Blockchain Cases and Innovations

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    Understanding the Challenges of Blockchain Technology Adoption: Evidence from China’s Developing Carbon Markets
    ( 2021-01-05) Chen, Xing ; D. Lloyd, Ashley
    Blockchain technology promises disruptive change to industry and society. Although academic researchers and practitioners have engaged with blockchain for years, actual adoption rates of this technology significantly lag predictions. This paper explores present barriers to blockchain adoption in an industry for which blockchain might be assumed to offer an obvious solution to a globally distributed challenge: the integration of carbon markets. Using technological framing theory as a focusing lens, we investigate the challenges of blockchain adoption in China’s developing carbon markets from three expert groups: carbon market experts with blockchain knowledge only, carbon market experts with blockchain projects, and IT experts in carbon markets. Our findings suggest that different expert groups present distinctive and incongruent framing challenges where technical challenges are not the most significant. In exploring this we make contributions to the introduction of a socio-technical perspective in blockchain adoption research and provide practical suggestions to policymakers and practitioners.
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    Rebuilding Trust in Cryptocurrency Exchanges after Cyber-attacks
    ( 2021-01-05) Marella, Venkata ; Roshan, Maryam ; Merikivi, Jani ; Tuunainen, Virpi
    Cryptocurrency exchanges are subjected to cyber-attacks and cryptocurrencies worth millions of US dollars are lost every year. The value of cryptocurrencies is volatile and the cyber-attacks on the exchanges make them even more volatile. Whenever these cyber-attacks happen, the customers might lose their trust not only on a given exchange but also on cryptocurrencies in general. Hence, the exchanges need to rebuild trust among their current and potential customers after a cyber-attack. In this paper, we present findings from a study on cyber-attacks on seven different exchanges, focusing on how they responded after the cyber-attacks to rebuild customers’ trust. Analyzing the responses of current and potential customers to the trust rebuilding techniques used by the exchanges, we also assessed the efficiency of these techniques.
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    Public Perceptions of Facebook’s Libra Digital Currency Initiative: Text Mining on Twitter
    ( 2021-01-05) Ye, Chen ; Zhao, Lin
    Large corporations in the financial and technology sectors are increasingly interested in digital currencies, and central bank digital currencies are being actively researched around the globe. In this study, we analyzed the public discourse conducted through the social media platform Twitter concerning Facebook’s Libra digital currency initiative. Text mining of tweets posted during the one-month period around the official announcement of the digital currency project revealed that the majority of the public have a neutral sentiment toward the proposed digital currency. However, those with positive attitudes outnumbered those perceiving the digital currency initiative as negative, and the negative sentiment mainly stemmed from anger and anxiety. Through topical modeling analysis using latent Dirichlet allocation, we identified eight themes in the public discourse related to Facebook Libra. The study provides an early exploratory assessment of factors facilitating and hindering user adoption of one of the most important practical applications of blockchain technology.
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    Proposal of a methodology for the sustainability assessment of cryptocurrencies
    ( 2021-01-05) Näf, Marco ; Keller, Thomas ; Seiler, Roger
    As cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more widespread and their power consumption has caught the attention of the public, it seems worthwhile to investigate their effects on the environment, economy and society. In the scientific literature, a clear focus on the high power consumption of the market-dominating Bitcoin can be seen in the sustainability assessment of cryptocurrencies. In order to build a comprehensive understanding of cryptocurrencies’ sustainability other aspects should be considered as well instead of narrowing down the scope of analysis to power consumption. Therefore, a holistic definition of sustainability in the context of cryptocurrencies is proposed. Building upon this definition a methodology for assessing a cryptocurrencies’ sustainability is derived in this paper and subsequently applied to ten cryptocurrencies.
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    Process Automation on the Blockchain: An Exploratory Case Study on Smart Contracts
    ( 2021-01-05) Eggers, Julia ; Hein, Andreas ; Weking, Jörg ; Böhm, Markus ; Krcmar, Helmut
    While business process automation through information technology has progressed over the last decades, smart contracts have recently emerged as a promising new means of automation. However, in practice, the adoption of smart contract-based automation is in its infancy, raising the question if the technology genuinely offers a unique approach to process automation. Drawing on an exploratory case study of four start-ups, we investigate the potentials for automation that organizations achieve through smart contracts and how smart contracts differ from established automation technologies, such as workflow management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, and robotic process automation. We contribute to the literature on process automation by unveiling transparent and immutable, cross-organizational, and decentralized automation as characteristics that differentiate smart contracts from established automation technologies. Besides, we provide practitioners with an understanding of application scenarios, potentials, and drawbacks of smart contracts for process automation.
