Blockchain-based DR logic: a trade-off between system operator’s and customer’s needs

Designing an optimal Demand Response (DR) program necessitates having information on the utility of users. However, that is not easily accessible since the users may not be willing to report their personal information. In this paper, we propose an incentive-based DR mechanism for Commercial and Industrial (C <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\&amp;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> I) customers, leveraging contract theory to address the challenges of incomplete information and ensure the participation of customers in the DR program. Designing a DR mechanism includes specifying an incentive reward, penalty, and the corresponding demand reduction as functions of the customer’s utility information. These functions are obtained through an optimization problem that maximizes the grid operator’s profit, ensures truthful reporting of personal information and participation of the customers in the DR program. After formulating the optimal mechanism, the main technical challenge is reformulating the obtained non-convex and computationally inefficient optimization problem to a tractable and convex one. The extensive numerical evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework in comparison to existing benchmark schemes. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —Imbalances between supply and demand, particularly during the hot summer months, can result in issues such as power outages. This problem is detrimental for both grid operators and customers alike. DR programs have been implemented in numerous countries to address these challenges. C <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\&amp;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> I customers, due to the schedulable nature of their loads, make for ideal targets for these programs. However, the main obstacle to implementing such programs is customer participation. Incentive rewards offered in these programs for load reduction are fixed for all customers, discouraging those with low rewards from participating and imposing high costs on grid operators for those with high rewards. On the other side, designing unique rewards and penalties for each customer necessitates information about their preferences, which grid operators cannot access. In this paper, we propose an incentive mechanism based on the contract between the grid operator and C <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\&amp;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> I customers that ensures customers truthfully report their preferences while simultaneously maximizing grid operator profit and guaranteeing the participation of all customers. The proposed DR program can be implemented for large non-residential customers in order to reduce the peak load of the grid.

The world today has realized the vast technological evolution that has greatly shaped the production and management functions of business enterprises. Traditional contracts can take weeks or even months to initiate, and there have been numerous instances of breaches and lack of trust for contracts in both the private and public sector. A smart contract can be defined as a self-executing contract that utilizes blockchain technology to digitally enforce, verify, or facilitate the performance or negotiation of a contract. Owing to the security and decentralized system exhibited by blockchain technology, smart contracts can foster transaction credibility between contracting parties without the necessity of third parties as exhibited in traditional contracts. Any business organization that aims at achieving greater heights in management and production dimensions must consider utilizing robust technologies that are aimed at bolstering its competitive edge. Owing to the newness of smart contracts, characterized by very few studies on the same, this research reviews how smart contracts through blockchain technology can be implemented in an organization to enhance performance and outlines the applications, benefits, and limitations associated with such contracts. Keywords: Blockchain technology; smart contracts; smart contract applications; smart contract benefits; smart contract implementation; cryptography; cryptocurrency DOI : 10.7176/JIEA/9-5-07 Publication date :September 30 th 2019

Smart grid is considered as next generation power system which performs automated control and monitoring operations to make it self-resilience. Advanced Metering Infrastructure is an essential part of smart grid which enables two-way communication thereby providing real-time communication link between consumer and grid operators. Emergence of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) at end user make AMI's operation more challenging. Smart Meters (SMs) are key components in AMI that sends Power Consumption Data (PCD) of home appliances to Distributed System Operator (DSO). PCD received at DSO can be used for real time pricing applications, real time energy consumption, automatic diagnostic, daily energy metering and tasks such as billing, monitoring, planning and predicting of energy usage. In the context of selling of excess energy generated at DER's to the grid, SMs participates in Demand Response (DR) applications to perform energy trading. Revealing PCD of a home leads to privacy breach, hence it is necessary to achieve secure communication between SM and DSO. At the same time, it is essential to make energy trading transparent. To address this issue, this paper proposes a cloud based private blockchain framework to accomplish secure communication between SM and DSO without compromising privacy. Furthermore, trust between SM and DSO is achieved through smart contracts. Performance evaluation of the proposed blockchain shows its applicability to the said environment.

