https://www.pokerlistings.com/is-poker-gambling ???

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-a-mobile-iOS-Android-poker-game-
app    vv
https://www.connectbit.com/blockchain-applications/ vv

Documentarea tehnologiilor folosite si analiza solutiilor existente

How Does Blockchain Work?

The whole point of using a blockchain is to let people – in particular, people who don’t trust one another
– share valuable data in a secure, tamperproof way. – MIT Technology Review

Hyperledger is a cross-industry collaborative effort from the Linux Foundation to support blockchain-

based distributed ledgers, with projects under this initiative including Hyperledger Burrow (by Monax)
and Hyperledger Fabric (spearheaded by IBM)

Programming Smart contracts - A look into DAML, Kotlin & java

https://daml.com/blog/engineering/programming-smart-contracts-a-look-into-daml-kotlin-java/

For the purposes of this blog, we consider Daml, an open source smart contracts language
created by Digital Asset. Through the Daml runtime – which manages the integration with
the blockchain platform and exposes standard application API – Daml smart contracts can
be deployed to multiple platforms without any changes. Daml uses a modified version of
the Haskell GHC compiler.
(Daml vs. Solidity (Ethereum) for smart contracts)

Mobile Poker Application – Science Paper

Gambling Poker App – Master Degree Science

The need of BT in gambling industry

BT applications and areas of interest

BT popularity in last decade

It is possible to integrate this TECHNOLOGY in this kins of mobile app, instead of using a central authority
for delivering a quality services for players, excepting the delay of transferring money?

---

Exemple de aplicații pe blockchain notabile și care nu reprezintă criptomonede includ:

 The DAO ("Decentralized Autonomous Organisation") – un fond de investiții

descentralizat de tip peer-to-peer cu scopul de a finanța alte afaceri sau ONG-uri.[108] În
contrast cu alte fonduri de investiții existente, DAO nu aparținea de un anumit stat și nu
avea un consiliu de administrație.[109] Investitorii DAO primeau token-uri de votare și
investițiile fondului erau decise prin vot.
 Steemit – un blog/site de social networking și o criptomonedă
 Hyperledger – un efort de colaborare al Linux Foundation pentru a sprijini blockchain-
urile pe bază de registre distribuite. Proiecte notabile în cadrul acestei inițiative
includ Hyperledger Burrow (de Monax) și Hyperledger Fabric (de IBM)[110]
 Counterparty – o platformă financiară open-source pentru crearea de aplicații financiare
peer-to-peer pe blockchain-ul bitcoin.
 Quorum – un blockchain privat al băncii JPMorgan Chase cu depozitare privată, folosit
pentru smart contracts[111]
 Bitnation – o țară/națiune voluntară descentralizată fără frontiere, care stabilește un set
de contracte și legi, bazate pe smart contracts de tip Ethereum
 Tezos – un sistem descentralizat de votare.

We examine the projects in particular for their relevance and contribution to open science and categorize
them afterwards according to their primary purpose.Several of them already provide functionalities that
can have a positive impact on current research workflows.

1.Introduction (BT in Game Development / Mobile App (Gambling Development)) - BT, however, is not
limited to cryptocurrencies

The Fraunhofer Institute for Scientific and Technical Trend Analysis (INT) in Germany published a
study (Schütte et al., 2018) showing that currently BT can be most frequently found in applications used
in the financial sector.

The typical use case in that area for BT is the exchange of value units without the need of
intermediaries (Nakamoto, 2008; Ben-Sasson et al., 2014). Examples for that are the already mentioned
cryptocurrencies and other applications that, for instance, allowing individuals to offer and sell their
digital assets like art or data from sensors on a marketplace (Draskovic and Saleh, 2017). ... The
pioneering role of the financial sector seems obvious because cryptocurrencies were the first usable
blockchain applications. Nevertheless, the potential of this technology has attracted the attention of
other areas in recent years, leading to a vast number of new projects2 . BT is still in an early development
phase without widely adopted standardization and frameworks yet.

