Token Economy – Towards Building a Sustainable Blockchain Token Ecosystem Framework

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementIn the context of the internet’s historical trajectory, blockchain technology represents a significant paradigm shift from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. Web 2.0, the current world of the interactive and social web, is an internet siloed by centralized organizations that provide services in exchange for personal data. Web 3.0, on the other hand, is based on cryptographic blockchain technology and enables an economic institutional infrastructure that is natively available on the web, hands ownership back to the creators and users and operates without an intermediary. Blockchain tokens enable digital scarcity and a novel internet-native value transfer mechanism. Tokens can have a magnitude of different use cases ranging from serving as unit of account (currency), promoting usage incentive, as tool for governance, representation of ownership or as a funding instrument. The research field of token creation is still in its very infant stage and a lot of blockchain project launches still happen without proper structure and long term strategy – leading to suboptimal and short lasting results. Based on the Design Science Research methodology, this dissertation attempts to design a holistic conceptual framework that can serve as a base for a decision aid for organizations when creating a blockchain token ecosystem. This artifact will finally be evaluated by domain experts to ensure proper correctness

Security, privacy and trust in wireless mesh networks

With the advent of public key cryptography, digital signature schemes have been extensively studied in order to minimize the signature sizes and to accelerate their execution while providing necessary security properties. Due to the privacy concerns pertaining to the usage of digital signatures in authentication schemes, privacy-preserving signature schemes, which provide anonymity of the signer, have attracted substantial interest in research community. Group signature algorithms, where a group member is able to sign on behalf of the group anonymously, play an important role in many privacy-preserving authentication/ identification schemes. On the other hand, a safeguard is needed to hold users accountable for malicious behavior. To this end, a designated opening/revocation manager is introduced to open a given anonymous signature to reveal the identity of the user. If the identified user is indeed responsible for malicious activities, then s/he can also be revoked by the same entity. A related scheme named direct anonymous attestation is proposed for attesting the legitimacy of a trusted computing platform while maintaining its privacy. This dissertation studies the group signature and direct anonymous attestation schemes and their application to wireless mesh networks comprising resource-constrained embedded devices that are required to communicate securely and be authenticated anonymously, while malicious behavior needs to be traced to its origin. Privacy-aware devices that anonymously connect to wireless mesh networks also need to secure their communication via efficient symmetric key cryptography, as well. In this dissertation, we propose an efficient, anonymous and accountable mutual authentication and key agreement protocol applicable to wireless mesh networks. The proposed scheme can easily be adapted to other wireless networks. The proposed scheme is implemented and simulated using cryptographic libraries and simulators that are widely deployed in academic circles. The implementation and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is effective, efficient and feasible in the context of hybrid wireless mesh networks, where users can also act as relaying agents. The primary contribution of this thesis is a novel privacy-preserving anonymous authentication scheme consisting of a set of protocols designed to reconcile user privacy and accountability in an efficient and scalable manner in the same framework. The three-party join protocol, where a user can connect anonymously to the wireless mesh network with the help of two semi-trusted parties (comprising the network operator and a third party), is efficient and easily applicable in wireless networks settings. Furthermore, two other protocols, namely two-party identification and revocation protocols enable the network operator, with the help of the semi-trusted third party, to trace suspected malicious behavior back to its origins and revoke users when necessary. The last two protocols can only be executed when the two semi-trusted parties cooperate to provide accountability. Therefore, the scheme is protected against an omni-present authority (e.g. network operator) violating the privacy of network users at will. We also provide arguments and discussions for security and privacy of the proposed scheme

Proclus and his Legacy

Proclus and his Legacy bridges a gap in scholarship, specifically the last great head of the Platonic Academy, Proclus, and his influence in the history of philosophy and theology. These essays offer not only a companion to Late Antique metaphysics, epistemology, theology and ethics it also explores his reception in the immediate Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions within the mediaeval, renaissance and modern eras

Proclus and his Legacy

Proclus and his Legacy bridges a gap in scholarship, specifically the last great head of the Platonic Academy, Proclus, and his influence in the history of philosophy and theology. These essays offer not only a companion to Late Antique metaphysics, epistemology, theology and ethics it also explores his reception in the immediate Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions within the mediaeval, renaissance and modern eras

Teaching Not To F(in)ish !?: A constructivist perspective on reinventing a responsible marine fisheries extension system

It is true that our marine fishing sector has achieved tremendous growth during the last five decades. Apart from providing nutritional security to the fish eating population it plays a very significant role in the economy of our country. The foreign exchange contribution of the sector by way of seafood exports is to the tune of Rs 6300 crores now (compared to Rs45 crores realized in 1960-61

