Identity Chains

In this short technical summary, the authors describe how the mathematical primitives of Ring Confidential Transactions may be used to provide anonymous identity authentication services in a similar manner to Anonrep but in a trustless (or permissioned), distributed manner, and with the additional security and resilience provided by a blockchain. The use of the mathematics in the RingCT paper additionally, and importantly, allows for combining different types of authentication in a seamless manner, in essence if the Bitcoin or Monero blockchain is a single thread, then the protocol here allows one to weave such threads together. The resulting protocol is dubbed an Identity Chain and provides anonymous authentication working in a lightweight and interoperable manner between any number of different service providers running different identity chains

Edge Computing and Blockchain in Smart Agriculture Systems

The advancement of Internet-based technologies has made huge progress toward improving the accessibility of "smart agriculture." With the advent of unmanned and automatic management, smart agriculture is now able to accomplish monitoring, supervision, and real-time picture monitoring. It is not possible to know for sure that the data in a smart agriculture system is complete and secure from intrusion. This article investigates and assesses the potential of edge computing and blockchain for use in smart agriculture. We combine the advantages of blockchain technology and the edge computing framework to create a smart agriculture framework system that is based on a very straightforward analysis of the evolution of smart agriculture. The study proposes a thorough method for emphasizing the significance of agriculture and edge computing, as well as the advantages of incorporating blockchain technology in this context. This paper also proposes an intelligent agricultural product traceability system design: edge computing with blockchain for smart agriculture. The study concludes with a discussion of outstanding problems and difficulties that can arise during the creation of a blockchain-based edge computing system for smart agriculture systems

Forwarding Web Service Requests To A Single Service Instance in Service Oriented Networking

Abstract: Service providers within an enterprise network are often governed by client service contracts (CSC) that specify, among other constraints, the rate at which a particular service instance may be accessed. The service can be accessed via multiple points in a proxy tier configuration. The CSC and thus the rate specified have to be collectively respected by all the middleware appliances. The appliances locally shape the service requests to respect the global contract. Investigation is done in the case where the CSC limits the rate to a service to X requests with an enforcement/observation interval of T seconds. This paper extends, and investigates the Credit-based Algorithm in a production level enterprise network setting. CBA is a decentralized algorithm for service traffic shaping in middleware appliances

Exploratory literature review of blockchain in the construction industry

First academic publications on blockchain in construction instantiated in 2017, with three documents. Over the course of several years, new literature emerged at an average annual growth rate of 184%, surmounting to 121 documents at time of writing this article in early 2021. All 121 publications were reviewed to investigate the expansion and progression of the topic. A mixed methods approach was implemented to assess the existing environment through a literature review and scientometric analysis. Altogether, 33 application categories of blockchain in construction were identified and organised into seven subject areas, these include (1) procurement and supply chain, (2) design and construction, (3) operations and life cycle, (4) smart cities, (5) intelligent systems, (6) energy and carbon footprint, and (7) decentralised organisations. Limitations included using only one scientific database (Scopus), this was due to format inconsistencies when downloading and merging various bibliographic data sets for use in visual mapping software