This thesis deals with cryptocurrencies and the underlying principles they are based on. It describes the blockchain technology and explores various cryptocurrencies that utilize it with the focus on their similarities and differences. The next part analyzes InsightAPI, the existing tool for real-time Bitcoin blockchain exploration. It then describes the proposed solution for the Ethereum blockchain explorer, highlights the implementation details, and shows results of its testing. The created tool allows the user to quickly gather information about desired blocks, users, and transactions of the Ethereum blockchain.

Magíster en Gestión y Dirección de Empresas / En este trabajo se presenta un plan de negocios basado en la adopción de la criptomoneda Ethereum o Ether (ETH) como moneda y medio de pago en Chile para la empresa CryptoMarket, la cual es pionera en el inicio de operaciones de compra venta de Ether en Chile y otros mercados de la región Sudamericana, en su estrategia busca convertirse en una de las empresas más usadas de pagos con criptomonedas. Algunos datos que sustentan el desarrollo de este plan, es la adopción del 47% de equipos smartphones en el mercado chileno, el crecimiento constante del mercado e-commerce, cerrando el año 2016 con un 15% y ventas superiores a los US $24 mil millones de dólares, asimismo el uso de internet que posee una penetración del 90%. Por otro lado, el uso de la red de pagos electrónicos en Chile posee altas comisiones para los comercios que van desde el 1% hasta el 3%, mientras que para el comprador el subsidio en el pago electrónico es un incentivo. Sin embargo, se requiere de elevados índices de inclusión financiera y si bien en Chile el 98% de su población adulta (mayor a 15 años) tiene al menos un producto financiero bancario, sólo el 58% de la población tendría un nivel de inclusión superior. Existiendo así un clima propicio de oportunidades y desafíos de proveer servicios basados en las tecnologías, factor principal de competitividad en la era digital. Como conclusiones principales, se determina que legalmente las criptomonedas no forman parte del marco regulador chileno, no existe una legislación que prohíba o establezca su funcionamiento, tampoco existen iniciativas formales de un sistema de pagos basado en criptomonedas, pese a que las cotas de mercado son relevantes y por ser una oferta basada en tecnologías se logrará competir con un menor precio de 0,7% de comisión por transacción. En cuanto a los indicadores del proyecto, se logra financiar y generar retornos positivos en los 3 primeros años de evaluación, con una tasa de descuento de 21,2%, el Valor Actual Neto de las Inversiones es de CLP $2,201,322. Finalmente, para el éxito de este proyecto, es necesario enfrentar a su competidor directo (Transbank) y para ello se requiere de la inyección de incentivos para dinamizar el mercado con una nueva tecnología que entregue los beneficios de bienestar a las personas como eje central y mantener una constante supervisión de las políticas de gobierno con relación a las criptomonedas.

This thesis seeks to shed further light on how blockchain technology has fostered increases in efficiency at an overall level looking specifically at the Ethereum network, and a continued analysis of its evolving state. A network at the forefront of blockchain technology and smart contract utilization. Firstly, we introduce blockchain technology itself and the various facets of the technology, including consensus protocols, smart contracts and smart contract applications. Subsequently, we further analyse and showcase how blockchain technology has developed in efficiency over its maturation recently. Through the employment of various econometric models and strong discussion promotes insights to the key metrics of the Ethereum network. Finally, we explore whether we are able to note these changes over time and look to the future of blockchain technology. Not only to shed light on how this evolving state will continue to cultivate but also detail the other necessary advances needed to continue this growth.

Rising levels of uncertainty and distrust of governments and mass printing of fiat currencies in conjunction with pandemic-related events have led to a rotation into different assets such as cryptos. Without solid fundamentals, cryptocurrencies have spiked in price levels in the last few years; while popularity rises it remains heavily misunderstood. This study looks into the factors that specifically influence the cryptocurrency Ethereum's price volatility. According to previous literature and existing theories, it gathers seven explanatory variables that should impact the volatility and applies a GARCH (1,1) model. The study finds that the variables Google trends, hash rate, S&P 500, address count, and trade volume impacted the volatility. With only the hash rate and S&P 500 lowering the volatility. Both the ARCH and GARCH terms were significant, with the latter having the bigger coefficient, implying that the past volatility should be accounted for when forecasting future volatility. The findings within this study align with previous literature and other studies on different cryptos. It concludes that while Ethereum is still volatile and is in its growing phase it is headed in a positive direction in terms of stabilization. Further research or a repeated identical/similar study should be conducted again once the market has matured further.

