Factors driving enterprise adoption of blockchain technology

Amidst the rapidly evolving advancement of blockchain technology (BT), enterprises face notable challenges in leveraging its transformative potential, starting with a need to understand the technology and how it can be used for particular applications. Two challenges are that many BT trials have not been successful and large-scale implementations that have led to continued use are scarce. This research provides a comprehensive examination of factors that drive the successful adoption of BT for enterprise use cases. A dual-phased approach was employed. First, I introduce a taxonomy matrix correlating BT design characteristics with use case characteristics, offering a framework for BT design and benefits across different enterprise contexts. Second, I conducted case studies of five successful BT cases in large enterprises that led to the adoption in terms of continued use and contrasted them with one failure case. The data collection and analysis of the case studies encompassed technological, organizational, environmental, and inter-organizational variables that led to BT\u27s continued use. The cross-case analysis revealed that compatibility, relative advantage, and observability are primary technological factors contributing to continued use. Within the organizational dimension, organizational knowledge and internal characteristics emerged as crucial elements, while regulatory compliance came out to be a significant factor. Based on the cross-case analysis, I develop theoretical propositions about the factors that lead to the continued use of BT, which can be further validated and tested in future research

Smart Contracts Obfuscation from Blockchain-based One-time Program

We propose a cryptographic obfuscation scheme for smart contracts from one-time programs using a blockchain, a garbled circuit, and witness encryption. The proposed scheme protects not only the privacy of its input data and states but also the privacy of its algorithm and hardcoded secrets. Its security depends on existing secure blockchains and does not require the honest majority of secure multiparty computation and trusted hardware. This scheme is more efficient than obfuscating an entire program with indistinguishability obfuscation. In addition, it needs a trusted setup, but its security is protected unless all participants of the setup process are malicious

zkFi: Privacy-Preserving and Regulation Compliant Transactions using Zero Knowledge Proofs

We propose a middleware solution designed to facilitate seamless integration of privacy using zero-knowledge proofs within various multi-chain protocols, encompassing domains such as DeFi, gaming, social networks, DAOs, e-commerce, and the metaverse. Our design achieves two divergent goals. zkFi aims to preserve consumer privacy while achieving regulation compliance through zero-knowledge proofs. These ends are simultaneously achievable. zkFi protocol is designed to function as a plug-and-play solution, offering developers the flexibility to handle transactional assets while abstracting away the complexities associated with zero-knowledge proofs. Notably, specific expertise in zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) is optional, attributed to zkFi's modular approach and software development kit (SDK) availability

Taking Computation to Data: Integrating Privacy-preserving AI techniques and Blockchain Allowing Secure Analysis of Sensitive Data on Premise

PhD thesis in Information technologyWith the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), digital pathology has seen significant progress in recent years. However, the use of medical AI raises concerns about patient data privacy. The CLARIFY project is a research project funded under the European Union’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) program. The primary objective of CLARIFY is to create a reliable, automated digital diagnostic platform that utilizes cloud-based data algorithms and artificial intelligence to enable interpretation and diagnosis of wholeslide-images (WSI) from any location, maximizing the advantages of AI-based digital pathology. My research as an early stage researcher for the CLARIFY project centers on securing information systems using machine learning and access control techniques. To achieve this goal, I extensively researched privacy protection technologies such as federated learning, differential privacy, dataset distillation, and blockchain. These technologies have different priorities in terms of privacy, computational efficiency, and usability. Therefore, we designed a computing system that supports different levels of privacy security, based on the concept: taking computation to data. Our approach is based on two design principles. First, when external users need to access internal data, a robust access control mechanism must be established to limit unauthorized access. Second, it implies that raw data should be processed to ensure privacy and security. Specifically, we use smart contractbased access control and decentralized identity technology at the system security boundary to ensure the flexibility and immutability of verification. If the user’s raw data still cannot be directly accessed, we propose to use dataset distillation technology to filter out privacy, or use locally trained model as data agent. Our research focuses on improving the usability of these methods, and this thesis serves as a demonstration of current privacy-preserving and secure computing technologies

