scholarly journals General Purpose Technology: The Blockchain Domain

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Elona Marku ◽  
Manuel Castriotta ◽  
Michela Loi ◽  
Maria Chiara Di Guardo

Blockchain is an emerging evolutionary paradigm that is expected to revolutionize existing business models in many industries and impact the world economy and society. Its potential pervasiveness is increasingly drawing the interest of academics, practitioners, firms, financial institutions, and national governments, who define it as a general purpose technology (GPT). Although it may take considerable time to affirm a technology as general, in this phase of the evolution of the blockchain domain, to what extent can it be considered a GPT? By adopting a patent co-classifications analysis, this paper aims at disentangling the blockchain technology structure, evolution, and potential future trends. We analyzed blockchain international patents issued from 2008 to 2018. Results showed a proliferation of the inventive activity outputs and a significant increase in the diversification across different technology fields, capturing the blockchain’s GPT traits. Moreover, our patent measures detected technology dynamics related to ‘space for improvement’ and ‘pervasiveness’ that commonly characterize GPTs. Our study contributes to the technology innovation literature by uncovering the emergence and evolutionary path of a GPT, and our results provide an empirical basis on which managers can build technology-related decisions and systems to enable appropriate firms’ innovation strategies.

Author(s):  
Deepika Jamwal ◽  
Aashima Sharma ◽  
Rohini Kanwar ◽  
Surinder Kumar Mehta

Nanoscience as a powerful general-purpose technology for commercialization.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-492
Author(s):  
Jovan Karamachoski ◽  
Ninoslav Marina ◽  
Pavel Taskov

Blockchain technology will bring a disruption in plenty of industries and businesses. Recently it proved the robustness, immutability, auditability, in many crucial practical applications. The blockchain structure offers traceability of actions, alterations, alerts, which is an important property of a system needed for development of sustainable technologies. A crucial part of the blockchain technology regarding the optimization of the processes is the smart contract. It is a self-executable computer code, open and transparent, encoding the terms of a regular contract. It is able to automate the processes, thus decreasing the human-factor mistakes or counterfeits. In this paper, we are presenting the feasibility of the blockchain technology in the certification processes, with an application developed for university diploma certification. The example is easily transferable in other areas and business models such as logistics, supply chain management, or other segments where certification is essential.


The article examines the transition of Ukraine from the periphery of the modern world-economy to the semi-periphery. Several global variants of such a transition have been analysed and a hybrid version has been proposed. Based on the analysis of Ukrainian export-import operations, the conclusion of our previous work of Ukraine being one of the periphery states has been confirmed. According to the global practice, for such states, there are two options for the transition to the semi-periphery. The first of them is the implementation of such systemic reforms that will allow for a considerable time to redistribute profits from international operations in their favour. This option is implemented in two forms. The first is authoritarian modernization (examples – Singapore, China). The second is reforms carried out with the broad support of the countries of the centre (an example is the European and Euro-Atlantic integration of the Central Europe countries). The second option is cooperation with the hegemonic state (USA) in the field of security and maintenance of order, for which such a state receives various support and access to the American sales market (examples - South Korea, Japan and the FRG, partly Turkey and Chile). It was concluded that the above options are unacceptable in a difficult Ukrainian case (chronic under-reforming, low quality of the Ukrainian elite, internal problems in the EU and the United States, a protracted conflict with the Russian Federation, etc.), thus there is a need for such an option that would combine the elements of all of the above – that is, a hybrid one. The proposed option assumes, firstly, the introduction of qualitatively new representatives into the Ukrainian elite, capable for systemic reforms, secondly, the continuation of European integration efforts, thirdly, strengthening cooperation with the United States in the security sphere, and fourthly, the activation of regional integration projects (primarily with Turkey and Poland). If efforts in one of the designated areas fail, then resources can be redirected to activate others without wasting precious time. As a conclusion, it was stated that the proposed hybrid version of Ukraine’s transition from the periphery to the semi-periphery looks like the only realistic way for Ukraine.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 639-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
SINCLAIR DAVIDSON ◽  
PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI ◽  
JASON POTTS

AbstractBlockchains are a new digital technology that combines peer-to-peer network computing and cryptography to create an immutable decentralised public ledger. Where the ledger records money, a blockchain is a cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin; but ledger entries can record any data structure, including property titles, identity and certification, contracts, and so on. We argue that the economics of blockchains extend beyond analysis of a new general purpose technology and its disruptive Schumpeterian consequences to the broader idea that blockchains are an institutional technology. We consider several examples of blockchain-based economic coordination and governance. We claim that blockchains are an instance of institutional evolution.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burcu Sakız ◽  
Ayşen Hiç Gencer

Blockchain technology is a disruptive innovation with the potential to replace existing business models that rely on centralized systems and third parties for trust. Even if there are a lot of application areas, blockchain used primarily for cryptocurrencies. Satoshi Nakamoto implemented the first blockchain application and invented the world’s first digital currency which is named as Bitcoin in 2008. Fundementally Bitcoin relies on cryptographic “proof of work” mechanism, digital signatures, and peer to peer distributed networking layer in order to provide a distributed ledger holding transactions. In 2014, a second generation of blockchains allow to program and execute them over distributed networks such as Ethereum project. The code to program any asset stored in blockchain’s peer-to-peer network is called as "smart contract" and smart contracts gives a powerful tool to developers for decentralized applications. There are various types of tokens that anyone can built on top of Ethereum and by combining smart contracts and new tokens, this paved the way of possibility to build a wide range of decentralized projects. One of the disruptive blockchain based innovation impacting intellectual property is called non-fungible-tokens or NFTs firstly introcuced in late 2017 on Ethereum network. This research contends that blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which are cryptographically unique, scarce, non-replicable digital assets created through smart contracts and provably digital collectible assets. Our objective is to give NFT taxonomy, review NFT platforms and discuss technical challenges as well as recent advances in tackling the challenges. Moreover, this paper also aims to point out the future directions for NFT technology.


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