A Flexibility Market Platform for Electricity System Operators Using Blockchain Technology

The paper’s main objective is to demonstrate the trading and flexibility of services amongst TSOs, DSOs, and Prosumers in a transparent, secure, and cost-effective manner using Blockchain-based TSO-DSO flexibility marketplace (EFLEX). The aim is to look for ways to help DSOs/TSOs be more flexible and more directly engaged in managing energy flows on the network. EFLEX will streamline the needs of both TSO and DSO on the same platform. Based on the paper’s proposed services, the pilot service demonstration will be carried out in Bulgaria and Romania, and the main focus will be on congestion management, TSO-DSO Coordination, and Marketplace. The proposed objective is achieved by using Blockchain-based smart contracts and distributed ledger technology.

Impediments to Blockchain Adoption

Satoshi Nakamoto (2008) published a seminal paper on a promising digital currency application and proposed a distributed ledger technology (DLT) to support it. Shortly thereafter, in 2009, bitcoin and the customized DLT that supports it were established. Although the DLT described by Nakamoto (2008), which packages data into blocks that are then cryptographically chained together (i.e., "block chain", or "blockchain"), possesses features that are desirable for some business applications and/or their auditors, over a dozen years later there is not yet a widescale adoption of blockchain for business operations. This paper explores functionality, data and process integrity, and regulatory concerns as potential explanations for the lag in mainstream business and accounting adoption. We also contextualize some of the concerns that are likely to have delayed blockchain implementation by providing a framework of questions directed at both researchers and practitioners.

Blockchain

Blockchain is distributed ledger technology. Its advancement has been compared to the rise of the internet with debate about the technology's probability to disrupt multiple industries including healthcare, transportation, real estate, public domains, manufacturing, intellectual property, education, and financial services. It is predicted that the blockchain will have a major impact on many trust-based environments due to its nature of recording any digital transaction that is secure, efficient, transparent, auditable, and resistant to the outage, thereby providing the much-needed security in the transfer of assets in cyberspace. This chapter will highlight some of the business processes that can be disrupted by blockchain technology.

Beyond Bitcoin: Recent Trends and Perspectives in Distributed Ledger Technology

In the last four years, the evolution and adoption of blockchain and, more generally, distributed ledger systems have shown the affirmation of many concepts and models with significant differences in system governance and suitable applications. This work aims to analyze distributed ledger technology (DLT) critically. Starting from the topical idea of decentralization, we introduce concepts and building blocks currently adopted in the available systems centering on their functional aspects and impact on possible applications. We present some conceptual framing tools helpful in the application context: a DLT reference architecture, off-chain and on-chain governance models, and classification of consensus protocols. Finally, we introduce the concept of process authenticity, reviewing tools and strategies for integrating DLT with the physical world and proposing a constructive scheme for the authentication of a physical resource through alphanumeric data.

Digital Euro: A (Digital) Symbol of Progress and Integration in Europe

The emergence of crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether exposed a number of advantages that these digital assets based on distributed ledger technology (DLTs) can offer. As cash is becoming less and less popular in the eurozone, the European Central Bank (ECB) is currently looking at the scenario of creating a digital euro as a kind of central bank money that may be used by the general public. DLT may be used to tokenize central bank money via digital currencies (CBDCs) issued by central banks, as well as to digitally represent bank deposits. The purpose of this article is to analyse what are the solutions for the future digitization of the monetary and financial systems and if current CBDC projects and prototypes, including those by the Chinese and Swedish central banks and the attempts of the ECB, have the chance to succeed with or without DLT.

Towards Continuous Deployment for Blockchain

Ensuring a production-ready state of the application under development is the immanent feature of the continuous delivery approach. In a blockchain network, nodes communicate, storing data in a decentralized manner. Each node executes the same business application but operates in a distinct execution environment. The literature lacks research, focusing on continuous practices for blockchain and distributed ledger technology. In particular, such works with support for both software development disciplines of design and deployment. Artifacts from considered disciplines have been placed in the 1 + 5 architectural views model. The approach aims to ensure the continuous deployment of containerized blockchain distributed applications. The solution has been divided into two independent components: Delivery and deployment. They interact through Git distributed version control. Dedicated GitHub repositories should store the business application and deployment configurations for nodes. The delivery component has to ensure the deployment package in the actual version of the business application with the node-specific up-to-date version of deployment configuration files. The deployment component is responsible for providing running distributed applications in containers for all blockchain nodes. The approach uses Jenkins and Kubernetes frameworks. For the sake of verification, preliminary tests have been conducted for the Electricity Consumption and Supply Management blockchain-based system for prosumers of renewable energy.

A Game Model for Incentive Mechanism of Distributed Nodes in Supply Chains

This study aims to solve the credit problems in the supply chain commodity and currency circulation links from the perspective of the ledger, while the game model method has been adopted. The research firstly reviews the relationship between distributed ledger technology and the essential functions of currency. Then, by constructing two-agent single-period and multi-period game models in the entire supply chain, the researchers analysed the incentive mechanism and equilibrium solution of distributed nodes of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The results of this study include the incentive mechanism and optimization of distributed nodes based on licensed distributed ledger technology, which is an important issue that CBDC faces when performing currency functions. The implications of this study mainly cover the limitations of the underlying technology of the public chain and its reward mechanism in the supply chain management and provide support for the rationality of the CBDC issuance mechanism based on state-owned commercial banks, which provides a reference for the CBDC practice. The main value of the research not only serves the decision-making department of the CBDC issuance but also provides ideas on the operation mode of digital currency for the field of digital currency research.

Zastosowania technologii blockchain w finansach

This chapter describes blockchain – an IT tool which has found an innovative use in finance, creating a new, fast-growing segment within FinTech. Blockchain, connected to the field of Distributed Ledger Technology, over the last few years has become a proposed solution for problems ranging from keeping financial records to designing new forms of money. The chapter establishes the foundations for further research by explaining what blockchain is and how it works, describing its characteristic features and weighing them against each other in a SWOT matrix. Following that, a number of proposed and already implemented applications of the technology are presented and discussed. This includes: cryptocurrencies, investment/security tokens and the process of tokenizing other types of real-world assets as well as digital repositories.