In addition to the technical perspective, cryptocurrencies, for example, provide additional,

unique opportunities to create business models and incentives for users or entire communities. However,
besides BT, there are also other technologies that are applicable to open science. One example is the
peer-topeer data synchronization protocol Dat (Ogden et al., 2018) that also supports immutable and
decentralized storage and can be used as an infrastructure for scholarly communication (Hartgerink,
2019). The protocol got inspired by several existing systems, one of them being BitTorrent (Pouwelse et
al., 2005). Further non-blockchain-based approaches supporting open science include the research and
collaboration platforms Open Science Framework (OSF) (OSF, 2019) and OPERAS (Mounier et al., 2018),
the open access repository Zenodo (Zenodo, 2019), the research data infrastructure offered by the
European Science Cloud (EOSC) (EOSC, 2019), and the publishing platform F1000Research (F1000, 2019) {
Context }

BT is just a technology and certainly not the silver bullet that will overcome all problems we are
facing in science today. Some of the issues cannot get solved by technology alone, instead require the
involved persons to rethink habits, behaviors, and processes. In some cases, it might even lead to
researchers having to renounce privileges. There is also criticism of the use of BT for science. Hartgerink
(2018) argues that blockchains can even amplify inequalities by increasing artificial scarcity and relying on
free market principles. Another point of criticism affects the consensus principle as the fundamental
definition of truth in a blockchain. Firstly, there is always a chance of hijacking a blockchain with a so-
called 51%-attack. Secondly, and more relevant from a philosophical point of view, Hartgerink asks
whether we need a consensus for scientific theories or ideas at all.

Overall, our work contributes to understanding the BT and the possibilities it offers to design, implement,
and improve open science projects and applications across all different scientific fields. (Poker/Gambling
App Development)1

We think it is a suitable technology to support the transformation of open science. The motivation for
this work lies in the circumstance that there is currently no systematic review of the general suitability of
BT for open science, the state of the art or related vital challenges and research potentials. We are
addressing these topics in this paper.

2.Methods

The BT is, besides the financial area, also emerging in many other sectors and gets continuously
more popular. It is difficult to overview the market of existing and planned projects since there is no
holistic public database or repository for it. Further, the range of visions, concepts, and prototypes is
constantly increasing, which means that this review can only provide a snapshot and does not claim to be
complete or exhaustive.
 It has turned out that this topic is quite novel, and there are just a few publications about how BT
can be used to foster open science or science in general. In a literature review about the usage of BT in
different domains (Casino et al., 2018), the application field of science did not even get mentioned as an
application domain

1. What are the current requirements for a technical open science infrastructure, and how do they
compare with BT features? 2. What is the current status and perspectives for the use of BT in science and
academia? 3. What are the biggest challenges and obstacles that are preventing successful
implementation and adoption of BT as supporting infrastructure for open science? MOBILE APP GAMES

 At first, we studied existing literature to describe what open science is (section 3.1), what it aims
to be, and what the requirements for such an infrastructure (section 3.2) are. Then, we examined
the BT to understand how it works and what characteristics it has (section 4.1). Finally, we
created a matrix that shows all related infrastructure requirements and compares them to the
characteristics of the BT to determine how they match and whether they can be fulfilled (section
4.2).

 (2)To answer the second research question, we discussed relevant literature, gray literature, and
projects that we found, collected, and screened from different search engines and reference lists
until April 2019. Primarily, we used Google Scholar3 , PLOS4 , CiteSeerX5 , Microsoft Academic
Search6 , and GitHub as file hoster of software development projects. Secondarily, we examined
research publications, whitepapers, and blogs. We found the most relevant literature and
projects by using the search terms “blockchain” with “science,” “publishing,” “peer review,” and
“reproducibility.”    The relevance of literature was made sure by reading their abstracts and,
partially, the whole work if the abstract was not clear enough to rate the specific content. If a
paper had no meaningful content for our research, we excluded it from our review

         (2)The so built structure and the review of projects help to gain a better understanding of the
current situation of research in this area (section 5.3). Finally, we made a summary and discussed
our findings (section 5.4). ***For a complete overview, we created a database (see
Supplementary Material) containing a short description, project state, and other characteristics
for each project

 (3) As a basis to process the third research question, we used the knowledge gained from
answering the first and second research question, and the analysis of literature and projects. .
Finally, we took the issues of rank one to five and described them in terms of current challenges,
research potentials, and open questions that should be addressed to foster the BT for open
science (sections 6.1–6.5).