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    Factors Affecting the Organizational Adoption of Blockchain Technology: An Australian Perspective
    ( 2021-01-05) Malik, Muhammad Saleem ; Chadhar, Mehmood ; Chetty, Madhu
    Blockchain Technology (BCT) is a novel innovation that has the potential to transform entire sectors, for instance, supply chain, energy, finance, and healthcare. However, despite the potential and the wide range of benefits reported, organizational adoption of BCT is low in several countries including Australia. Some studies investigated the adoption of BCT in different countries, however, there is a lack of research that examines the organizational adoption of BCT in Australia. This study fills this gap by exploring the factors, which influence BCT adoption among Australian organizations. To achieve this, we used an interpretative qualitative research approach based on the Technology, Organization, and Environment (TOE) framework and the Institutional Theory. The findings show that organizational adoption of BCT in Australia is influenced by perceived novelty, complexity, cost, and disintermediation feature of BCT; top management knowledge and support; government support, customer pressure, trading partner readiness, and consensus among trading partners.
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    BlockELM A Public Blockchain Freight Exchange Protocol
    ( 2021-01-05) Wester, Marek ; Otto, Boris
    Freight exchanges are central to the logistics industry, as they reduce empty runs and meet spot demands. To improve their efficiency in terms of automation and enhance trust between the participants, we propose a decentralized freight exchange implemented using public blockchains. With our solution, we also address shortcomings of public blockchains, such as scalability and privacy. We present two artifacts: a general architecture for an electronic logistics marketplace (ELM) and a concrete implementation as the proof of concept for a freight exchange. The solution is implemented using two off-the-shelf public blockchains and a public distributed file system. Additionally, we investigate the implications for the general ELM model and show that an ELM based on a blockchain can be viewed as infrastructure rather than a market participant.
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    Blockchain Technology for Tracking and Tracing in Supply Chains: A Critical Viewpoint
    ( 2021-01-05) Straubert, Christian ; Sucky, Eric ; Mattke, Jens
    Tracking and tracing (TnT) in supply chains (SCs) is often mentioned as a very promising area of application for blockchains. At the same time, there is also much reticence and even disillusionment in practice. In this context, we present a literature meta-review and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using blockchains in SCs. We find that public permissionless blockchains offer new functionalities (e.g. pseudonymity), which however are often not desired. Moreover, a blockchain loses value in the context of SCs because there is a physical level (goods) in addition to the digital level (information) and these two levels do not necessarily match. Furthermore, we present a survey of TnT solution providers, which indicates that there are complexity and collaboration problems in supply chains that even a blockchain cannot alleviate. Nevertheless, the surveyed experts generally have a positive attitude towards the blockchain and are willing to give it a chance.
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    BLOCKCHAINS FOR PAY-PER-USE BUSINESS MODELS: INSIGHTS FROM A DESIGN RESEARCH STUDY
    ( 2021-01-05) Beverungen, Daniel ; Overhage, Sebastian ; Gorlick', Albert ; Moerchel, Pascal ; Schuermann, Sebastian
    A blockchain features an immutable, encrypted, and distributed ledger that enables transactions even if trust and trusted intermediaries are absent. Despite research on their technological properties, few papers are on record to demonstrate (a) what business scenarios blockchains can enable and (b) under which circumstances they outperform rival technologies. This shortfall of design knowledge obscures blockchains’ value proposition, its conceptual limitations, and its positioning towards rival classes of IT artifacts. We set out to design a blockchain-based IS that enables pay-per-use business models for industrial equipment—a business model that suffers from high transaction costs and complex agency dilemma caused by asymmetric information. We demonstrate how smart contracts deployed in a blockchain can level these information asymmetries. However, we also find that blockchains will only outperform rival technologies if the business scenario fulfils a set of specific properties, narrowing down the scope of application scenarios for applying blockchains substantially.
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    A Scalable Voting System: Validation of Holographic Consensus in DAOstack
    ( 2021-01-05) Faqir-Rhazoui, Youssef ; Arroyo, Javier ; Hassan, Samer
    Blockchain technology allows for new forms of online governance relying on decentralized infrastructure. In particular, it has enabled the so called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): pieces of software deployed on a blockchain which mediate the interaction of groups of people. Allegedly, their main aim is to facilitate large-scale decentralized cooperation in online communities. In order to do that, they provide governance mechanisms for democratic decision-making in communities. One of the most popular novel decision-making systems is "Holographic Consensus", a voting mechanism intended to filter relevant proposals for large communities. To which extent is Holographic Consensus working as intended, facilitating effective scalable cooperation? In order to validate this method, we analyze the 22 DAO communities and 6000 users from the DAOstack platform, which uses Holographic Consensus in all its DAOs.