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Advanced Blockchain Technologies and Their Applications
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Advanced Blockchain Technologies and Their Applications

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 September 2026 | Viewed by 2054

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Yujue Wang

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Hangzhou Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou 310051, China
Interests: cryptography; blockchain; cloud security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Blockchain technology has rapidly evolved from its origins in cryptocurrency to become a transformative force across multiple industries. With advancements in scalability, interoperability, privacy, and smart contract functionality, blockchain is now being applied in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi), supply chain management, healthcare, digital identity, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Despite its potential, challenges remain in security, energy efficiency, regulatory compliance, and real-world integration. This Special Issue seeks to explore cutting-edge developments in blockchain technology and their practical applications, fostering innovation and addressing critical challenges in the field.

We are pleased to invite you to submit your latest research findings to this Special Issue, ‘Advanced Blockchain Technologies and Their Applications.’ This Special Issue aims to bring together high-quality research and review articles that highlight novel blockchain architectures, consensus mechanisms, cryptographic techniques, and real-world implementations. By showcasing both theoretical advancements and practical use cases, we hope to accelerate the adoption and optimization of blockchain solutions across diverse domains.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  1. Scalability and Performance Optimization.
  2. Security and Privacy Enhancements.
  3. Decentralized Applications (DApps) and Smart Contracts.
  4. Blockchain for Industry 4.0. 
  5. Emerging applications of blockchain.

We look forward to receiving your contributions and advancing the discourse on next-generation blockchain technologies.

Dr. Yujue Wang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • blockchain technology
  • decentralized applications (DApps)
  • smart contracts
  • scalability
  • consensus algorithms
  • privacy and security
  • Industry 4.0
  • supply chain
  • healthcare
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • post-quantum cryptography

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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18 pages, 1570 KB  
Article
A Study on Broker-Assisted Blockchain Trust Chains for Provenance and Integrity Verification of Generative Media Using Watermarking, Semantic Fingerprinting, and C2PA
by Chaelin Yang and Minchul Kim
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(7), 3391; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16073391 - 31 Mar 2026
Viewed by 552
Abstract
The widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence has increased the volume of images and videos shared online, while making it difficult to verify origin and integrity after routine post-processing such as re-encoding, resizing, and transcoding. This research proposes a broker-assisted trust chain architecture [...] Read more.
The widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence has increased the volume of images and videos shared online, while making it difficult to verify origin and integrity after routine post-processing such as re-encoding, resizing, and transcoding. This research proposes a broker-assisted trust chain architecture that treats authenticity verification as an evidence registration and validation workflow rather than a single-signal decision. A trust chain broker seals submitted media by embedding a robust hidden watermark, deriving an embedding-based semantic fingerprint, and producing standardized provenance metadata, then stores the sealed media off-chain using content-addressed storage and anchors only compact evidence on an immutable ledger. The anchored evidence binds the content identifier of the sealed artifact with semantic and provenance hashes, timestamps, and the broker signature, while scalable candidate discovery is supported through an off-chain Facebook AI Similarity Search (FAISS)-based nearest-neighbor similarity index. We evaluate the retrieval stage on a COCO 2017 validation subset (N = 200) under representative post-processing transformations (JPEG compression, resizing, and center cropping), and observe near-perfect candidate identification performance with Recall@1 = 0.9988 and Recall@5/10 = 1.000. During verification, the broker retrieves candidates by embedding similarity, validates ledger inclusion and broker signatures, applies consistency checks across evidence fields, and issues an operational verdict with a signed verification report that is independently checkable. We also implement an EVM-based proof-of-concept for on-chain anchoring and report low ledger-side overhead for a representative registration transaction (gasUsed = 25,380) when recording fixed-size compact evidence fields. The proposed architecture does not prevent copying itself, but improves traceability and auditability under realistic transformation and redistribution conditions by combining watermarking, semantic association, provenance binding, and tamper-evident evidence anchoring within a clear service accountability boundary. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Blockchain Technologies and Their Applications)
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29 pages, 1197 KB  
Article
Data-Availability-Aware Hybrid Storage Optimization in Permissioned Blockchains: A Multi-Objective Metaheuristic Approach
by Özgür Karaduman
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(5), 2299; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16052299 - 27 Feb 2026
Viewed by 409
Abstract
Modern permissioned blockchain systems increasingly adopt hybrid data architectures in which critical metadata are anchored on-chain, while large or sensitive payloads are stored off-chain using infrastructures such as IPFS and cloud services. Although this paradigm improves scalability and cost efficiency, it introduces a [...] Read more.
Modern permissioned blockchain systems increasingly adopt hybrid data architectures in which critical metadata are anchored on-chain, while large or sensitive payloads are stored off-chain using infrastructures such as IPFS and cloud services. Although this paradigm improves scalability and cost efficiency, it introduces a coupled design challenge where latency, operational cost, and security must be balanced simultaneously. Existing Layer-2 and data-availability approaches primarily focus on throughput and verification, leaving data placement decisions in enterprise permissioned environments insufficiently explored. This paper formulates hybrid on-chain, IPFS, and cloud data placement as a multi-objective optimization problem that jointly encodes storage location, transaction execution mode, and key blockchain parameters, aiming to minimize latency and cost while maximizing integrity and resilience. To explore this high-dimensional design space without costly physical deployment, a digital-twin-based evaluation framework is proposed to approximate the performance, cost, and security behavior of a Fabric-class permissioned blockchain integrated with IPFS and cloud storage. The optimization problem is solved using NSGA-II, yielding a Pareto front that reveals fundamental trade-offs among hybrid configurations. The results demonstrate that hash-anchored off-chain storage consistently outperforms purely on-chain and purely off-chain strategies by reducing latency and cost while preserving strong integrity and replication guarantees. The proposed framework provides practical decision support for data-availability-aware permissioned blockchains in domains such as supply chains, healthcare, and disaster response. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Blockchain Technologies and Their Applications)
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Review