This, together with the related term Bitcoin, was a revolution in blockchain as envisioned by the mystery character Satoshi Nakamoto up to 2008. All this changes the very way the foundations of digital exchange and storage were thought about: decentralized, transparent, immutable, the very fundamentals of Distributed Ledger Technology enabling safe data exchange without an intermediary. The blockchain is fundamentally a chain of blocks carrying information about transactions, including times and cryptographic hashes, each of these connecting to the previous one in one unbroken chain, for which no modification is viable. The whole design of Blockchain has been to solve a number of issues, including double spending, fraud, and inefficient records, with distributed nodes and consensus mechanisms such as Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, facilitated by cryptographic keys. Other areas beyond cryptocurrency where quite a number of innovative uses are cut across include supply chain, healthcare, financial, and real estate sectors. For example, while the supply chain process is being promoted to become effective and transparent in order to ensure the origin and quality of the product, adding to the guarantee that the user's personal health information will not be accessed and tampered with, blockchain uses smart contracts in automating agreement processes within the contract. All of them are expecting cost reduction, operating efficiencies enhancement, enhanced securities of many industries. Anyhow, there exist quite a number of serious obstacles standing in the way of the wide application of blockchain technology. Firstly, the problem of scalability has still been an issue whereby the network performance tends to be problematic when users are increased. Besides, energy wasting cannot be ignored-apparently mostly a challenge from the PoW kind of system proved to be consuming too much energy, standing big on the road to sustainability. Of course, the mere lack of any kind of international rules and standards is already a complication in making them work. It also underlines failures in the adoption of the system or in decentralizing and is still an open technical and organizational challenge on how to combine blockchain with traditional structures. Their solutions require compounding ideas: sharding of blockchain to make it big, off-chain solutions for the blockchain to be many but thin, and provision of amicable solution consensus mechanisms for environmental conservation. Besides coherent policy vision, in addition to the existing cornerstones of regulation besides well-laid-out standards of interoperability, it is important to create confidence and give a road map across different industries. This paper hereby conceptually reviews the literature with respect to how the blockchain technology was designed to show revolutionary capability in the different fields and what keeps on tormenting it with its future.KEYS: Blockchain technology; Distributed Ledger; Decentralization; Cryptographic keys; Consensus mechanisms; Proof of Work; Proof of Stake; Smart contracts; Supply chain management; Data immutability; Transparency; Scalability; Energy consumption; Challenges to regulatory bodies; Security vulnerability; Sharding; off- chain processing; Interoperability; Applications using blockchain; Architecture of blockchain.

As the mobility of global capital is getting higher, more and more investors tend to invest in overseas real estate. However, the conventional model of investing in real estate possesses several disadvantages including high entry hurdles, low levels of market liquidity, and low transparency, particularly for retail investors. This article will seek to establish how blockchain technology as applied in smart contracts can help in the clarification of unclear fragmented investments in overseas property. First of all, this paper begins with the definition and examples of applying conventional and advanced blockchain technology and then describes the work of smart contracts and the comparison between regular contracts and smart contracts. The paper also evaluates the nature of fragmented investment in overseas property and its associated risks before suggesting the use of blockchain and smart contracts for a new institutional structure of the investment platform. This study demonstrates how the technologies can advance data sec, promote trust in transactions, and how investment can be automated. It can be concluded that blockchain technology, and smart contracts, can enhance Overseas Real Estate Investment by increasing transparency and decreasing the investment threshold as well as the instances of fraud. This study also presents an analysis of the potential difficulties that may be encountered in real-world applications and a recommendation of what may be done in subsequent studies. On one hand, this research offers a new perspective to the theoretical world, on the other hand, it offers practical problems and solutions to the practitioners who are a part of overseas real estate markets and businesses by steadily helping the overseas real estate markets to move in the fairer and more transparent direction.

