The emergence of new digital financial technologies such as Blockchain technology,  has brought about new challenges and disruptions to the financial service industry. Despite its transformative potential, the problem is that its adoption has been hesitant and sporadic. The perception of blockchain technology plays a crucial role in its potential adoption within the financial service industry. Thus, this thesis delves deeper into these perceptions by employing a qualitative research approach influenced by the Technology Organization Environment (TOE) Model. Multiple interviews were conducted with industry experts in the financial service industry to gather a variety of viewpoints. While the views on specific characteristics of blockchain technology differed among the participants, there was a general view on the positive future possibilities of the technology. An understanding of the perception of blockchain technology was established, where the perception was a mix of optimism and caution. Despite the varied opinions, the study’s conclusion is that blockchain technology has a promising future within the financial service industry. However, the shape and form of its integration within companies is a subject of debate. The paper suggests that to fully harness BT’s potential, financial institutions should take a more proactive approach to adoption where they seek to understand and perceive blockchain technology for what it is without overvaluing the negative stigma that currently revolves around the technology.

Blockchains, smart contracts and cryptocurrencies are reaching further global adoption each day and are becoming more prominent to be the foundation for a new technological era and to be used in transactions globally. The technology has strong coherent properties, including a high level of security, decentralization, and its use of smart contracts to obviate intermediaries. These technologies offer the possibility to do any transaction without a centralized bank controlling, denying, or reversing the transaction. This report aims to shed light on blockchain technologies possible impact on society and if the current centralized-based system can be replaced or if it is deemed as necessary. What the potential outcome would be if these centralized authorities sees a decrease in power and how blockchains, smart contracts and stablecoins can be used as an everyday payment and transaction system, excluding all third parties. To do this, a literature review, a quantitative survey, and qualitative interviews were conducted. The literature review, to lay the ground for the questions in the survey, interviews, and additionally, to determine what blockchain and what kind of stablecoin is most suited for global adoption. The result from the qualitative interview were to acquire knowledge from more experienced individuals working or owning a company that is based on top of blockchains. Lastly, considering blockchain technology and web 3.0 is still under development and yet to become globally accepted, the questionnaire survey was conducted to retrieve the general consensus from individuals inside crypto communities. The report overall, came out to be successful, indicating that blockchain technologies has a bright future and that the decentralization it adds to society can benefit the individual in multiple of different ways, specifically in the financial sector. However, although the conclusion that blockchain technologies can be used as a global payment system were deemed successful, objective, and subjective opinions were discussed and reported relevant, whereas one individual might view the exclusion of intermediaries as necessary and beneficial, while the other – as something negative. Scalability issues in blockchains and smart contracts controversy, such as its complexity and its immutability aspect are also analyzed and discussed as a potential hindrance for further global adoption.

The rise of cryptocurrencies has brought with it new math problems with new sets of constraints. The MEV problem entails solving for the ordering of pending trades that maximizes a block creator's profit. In decentralized finance, time is a big constraint, so an exhaustive search of all possible orderings is impossible. I propose a solution to the MEV problem that gives a near optimal result that can be solved in a reasonable amount of time. I layout the method and the formulas required for my solution. Additionally, I test my solution on synthesized data to show that it works as desired.

Объектом исследования являются блокчейн-технологии и децентрализованные сервисы. В данном исследовании предлагается разработать децентрализованное приложение для проведения лотерей. Исследование проводится с целью изучения блокчейн-технологий. Для разработки децентрализованного приложения использовался блокчейн Ethereum. В результате был разработан смарт-контракт для проведения лотерей, а также веб-интерфейс для взаимодействия с ним, образующие децентрализованное приложение. / The object of research is blockchain technologies and decentralized services. In this study, it is proposed to develop a decentralized application for conducting lotteries. The research is conducted in order to study blockchain technologies. The Ethereum blockchain was used to develop a decentralized application. As a result, a smart contract for conducting lotteries was developed, as well as a web interface for interacting with it, forming a decentralized application.

[pt] A principal contribuição deste trabalho é: Discutir os desafios e oportunidades no surgimento das Finanças Descentralizadas. Este trabalho fornece uma visão abrangente dos princípios fundamentais que sustentam as tecnologias Blockchain, como arquiteturas de sistema e algoritmos de consenso distribuído. Em seguida, nos concentramos em possíveis soluções de Blockchain para o setor financeiro, discutindo seus desafios e oportunidades. / [en] The main contribution of this work is: Discuss the challenges and opportunities in the emergence of Decentralized Finance. This work provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamental principles that underpin Blockchain technologies, such as system architectures and distributed consensus algorithms. Next, we focus on possible Blockchain solutions for the financial sector by discussing their challenges and opportunities.

Access to finance is often a vital tool for a company to make investments which in turn leads to increased generation of income. In 2022, the amount of lending to non-financial companies increased by around 13 %. Banks' traditional lending channels have recently been challenged by DeFi. Within DeFi, no central intermediary is used, the security provided is cryptocurrencies and the transaction history is public. The most common cryptocurrency used in DeFi is bitcoin. At the time of writing, bitcoin has a market capitalization of approximately $521 million. The use of DeFi has grown rapidly in 2022 as cryptocurrencies worth just under $110 billion were pledged in DeFi as collateral for credit. The EBA has previously warned about the risks of cryptocurrencies. Despite warnings, neither case law nor any clear legislation regarding cryptocurrencies and creditors protection has thus been created. Though, there is a proposal from EU that will create a uniform regulation for cryptocurrencies that are not currently covered by the EU's existing regulatory framework for financial services, the so-called MiCA regulation. In Swedish legislation, there is an ongoing investigation on how to handle cryptocurrencies. However, neither the proposals at EU-level nor national level deal with substantive legal aspects such as creditors protection. The purpose of the thesis is to present a proposal for what bitcoin as property is classified as according to Swedish law and to identify the most appropriate legal aspect when bitcoins are used within DeFi. Based on the purpose, the following questions arise (i) What type of property should the cryptocurrency bitcoin be legally classified as? (ii) How can creditor protection be achieved when a transaction with bitcoin is made? (iii) How can creditor protection be achieved when bitcoin is used as collateral? In this thesis, the legal dogmatic method and law analogies will be used to answer the questions. The conclusions are that bitcoin should first be seen as a financial instrument according to MiFID II and creditor protection in the case of acquired ownership of bitcoins can basically never be achieved. Creditor protection in case of retained ownership can be achieved with analogous application of RVL and using registration as an element of property rights. When bitcoin is used as collateral, creditor protection can be achieved through the property right element of registration or tradition. In the case of three-party escrow, notification of transfer of claim must be made to the person who holds the pledged property in accordance with the 1936 Pawn Law.