Blockchain technology is a disruptive technology that affords businesspeople an opportunity to correct problems of dishonesty, corruption, and poor decision-making. This book crafts blockchain technology for the non-technical expert, to interpret the various applications of blockchain technology through the lens of various industries and creates opportunities for professionals using practical applications and case studies. Blockchain technology is an important platform for businesses to consider as it provides a consensus based, trusted, and transparent system for businesses to operate various critical functions.

The opening chapter of this book introduces the impact space, exploring different social business models, the role of technology, the impact investing market and general problems in the space. The remainder of this book falls into two paths: the first focusing AI and the other looking at the blockchain technology. Providing introductions to each of these technologies and their histories, the author goes on to examine them from the perspectives of social business models and impact finance. A concluding chapter explores AI and cryptocurrencies in the impact space in the future. Readers are supported with international case studies.

This is the first professional academic work in China to discuss artificial intelligence and blockchain together. Artificial intelligence is a productivity revolution, and its development has a significant and profound impact on global changes. However, at the same time, its development also brings a series of challenges to human society, such as privacy, security, and fairness issues. Therefore, the significance of blockchain is even more prominent. Blockchain is a revolution in production relations, which will propose important solutions to the challenges of privacy, security, and fairness that arise after the development of artificial intelligence. The book not only discusses the problems currently faced by the development of artificial intelligence, as well as the new opportunities and challenges that artificial intelligence brings to future global governance, but also explains the further development direction of the intelligent revolution from the perspective of blockchain.

This book reviews blockchain technology, discusses why proof of concept fails, offers examples of use cases that have been successful and that have failed and articulates a framework that should be used before deciding whether blockchain is the right technology for transformation. It uses strategic models and frameworks to assist organisations to see a fit score for their specific use cases. This book provides guidance on how to create a blockchain strategy and a business case to pitch for the budget. It also includes a case study to apply the knowledge on practical use cases for blockchain and a technical overview of most of the blockchain use cases in the market including crypto, non-fungible tokens, decentralised finance, and decentralised autonomous organisations, as well as financial and non-financial industry use cases.
This book also provides a detailed overview of most of the mainstream blockchain products currently available in the market. It also offers guidance on how readers can best educate themselves on blockchain technology that is available through commercial and free resources. It concludes with a clear direction on selecting blockchain to solve real-life use cases that are best fit. A financial and non-financial value-adding framework is discussed throughout this book to assist business leaders, programme managers, product managers and information technology leaders to make strategic choices, and business cases and develop strategies for digital transformation through the use of blockchain.

The book focuses on Blockchain, its features, and the core technologies that are used to build the Blockchain network. The gradual flow of chapters traces the history of blockchain from cryptocurrencies to blockchain technology platforms and applications that are adopted by mainstream financial and industrial domains worldwide due to their ease of use, increased security and transparency. * Focuses on application of Blockchain on IoT domain * Focuses on Blockchain as a data repository * This book will also cover blockchain in other areas like healthcare, supply chain management, etc * Covers consensus algorithms like PAROX, RAFT etc. and its applications.

This book is an in-depth exploration of blockchain and smart contracts technologies, systematically addressing their theoretical foundations while highlighting concrete applications in several key sectors. It begins by defining the fundamentals of blockchain and smart contracts, then ventures into the legal domain, analyzing the implications of automated contracts from both backend and frontend perspectives. A particular focus is placed on a sustainable design for cryptocurrencies, anticipating the principles and expectations of the future. The book then provides a detailed taxonomy of blockchain's financial applications, while also examining its role in managing scientific workflows. The fascinating world of NFTs is also explored, from the tokenization of fine arts to innovative event ticketing systems. The convergence between ontologies and blockchain technology is then highlighted, followed by an in-depth assessment of the implications of this technology in the telecommunicationssector, including a SWOT analysis of next-generation cellular networks.

This insightful book is the first to explain the basics of blockchain and its applications in the service industry, as well as potential future implementations of the technology. Embellished with explanatory diagrams throughout, this book predominantly focuses on blockchain as a prominent driver of digital transformation within the service sector and explores its potential applications within the tourism and hospitality industries. Expert-led and logically structured, the chapters explore a plethora of concepts within the service industry and explain the possibilities of blockchain technology and its pros and cons. Key topics include blockchain and its current and potential future impact on food and agricultural supply chains, the sharing economy, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), financial systems and payments, medical tourism, sustainability, and smart contracts.

