Preparing construction supply chains for blockchain technology:An investigation of its potential and future directions

Blockchain, a peer-to-peer, controlled, distributed database structure, has the potential to profoundly affect current business transactions in the construction industry through smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, and reliable asset tracking. The construction industry is often criticized for being slow in embracing emerging technologies and not effectively diffusing them through its supply chains. Often, the extensive fragmentation, traditional procurement structures, destructive competition, lack of collaboration and transparency, low-profit margins, and human resources are shown as the main culprits for this. As blockchain technology makes its presence felt strongly in many other industries like finance and banking, this study investigates the preparation of construction supply chains for blockchain technology through an explorative analysis. Empirical data for the study were collected through semistructured interviews with 17 subject experts. Alongside presenting a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis (SWOT), the study exhibits the requirements for and steps toward a construction supply structure facilitated by blockchain technology

The state of play of blockchain technology in the financial services sector: A systematic literature review

The modern trends of digitalization have completely transformed and reshaped business practices, whole businesses, and even a number of industries. Blockchain technology is believed to be the latest advancement in industries such as the financial sector, where trust is of prime significance. Blockchain technology is a decentralized and coded security system which provides the capability for new digital services and platforms to be created through this emerging technology. This research presents a systematic review of scholarly articles on blockchain technology in the financial sector. We commenced by considering 227 articles and subsequently filtered this list down to 87 articles. From this, we present a classification framework that has three dimensions: blockchain-enabled financial benefits, challenges, and functionality. This research identifies implications for future research and practice within the blockchain paradigm

Intersections between IoT and distributed ledger

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing exponentially. It allows not only humans but also all various devices and objects in the environment to be connected over the Internet to share their data to create new applications and services which result in a more convenient and connected lifestyle. However, the current centralized IoT architecture faces several issues. For instance, all computing operations of all nodes in the network are carried out using a single server. This creates a single point of failure in which if the server goes down, the entire system will be unavailable. Also, the IoT centralized architecture is an easy target of various types of security and privacy attacks, since all IoT data collected from different devices is under the full authority of a single server. Therefore, adopting one of the Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) for the IoT may be the right decision. One of the popular types of DLTs is the blockchain. It provides an immutable ledger with the capability of maintaining the integrity of transactions by decentralizing the ledger among participating nodes in the blockchain network which eliminates the need for a central authority. Integrating the IoT system with the blockchain technology can provide several benefits which can resolve the issues associated with the IoT centralized architecture. Therefore, this chapter provides a discussion of the intersection between IoT and DLTs. It started by providing an overview of the DLT by highlighting its main components, benefits and challenges. The centralized IoT system is also discussed with highlighting its essential limitations. Then, the integration of blockchain with IoT is presented by highlighting the integration benefits. Various application and challenges of integrating blockchain with IoT are also discussed.</p