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29 pages, 2311 KB  
Review
Trust Assessment Methods for Blockchain-Empowered Internet of Things Systems: A Comprehensive Review
by Mostafa E. A. Ibrahim, Yassine Daadaa and Alaa E. S. Ahmed
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(6), 2949; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16062949 - 18 Mar 2026
Viewed by 438
Abstract
The Internet of things (IoT) is rapidly pervading daily life and linking everything. Although higher connectivity offers many benefits, including higher productivity, robotic processes, and decision-making guided by data, it also poses a number of security dangers. Modern risks to data authenticity and [...] Read more.
The Internet of things (IoT) is rapidly pervading daily life and linking everything. Although higher connectivity offers many benefits, including higher productivity, robotic processes, and decision-making guided by data, it also poses a number of security dangers. Modern risks to data authenticity and confidence are getting harder to handle through typical central safety solutions. In this paper, we present a detailed investigation of the latest innovations and approaches for assessing reputation and confidence in the blockchain-empowered Internet of Things (BIoT) area. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across major electronic databases, including IEEE, Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, MDPI, and top indexed conference proceedings. The publication year was restricted to the period from 2018 to 2025. The methodological quality of a total of 122 studies met the inclusion criteria assessed using predefined quality measures. We figure out existing flaws at each layer of IoT architecture, illustrating how autonomous, transparent, and impenetrable blockchain ledgers address these flaws. Plus, we analytically compare public, private, consortium, and hybrid blockchain networking architectures to emphasize the underlying compromises among security, reliability, and decentralization. We also assess how reputation evaluation techniques evolved over time, moving from classical fuzzy logic and weighted average models to modern mature game theory and machine learning (ML) models, addressing their limitations in terms of computational overhead, scalability, adaptability, and deployment feasibility in IoT systems. Additionally, we outline future directions for BIoT system trust assessment and identify research limitations and potential solutions. Our research indicates that although ML-driven models offer more accurate predictions for identifying illicit node activities, they are still constrained by limited unbalanced data and high processing overhead. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Blockchain Technologies and Their Applications)
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