Real-world Deployability and Usability of Bitcoin

We live in an era where Internet is one of the daily needs of human life. People use Internet banking instead of going to banks, they use email rather than postal mail.This leads to a robust digital way of living, but this also means people are trusting middle companies and third parties for their online services. The need of having a digital form of money that is not being controlled by one entity is plain to see. Bitcoin is the first and the most popular decentralized virtual currency. It is based on cryptographic functions to remove the need of a central bank and regulates the generation of new units. In this thesis, we would like to look at available tools to facilitate users in holding and using Bitcoin by a perspective on usability and security, and then evaluate the possibilities for a small business to accept Bitcoin payments. Our focus is on the usability of these tools and developing a useful framework for comparing and eval- uating future tools. While many security tools have been studied from a usability perspective, our work is the first to look at Bitcoin

DIGITAL ASSETS TRANSMISSION BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONS: MUSIC INDUSTRY CASE

This research addresses the following experiences as a contribution to the topic of Blockchain applications. First, the modeling of a Music Industry revenue distribution problem. Second, the Integration of Blockchain platforms and Legacy software. Third, the design of an algorithm that solves the distribution of Digital Assets across organizations within the Music Industry. Ultimately, the analysis of the Performance of Blockchain platforms (Ethereum and Hyperledger) in terms of Latency and Throughput. Additionally, the purpose of the research is to show that the modeling of a Music Industry payment system is possible using Blockchain Technology. Therefore, the old business model of the Music Industry, which possessed flaws and inefficiencies, could potentially change into a trustless environment benefiting all the participants y paying their contributions instantaneously. Moreover, the necessity of a solution is reinforced by an internship experienced in a MITACS project in conjunction with a company called Membran to design and implement a Blockchain solution that shortens the gap between Spotify and the payment to the Labels and Artists. The system distributes value by automatically calculating payments whenever the Digital Assets (Music Tracks revenue) are imported. The application defines specific roles and variables to simulate the Music Industry. For example, Distributors as an entry point and Artists at the end of the chain. Although, any participant within the network can create agreements and benefit from the distribution. The implementation of this research took the Hyperledger Composer framework to use the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain as the Private Distributed Ledger, and the public Blockchain Ethereum with the Ganache Client for development purposes. Extensive research of the strengths and weaknesses of these technologies included the descriptions of features like the consensus algorithms, modular architectures, and smart contracts. Ultimately, the performance of these technologies compared Hyperledger Composer and Ethereum in terms of Latency and Throughput. The conclusion of this research pointed that Hyperledger Composer with features like the role-based architecture for applications, Programmable ChainCode (Smart Contracts), and Business Network Definitions, is better suitable for modeling customized solutions and outperforms Ethereum in terms of performance when testing the same number of transactions, the same logic of the chain code and the same machine environment

Trusted systems of records based on Blockchain technology ‐ a prototype for mileage storing in the automotive industry

Blockchain technology has the potential to bring transparency and trust to a multitude of use cases. Our research demonstrates that the technology can reduce asymmetric information in markets by bridging trust gaps. The combination of blockchain and Internet of Things technology that automatically collects sensor data, provides a feasible, decentralized technological solution for such an inefficient “Market of Lemons” coined by nobel laureate Georg Akerlof. In this paper, we develop a system prototype to reduce mileage fraud on the used car markets. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of a trusted system of records for (vehicle) data such as mileage data using a distributed database based on the public Ethereum network and smart contracts. We have identified eight requirements that are fulfilled by the prototype and the functional logic and design of thesolution can be reproduced to any other application area characterized by a lack of trust between actors or by the absence of a trusted central authority. However, the developed prototype suffers from similar limitations and challenges as the technology itself. Low throughput causes limitations in scalability and transaction costs are unpredictable. Further development of the blockchain technology and considering more cost‐efficient consensus mechanisms will address these issues.TU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel – 202

Analysis of web3 solution development principles

In the master's thesis, we researched the principles of Web3 solution development. We studied the blockchain and blockchain-related technology, development of the Web including all versions of the Web and the differences between them. We presented the popular technologies for Web3 development and the most common Web3 solutions with examples. With help of systematic literature review we explored the state-of-art technologies for Web3 solution development and proposed a full-stack for Web3. In the final part we implemented a proof-of-concept Ethereum decentralized application and compared it with equivalent concept of Web2 application. We proposed future work of researching other popular blockchain protocols like Solana or Polygon

Leveraging Twitter data to understand the dynamics of social media interactions on cryptocurrencies

Rapid technological change in the last decades has led to the emergence of new platforms and fields such as cryptocurrencies and social media data. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized digital currencies that use blockchain technology to create a secure and decentralized environment. In the decade since the inception of social media, it has created revolutions and connected people with interests. Social media platforms such as Twitter allow users worldwide to share opinions, emotions, and news. Twitter is one of the most used social media platforms worldwide. The social media platform has millions of users where tweets are continuously shared every second. Therefore, tweets are useful when a large amount of data is generated to conduct a social media analysis. In addition, Twitter is broadly utilized by investors and financial analysts to gather valuable information. Several studies have shown that the content posted on Twitter can predict the movement of cryptocurrency prices. However, limited research has been conducted on the dynamics of Twitter interactions on cryptocurrencies among users. By leveraging 1724328 tweets, this research aims to understand the dynamics of social media users’ interactions on cryptocurrencies. Essentially by shedding light on larger cryptocurrencies contrary to smaller. The findings reveal that Twitter users are more positive than negative about cryptocurrencies. The analysis also shows an existing relationship between events and the interaction of users, where cryptocurrency-related events shift the emotion, sentiment, and discussion topics of the users. The thesis contributes to demonstrating the effectiveness of the Social set analysis framework to analyze and visualize a massive amount of social media data and user-generated data created on social media platforms such as Twitter

Towards Sustainable Blockchains:Cryptocurrency Treasury and General Decision-making Systems with Provably Secure Delegable Blockchain-based Voting

The blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, its most prevalent application, continue to gain acceptance and wide traction in research and practice within academia and the industry because of its promise in decentralised and distributed computing. Notably, the meteoric rise in the value and number of cryptocurrencies since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009 have ushered in newer innovations and interventions that addressed some of the prominent issues that affect these platforms. Despite the increased privacy, security, scalability, and energy-saving capabilities of new consensus protocols in newer systems, the development and management of blockchains, mostly, do not reflect the decentralisation principle despite blockchains being decentralised and distributed in their architecture. The concept of treasury has been identified as a tool to address this problem. We explore the idea of blockchain treasury systems within literature and practice, especially with relation to funding and decision-making power towards blockchain development and maintenance. Consequently, we propose a taxonomy for treasury models within cryptocurrencies. Thereafter, we propose an efficient community-controlled and decentralised collaborative decision-making mechanism to support the development and management of blockchains. Our proposed system incentivises participants and is proven secure under the universally composable (UC) framework while also addressing gaps identified from our investigation of prior systems e.g. non-private ballots and insecure voting. Furthermore, we adapt our system and propose a privacy-preserving general decision making system for blockchain governance that supports privacy-centric cryptocurrencies. Besides, using a set of metrics, we introduce a consensus analysis mechanism to enhance the utility of decision-making of the systems by evaluating individual choices against collective (system-wide) decisions. Finally, we provide pilot system implementations with benchmark results confirming the efficiency and practicality of our constructions