Syftet med denna studie var att förstå kriterier, barriärer, kostnader och fördelar som är förknippade med implementering av blockchain-teknik, och utifrån detta utforska hur blockchain-teknik kan förbättra BPM. Studien är av kvalitativ karaktär och gjordes sekventiellt genom att först genomföra en omfattande tvärvetenskaplig litteraturöversikt och därefter intervjua personer med erfarenhet från blockchain-teknik. Analysen gjordes med både en induktiv och deduktiv ansats där tematisk analys tillämpades. Resultaten från studien visar att blockchain-teknik kan minska transaktionskostnader, förbättra avstämning och verifiering, förbättra samarbetsprocesser och skapa förtroende och öppenhet samtidigt som de stöder organisationer med styrning av datasäkerhet, korrekthet av data, och minskade IT-kostnader till följd av förbättrad hantering med säkerhetskopiering av data, servrar och lagring. Stort fokus ligger för tillfället på smarta kontrakt där integrering av affärslogiken tillsammans med en förbättrad databasstruktur möjliggör förbättrat samarbete och automatisering av standardiserade affärsprocesser. Resultaten indikerar också brist på blockchain-ingenjörer, vilket påverkar utveckling och tillväxt. Studien belyser ett behov av ytterligare implementeringsstudier och att bättre skilja mellan de olika blockchain-typerna och de problem de kan lösa. Säkerhet, hållbarhet och interoperabilitet nämns ofta som utmaningar i den pågående diskussionen om blockchain. Detta är inte unikt för blockchain-teknik och mer nyanserade förklaringsmodeller krävs. Blockchain-teknik kan vara framtiden, och kan ersätta befintlig infrastruktur, i slutändan måste organisationer överväga vid vilken tidpunkt de bör börja tänka på att sätta blockchain på sin agenda, med de olika avvägningar som detta innebär. / The purpose of this study was to understand criteria, barriers, costs and benefits that are associated with implementing blockchain technology, and from this explore how blockchain technology can improve BPM. The study is of qualitative nature and was done sequentially by conducting an extensive cross-disciplinary literature review first, and then interviewed people with experience from blockchain technology. The analysis was done with both an inductive and deductive approach by doing a thematic analysis. The results from this study show that blockchain technology can reduce transactional costs, improve reconciliation, improve collaborative business processes and bring trust and transparency while supporting organizations with governance of data security, data consistency and reducing associated IT-costs with managing back-up of data, servers and storage. A lot of focus is currently centered around smart contracts, where incorporating the business logic together with an improved database structure allows for improved collaboration and automation of standardized business processes. The results also indicate a shortage of blockchain engineers, consequently impacting development and growth. The study highlights a need for further implementation studies and to better distinguish between the different blockchain types and the problems they can solve. Security, sustainability and interoperability are often mentioned as challenges in the current discourse on blockchain. This is not unique for blockchain and more nuanced explanation models are required. Blockchain technology may be the future and replace existing infrastructure, ultimately organizations have to consider at what point in time they should start thinking about putting it on their agenda and the associated trade-offs that comes with this. / <p>2021-06-06</p>

Under de senaste åren har blockkedjans popularitet blivit alltmer känd och dess popularitet har ökat. Aspekten av att använda en blockkedja i olika delar av samhället har diskuterats och testats. Smarta elnät är också ett brett ämne som har undersökts djupt, idén fortsätter att utvecklas och dess implementation i ett större samhälle. Slutligen är intelligenta agenter ett mål som används och diskuteras i stor utsträckning idag. Användningen av intelligenta agenter sträcker sig till områden som datautvinning, dataanalys och andra olika tjänster. Denna studie har börjat med ett föreställt scenario, men med avseende på olika områden blev det ett avskalat scenario där det förverkligade scenariot utvecklade ett bevis på koncept. Visionen med avhandlingen var att ta fram ett nytt sätt att köpa mindre mängder elektricitet, vilket framtar en ny metod för att köpa el från andra privatpersoner som har lagrat ström från olika källor där det inte kommer till användning. Undersökning av olika blockkedjealternativ slutade med alternativet Ganache som fungerar med kryptovalutan Ethereum. Scenariot började med att en person A hade en önskan att göra ett köp med beloppsgränsen 100 SEK. Därefter utfördes implementationen för att uppfylla önskemålen hos Person A. När det gäller data och tidmätningar resulterade det i bättre än förväntade resultat. Studien har visat att genomförandet av detta bevis på koncept kan utöka förbättringar vid inköp av mindre mängder el. / In the later years, blockchain's popularity has been more recognized and its popularity has increased. The aspect of using a blockchain in different aspects of society has been discussed and tested. Smart grids are also a topic that has been deeply investigated, the idea is moving forward in the making of tweaks in the system. Lastly, Intelligent Agents are a target widely used and discussed today. The usage of Intelligent Agents is considered in areas such as data mining, data analytics, and different services. This study started with an envisioned scenario but regarding different scopes, it became a realized scenario where the realized scenario developed a proof of concept. The vision of the thesis is to bring forth a new way to purchase smaller amounts of electricity, creating a new way to purchase electricity from other civilians who have stored it from different sources where they do not use it. Investigating different blockchain alternatives led to Ganache which works with the cryptocurrency Ethereum. The scenario started with Person A that requested to purchase with the amount limit of 100 SEK. Thereafter the case was implemented to fulfill the needs of Person A. In terms of data and time measurements, it resulted in good outcomes. The study has proven that an implementation of this proof of concept could lead to improvements when purchasing smaller amounts of electricity.