PurposeCross border trade, involving different business environments between the sellers’ and buyers’ countries, may result in conflicts because of asymmetry in the information structure across the borders. The International Chambers of Commerce (ICC) has laid down ground rules on terms of shipment and payment, enabling harmonization and standardization of business process, and fixing of responsibilities for international trade. The international commercial (INCO) terms by ICC define the duties, obligations and cost borne by the exporter and the importer. An exporter’s uncertainty looms once the goods cross his/her border. Therefore, there is a need for a smart contract that is secured, transparent, legitimate and trustworthy. The authors propose a blockchain technology-based smart global contract (BTGC) framework for international trade.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors develop the framework based on value chain analysis (VCA) of international trade and an ontology-driven-blockchain-design approach. The paper analyzes the sequence of activities in the value chain of global trade, the terms of the contract, the data structure templates, the validation rules and the points-of-failure, and proposes the smart contract blockchain structure.FindingsThis paper proposes the BTGC framework considering the INCO terms 2020; it provides the validation rules and the probability of failures; and identifies the elements that cause the halting of contracts and conditions of creation of side blockchains. The framework also includes the governance of the BTGC system.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed framework not only has implications at the firm level as it automates and secures a global sale contract but also is expected to harmonize the global-trade process as well. The developers may use the attributes, data structure templates and the rules identified in this paper for developing the GC software. Future research may consider using case analysis, class diagrams and the related steps for developing the blockchain software.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a complete value chain of global contract (GC) concerning exports, an ontology of GC and a blockchain-based smart-contract framework based on global standards. Besides, it specifies the elements of fraud (such as the non-integration of side chains) and uncertainty, i.e. the probability of failures. Such a framework will harmonize the global-trade process and build an international standards for smart GC based on blockchain technology (ISSGCBT), which is not yet done.

Blockchain and drone technologies can operate in cooperation with each other. As the number of drones increases, managing them becomes a significant challenge. A swarm of drones, also referred to as swarm drones, must operate reliably and securely. In this study, blockchain technology is utilized through a smart contract to ensure both security and reliability. Swarm drones are deployed for surveillance missions, where each execution corresponds to a single mission. These missions are represented using a simple model. A smart contract maintains the essential mission data in the model. The mission is divided into smaller tasks. Until all the tasks are completed, they are executed by drones in parallel. The smart contract, implemented on the Ethereum platform, securely exchanges information with the drones. The proposed model functions dynamically. It reorganizes when drones leave or new drones join the system. Because blockchain platforms have limited resources, particularly in memory and the number of permissible execution operations, optimizations are applied to both the smart contract and drone programs to accommodate these constraints within the surveillance framework. The proposed surveillance model is implemented and simulated to analyze its dynamic behavior.

Introduction: Although blockchain technology and smart contracts are garnering attention in various sectors, their applications and familiarity within the realm of radiology remain largely unexplored. Blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger technology, offers secure, transparent, and resilient data management by distributing the verification process across a network of independent entities. This decentralized technology presents a possible solution for a range of healthcare challenges, from secure data transfer to automated verification processes. To address such challenges in the context of medical imaging, blockchain could provide different approaches, including smart contracts, machine learning algorithms, and the secure dissemination of large files among key stakeholders such as patients, healthcare providers, and institutions. This manuscript aims to explore the current attitudes and perspectives of trainees and radiologists to the utilization of blockchain technology and smart contracts in clinical radiology. Additionally, the study provides an in-depth analysis of the potential applications for incorporating blockchain into radiology.Methods: After obtaining The George Washington University Committee on Human Research Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, we conducted a 10-question survey among radiologists and trainees at several institutions and private practices. Surveys were created via the Google Forms application and were emailed to potential participants. Participants were asked about their current academic level (medical student, resident/fellow, academic radiologist, private practice radiologist, others), their knowledge level about the field of imaging informatics and blockchain and smart contract technologies, their level of interest in learning more about blockchain and smart contracts, and their opinion about possible applications of blockchain and smart contract in the future of medical imaging.Results: A total of 118 survey requests were distributed; 83 were returned, reflecting a 70.3% overall response rate. Of these, 19 were sent to private practices with a 15.8% response rate (3/19), and 99 to academic centers, yielding an 80.8% response rate (80/99). The survey respondents demonstrated a strong interest and need to further understand these technologies among radiologists and trainees. This study focuses on key components of this technology as it relates to healthcare and the practice of radiology, including data storage, patient care, secure communication, and automation, as well as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis.Discussion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate and establish a baseline for the current perspectives on the application of blockchain technology and smart contracts in clinical radiology amongst trainees and radiologists across academic and private settings. Incorporating blockchain and smart contracts technologies into the field of radiology has the potential to achieve greater efficiency, security, and patient empowerment. However, the adoption of this technology comes with challenges, such as infrastructure, interoperability, scalability, and regulatory compliance. Collaboration between radiologists, hospital administration, policymakers, technology developers, and patient advocacy organizations will help guide and advance our understanding of the potential applications of blockchain and smart contracts in radiology and healthcare.