3.Open Science

Open science still has to overcome significant obstacles in different dimensions to get widely applied.
Most of the points mentioned here require such drastic changes in research processes and habits and
behaviors of researchers that their realization in the foreseeable future is doubtful. For example, the
traditional workflows of researchers need to be changed;
Research is most of the time taking place in a closed institutional framework without the integration of
individuals from the outside, so these barriers need to put down to build an open research environment.

3.2. Requirement Analysis for an Infrastructure

4.Blockchain Technology

In this section, we briefly describe the blockchain technology (BT), its characteristics, and
functionalities to provide fundamental knowledge about it (section 4.1). After that, we compare the
requirements of an open science infrastructure (section 3.2) with the characteristics of the BT (section
4.2). Finally, we present an overview matrix and several examples showing that the technology as a
technical basis fulfills the requirements and hence suits as a solution.

4.1 Overview

In 2008 a pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” released a whitepaper about a novel peer-to-peer-

based digital currency called “Bitcoin” (Nakamoto, 2008) that overcame these flaws. Finally, the Bitcoin
network went live in 2009 and had a wild journey in the context of its market value (short time over
20,000$16) and media relevance. It gained most popularity through the high number of news about its
value development. We refer to a Wikipedia article17 that contains numerous sources to reconstruct the
detailed history of Bitcoin. Since 2009 many more cryptocurrencies have been developed (so far over
2,000 different currencies) and BT got noticed as a technology that not only can provide an infrastructural
environment to manage currencies but also it is enabling the realization of much more use cases (Casino
et al., 2018). Due to the possibilities, a research offensive started a few years ago by researchers from all
over the world to analyze the use of BT in many different areas

The BT does nothing new in a perspective of its single elements, but as a bulk, these elements
(for example, decentralization, immutability, transparency, and cryptographic hashing) are unique and
avoiding the double-spending problem (Nakamoto, 2008; Beck et al., 2016). A blockchain network works
without a centralized server. Transactions made in such a network are verified by the decentralized nodes
(user systems) (Abraham and Mahlkhi, 2017; Zheng et al., 2017) and stored in so-called blocks with a
timestamp (Gipp et al., 2015; Lin and Liao, 2017). The size limit of blocks can differ between varying
blockchains. The blocks are getting linked in chronological order because every one of them (except the
first “genesis” block) contains the cryptographic hash of the previous one, so they form a chain (Beck et
al., 2016; Crosby et al., 2016). The block hash considers not only structural data of a specific block but
also its content like, for example, transactions.

It depends on the blockchain whether users can store complete files on-chain or they need to use
off-chain solutions like a cloud or an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) (Benet, 2014) due to file sizes. An
IPFS is a peer-to-peer distributed file system for storing and sharing data. It connects computing devices
with the same network of data, and each device holds and distributes a portion of the overall data. In
relation with a blockchain, the chain only stores an associated hash that references to the actual file on
an IPFS. Note, that off-chain solutions (sometimes referred to as “second-layer” blockchain solutions)
introduce new challenges and are an interesting research topic on their own, but one that goes beyond
the scope of this paper
 In general, a blockchain is a type of database that only supports reading and appending (Swan,
2015a; Yli-Huumo et al., 2016). Due to its decentralized architecture, it operates as a peer-to-peer
network, so users (peers) are interacting directly with each other without the need of trusted
intermediaries or authorities (Hoffmann, 2015; Catalini and Gans, 2016; Christidis and Devetsikiotis,
2016) calls it “trustless trust.” The nodes of the other users in the network are then verifying the
transaction by the programmed rules of the system to make sure everything is valid before it gets
executed (Nakamoto, 2008). The verification is essential because all records and transactions in a
blockchain are immutable (tamperproof) (Gipp et al., 2015; Zyskind et al., 2015).