Background. Blockchain technologies are one of the most relevant examples of computer science today. Blockchain technologies have a lot of both existing and theoretical applications. Given the speed of development of this sub-industry, the standards by which it will operate are far from ideal and there are regrettably few peer-reviewed scientific articles on this topic. Therefore, there will be links to current security standards in the industry and to the results of various events to identify and test vulnerabilities in these algorithms, as well as links to real cases and articles on the theory of algorithmization. This work will explore and test several technologies and standards in terms of information security concepts and risk assessment, as well as the use of blockchain, including smart contract technology using the example of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) and decentralized finance, in the application, and the risks associated with it. This paper explores the question of how secure is the current level of NFT technologies and decentralized finance, in particular what problems of Accessibility and Integrity do exist in Blockchain Projects? It is proposed to answer this question by studying cases of recent years, as well as checking the performance of some exploits, some of which have been around for a couple of years and are still an urgent problem. In this work, a blockchain application is a part of a blockchain project that is the implementation of blockchain technology in practice, together with the architecture, depending on the purpose of the project, such a combination is called a blockchain project.Objectives. The purpose of this work is to study the security of the practical implementation of blockchain projects, using the example of decentralized finance, smart contracts in the Ethereum blockchain, since they are the most common. Particular attention is paid to the centralized approach to the use of blockchain technology in practice on the example of the Ethereum blockchain anddecentralized finance.Methods. Methods include multivocal literature review, Proof of Concept evidence-based approach using several vulnerabilities as an example, as well as a review of current case studies of blockchain projects in the period from 2020 to 2022.Results. The result of this work is the answer to research questions, namely the found correlation of the use of a centralized approach to the implementation of blockchain projects in practice and the vulnerabilities found associated with this approach. Based on the results of the work done, it was concluded that the current level of security of blockchain technologies working with smart contracts is unsatisfactory given the number of unresolved problems regarding the current capitalization of the industry / <p>Defence was held online</p>

Counterparty credit risk is present in trades offinancial obligations. This master thesis investigates the up and comingtechnology blockchain and how it could be used to mitigate counterparty creditrisk. The study intends to cover essentials of the mathematical model expectedloss, along with an introduction to the blockchain technology. After modellinga simple smart contract and using historical financial data, it was evidentthat there is a possible opportunity to reduce counterparty credit risk withthe use of blockchain. From the market study of this thesis, it is obvious thatthe current financial market needs more education about blockchain technology. / Motpartsrisk är närvarande i finansiella obligationer. Den här uppsatsen un- dersöker den lovande teknologin blockkedjan och hur den kan användas för att reducera motpartsrisk. Studien har för avsikt att täcka det essentiel- la i den matematiska modellen för förväntad förlust, samt en introduktion om blockkedjeteknologi. Efter att ha modellerat ett enkelt smart kontrakt, där historiska finansiella data använts, var det tydligt att det kan finnas en möjlighet att reducera motpartsrisk med hjälp av blockkedjan. Från mark- nadsundersökningen gjord i studien var det uppenbart att den nuvarande finansiella marknaden är i stort behov av mer utbildning om blockkedjan.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an important routing protocol used to exchangerouting information among autonomous systems on the Internet. The BGP version 4 doesnot include specific protection mechanisms against attacks or deliberate errors that couldcause disruptions of routing behavior. There were several securing solutions developedto mitigate security issues of BGP. In this thesis, current secure solutions are reviewedand evaluated against a list of security and deployment requirements. Furthermore, a newBGP securing solution is proposed which uses blockchain technology and smart contractsto exchange information required for messages validation among peers. This allows todecouple security-related data from the protocol itself and fix the problems introduced inother BGP solutions. / Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) är ett viktigt routing protokoll som används för att utbytarouting-information mellan autonoma system på Internet. BGP version 4 inkluderaringa specifika skydd mot attacker eller avsiktliga fel som kan skapa störningar i routingbeteendet. Ett flertal säkerhetslösningar har utvecklas för att förebygga säkerhetsproblemför BGP. I denna avhandling granskas nuvarande befintliga säkerhetslösningar och utvärderasmot en lista av säkerhets- och deployment-krav. Vidare presenteras en ny säkerhetslösningför BGP som använder blockchain-teknologi och smarta kontrakt för att utbytainformation som krävs för verifiering av meddelanden mellan grannar. Detta möjliggöratt frånkoppla säkerhetsrelaterad data från själva protokollet och åtgärda problemen introduceradei andra BGP lösningar.

