Beyond Bitcoin: What blockchain and distributed ledger technologies mean for firms

Blockchain technologies are benefiting from significant interest in both societal and business contexts. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have grown rapidly in user adoption over the past 8 years. However, blockchain technologies, which fuel cryptocurrencies, have the potential to extend to other business applications even more profoundly. Blockchain can be leveraged to drive innovation and increase efficiencies in new domains—including digital arts management, supply chains, and healthcare—but there remain technical, organizational, and regulatory headwinds that must be overcome before mass adoption can occur. In this article, we provide a brief history of blockchain and identify some of the key features that have enabled its popular uptake in the world of cryptocurrencies. We discuss how blockchain technologies have evolved from traditional software and web technologies and then examine their underlying strengths and evaluate new, noncryptocurrency use cases. We conclude with a look at the limitations of blockchain and present several important factors for managers considering blockchain implementation within their organizations.     

The decade-long cryptocurrencies and the blockchain rollercoaster: Mapping the intellectual structure and charting future directions

Recent advances in science mapping allowed to analyze the entire intellectual structure of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in business-related disciplines to identify 174 academic articles as well as 1482 practitioner-oriented articles published since the inception of cryptocurrencies in 2008 to highlight key trends of the published outputs. The results demonstrate academic research done by 389 authors in 296 organizations based in 50 countries that only just initiated the conversation on four major streams of the literature—Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies; blockchain adoption; cryptocurrency and blockchain environment; and business model innovations. When comparing academic scholarship to practitioner-oriented literature, the results demonstrate that practitioners discussed investor-related themes, cryptocurrency intrinsic value, political-economic sphere, and the impact of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies on the wider society in greater detail. As a result, a number of themes are identified and discussed that could align academic and practitioner interests and provide guidance for further research in this important field.     

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) to finance new ventures

In an initial coin offering (ICO), new ventures raise capital by selling tokens to a crowd of investors. Often, this token is a cryptocurrency, a digital medium of value exchange based on the distributed ledger technology. Both the number of ICOs and the amount of capital raised have exploded since 2017. Despite attracting significant attention from ventures, investors, and policy makers, little is known about the dynamics of ICOs. This initial study therefore assesses the determinants of the amount raised in 423 ICOs. Drawing on signaling theory, the study explores the role of signaling ventures' technological capabilities in ICOs. The results show that technical white papers and high-quality source codes increase the amount raised, while patents are not associated with increased amounts of funding. Exploring further determinants of the amount raised, the results indicate that some of the underlying mechanisms in ICOs resemble those found in prior research into entrepreneurial finance, while others are unique to the ICO context. The study's implications are multifold and discussed in detail. Importantly, the results enable investors to more accurately understand crucial determinants of the amount raised (e.g., technical white papers, source code quality, token supply, Ethereum-standard). This reduces the considerable uncertainty that investors face when investing in ICOs and enables more informed decision-making.     

A supplier evaluation model based on customer demand in blockchain tracing anti-counterfeiting platform project management

This study assesses supplier selection at the beginning of project management to establish an evaluation system corresponding to blockchain tracing anti-counterfeiting platforms (BTAP). First, this paper determines 20 evaluation criteria from the four dimensions of platform overview, core technology, application support, and operations management. On this basis, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) based on customer needs is proposed, which consists of three main steps. First, quality function deployment (QFD) and the best and worst method (BWM) are used to evaluate the four dimensions of the BTAP and specific evaluation criteria from the perspective of customers to obtain the criteria weight. Then, this method uses the extended Vlse Kriterjumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) approach to sort the alternatives. Finally, the improved decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method is used to analyse the relationships between the 20 criteria in the four dimensions. The feasibility and effectiveness of this method are verified by an example. According to the sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis, the results show that this method can evaluate blockchain anti-counterfeiting enterprises. The main conclusions are as follows: the core technology is the most important factor influencing the choice of a BTAP project, and the role of application support in evaluation cannot be ignored.     

产业技术创新联盟信息共享决策研究——基于区块链技术的应用

将区块链技术应用于产业技术创新联盟信息共享领域,可解决联盟信息共享安全问题,提高联盟主体信息共享意愿,加深信息共享程度,进而提升联盟信息共享效率。使用演化博弈方法,构建产业技术创新联盟企业和学研两方的信息共享博弈模型,并通过Matlab仿真对影响双方信息共享决策的政府与区块奖励、惩罚力度、边际成本、风险系数5项因素的影响结果与演化逻辑进行具体分析。结果表明,与传统产业技术创新联盟信息共享过程相比,区块链技术的应用对其共享过程中的各项因素的关键参数值产生了较大影响,更容易推动双方实现均共享的理想均衡状态,但各因素的影响程度不同。有条件的联盟应致力于区块链技术与联盟信息共享网络的融合工作,根据实际情况制定合适的因素组合协同策略,促进联盟的可持续高速发展。     

CKshare: secured cloud-based knowledge-sharing blockchain for injection mold redesign

This paper proposes a trustable mold redesign knowledge-sharing platform, known as CKshare, based on private cloud and blockchain technology. Firstly, we use private cloud to store the mold redesign knowledge of each party to meet its own privacy and data format requirements. Secondly, a blockchain network is used for recording the knowledge and its transactions to ensure security and trustfulness. Thirdly, a simple retrieval mechanism is developed based on k-nearest neighbors for retrieving the codified knowledge on the platform. To realize CKshare, a prototype platform has been developed and explained based on real data from the case mold company.     

区块链技术在信用经济建设中的运用研究

2008年全球金融危机后,出口和固定资产投资增速逐渐放缓,消费成为了拉动经济增长的关键点,信用经济是各行各业的连接器,也是拉动内需的“法宝”和撬动经济增长的“利器”。当前,我国信用经济发展面临数据“孤岛”、个人信用信息保护不足、“羊群效应”明显等问题,随着区块链发展上升到国家战略层面,区块链与社会经济发展融合成为趋势,区块链和信用经济十分契合,可以解决信用经济发展过程中遇到的问题。为推动“区块链+信用经济”创新发展,必须加强顶层设计,完善信用法律体系;保护用户信息安全,完善风险管理体系;强化信用监管,营造良好发展环境;推广智能合约,拓展业务场景;搭建人才支撑发展体系,提供智力保障。     

A systematic review of a digital twin city: A new pattern of urban governance toward smart cities

Many countries and governments consider smart cities a solution to global warming, population growth, and resource depletion. Numerous challenges arise while creating a smart city. Digital twins, along with the Internet of Things, fifth-generation wireless systems, blockchain, collaborative computing, simulation, and artificial intelligence technologies, offer great potential in the transformation of the current urban governance paradigm toward smart cities. In this paper, the concept of a digital twin city (DTC) is proposed. The characteristics, key technologies, and application scenarios of a DTC are elaborated upon. Further, we discuss the theories, research directions, and framework regarding DTCs.