A Systematic Review of Blockchain-based Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs, the incentive structures designed to reward and retain customers for purchases and other activities, have struggled to maximize their intended goals. Academics and industry practitioners have advocated for the use of blockchain technology as a vehicle to revolutionize loyalty programs. Despite this hype, we have yet to see an examination of existing blockchain-based loyalty solutions. This paper identifies, reviews, and classifies tokenized loyalty solutions. Using a web-scraping method, we systematically retrieved 9,642 tokens listed on the coinmarketcap.com website. Multiple applications of inclusion/exclusion criteria resulted in 21 active loyalty programs based on blockchain, which we evaluated in depth. Our findings confirm that the domain is nascent yet more actualized than previous research has suggested. This analysis fills a much-needed role in the blockchain-loyalty literature by providing an industry lens into the realities of blockchain as a loyalty solution

FinBook: literary content as digital commodity

This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be

Towards an Implementation of Blockchain-based Collaboration Platforms in Supply Chain Networks: A Requirements Analysis

The competitiveness and speed of international markets have created significant pressure from competitors, forcing companies to collaborate with foreign companies. To address this situation, companies use supply chain networks (SCN) to concentrate on their core competencies while sourcing the remainder of (pre-)products or services. This situation often causes a lack of trust as the application of hard-to-trace illegal practices through complex SCN is a threat. The blockchain provides a solution for chaining data, enabling trust in its tamper-proof storage, even if there is no trust between business parties. Using blockchain also provides the opportunity to automate and monitor processes within digital SCNs in real-time. This paper aims to identify requirements for a blockchain-based collaboration platform in SCNs. We define the requirements based on a literature review and expert interviews. We use an additional survey to validate and prioritizes these 45 requirements

Design Printed Signature Protocol based on a Blockchain Concept

For a certain reason, usually an agency validates certain document sheets using a printed signature, for example the Dukcapil Office in signing a family card. The printed signature here uses a Qr-Code or barcode instead of a wet signature. Verification of the printed signature is done by scanning a Qr-Code or barcode which triggers the appearance of a website page stating the validity of the printed signature. One of the disadvantages of printed signatures is that they are vulnerable to tampering, such as transferring signatures for unauthorized documents. This is because the signature authenticity validation authority is single. This article introduces a blockchain-based signature protocol that is believed to be able to guarantee the security of printed signatures and the document itself. The security guarantee here is because the validation authority holder is not single but is distributed among the various parties involved

BLOCKCHAIN AS A TECHNOLOGY ADMINISTRATION OF FAMILY HOMESTEAD SETTLEMENTS

Human community, whose behavior is determined by the influence of biological and social systems, the ability to realize and evaluate the results of its activities, orientation, strategic decisions, to ensure the sustainable development of the ecosystem, in a context of increasing the factor of limited resources (energy, materials, information) is transformed into intellectualization public relations and institutions. Rural development in the context of decentralization has led to the search for effective public administration mechanisms. The purpose of the study is to establish a mechanism for improving the territorial communities management technology on the example of Family Homesteads. The research methodology is based on structured interviews and unstructured conversations with the inhabitants of family homesteads, leadership of local self-government and experts in the field of rural development. Activation of the processes of rural development through the implementation of the idea of "Family Homestate" involves the participation of the population in the normative regulation (the adoption of the relevant law); assistance in the development of new settlements in rural areas by changing the status of the land, creating a land bank; activation of activity of public organizations registered in territorial communities, organization of settlements at the level of territorial communities, including the exchange of experience, coordination of activities in the middle of the movement, establishment of positive relations between the local population and immigrants and others like that. The advantages of the practice of public administration of the territory are established with the help of blockchain technology, which allows to reduce administration costs and promote resource participation

Non-State Community Virtual Currencies

Community currencies are means of payment issued other than by the State, for voluntary use side by side with State-issued (that is, national) currency, either in a particular geographical area or by a group of users. This chapter deals with them as their media have been transforming from paper to digital. Discussing legal aspects of digital community currencies as monetary objects, this chapter combines an analysis general to the law of community currencies, as applied to community currencies regardless of the media in which they are embodied, with an analysis of the general law governing digital currencies as applied to community currencies. Questions relating to the meaning of \u27money\u27 and \u27community\u27 are at the crossroad of law, economics, and sociology: hence the collaboration between a lawyer and a sociologist

Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain

This book is the result a 12 month research process, in which editors commissioned new works and sought out a range of active international practitioners addressing the question: what does the blockchain mean to art? and how can artists shape and intervene in this emerging technology? Contributions from a range of world-leading and emerging voices in the fields of blockchain theory and art practice were newly commissioned by editors and developed in conversations held at Furtherfield gallery in London during 2016 and 2017. It is the first book of its kind, addressing the meaning of nascent blockchain technologies to art production and dissemination. Continuing Torque Edition's commitment to hybridity in their published editions, the book's thirty chapters are split into three sections: "Documents" presents a range of extant landmark artworks and events; "Fictions" presents newly commissioned creative text and image works; and "Theories" which opens with a essay by Hito Steyerl, includes a number of original essays addressing how blockchain is, and can be, used and thought. The book's release was accompanied by a newly commissioned digital portal developed by Design Informatics at Edinburgh University: using the unique "Finbook" portal, readers can interact with Financial bots based on chapters within the book as they "trade themselves". In their introduction to the book (c. 5000 words) Jones and Skinner place a focus on the "janus faced" quality of the blockchain, as a speculative tool with liberating potential, and an already hyper-financialised entity. They frame the book's unique importance as presenting an alternative range of discourse around the blockchain -- outside of from Fin-tech disciplines -- and express an intention that the contents of the book will open the way for newer and more progressive uses of this technology. This purpose has been widely referenced and acknowledged in reviews and profiles of the book. The book is on its third printed edition, and has been released as a free PDF available on the Torque Editions website. It has been reviewed and profiled in a number of specialist industry and public journals and magazines, including Art Review, Art Monthly, Hyperallergic, We Make Money Not Art, Rhizome and the 2P2Foundation. Further impact for the project includes launch events and invited talks at ArtReview in London, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool, Transmediale in Berlin and Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, each of which Jones has prepared new material for. It was funded by the European Union via the State Machines project, The Culture Capital Exchange, and Arts Council England

The Rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Coordination and Growth within Cryptocurrencies

The rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is driving a paradigm shift in organization design. Their underlying blockchain technology enables a novel form of organizing, which I call the “decentralized autonomous organization” (DAO). This study explores how tasks are coordinated within DAOs that provide decentralized and open payment systems that do not rely on centralized intermediaries (e.g., banks). Guided by a Bitcoin pilot case study followed by a three-stage research design that uses both qualitative and quantitative data, this inductive study examines twenty DAOs in the cryptocurrency industry to address the following question: How are DAOs coordinated to enable growth? Results from the pilot study suggest that task coordination within DAOs is enabled by distributed consensus mechanisms at various levels. Further, findings from interview data reveal that DAOs coordinate tasks through “machine consensus” and “social consensus” mechanisms that operate at varying degrees of decentralization. Subsequent fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses (fsQCA), explaining when DAOs grow or decline, show that social consensus mechanisms can partially substitute machine consensus mechanisms in less decentralized DAOs. Taken together, the results unpack how DAO growth relies on the interplay between machine consensus, social consensus, and decentralization mechanisms. To conclude, I formulate three propositions to outline a theory of DAO coordination and discuss how this novel form of organizing calls for a revision of our conventional understanding of task coordination and organizational growth

Digital transformation, business models and the postal industry

For many decades, the postal industry offered postal services and in parallel, had a monopoly over the national postal markets. Recently, the postal industry endured a phase where their national postal markets were subjected to liberalisation by the respective nations. This was due to various reasons such as inefficiencies of the postal services, ambiguous monopoly legislations, mounting pressure from competitors, and changing nature of customer demands. The liberalisation of the European Union postal markets is an example of a liberalisation that was based on the unique requirement of harmonising the postal services across the whole European Union. Other nations outside the European Union liberalised their postal markets either completely or partially based on their own unique requirements. After the liberalisation phase, the postal industry faced a significant challenge from digital services. Digital services were responsible for the constant declines in profitable letter service volumes. In response, the postal industry started developing digital postal services. However, therein lies the problem. The postal industry is unaware of the steps needed to develop digital postal services and has not had a great deal of financial success in this area. I address this problem by referring to âbusiness models. Business models have been a recent area of interest in management literature and, as such, offer an innovative perspective on the postal industry development activities in digital postal services. The main goal of my dissertation is to provide recommendations for the postal industrys development of digital postal services via business models. The four sub-goals of the dissertation are as follows: determine the business model framework, determine the different types of business models for digital postal services using the business model framework, determine the antecedents to these business models, and determine the performance effects of these business models on the postal industry. The targeted research methodology involves multiple exploratory case studies and explanatory survey studies on the digital service activities of the postal operators. I initially developed a business model framework from the literature review. The business model framework has four components that help identify business models within firms: value proposition, resources, network and finance. Subsequently, I conducted case studies on the digital postal services activities of six postal operators, in order to investigate the different types of business models for digital postal services. I identified four types of business models for digital postal services based on my developed business model framework: traditional add-ons, digital add-ons, hybrid ecosystem and digital ecosystem. I then conducted survey studies with postal operators in a number of countries, in order to investigate the antecedents of the business models described above, as well as the performance effects of these business models on the postal industry. The findings suggest that dynamic capabilities have a statistically significant impact on the business models that are in synergy with the postal operators physical postal services. In addition, the business models that are in synergy with the postal operators physical postal services have a statistically significant impact on firm performance