In response to food contamination scandals worldwide, retail giant Walmart is tackling food safety in the supply chain using blockchain technology. In 2016, it established the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center in Beijing and plans to invest $25 million over five years to research global food safety (Yiannas and Liu, 2017). Using IBM’s blockchain solution based on Hyperledger Fabric, Walmart has successfully completed two blockchain pilots: pork in China and mangoes in the Americas (IBM, 2017). With a farm-to-table approach, Walmart’s blockchain solution reduced time for tracking mango origins from seven days to 2.2 seconds and promoted greater transparency across Walmart’s food supply chain (Yiannas, 2017). IBM called it “complete end-to-end traceability” (McDermott, 2017). The case highlights the challenges of implementing blockchain technology in the food supply chain and the opportunities for deploying blockchain solutions throughout the global food ecosystem to increase safety and reduce waste.
Blockchain technology has attracted tremendous attention in both academia and capital market. However, overwhelming speculations on thousands of available cryptocurrencies and numerous initial coin offering scams have also brought notorious debates on this emerging technology. This paper traces the development of blockchain systems to reveal the importance of decentralized applications (dApps) and the future value of blockchain. We survey the state-of-the-art dApps and discuss the direction of blockchain development to fulfill the desirable characteristics of dApps. The readers will gain an overview of dApp research and get familiar with recent developments in the blockchain.
José-María Oliet-Villalba, José-Amelio Medina-Merodio, Mikel Ferrer-Oliva
et al.
The rapid growth of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has expanded technological opportunities, but it has also increased the exposure surface to cyber threats, creating a need for a more precise understanding of the field’s scientific evolution. This study aims to systematically analyse academic output related to cybersecurity and cyber threats within cryptocurrency and NFT ecosystems, identifying central themes, the most influential authors, and emerging trends. A bibliometric methodology was employed, based on the PRISMA 2020 protocol and scientific mapping tools such as SciMAT (v1.1.06) and VOSviewer (v1.6.20), using a corpus of 337 articles published between 2014 and 2025. The findings indicate sustained growth in the literature, a marked geographical and editorial concentration, and the presence of motor themes such as blockchain, cybersecurity, emerging technologies and illegal mining, alongside emerging areas such as intrusion detection. The results also reveal a progressive integration of artificial intelligence techniques in the detection and prevention of attacks. In conclusion, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art, identifies critical gaps, and underscores the need for interdisciplinary approaches to strengthen security in decentralised environments.
Abstract As the underlying technology of bitcoin, blockchain is expected to create a new economic system by revolutionizing the way we communicate over the internet. Blockchain seeks to improve information security and transparency by sharing encrypted data among peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Due to its emphasis on security and trust, there is increased demand for blockchain’s application in a variety of business sectors. The decentralized nature of blockchain creates the new concept of a token economy in which the community’s revenue can be allocated to the actual content producers and service users who create value. This article looks at how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are evolving and interconnected, creating a token economy through different business models. Blockchain is expected to be a key technology that enables new protocols for the establishment of a token economy in the future, leading to a new economic paradigm.
Saikat Mondal, Kanishka P. Wijewardena, Saranraj Karuppuswami
et al.
In this paper, we propose a blockchain inspired Internet-of-Things architecture for creating a transparent food supply chain. The architecture uses a proof-of-object-based authentication protocol, which is analogous to the cryptocurrency’s proof-of-work protocol. The complete architecture was realized by integrating a radio frequency identification (RFID)-based sensor at the physical layer and blockchain at the cyber layer. The RFID provides a unique identity of the product and the sensor data, which helps in real time quality monitoring. For this purpose, a small feature size 900-MHz RFID coupled sensor was fabricated and demonstrated for real time sensor data acquisition. The blockchain architecture aids in creating a tamper-proof digital database of the food packages at each instance. A detailed security analysis was performed to investigate the vulnerability of the proposed architecture under different types of cyber attacks.
Mohammad Jaminur Islam, Saminur Islam, Mahmud Hossain
et al.
Blockchain technology is emerging as a pivotal framework to enhance the security of internet-based systems, especially as advancements in machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and cyber–physical systems such as smart grids and IoT applications in healthcare continue to accelerate. Although these innovations promise significant improvements, security remains a critical challenge. Blockchain offers a secure foundation for integrating diverse technologies; however, vulnerabilities—including adversarial exploits—can undermine performance and compromise application reliability. To address these risks effectively, it is essential to comprehensively analyze the vulnerability landscape of blockchain systems. This paper contributes in two key ways. First, it presents a unique layer-based framework for analyzing and illustrating security attacks within blockchain architectures. Second, it introduces a novel taxonomy that classifies existing research on blockchain vulnerability detection. Our analysis reveals that while ML and deep learning offer promising approaches for detecting vulnerabilities, their effectiveness often depends on access to extensive and high-quality datasets. Additionally, the layer-based framework demonstrates that vulnerabilities span all layers of a blockchain system, with attacks frequently targeting the consensus process, network integrity, and smart contract code. Overall, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain security threats and detection methods, emphasizing the need for a multifaceted approach to safeguard these evolving systems.