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

Classic Concepts in Anthropology

The late anthropologist Valerio Valeri (1944–98) was best known for his substantial writings on societies of Polynesia and eastern Indonesia. This volume, however, presents a lesser-known side of Valeri’s genius through a dazzlingly erudite set of comparative essays on core topics in the history of anthropological theory. Offering masterly discussions of anthropological thought about ritual, fetishism, cosmogonic myth, belief, caste, kingship, mourning, play, feasting, ceremony, and cultural relativism, Classic Concepts in Anthropology, presented here with a critical foreword by Rupert Stasch and Giovanni da Col, will be an eye-opening, essential resource for students and researchers not only in anthropology but throughout the humanities

Technical Epistemologies: On the medical reception of Hellenistic philosophy

This thesis examines the transposition of Hellenistic philosophy into the medical sphere, with a focus on the Stoic, Epicurean and Pyrrhonian traditions. The intersection of Hellenistic philosophy and medicine is especially abundant; the Hellenistic philosopher, with his eudaimonic orientation, presents himself as a physician of the soul. The τέλος of the medical art – the production and maintenance of health – served as a practical template for the philosopher’s administrations. As the Hellenistic period fades into the centuries of Roman hegemony, Stoic and Epicurean doctrines find their way into the medical tradition per se via the theories of Athenaeus of Attalia and Asclepiades of Bithynia respectively. However, despite the oft-stated affinity of philosophical and medical objectives, Stoicism and Epicureanism are refashioned as they cross disciplinary boundaries – in the case of Epicureanism, radically so. My thesis is that these adjustments are most intelligibly read as attempts by doctors to signify the capacity of their τέχνη to generate new ideas by disentangling their theories from the philosophies to which they were intellectually indebted. The method by which this is achieved, I will argue, is in large part dependent on the nature of the philosophy at root, the ‘mother-doctrine’. Athenaeus was able, through selective adoption, to delineate a technical epistemology within the greater architecture of Stoic theory; Asclepiades, by contrast, was motivated to adapt the physical system he sought to appropriate. The Pyrrhonists, who interface with the medical sphere via their affiliation with the Empiricist sect in the second century AD, represent an alternative mode of interaction between the philosophical and medical traditions – the alliance of independent, differently oriented sects, the integrity of which, I will propose, depends upon the preservation of that independence. The Pyrrhonian Empiricists grant us further insight into the boundary between philosophy and τέχνη as disciplines in antiquity, a boundary which is also central to understanding the medical adoption/adaptation of Stoicism and Epicureanism

H. P. Blavatsky's Theosophy in Context: The Construction of Meaning in Modern Western Esotericism

To contact the author for further details go to www.h-e-r-m-e-s.orgAbstract of PhD Thesis by Tim Rudbøg, 15 December 2012 H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy in Context: The Construction of Meaning in Modern Western Esotericism H. P. Blavatsky’s (1831-1891) Theosophy has been defined as central to the history of modern Western spirituality and esotericism, yet to this date no major study has mapped and analysed the major themes of Blavatsky’s writings, how Blavatsky used the concept ‘Theosophy’ or to what extent she was engaged with the intellectual contexts of her time. Thus the purpose of this thesis is to fill this gap. The proposed theoretical framework is based on the centrality of language in the production of intellectual products, such as texts—but contrary to the dominant focus on strategies, rhetoric and power this thesis will focus on the construction of meaning coupled with a set of methodological tools based on contextual analysis, intellectual history and intertextuality. In addition to an overview of Blavatsky research this thesis will map and analyse Blavatsky’s use of the concept ‘Theosophy’ as well as Blavatsky’s primary discourses, identified as: (1) discourse for ancient knowledge, (2) discourse against Christian dogmatism, (3) discourse against the modern natural sciences and materialism, (4) discourse against modern spiritualism, (5) discourse for system and (7) discourse for universal brotherhood. In mapping and analysing Blavatsky’s discourses, it was found that her construction of meaning was significantly interconnected with broader intellectual contexts, such as ‘modern historical consciousness’, ‘critical enlightenment ideas’, studies in religion, studies in mythology, the modern sciences, spiritualism, systemic philosophy, reform movements and practical ethics. It, for example, becomes clear that Blavatsky’s search for an ancient ‘Wisdom Religion’ was actually a part of a common intellectual occupation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that her critique of the Christian dogmas was equally a common intellectual trend. To read Blavatsky’s discourses as the idiosyncratic strategies of an esotericist, isolated from their larger contexts or only engaged with them in order to legitimise minority views would therefore largely fail to account for the result of this thesis: that in historical actuality, they were a part of the larger cultural web of meaning