In a circular economy, tracking the flow of second-life components for quality control is critical. Track and trace of products or product parts are an essential enabler for a circular economy. With the use of tokenization and blockchain, products can be traced in a decentralized and secure fashion. In this thesis, we implement a system that could be used for the tracking and tracing of computer components. Using the Algorand blockchain, we have implemented a system based on the typical actors involved in the life cycle of a computer. Employing smart contracts, we have set up a system that regulates the ownership of the tokens representing the parts in a computer. We also performed scalability tests on the developed system to measure its time to perform certain critical operations. The result of these test indicate that the developed system is useful at scale. The open-source implementation of the system is publicly available on Github*. / Inom cirkulär ekonomi är spårbarhet av begagnade komponenter en kritiskt del av kvalitetssäkring. Spårning av hela, eller delar av, produkter är en grundläggande möjliggörare för cirkulär ekonomi. Med hjälp av tokenisering och blockkedjor kan produkter spåras på ett decentraliserat och säkert sätt. I denna rapport utvecklar vi ett system som kan användas för att spåra datorkomponenter. Genom att använda blockkedjan Algorand har vi utvecklat ett system baserat på de typiska aktörerna som är inblandade i livscykeln av en dator. Genom användning av Algorand smarta kontrakt har vi satt upp ett system som reglerar ägandeskapet av en token som representerar komponenterna i en dator. Vi genomförde även skalbarhetstester på det utvecklade systemet för att mäta tidsåtgången för utförandet av vissa kritiska operationer. Källkoden till vårt utvecklade system finns publikt tillgängligt på GitHub*.

The IoT offers enormous potentials thanks to its Widespread adoption by many industries, individuals, and governments, leading explosive growth and remarkable breakthroughs that have made it a technology with seemingly boundless applications. However, the far-reaching IoT applications cum its characteristic heterogeneity and ubiquity come with a huge price for more security vulnerabilities, making the deployed IoT systems increasingly susceptible to, and prime targets of many different physical and cyber-attacks including insider attacks, thereby growing the overall security risks to the systems. This research, which focuses on addressing insider attacks on IoT, studies the likelihood of malicious insiders' activities compromising some of the security triad of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) of a supposedly secure IoT system with implemented security mechanisms. To further establish the vulnerability of the IoT systems to the insider attack being investigated in our research, we first produced a research output that emphasized the need for multi-layer security of the overall system and proposed the implementation of security mechanisms on components at all layers of the IoT system to safeguard the system and ensure its CIA. Those conventional measures however do not safeguard against insider attacks, as found by our experimental investigation of a working IoT system prototype. The outcome of the investigation therefore necessitates our proposed solution to the problem, which leverages the integration of distributed edge computing with decentralized Ethereum blockchain technology to provide countermeasures that preserve the Integrity of the IoT system data and improve effectiveness of the system. We employed the power of Ethereum smart contracts to perform integrity checks on the system data logically and take risk management decisions. We considered the industry use case of Downstream Petroleum sector for application of our solution. The solution was evaluated using datasets from different experimental settings and showed up to 86% accuracy rate. / Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria through the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) Overseas Scholarship Scheme (OSS)