Blockchain technology and its applications are gaining popularity day by day. It is a ground-breaking technology that allows users to communicate without the need of a trusted middleman. A smart contract (self-executable code) is deployed on the blockchain and auto executes due to a triggering condition. In a no-trust contracting environment, smart contracts can establish trust among parties. Terms and conditions embedded in smart contracts will be imposed immediately when specified criteria have been fulfilled. Due to this, the malicious assailants have a special interest in smart contracts. Blockchains are immutable means if some transaction is deployed or recorded on the blockchain, it becomes unalterable. Thus, smart contracts must be analyzed to ensure zero security vulnerabilities or flaws before deploying the same on the blockchain because a single vulnerability can lead to the loss of millions. For analyzing the security vulnerabilities of smart contracts, various analysis tools have been developed to create safe and secure smart contracts. This paper presents a systematic review on Ethereum smart contracts analysis tools. Initially, these tools are categorized into static and dynamic analysis tools. Thereafter, different sources code analysis techniques are studied such as taint analysis, symbolic execution, and fuzzing techniques. In total, 86 security analysis tools developed for Ethereum blockchain smart contract are analyzed regardless of tool type and analysis approach. Finally, the paper highlights some challenges and future recommendations in the field of Ethereum smart contracts.

Based on the preliminary introduction of power demand response, this paper puts forward the problem in multi-level demand response reliable communication. Next, we analysis the principle of block chain technology, and then according to the characteristics of power demand response, the private block chain is chosen to solve the problem of mutual trust between users, load aggregators and power grids in multi-level demand response reliable communication. Smart contracts are used to solve the problem of demand response automation.

Smart contract is a computer program that can execute contract terms using Blockchain technology. The contract has started getting applied in financial services or used to assist companies in managing the financial aspects of the trading, and was presumed to undertake the trading, banking, and insurance industries in the applications, processes, and business models. The objective of this paper focuses to discuss on the possibility to apply the smart contract in Islamic trade finance practice and to understand how the smart contract works. This study will explore the smart contract technology, whether it is Sharia compliance and well as the advantages of the smart contract. Besides that to understand the context of smart contract which is one of the technologies from Blockchain that holds great potential across the Islamic trade finance. This study will refer to secondary data such as online journal, books, and news. Resulting to understand the context of smart contract, this study will show how the usage of smart contract can have a huge impact in the future of Islamic trade finance. The recommendations will emphasis on the roles of traders to grab the opportunity and adapting the smart contract technology in their business practices with the fact that smart contract will expect stronger growth in the future.