Blockchains or distributed ledgers is an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest from energy supply firms, startups, technology developers, financial institutions, national governments and the academic community. They identify blockchains as having the potential to bring significant benefits and innovation. Blockchains promise transparent, tamper-proof and secure systems that can enable novel business solutions, especially when combined with smart contracts.

This book is dedicated to exploring some of the key developments related to the expanding role of blockchain in our health systems, from established applications to cutting-edge developments taking shape today.

This book explores opportunities and challenges in the field of Internet of Everything (IoE) security and privacy under the umbrella of distributed ledger technologies and blockchain technology including distributed consensus mechanisms, crypto-sensors, encryption algorithms, and fault tolerance mechanisms for devices and systems. It focusses on the applicability of blockchain technology, including architectures and platforms for blockchain and IoE, authentication and encryption algorithms for IoE, malicious transactions detection, blockchain for forensics, and so forth.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the cryptocurrency phenomenon from a financial/monetary point of view. It offers a unique slant in at least two ways, with the financial perspective as the reference point. An examination of the technicalities surrounding blockchain and the mining of cryptocurrencies is included, but the reading is oriented to those who seek to better understand how these technical issues help to explain the functioning and the potential of cryptocurrencies, without touching on coding aspects. Moreover, the book addresses cryptocurrencies as an evolution of the concept of money, and it frames the analysis to give readers all the knowledge needed to connect the cryptocurrency phenomenon with traditional monetary theories. In so doing, cryptocurrencies are not considered as a completely disconnected trend, set apart from traditional financial systems, but as innovations that will push the concept of money forward, without dismantling previous foundations. The book also includes a discussion on central banks, and stresses how their initial diffidence toward cryptocurrencies has turned into a more active approach that includes projects to develop the so-called Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), thereby completing the analysis of the state of the art of the cryptocurrency surge.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of decentralized finance (DF) and discusses how entrepreneurs can leverage it in their business activities. Decentralized finance (DF) is a system for exchanging value without centralized intermediaries. It relies heavily on peer-to-peer lending and borrowing, decentralized exchanges, trustless systems, and blockchain. Decentralized Finance is seen as a disruptive technology that could replace traditional financial systems in the future due to its advantages of being inclusive, non-discriminatory, resilient to risk management failures, cost-effective for lenders and borrowers to access the system and more efficient in terms of financial intermediation through automated trustless systems.  This book explains the challenges and opportunities that these blockchain-based financial innovations present for both entrepreneurship and the broader financial system.

This book presents a collection of state-of-the-art research findings on the digital transformation of financial services. Digitalization has fundamentally changed financial services and has a tendency to reshape the landscape of the financial industry in an unprecedented manner. Over the last ten years, the development of new financial technologies has contributed to the creation of new business and organizational models, along with new approaches to service delivery. By encompassing significant conceptual contributions, innovations in methods and techniques, and by delineating the main applications of digital transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the volume extends current knowledge on digital transformation in the financial industry.

This book highlights a comprehensive overview of the recent advancements and challenges in the field of cybersecurity with a focus on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and blockchain technologies. The book targets both researchers and practitioners working in the field of cybersecurity and aims to fill the gap in the current literature by providing a comprehensive and up-to-date examination of the integration of AI, ML, and blockchain in cybersecurity systems. The book has a technical focus and provides an in-depth examination of the latest developments in the field. It covers a range of topics including the basics of AI, ML, and blockchain, the application of AI and ML in cybersecurity, the use of blockchain in cybersecurity, and the integration of AI, ML, and blockchain in cybersecurity systems. Each chapter is written by leading experts in the field and provides a thorough and technical overview of the topic, including case studies, examples, and practical applications.

The book is a collection of best selected research papers presented at International Conference on Network Security and Blockchain Technology (ICNSBT 2023), held at Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, India, during March 24-26, 2023. The book discusses recent developments and contemporary research in cryptography, network security, cybersecurity, and blockchain technology. Authors are eminent academicians, scientists, researchers, and scholars in their respective fields from across the world.

Smart Food Industry: The Blockchain for Sustainable Engineering, Volume I - Fundamentals, Technologies, and Management is a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge about food engineering and processing, under sustainable engineering perspective. This book includes disruptive approaches that will potentially enable the food industry for the transition to sustainable production. Divided into four parts, the book explores (i) fundamentals of sustainable food, (ii) conventional technologies in the food industry, (iii) sustainabile emerging technologies in food industries, and (iv) sustainable management in food industries.