The trends of resource consumption and optimization mechanisms for blockchain-enabled security in edge-fog computing environments. While blockchain provides robust security for fog networks in a decentralized fashion, its demand for resources creates tremendous challenge in resource-constrained settings. Through in-depth examination of a Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance PBFT-based blockchain deployment across 50 edge devices and 10 fog nodes. The study reveals the most critical resource bottlenecks and proposes an adaptive resource management framework that maximizes the tradeoff between security requirements and operational efficiency dynamically. The proposed work shows that data-type-based optimization and intelligent workload distribution can reduce CPU utilization by 27%, memory by 22%, and network bandwidth by 38% without sacrificing security assurance. The introduction of a novel dynamic resource allocation algorithm that adjusts consensus participation and cryptographic strength to current system conditions, demonstrating that security-performance trade-offs can be optimally resolved through context-sensitive optimization. These advancements are a move towards resource-constrained security architectures for edge-fog computing, enabling the broader applicability of blockchain security in resource-poor IoT environments.
Alessandra Corneli, Alessandro Carbonari, Francesco Spegni
et al.
The digitization that is impacting the construction sector still encounters areas where it is hindered. Safety is one of them—in Italy, even health and safety plans have to be digitally modeled. In this article, a methodology is presented for the digitization of health and safety plans and their visualization on-site using augmented reality and a seamless system for indoor–outdoor localization. Safety requirements for equipment are modeled as customized property within BIM models. Then, the interoperable-format IFC is used to upload the model in a BIM platform. On-site outdoor localization is ensured by a GPS-RTK system, while for indoor spaces, an artificial intelligence algorithm that recognizes features is used. In this research, an application that supports a seamless outdoor–indoor transition is proposed, with the display of inspection information through augmented reality and a blockchain notarization of images taken on-site and aligned with BIM models. The results of indoor and outdoor alignment are presented below. The experiment regarding augmented reality information display and the photo notarization procedure are also reported. This methodology improves the site inspection process by supporting the traceability of operations.
Partheeswaran Parameswaran, Mohammed Shahzad Shafi
This study examines the growing concern of corporate delinquency in securities markets through an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating insights from sociological jurisprudence, criminology, and economic principles. Deploying a qualitative methodology, the research involves a comparative analysis of landmark case studies such as Enron, Wirecard, and Yes Bank, along with existing legal frameworks to identify systemic weaknesses in corporate governance and regulatory enforcement. The authors discuss theories like the Fraud Triangle, General Strain Theory, and Locke’s social contract theory inter alia, delving into the psychological and sociological factors driving white-collar crimes. The findings reveal significant gaps in accountability mechanisms, which facilitate corporate delinquency that erode societal trust in capitalism and economic stability. The authors advocate for the integration of stronger regulatory mechanisms and incorporation of technology such as blockchain, to bolster investor confidence and mitigate the socio-economic impact of corporate crimes. By following a multidisciplinary framework, the research contributes to the evolving discourse on economic criminology and corporate governance.
Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Blockchain is considered as one of the popular solutions for decentralized data storage which offers high availability and data immutability due to the use of a specific structure for storing transaction blocks in combination with consensus algorithms. However, the nature of blockchain makes it not suitable for storing big amounts of data, like access control matrices which are typically used by DAC. This research proposes a new access control model based on DAC and RBAC models that is capable of managing access of various users, by storing minimal data in blockchain, and full data off-chain with the help of Merkle trees. A new model was proposed, which allows compressing access control data off-chain, and storing only Merkle root hash on-chain. The article describes DecStore - blockchain-based file storage system and how access control model can be scaled to more than 1,000 users and 1,000 storage objects using a caching mechanism on the users’ side. Experiments were conducted to verify the scaling of the proposed model. Based on the obtained result, it was concluded that the proposed model is applicable to a wide range of systems, including IoT. This model is one of the first to solve the problem of storing large-dimensional DAC RBAC data.
Our society is becoming “smarter” and more interconnected, as evidenced by technological trends such as smart farming, smart healthcare, supply chain and logistics, and smart city and nation. Security and privacy are two major key considerations in these smart applications, such as blockchain‐based security solutions for Industry 4.0‐based applications (the focus of this study). In this study, we present a systematic review of existing blockchain‐based solutions, particularly for Industry 4.0‐based applications. We present the merits and demerits of various state‐of‐the‐art approaches. We also highlight the challenges of the blockchain with the scope of interoperability and governance so that this gives a clear understanding to researchers and professionals.
A blockchain is a distributed, digitized and consensus-based secure information storage mechanism. The present article provides an overview of blockchain based e-voting systems. The primary purpose of this review is to study the up-to-date state of blockchain-based voting research along with associated possible challenges while aiming to forecast future directions. The methodology applied in the review is a systematic review approach. Following an introduction to the basic structure and features of the blockchain in relation to e-voting, we provide a conceptual description of the desired blockchain-based e-voting application. Symmetrical and asymmetrical cryptography improvements play a key role in developing blockchain systems. We have extracted and reviewed 63 research papers from scientific databases that have advised the adoption of the blockchain framework to voting systems. These articles indicate that blockchain-supported voting systems may provide different solutions than traditional e-voting. We classified the main prevailing issues into the five following categories: general, integrity, coin-based, privacy and consensus. As a result of this research, it was determined that blockchain systems can provide solutions to certain problems that prevail in current election systems. On the other hand, privacy protection and transaction speed are most frequently emphasized problems in blockchain applications. Security of remote participation and scalability should be improved for sustainable blockchain based e-voting. It was concluded that frameworks needed enhancements in order to be used in voting systems due to these reservations.