yes / Smart contracts have recently attracted interest from diverse fields including law and finance. Ethereum in particular has grown rapidly to accommodate an entire ecosystem of contracts which run using its own crypto-currency. Smart contract developers can opt to verify their contracts so that any user can inspect and audit the code before executing the contract. However, the huge numbers of deployed smart contracts and the lack of supporting tools for the analysis of smart contracts makes it very challenging to get insights into this eco-environment, where code gets executed through transactions performing value transfer of a crypto-currency. We address this problem and report on the use of unsupervised clustering techniques and a seed set of verified contracts, in this work we propose a framework to group together similar contracts within the Ethereum network using only the contracts publicly available compiled code. We report qualitative and quantitative results on a dataset and provide the dataset and project code to the research community. / Link to conference webpage: http://icccn.org/icccn17/workshop/

Under de senaste åren har blockchain-tekniken fått mer och mer uppmärksamhet. Det har visat speciella fördelar i digital valuta, eftersom det distribueras och dess data inte kan ändras. Med fler länder som presenterar idén om kraftsysteminnovationen har ett stort antal distribuerade kraftkällor dykt upp. Nätanslutningen för dessa distribuerade kraftkällor leder till instabil nätdrift och ökar svårigheten att hantera kraftigt. Därför finns det ett akut behov av en lösning som kan realisera direkt transaktion av distribuerad kraftförsörjning. Denna artikel gör en fördjupad analys av blockchain-tekniken, inklusive hasalgoritm, konsensusmekanism, Merkle-träd, smart kontrakt etc. Och sedan studeras Ethereum och smarta nät. Den här artikeln realiserar automatisering och intelligens för mätning av eltransaktioner genom smart kontraktsteknik som tillhandahålls av Ethereum. En blockchain privat kedja skapas och sedan distribueras det smarta kontraktet i den privata kedjan. Med fördelarna med blockchaintekniken ovan kommer lagring av kraftdata och krafttransaktioner att vara mer trovärdig och mer transparent. Sammantaget designar och bygger detta papper ett smart grid-system baserat på blockchain-smarta teknik. Systemet kan inte bara användas för smarta nätsystem utan även för andra energisystem. Denna artikel ger en referens för tillämpning av blockchain-teknik. / In recent years, blockchain technology has received more and more attention. It has shown special advantages in digital currency, because it is distributed and its data cannot be altered. With more countries put forward the idea of the power system innovation, a large number of distributed power sources have emerged. The grid connection of these distributed power sources will lead to unstable grid operation and greatly increase the difficulty of management. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a solution that can realize direct transaction of distributed power supply. This article makes an in-depth analysis of the blockchain technology, including hash algorithm, consensus mechanism, Merkle tree, smart contract, etc. And then the Ethereum and smart grids are studied. This article realizes automation and intelligence of the electricity transaction measurement through the smart contract technology provided by Ethereum. A blockchain private chain is created and then the smart contract is deployed into the private chain. With the advantages of blockchain technology aforementioned, the storage of power data and the power transactions will be more credible and more transparent. All in all, this paper designs and builds a smart grid system based on the smart contract technology of blockchain. The system can be used not only for smart grid systems but also for other energy trading systems. This article provides a reference for the application of blockchain technology.