Web3: The Next Internet Revolution

Since the first appearance of the World Wide Web, people more rely on the Web for their cyber social activities. The second phase of World Wide Web, named Web 2.0, has been extensively attracting worldwide people that participate in building and enjoying the virtual world. Nowadays, the next internet revolution: Web3 is going to open new opportunities for traditional social models. The decentralization property of Web3 is capable of breaking the monopoly of the internet companies. Moreover, Web3 will lead a paradigm shift from the Web as a publishing medium to a medium of interaction and participation. This change will deeply transform the relations among users and platforms, forces and relations of production, and the global economy. Therefore, it is necessary that we technically, practically, and more broadly take an overview of Web3. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of Web3, with a focus on current technologies, challenges, opportunities, and outlook. This article first introduces several major technologies of Web3. Then, we illustrate the type of Web3 applications in detail. Blockchain and smart contracts ensure that decentralized organizations will be less trusted and more truthful than that centralized organizations. Decentralized finance will be global, and open with financial inclusiveness for unbanked people. This paper also discusses the relationship between the Metaverse and Web3, as well as the differences and similarities between Web 3.0 and Web3. Inspired by the Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, we further conduct a novel hierarchy of needs theory within Web3. Finally, several worthwhile future research directions of Web3 are discussed.Comment: Preprint. 5 figures, 2 table

Algorithmic Regulation using AI and Blockchain Technology

This thesis investigates the application of AI and blockchain technology to the domain of Algorithmic Regulation. Algorithmic Regulation refers to the use of intelligent systems for the enabling and enforcement of regulation (often referred to as RegTech in financial services). The research work focuses on three problems: a) Machine interpretability of regulation; b) Regulatory reporting of data; and c) Federated analytics with data compliance. Uniquely, this research was designed, implemented, tested and deployed in collaboration with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Santander, RegulAItion and part funded by the InnovateUK RegNet project. I am a co-founder of RegulAItion. / Using AI to Automate the Regulatory Handbook: In this investigation we propose the use of reasoning systems for encoding financial regulation as machine readable and executable rules. We argue that our rules-based “white-box” approach is needed, as opposed to a “black-box” machine learning approach, as regulators need explainability and outline the theoretical foundation needed to encode regulation from the FCA Handbook into machine readable semantics. We then present the design and implementation of a production-grade regulatory reasoning system built on top of the Java Expert System Shell (JESS) and use it to encode a subset of regulation (consumer credit regulation) from the FCA Handbook. We then perform an empirical evaluation, with the regulator, of the system based on its performance and accuracy in handling 600 “real- world” queries and compare it with its human equivalent. The findings suggest that the proposed approach of using reasoning systems not only provides quicker responses, but also more accurate results to answers from queries that are explainable. / SmartReg: Using Blockchain for Regulatory Reporting: In this investigation we explore the use of distributed ledgers for real-time reporting of data for compliance between firms and regulators. Regulators and firms recognise the growing burden and complexity of regulatory reporting resulting from the lack of data standardisation, increasing complexity of regulation and the lack of machine executable rules. The investigation presents a) the design and implementation of a permissioned Quorum-Ethereum based regulatory reporting network that makes use of an off-chain reporting service to execute machine readable rules on banks’ data through smart contracts b) a means for cross border regulators to share reporting data with each other that can be used to given them a true global view of systemic risk c) a means to carry out regulatory reporting using a novel pull-based approach where the regulator is able to directly “pull” relevant data out of the banks’ environments in an ad-hoc basis- enabling regulators to become more active when addressing risk. We validate the approach and implementation of our system through a pilot use case with a bank and regulator. The outputs of this investigation have informed the Digital Regulatory Reporting initiative- an FCA and UK Government led project to improve regulatory reporting in the financial services. / RegNet: Using Federated Learning and Blockchain for Privacy Preserving Data Access In this investigation we explore the use of Federated Machine Learning and Trusted data access for analytics. With the development of stricter Data Regulation (e.g. GDPR) it is increasingly difficult to share data for collective analytics in a compliant manner. We argue that for data compliance, data does not need to be shared but rather, trusted data access is needed. The investigation presents a) the design and implementation of RegNet- an infrastructure for trusted data access in a secure and privacy preserving manner for a singular algorithmic purpose, where the algorithms (such as Federated Learning) are orchestrated to run within the infrastructure of data owners b) A taxonomy for Federated Learning c) The tokenization and orchestration of Federated Learning through smart contracts for auditable governance. We validate our approach and the infrastructure (RegNet) through a real world use case, involving a number of banks, that makes use of Federated Learning with Epsilon-Differential Privacy for improving the performance of an Anti-Money-Laundering classification model