Blockchain Cases and Innovations
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ItemTogether or Not? Exploring Stakeholders in Public and Permissionless Blockchains( 2022-01-04)The emergence of blockchain projects enables new ways of collaboration between untrusted parties. Each of these projects, however , only exists because stakeholders of these projects find common ground. If this common ground is not found, blockchains are forked – organizationally and technically – which endangered major blockchain systems like Bitcoin or Ethereum. To assure the operation of such projects and, thus, to improve their governance, it is crucial to understand their stakeholders. This research conducted a literature review and a survey to (1) identify blockchain stakeholders and to (2) understand their interests as well as underlying motives for their interests. This research has two main contributions: a stakeholder map, which serves as a lens to study stakeholders of public blockchains, and exemplary insights from the application of this lens comprising of 74 survey responses. Consequently, this research provides a novel tool for stakeholder analysis in academia and practice to improve blockchain governance.
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ItemThe Proliferation of End Users as a Success Metric for Cryptocurrencies( 2022-01-04)Over the last decade, numerous studies have examined the remarkable appreciation of cryptocurrencies and have typically focused on their price and the factors that predict them. In contrast, this paper argues that the success of a cryptocurrency is determined not only by its monetary value but also by the proliferation of its end users. Specifically, we hypothesize that changes in developers’ and miners’ activities drive the growing proliferation of a cryptocurrency’s end users. Building on the Bitcoin case, we use a time-series model based on 4,285 Bitcoin daily observations to suggest that changes in the number of end users are anticipated by surges or drops in activity by the developers and miners who develop and maintain the network. We further find a limited relationship between these variables and the price of Bitcoin. These results support an alternative view of cryptocurrencies’ success and highlight further research avenues in this nascent domain.
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ItemThe De-Central Bank in Decentralized Finance: A Case Study of MakerDAO( 2022-01-04)Countless decentralized finance (DeFi) applications of the past years have suffered from the high volatility and speculative behavior surrounding their underlying crypto assets. While the academic debate has been flourishing in these areas, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have not received as much attention. This is the case even though they could offer an opportunity to solve some of the underlying problems of existing cryptocurrencies and ecosystems, for example, by providing lower volatility and, thus, exchange rate stability. This paper presents an economic analysis of the MakerDAO, a DAO in DeFi. In doing so, we use a single case study methodology based on existing resources and expert interviews. It also uses monetary theory instruments to provide researchers and developers with insights into how DAOs are governed. Further, it serves to illustrate how IS research may support the development of future IT artifacts aimed at offering the infrastructure for DeFi applications.
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ItemIncreasing user engagement on blockchain applications through persuasive design( 2022-01-04)Blockchain gives rise to many new applications and use cases and has already markedly changed several industries, such as financial services, energy and utilities, or healthcare. Although blockchain could potentially be used disruptively for end-user applications as well, utilizing it remains poor. It appears that the unconvincing design of many end-user blockchain applications leads to insufficient user engagement. To investigate the influence of design aspects on users’ engagement of blockchain end-user applications, we developed a blockchain application for the creative industries based on the principles of persuasive design. Hereby, we aim to contribute to research in the blockchain context on how end-user applications need to be designed to increase user engagement. By using a design science research process, we can ultimately provide a total of seven recommendations for developing persuasive blockchain applications for end-users.
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ItemGoing Beyond Blockchain Adoption's Hype to Improve Supply Chain Sustainability: Evidence From Empirical and Modelling Studies( 2022-01-04)Potential solutions emerge with the fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, including the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. The global supply chain requires greater traceability and transparency to ensure product security, efficient management and sustainable performance. However, traditional supply chains face several challenges related to traceability systems. This paper aims to analyse academic literature regarding Blockchain adoption in supply chains to improve traceability and transparency from a sustainable perspective. A systematic literature review was performed in order to provide verifiable evidence; we focused our investigation on empirical and modelling articles. Results suggest that Blockchain benefits occur through three levels: macro-level (overall supply chain network), meso-level (such as dyadic relationships) and micro-level (end consumers). However, we note that the contribution’s results have not yet reached a consensus. We have therefore proposed three research insights towards addressing the identified gaps.
