Blockchain Technology—a Breakthrough Innovation for Modern Industries

Dear Colleagues,

Blockchain technology (BCT), the first decentralized technology originally developed for cryptocurrency mining, has benefited various areas. It has the potential to solve the problem of data reliability, transparency, and traceability, thus guaranteeing the trustworthiness of information (Adamashvili et al., 2021) as well as its immutability (Caro et al., 2018). Thanks to its unique characteristics, BCT is capable of fundamentally transforming the businesses (Weking et al., 2020), governmental systems (Allessie et al., 2019), and being of society (Ravishankar and Kavitha, 2022).

On the other hand, different areas and industries have different needs. Thus, in order to meet their requirements, BCT needed to adapt some features (Adamashvili et al., 2022). As a result, it is evolving over time, and new types of BCTs are created. For instance, “smart contracts” are developed for better managing contractual terms, automizing and speeding up certain activities (Khan et al., 2021). Additionally, consortium and private BCTs are separated from classical fully decentralized public blockchain in order to improve authorization and authentication processes, eliminate the problem of privacy, and reduce the latency in the transaction processes (Malik et al., 2019). The technical aspects of BCT are also being continuously strengthened to make this technology more resistant towards attacks (Idrees et al., 2021).

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect high-quality articles dealing with the challenges and prospective applications of BCT in different industries, discussing technical characteristics of this technology as well as the need for further development in order to fasten its wide adoption. Therefore, authors from all fields are encouraged to submit original, previously unpublished papers based on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Blockchain technology
• Scalability of blockchain
• Interoperability of blockchain
• Security and trust
• Reliability of blockchain-based systems
• Smart contracts
• BCT and IoT integration.
• Blockchain-based big data solutions
• Blockchain-enabled sustainable development
• Blockchain application in business/supply chain/healthcare/finance/travel and transport
• Blockchain technology under regulation

References

1. Adamashvili, N.; State, R.; Tricase, C.; Fiore, M. Blockchain-Based Wine Supply Chain for the Industry Advancement. Sustainability 2021, 13, 13070. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132313070.
2. Adamashvili, N.; Zumburidze, O.; Fiore, M. Blockchain and Supply Chain Integration: Needs, Benefits, Challenges and Future Perspective. In Proceedings of the 17th international conference on Social Innovations for Sustainable Regional Development, Klaipėda, Lithuania, 28–29 April 2022.
3. Allessie, D.; Sobolewski, M.; Vaccari, L.; Pignatelli, F. Blockchain for digital government. Available online: https://www.mafr.fr/media/assets/publications/blockchain-for-digital-government-2019.pdf (accessed on 20 September 2023).
4. Caro, M.P.; Ali, M.S.; Vecchio, M.; Giaffreda, R. Blockchain-based traceability in agri-food supply chain management: A practical implementation. In Proceedings of the 2018 IoT Vertical and Topical Summit on Agriculture-Tuscany (IOT Tuscany), Tuscany, Italy, 8–9 May 2018; pp. 1–4.
5. Idrees S.M.; Nowostawski M.; Jameel R.; Mourya A.K. Security Aspects of Blockchain Technology Intended for Industrial Applications. Electronics 2021, 10, 951. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10080951
6. Khan, S.N.; Loukil, F.; Ghedira-Guegan, C.; Benkhelifa, E.; Bani-Hani, A. Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 2021, 14, 2901–2925. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-021-01127-0
7. Malik, S.; Dedeoglu, V.; Kanhere, S. S.; Jurdak, R. TrustChain: Trust management in blockchain and iot supported supply chains. In the Proceedings 2019 2nd IEEE International Conference on Blockchain, Blockchain 2019, Atlanta, GA, USA, 14–17 July 2019; pp 184–193. https://doi.org/10.1109/Blockchain.2019.00032
8. Ravishankar, C.V.; Kavitha, K.S. Blockchain Applications that are Transforming the Society. In Convergence of Internet of Things and Blockchain Technologies. 2022 EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing. Gururaj, H.L., Ravi Kumar, V., Goundar, S., Elngar, A.A., Swathi, B.H. Eds. Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76216-2_2
9. Weking, J.; Mandalenakis, M.; Hein, A.; Hermes, S.; Böhm, M.; Krcmar, H. The impact of blockchain technology on business models – a taxonomy and archetypal patterns. ElectronMark. 2020, 30, 285–305. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-019-00386-3

Dr. Nino Adamashvili
Prof. Dr. Caterina Tricase
Prof. Dr. Otar Zumburidze
Prof. Dr. Radu State
Prof. Dr. Roberto Tonelli
Guest Editors

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