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Blockchain technology: what is it good for?

Authors:

Scott Ruoti,

Ben Kaiser,

Arkady Yerukhimovich,

Jeremy Clark,

Robert CunninghamAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 63, Issue 1

Pages 46 - 53

https://doi.org/10.1145/3369752

Published: 20 December 2019 Publication History

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Abstract

Industry's dreams and fears for this new technology.

References

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Cited By

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Çelebi ODemireli E(2024)Accurate Conditional Variance Models for Predicting Asymmetric Volatility in Cryptocurrency Marketsİzmir İktisat Dergisi10.24988/ije.1434189Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.24988/ije.1434189
Baecker RGrudin J(2024)EpilogueDigital Dreams Have Become Nightmares: What We Must Do10.1145/3640479.3640497Online publication date: 15-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3640479.3640497
Wazid MDas APark Y(2024)Generic Quantum Blockchain-Envisioned Security Framework for IoT Environment: Architecture, Security Benefits and Future ResearchIEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society10.1109/OJCS.2024.33973075(248-267)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCS.2024.3397307
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Index Terms

Blockchain technology: what is it good for?
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. E-commerce infrastructure

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Reviews

Reviewer: Mohammad Sadegh Kayhani Pirdehi

Cryptocurrency has been the origin of an evolution in financial and monetary relations the world over, and its domain of influence continues to spread. Bitcoin is its well-known symbol. In addition to security, trust is a key criterion in these trading interactions. Without the governance of a third-party entity to reduce the dependency of the trust relationship, blockchain technology was established. The paper tries to explain the pivotal features of this technology. Blockchain is a decentralized method based on consensus protocols and shared governance. The article covers blockchain's technical aspects-"shared governance and operation, verifiable state, and resilience to data loss"-and features mechanisms to prevent malicious actions. Newly discovered capabilities like auditability, access control, and automatic execution using functions are discussed. The complexity of decentralized governance and operation, ledger rollback mechanism issues when a bug occurs, security, privacy, usability, and legality problems are also discussed. The last section covers use cases. While the article is a good collection of topics related to the blockchain technology, there is not enough information about its architecture and structure.

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Information & Contributors

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Published In

Communications of the ACM Volume 63, Issue 1

January 2020

90 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/3377354

Editor:
Andrew A. Chien
Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 December 2019

Published in CACM Volume 63, Issue 1

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Cited By

View all

Çelebi ODemireli E(2024)Accurate Conditional Variance Models for Predicting Asymmetric Volatility in Cryptocurrency Marketsİzmir İktisat Dergisi10.24988/ije.1434189Online publication date: 30-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.24988/ije.1434189
Baecker RGrudin J(2024)EpilogueDigital Dreams Have Become Nightmares: What We Must Do10.1145/3640479.3640497Online publication date: 15-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3640479.3640497
Wazid MDas APark Y(2024)Generic Quantum Blockchain-Envisioned Security Framework for IoT Environment: Architecture, Security Benefits and Future ResearchIEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society10.1109/OJCS.2024.33973075(248-267)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCS.2024.3397307
Takakubo TLi RNan HJin QSu ZWu H(2024)ECPAS: A Blockchain-based E-Commerce Price Auditing SystemICC 2024 - IEEE International Conference on Communications10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10622720(1334-1339)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10622720
Fachrian MSukarno PWardana A(2024)Decentralize transaction records of digital payment gateway using Ethereum Blockchain and Interplanetary File SystemProcedia Computer Science10.1016/j.procs.2024.05.105237:C(269-276)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.procs.2024.05.105
Dib ONan ZLiu J(2024)Machine learning-based ransomware classification of Bitcoin transactionsJournal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences10.1016/j.jksuci.2024.10192536:1Online publication date: 17-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jksuci.2024.101925
Duan KOnyeaka HPang GMeng Z(2024)Pioneering food safety: Blockchain's integration in supply chain surveillanceJournal of Agriculture and Food Research10.1016/j.jafr.2024.10128118(101281)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2024.101281
Baptista NJanuario JCruz C(2023)Social and Financial Sustainability of Real Estate Investment: Evaluating Public Perceptions towards Blockchain TechnologySustainability10.3390/su15161228815:16(12288)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/su151612288
Tanniru MWoo CDutta K(2023)A Conceptual Model to Share Resources and Align Goals: Building Blockchain Application to Support Care Continuity Outside a HospitalJournal of Risk and Financial Management10.3390/jrfm1604024716:4(247)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm16040247
Alsaif S(2023)Machine Learning-Based Ransomware Classification of Bitcoin TransactionsApplied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing10.1155/2023/62742602023Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2023/6274260
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