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ItemDeFi, Not So Decentralized: The Measured Distribution of Voting Rights( 2022-01-04)Bitcoin and Ethereum are frequently promoted as decentralized, but developers and academics question their actual decentralization. This motivates further experiments with public permissionless blockchains to achieve decentralization along technical, economic, and political lines. The distribution of tokenized voting rights aims for political decentralization. Tokenized voting rights achieved notoriety within the nascent field of decentralized finance (DeFi) in 2020. As an alternative to centralized crypto-asset exchanges and lending platforms (owned by companies like Coinbase and Celsius), DeFi developers typically create non-custodial projects that are not majority-owned or managed by legal entities. Holders of tokenized voting rights can instead govern DeFi projects. To scrutinize DeFi’s distributed governance strategies, we conducted a multiple-case study of non-custodial, Ethereum-based DeFi projects: Uniswap, Maker, SushiSwap, Yearn Finance, and UMA. Our findings are novel and surprising: quantitative evaluations of DeFi’s distributed governance strategies reveal a failure to achieve political decentralization.
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ItemBusiness strategy and blockchain adoption( 2022-01-04)Although blockchain has drawn significant attention since its introduction in 2008, determinants of its adoption remain largely unknown. Relying on the Resource-Based View (hereafter, RBV) of the firm as a theoretical guide, we investigate whether a firm’s business strategy affects its decision on blockchain adoption. We split firms into prospectors (risk takers) and defenders (interested in cost stability) consistent with the business strategy framework to determine if the former group is more likely to adopt blockchain. Using a sample of 208 firms from 2015 to 2019, we find that prospectors are more likely to adopt blockchain than defenders. Results suggest blockchain brings more net benefits to prospectors than to defenders. The results support RBV and business strategy theories and are robust to the consistency test, factor analysis, and placebo test. The findings imply that the alignment between business strategy and technology characteristics motivates firms to adopt specific technology.
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ItemBlockchain Vending Machine: A Smart Contract-Based Peer-to-Peer Marketplace for Physical Goods( 2022-01-04)In this paper, we propose an autonomous vending machine that is governed by a public Blockchain and smart contracts platform. Set up as a decentralized autonomous organization, it serves as an open marketplace for physical goods, where anyone can buy and/or sell objects. We propose a basic architecture for the machine, analyze pricing and fee mechanisms and examine potential pitfalls. Moreover, we discuss open issues, possible extensions and further areas for improvement. We conclude that the deployment of such machines could significantly improve our understanding of decentralized autonomous organizations and build a bridge between virtual and physical markets. Insights gained from such an experiment may raise important questions for further research
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ItemBlockchain Based Smart Auction Mechanism for Distributed Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading( 2022-01-04)Blockchain based framework provides data immutability in a distributed network. In this paper, we investigate the application of blockchain for peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. Traditional energy trading systems use simple passing mechanisms and basic pricing methods, thus adversely affect the efficiency and buyers’ social welfare. We propose a blockchain based energy trading mechanism that uses smart passing of unspent auction reservations to (a) minimise the time taken to settle an auction (convergence time), (b) maximise the number of auction settlement; and (c) incorporate second-price auction pricing to maximise buyers’ social welfare in a distributed double auction environment. The entire mechanism is implemented within Hyperledger Fabric, an open-source blockchain framework, to manage the data and provide smart contracts. Experiments show that our approach minimises the convergence time, maximises the number of auction settlement, and increases the social welfare of buyers compared to existing methods.
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ItemBenchmarking Blockchains: The case of XRP Ledger and Beyond( 2022-01-04)Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies appear to be at a worldwide threshold of acceptance and adoption. Since their inception, several innovative projects have been proposing solutions to the blockchain trilemma, improving blockchain features and its technical limitations. However, the adoption of blockchain as a technology requires a comprehensive understanding and characterization of its technical aspects. The latter introduces an uncertainty for an organization to decide which blockchain protocol best meets its needs and demands. In general, there is a lack of proper testing and software engineering practices for assessing the usage of different blockchain protocols and understanding their performance. Toward that direction, this paper presents an architecture for a blockchain benchmarking framework that aims at the deployment and evaluation of different blockchain protocols. Moreover, we introduce a set of modules for testing and evaluating their behavior under different test-cases and scenarios. To illustrate the usefulness of the proposed architecture we demonstrate an instantiation with the deployment of a private XRPL Network. The experiments conducted in this work were focused on how XRPL behaves under heavy load.