Kryptomarknaden och decentraliserad finans har under det senaste året med sin höga avkastning dragit till sig mycket uppmärksamhet. Decentraliserade tillgångar blir alltmer attraktiva för investerare och i denna uppsats är undersöks kryptotillgångars egenskaper som hedge eller diversifiering i en portfölj. Hög avkastning och hög risk går allt som oftast hand i hand och i denna uppsats använder undersöker vi dynamisk villkorlig korrelation (DCC-GARCH), regressionsmodeller samt portföljers prestation över tid för att undersöka ifall de två största kryptotillgångarna, Bitcoin och Ethereum indikeras vara ett bra alternativ för en investerare att diversifiera sin portfölj med. Undersökningen av korrelationen för Bitcoin och Ethereum gentemot de vanliga tillgångarna (S&P500, guld, olja, inflation) visade på en stabil men svag (0.00-0.19) till mycket svag (0.20-0.40) positiv korrelation över tid. Korrelation inbördes mellan Bitcoin och Ethereum visades vara stark. Resultatet ur regressionen innehållandes Bitcoin, S&P500, Olja och Guld visade på att det existerar ett långsiktigt jämviktsförhållande mellan variablerna, däremot påträffas inget sådant när Ethereum tar Bitcoins plats som beroendevariabel. Portföljernas som undersöktes förändrade fördelningen mellan tillgångarna varje månad med restriktionen att nå de bästa sharpekvoten, utan att ha mindre än 2%, eller mer än 40% av någon tillgång. Resultatet visade att portföljerna som innehöll kryptotillgångarna hade en högre sharpekvot, samt även en högre överavkastning till en likvärdig risk gentemot de andra tillgångarna samt att sharpekvoten och överavkastningen ökade vid diversifiering inom kryptotlillgångar, men att risken var relativt oförändrad. Resultaten indikerar att kryptotillgångar fungerar bra som diversifiering, dock så finns det inget som pekar på att de skulle agera som hedge emot de undersökta tillgångarna. Nämnvärt är även att korrelationerna mellan kryptotillgångar och de traditionella tillgångar som undersöktes har varit stabil över den undersökta tidsperioden.

The rapid expansion of computer technology have forced several business sectors to integrate with the continuous development of techniques in order to assist them in various tasks. Many fields have happily embraced the technology implementing it in numerous ways, however the development speed have proven difficult to keep up with. The insurance industry have struggled with ridding themselves of old and monolithic legacy systems with a haphazard construction. These systems are costly, cumbersome and often reliant on a “third party” centered structure creating such flaws as data leaks and monopolisation. Blockchain is a distributed ledger operating over a peer-to-peer basis, with the intention to unshackle contemporary system from their dependence towards central authorities. Additionally, the peer-to-peer architecture introduced a new form of transparency which differs from contemporary solutions used in centralised systems, beyond the peer-to-peer architecture, the blockchain also incorporated consensus algorithms, allowing peers to verify one another to achieve consensus regarding the validity of each block. This resulted in a "trustless system" considering no single party in the community is dependent on the credibility of a central authority. In order for the blockchain technology to be applicable on the market it must overcome obstacles such as privacy and the new EU data protection regulation “General protection data regulation”. However a vague definition of personal data have caused ambiguity which appears to be irreconcilable with the blockchain technology. Research have therefore shifted its focus to explore opportunities for the technology to collaborate with techniques from centralisation in order to overcome its obstacles. / Datorteknologins hastiga expansion har bidragit till att mängder av olika yrkessektorer tvingats integrera teknologin i sin dagliga verksamhet för att bidra med vissa uppgifter. Då teknologin i stor utsträckning har varit till nytta har många yrkesgrupper välkomnat den, dock har teknikens utvecklingshastighet visats vara mycket hög vilket medfört viss problematik. Försäkringsbranschen har visats ha problem med att hantera vidareutvecklingen av sina gamla monolitiska “legacy” system då de är både utdaterade och konstruerade på ett ostrukturerat sätt. Dessa gamla system är kostsamma, svårhanterliga och baseras ofta på en systemarkitektur centrerad kring “tredje parter” detta medför problem som dataläckor och monopolisation. Blockkedjan är ett distribuerat journalsystem som struktureras med ett peer-to-peer nät som bas. Detta görs med förhoppningen att kunna frigöra existerande system från centrala autentiseringsparter. Dessutom har blockkedjan introducerat en ny sorts transparens som skiljer sig från de nuvarande centrala systemen. Blockkedjan inkluderar också consensus algoritmer som medför att alla deltagare kan verifiera varrandra och därmed nå ett uniformt beslut om blocks validitet. Dessa egenskaper resulterar i ett system som inte är beroende av att dess användare behöver lita på en centraliserad tredje part. För att blockkedjan ska vara användbar och framgångsrik på en öppen marknad finns vissa funktionskrav som måste uppfyllas. Ett av de främsta av dessa är EU förordningen “General protection data regulation”. Problem har uppstått då “General protection data regulation” innefattar vaga definitioner av “personlig data”, dessutom är de existerande tolkningar av konceptet svår applicerade för blockkedje tekniker. Detta har bidragit till att utvecklingen av rena blockkedje lösningar har stagnerat och utvecklingen dirigerats om till forskning inom hybrid teknologier som inkluderar tekniker från centraliserade system.

