor), while keeping most articles behind paywalls. Critics to such system include concerns about fairness, quality, performance, cost, unpaid labor, transparency, and accuracy of the evaluation process. The Open Access movement has tried to provide free access to the published research articles, but most of the aforementioned issues remain. In such context, decentralized technologies such as blockchain offer an opportunity to experiment with new models for science production and dissemination relying on a decentralized infrastructure, aiming to tackle multiple of the current system shortcomings. This paper makes a proposal for an interoperable decentralized system for an open peer review ecosystem, relying on emerging distributed technologies such as blockchain and IPFS. Such system, named ``Decentralized Science'' (DecSci), aims to enable a decentralized reviewer reputation system, which relies on an Open Access by-design infrastructure, together with transparent governance processes. Two prototypes have been implemented: a proof-of-concept prototype to validate DecSci's technological feasibility, and a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) prototype co-designed with journal editors. In addition, three evaluations have been carried out: an exploratory survey to assess interest on the issues tackled, a set of interviews to confirm the main problems for editors, and another set of interviews to validate the MVP prototype. Additionally, the paper discusses the multiple interoperability challenges such proposal faces, including an architecture to tackle them. This work finishes with a review of some of the open challenges that this ambitious proposal may face

Blockchain for Business Process Enactment: A Taxonomy and Systematic Literature Review

Blockchain has been proposed to facilitate the enactment of interorganisational business processes. For such processes, blockchain can guarantee the enforcement of rules and the integrity of execution traces - without the need for a centralised trusted party. However, the enactment of interorganisational processes pose manifold challenges. In this work, we ask what answers the research field offers in response to those challenges. To do so, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR). As our guiding question, we investigate the guarantees and capabilities of blockchain-based enactment approaches. Based on resulting empirical evidence, we develop a taxonomy for blockchain-based enactment. We find that a wide range of approaches support traceability and correctness; however, research focusing on flexibility and scalability remains nascent. For all challenges, we point towards future research opportunities.Comment: Preprint, Accepted at BPM 2022, Blockchain Foru

Ethereum Blockchain and HyperLedger Burrow Blockchain Comparative Analysis

Käesolevas bakalaureusetöös tutvustatakse plokiahela tehnoloogiat, võrreldakse kahte erinevat platvormi, Ethereum ja Hyperledger Burrow, luukse kaks detsentraalsed rakendust ning viimasena analüüsitakse, kas on praktiline rakendada Hyperledger Burrow platvormi keerukamatele rakendustele nagu näiteks Caterpillar. Töö raames tutvustatakse plokiahela ja hajusraamatu tehnoloogiaid. Järgnevalt selgitatakse miks ja mis põhjustel antud tehnoloogiad võrdleva analüüsi tegemiseks valiti. Analüüs põhineb kahe näidisrakenduse võrdlemisel, näidates mis on peamised erinevused ja sarnasused Ethereum ja Hyperledger Burrow vahel.This bachelor’s thesis aims is to introduce the blockchain technology, provide a comparative analysis of two different platforms Ethereum and Hyperledger Burrow, by creating two decentralized applications, and finally analyses if it is practical to implement Hyperledger Burrow to more complex applications like Caterpillar. At the beginning a brief explanation of blockchain, distributed ledger technologies is given with other related terminology. Then it is explained why and what was the motivation of selecting these technologies. More is depth comparative analysis in conducted based on example applications, showing what are the main differences and similarities between Ethereum and Hyperledger Burrow

A Distributed-Ledger, Edge-Computing Architecture for Automation and Computer Integration in Semiconductor Manufacturing

Contemporary 300mm semiconductor manufacturing systems have highly automated and digitalized cyber-physical integration. They suffer from the profound problems of integrating large, centralized legacy systems with small islands of automation. With the recent advances in disruptive technologies, semiconductor manufacturing has faced dramatic pressures to reengineer its automation and computer integrated systems. This paper proposes a Distributed- Ledger, Edge-Computing Architecture (DLECA) for automation and computer integration in semiconductor manufacturing. Based on distributed ledger and edge computing technologies, DLECA establishes a decentralized software framework where manufacturing data are stored in distributed ledgers and processed locally by executing smart contracts at the edge nodes. We adopt an important topic of automation and computer integration for semiconductor research & development (R&D) operations as the study vehicle to illustrate the operational structure and functionality, applications, and feasibility of the proposed DLECA software framewor

Overcoming the Data Transparency Trade-Off: Designing a Blockchain-Based Delivery Invoice System for the Construction Industry

Blockchain’s inherent characteristics render it a promising solution in collaborative supply chain networks. However, the technology still faces chal- lenges in coopetition, as sharing business data on blockchains requires balancing the benefits of data transparency for process automation with concerns about exposing business information to competitors. This paper draws on design science research to iteratively design and develop a decentralized infrastructure that can address the coopetition aspects of digital delivery invoices in construction supply chains. As a result, design objectives and design principles are derived while experts thoroughly evaluate the prototype. Practical guidance for implementing digital delivery invoices is provided to enable coopetitive while secure data ex- change. Our findings suggest that if construction companies want to prioritize network effects despite the growing complexity, they should establish channels and private data collections along with additional privacy-enhancing technologies to ensure secure data exchange across the entire supply chain

A Proof-Producing Compiler for Blockchain Applications

Cairo is a programming language for running decentralized applications (dapps) at scale. Programs written in the Cairo language are compiled to machine code for the Cairo CPU architecture, and cryptographic protocols are used to verify the results of the execution traces efficiently on blockchain. We explain how we have extended the Cairo compiler with tooling that enables users to prove, in the Lean 3 proof assistant, that compiled code satisfies high-level functional specifications. We demonstrate the success of our approach by verifying primitives for computations with an elliptic curve over a large finite field, as well as their use in the validation of cryptographic signatures

A Comparative Study on Blockchain-based Electronic Health Record Systems: Performance, Privacy, and Security Between Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum Frameworks

Traditional data collection, storage, and processing of Electronic Health Records (EHR) utilize centralized techniques that pose several risks of single point of failure and lean the systems to a number of internal and external data breaches that compromise their reliability and availability. Addressing the challenges of conventional database techniques and improving the overall aspects of EHR application, blockchain technology is being evaluated to find a possible solution. Blockchain refers to an emerging distributed technology and incorruptible database of records or digital events which execute, validate, and maintain by a ledger technology to provide an immutable architecture and prevent records manipulation or alterations. However, there are multiple frameworks emerged in recent years where identifying the advantages and limitation is crucial. This thesis focuses on (i) introducing electronic health records systems using two widely used blockchain frameworks, Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. (ii)aims to provide a comparative study on both frameworks from the performance, privacy, and security perspectives. Based on two different introduced EHR systems, we identify the strength and weaknesses of both frameworks and present the challenges and limitations of these systems. According to a comparative study, the Hyperledger Fabric framework demonstrates advanced features including private and consortium networks that can facilitate EHR systems from both security and performance perspectives. Taking the experience into consideration, we aim to extend our study in software engineering domain to evaluate the limits to developing blockchain-based software applications and highlight the way to improve current SE practices in future studies