&lt;p&gt;Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) has been a key part of evolving communication systems in the last few years. However, the life-cycle management of Virtual Network Functions (VNF) is still a not trivial task. Blockchains (BC), due to their decentralization and immutability characteristics, together with the automation provided by Smart Contracts (SC), can be employed to enable such automated and trustworthy VNF management.Thus, this paper proposes VeNiCE to automate the deployment and life-cycle management of VNFs using events emitted on SCs. VeNiCE provides automation and auditability by relying on a BC to provide a decentralized approach for VNF management, which performs management actions, such as VNF deployment and deletion, and based on events and communicates with an SC to provide immutable logging of the VNF life-cycle. VeNiCE provides (i) a frontend for user interaction, (ii) a backend implementing the communication with the NFV framework, and (iii) an SC that emits events, stores VNF allocations, and authenticates users. A prototype of VeNiCE was developed and deployed in the Ethereum BC using OpenStack Tacker as an NFV platform. Experiments were conducted in a real-world deployment of such a prototype to analyze the economic costs of using SCs and the time required to process requests by each component of VeNiCE and the BC. Those results obtained show VeNiCE&rsquo;s feasibility, highlight its benefits achieved with the automation and provide insights on reducing costs by exploring additional BC platforms and different deployment types, which introduce centralization and management concerns.&lt;/p&gt;

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology, nowadays widely used and a hot topic in the industries. A Smart Contract is a virtual contract based on Blockchain technology which executes and operates between two parties (especially a buyer and a dealer) when a certain condition of the contract is met. The objective of this research is to present a decentralized transaction system based on Blockchain technology implemented using Smart Contract. Blockchain based cryptocurrencies are an evidence for a secure implementation of any currency-based centralized systems put forth in use in a decentralized way. Current transaction systems and payment gateways are centralized systems that need monitoring and verification from a central agency like a bank or a third party organization which are not completely automated as some of the processes are human controlled. Also deposition and withdrawal of money sometimes take a long procedural time. Still these systems are neither completely error free nor secure and time to time certain issues may arise. Even nowadays some payment methods charges transaction fee which is like paying for the money you are paying for. In this research paper we are proposing an automated Ethereum blockchain technology based transactionsystem which will eliminate the bank and third party verification.Each block of the Ethereum blockchain in the system will store the transaction details also linked with all the previous transaction details in the form of a chain. A Smart Contract is used to define the terms and conditions of the transaction which include account creation, ether deposition and withdrawal. This system enables users to carry out transaction without any fraud and losses from anywhere around the globe within split seconds. Keywords: Transaction system ,Blockchain, Smart Contract, decentralized,crypto-currency

The aim of our systematic review was to inspect the recently published literature on decentralized governance systems and integrate the insights it articulates on blockchain technology and smart contracts by employing Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Throughout January and May 2022, a quantitative literature review of ProQuest, Scopus, and the Web of Science databases was carried out, with search terms including “city” + “blockchain technology”, “smart contracts”, and “decentralized governance systems”. As the analyzed research studies were published between 2016 and 2022, only 371 sources satisfied the eligibility criteria. A Shiny app was harnessed for the PRISMA flow diagram to include evidence-based acquired and handled data. Analyzing the most recent and relevant sources and leveraging screening and quality assessment tools such as AMSTAR, Dedoose, Distiller SR, ROBIS, and SRDR, we integrated the core outcomes and robust correlations related to smart urban governance. As data visualization tools, for initial bibliometric mapping dimensions were harnessed, together with layout algorithms provided by VOSviewer. Future research should investigate smart contract governance of blockchain applications and infrastructure using decision-making tools and spatial cognition algorithms.

Blockchain technology provides considerable promise to enhance security and transparency in energy management systems. As energy systems grow decentralized and involve various stakeholders, challenges including data integrity, transaction security, and transparency are becoming crucial. Traditional energy systems have risks such as cyberattacks, data manipulation, and inefficiencies owing to centralized control. Blockchain’s decentralized, immutable, and transparent ledger system can overcome these difficulties by enabling safe, verifiable, and tamper-proof energy transactions. Smart contracts further automate and ensure trust in energy trades. This article analyzes blockchain’s application in energy management systems, concentrating on decentralized energy trade, real-time grid balancing, and transparent billing. It also addresses the security implications of blockchain, its limitations, and future potential. While scalability and energy efficiency challenges persist, blockchain's role in constructing more resilient, secure, and transparent energy infrastructures shows promise for the future of energy management.