The popularity of blockchain technologies increases with a significant rise in the price of cryptocurrency in 2017, which drew much attention in the academia and industry to research and implement new application or new blockchain technology. Many new blockchains have emerged over the last year in a broad spectrum of sectors and use cases including IOT, Energy, Finance, Real estate, Entertainment, etc.Despite many exciting research and applications have been done, there are still many areas worth investigating, and implementation of the blockchain based distributed application are still facing much uncertainty and challenging since blockchain is still an emerging technology. Meanwhile, the energy sector is under a transition to be digitalized and more distributed. A global technology revolution has disrupted the conventional centralized power system with distributed resources and technologies, like photovoltaic units (PV), batteries, electric mobilities, etc. The citizens then have control of their generation and consumption profiles.The purpose of this master thesis is to explore existing blockchain technology, and smart contracts such as IOTA, NEO, Ethereum Tobalaba, which can be adapted in the energy sector. Within this thesis, blockchain and the smart contract is proposed as a way of building distributed applications for a p2p transaction use case in the energy asset management platform. A design science research methodology is applied for the artifact development and evaluation for the research result. The design was implemented on Ethereum and tested on Tobalaba public network with ether and GAS. The evaluation shows the artifact for the p2p transaction in energy asset management platform fulfill the completeness, and correctness of the design requirement. The result of the performance test on Tobalaba networks shows a correlation between GAS consumption and transaction time.

[pt] Blockchain e Tangle são estruturas de dados usadas para criar um registro público imutável de dados segurados por uma rede de participantes peer-to-peer que mantém um conjunto de registros de dados em constante crescimento conhecidos como ledgers. As tecnologias Blockchain e Tangle são uma solução descentralizada que garante a troca de grandes quantidades de mensagens confiáveis, entre bilhões de dispositivos de IoT conectados, os quais são muito valiosos, desde que sejam válidos e completos. Esse mecanismo de mensagens peer-to-peer altamente criptografado e seguro é adotado neste projeto para gerenciar o processamento de transações de IoT e a coordenação entre os dispositivos que interagem com o processo. Para manter as transações privadas e seguras, os algoritmos de consenso distribuídos são responsáveis por validar e escolher as transações e registrá-las no ledger global. Os resultados mostraram que a velocidade dos algoritmos de consenso pode afetar a criação em tempo real de histórias confiáveis que rastreiam os eventos das redes IoT. Após incorporar o Processamento de Eventos Complexos, que permite selecionar apenas os eventos de alto nível, é possível obter uma melhoria em muitas situações. O resultado é um sistema Middleware que fornece framework para a construção de aplicativos de larga escala onde podem usar Processamento de Eventos Complexos e diferentes ledgers descentralizados, como o blockchain da Ethereum ou IOTA Tangle, para armazenamento seguro de dados. / [en] Blockchain and Tangle are data structures and protocols used to create an immutable public record of data ensured by a network of peer-to-peer participants that maintain a monotonic constantly growing set of data records known as ledgers. Both technologies provide a decentralized solution that guarantees the exchange, among billions of IoT devices, of large amounts of trusted messages, which are very valuable as long as they are valid and complete. This highly encrypted and secure peer-to-peer messaging mechanism is adopted in this project to manage the processing of IoT transactions. To maintain transactions private, and secured consensus algorithms are responsible for validating and choosing transactions and recording them in the global ledger. The results showed that the speed of the consensus algorithms can affect the creation in real-time of reliable stories that track the events of the IoT networks. After incorporating Complex Event Processing that allows selecting only those high-level events, it is possible to obtain an improvement in many situations. The result is a Middleware system that provides a framework for the construction of large-scale computer applications that use Complex Events Processing and different decentralized ledgers such as the blockchain of Ethereum or IOTA Tangle, for secure data storage.