The deregulation of the Swedish railway industry began in the late 1980s and has led to an increased number of actors operating within it, and the deregulation divided the railway industry into two areas; infrastructure and rolling stock. This thesis has investigated the main research question, How could smart contracts be applied in the Swedish rolling stock industry?, by addressing the sub-questions; Related to the implementation of contractual agreements, what current challenges are there? and How could smart contracts facilitate the challenges identified? To align the research with current concepts and changes relevant to the industry, the results have been connected to Asset Management (AM) and Entity in Charge of Maintenance (ECM). A case study has been conducted, and an abductive research approach has been used to be able to utilize both current literature and knowledge gained from the case study. The results from the conducted interviews showed that there are challenges related to; trust and transparency, the life length of the vehicles and the interest of actors and the interpretations of the contractual agreements. Further, it was discussed that there are benefits of applying smart contracts and that they could solve issues regarding transparency. The conclusion is that smart contracts could be used within this industry in several ways, initially between every two actors bound together by a contractual agreement, but later on in a vehicle ecosystem, or to follow up on KPIs or other critical conditions. / Avregleringen av den svenska järnvägsbranschen började i slutet av 1980-talet och har lett till ett ökat antal aktörer som verkar inom branschen. Avregleringen delade järnvägsbranschen i två områden; infrastruktur och “rolling stock”. Detta examensarbete har undersökt möjliga tillämpningsområden för smarta kontrakt inom den svenska rolling stock-industrin, genom att undersöka genomförandet av avtal, om det finns några utmaningar och om smarta kontrakt skulle kunna lösa dessa utmaningar. För att anpassa forskningen till aktuella koncept som är relevanta för branschen, och förändringar som sker, har resultatet kopplats till Asset Management (AM) och Entity in Charge of Maintenance (ECM). En kvalitativ fallstudie har genomförts med intervjuer. Dessutom har en abduktiv forskningsansats använts för att kunna utnyttja både aktuell litteratur och kunskap från fallstudien. Resultaten från de genomförda intervjuerna visade att det finns utmaningar relaterade till; förtroende och transparens, fordonens livslängd och aktörers intresse och tolkningarna av avtalen. Vidare diskuterades fördelarna med att tillämpa smarta kontrakt och att de skulle kunna lösa utmaningen med transparens. Slutsatsen är att smarta kontrakt skulle kunna användas inom denna bransch på flera sätt, initialt mellan varannan aktör som är bunden av ett avtal, men senare i ett fordonsekosystem, eller för att följa upp KPI:er eller andra kritiska förhållanden.

This study examines small and medium scale specialty crop growers’ preferences for marketing contract attributes and willingness to adopt blockchain-based smart contracts. The data used were collected using an online survey and discrete choice experiment. Findings indicate that farmers prefer higher average prices, cash, check or electronic bank payment over cryptocurrency, and immediate payment upon product delivery over delayed payment. When choosing a contract, farmers viewed traditional text-based contracts and digital platforms with automated smart contracts equivalently, on average. On average, farmers showed no preference for providing and not providing traceability lot codes to buyers, and between choosing a contract and marketing their products as usual. Although we find that some farmers prefer to provide traceability lot codes to buyers while others do not, and some farmers prefer having a contract option while others do not. These insights could be useful to buyers and specialty crop farmers seeking to contract.

Falsified and substandard drugs are classified as a global problem and continue to increase as manufacturing becomes globalized and the complexity of distribution systems expands. The falsified and substandard drugs come with major health risks and socioeconomic consequences. The pharmaceutical supply chain is handled by several parties, making it harder to detect when falsified and substandard drugs end up in distribution. Since the rise of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, blockchain technology has been recognized for its transparency and security. Previous research describes blockchain as a decentralized database structure that preserves a chronological chain of blocks where each block contains a registered valid network activity verified by consensus of the participants in the network. The purpose of this study is to create a broader understanding of how blockchain can improve the transparency and traceability of the pharmaceutical supply chain in order to reduce the incidence of falsified and substandard drugs. The study is based on a qualitative method in the form of five semi-structured interviews with representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and two blockchain companies. In the study's discussion section, the literature study is set against the collected empirical material. Two tables also illustrate how the pharmaceutical industry is working with traceability and what effects blockchain can provide a supply chain. Finally, the study notes that regulations on the pharmaceutical industry primarily control which database structure is implemented on the supply chain. It is also stated that blockchain has characteristics that can improve transparency and traceability of a supply chain, but the technology is to some extent limited mainly by its large need for capacity