 The consensus mechanism of the network is responsible for how

verifications for the users are working. As an example, we mention the
consensus mechanism Proof-of-Work (PoW) (Nakamoto, 2008; Tschorsch and
Scheuermann, 2016) which is, among other blockchains, used in the Bitcoin
network and is the best-known method, but heavily criticized for its high
energy consumption (O’Dwyer and Malone, 2014). Another one is Proof-of-
Stake (PoS) (King and Nadal, 2012; BitFury Group, 2015; Tschorsch and
Scheuermann, 2016; Zheng et al., 2017) that offers a more efficient way for
verification and consensus finding, in terms of energy consumption and
performance.

In public (permissionless) blockchains like Bitcoin, everyone can join and participate in the
system. In private and consortium (permissioned) blockchains, only users have access who are on a
whitelist; typically, parties that know each other. Other combinations of the types and consensus process
permissions are also possible. For more information and a comparison between the different kind of
blockchains, we refer to Zheng et al. (2017) and Casino et al. (2018).

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are essential for a blockchain to connect off-chain
(external) hardware and software with the network. It enables communication as well as the
transmission and exchange of data between the systems (Linn and Koo, 2016; Liang et al., 2017). In such
a way, external applications (including web-services, Beck et al., 2016) can integrate the characteristics
and functionalities of an existing blockchain for specific use cases (Linn and Koo, 2016; Xu et al., 2016).
For example, it is possible to hash and store research data directly from external sensors, algorithms, and
other data creating processes. So, an API is an important feature of a blockchain in terms of
interoperability that developers always should provide and document to maximize the blockchain’s
potential and ease its use

BT has developed continuously; Swan (2015a) describes three evolutions (Blockchain 1.0, 2.0,
and 3.0) that led to new possibilities of using the technology to realize steadily more complex
applications and projects. Ethereum (Buterin, 2014) is a blockchain application that provides an
infrastructure, comparable to an operating system, which everyone can build their applications on top
without the need of the cost-intensive development of an own blockchain. Ethereum introduced smart
contracts (SCs) that are programmable in specific languages, for example, Java, GO, and Solidity (Dannen,
2017), and allowing for the automatic enforcement of a digital contract with typically ifthen clauses
(Bhargavan et al., 2016; Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016; Kosba et al., 2016). There are even projects to
create complete decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to automate organizational governance
and decision-making with SCs (Swan, 2015b; Jentzsch, 2016)

We noticed that there are slightly different characterizations of BT in the literature (Aste et al.,
2017; Puthal et al., 2018; Treiblmaier, 2019; Viriyasitavat and Hoonsopon, 2019). Therefore, we
summarized the properties of the technology and made the following compressed list of relevant
characteristics concerning the open science use case

 Decentralization: A blockchain is a distributed redundant peerto-peer system

of nodes each storing the whole blockchain or a part of it (Abraham and
Mahlkhi, 2017; Zheng et al., 2017). The architecture even allows for
distributing software and other content through the network automatically
(Kiyomoto et al., 2017). Further, decentralization also eliminates a potential
single point of failure and removes the dependency of a central authority
that has to be trusted

 Cryptographic Hashing: Due to the hashed connection embedded in every

block of a blockchain to the previous block, a chronological chain gets
created (Nakamoto, 2008; Gervais et al., 2016). Besides the consensus
mechanism, hashing ensures that the complete chain, inclusive the content,
cannot be altered because a change would affect one specific hash value,
and from there one, all subsequent hash values, and hence the chain would
get invalid (Zheng et al., 2017). It also allows generating a unique hash of
files of any size to create an identifier. For more information about the
hashing process, see the following references

 Timestamping: Every record (block creation, transaction, data storage) in a

blockchain gets chronologically timestamped. It provides traceability,
transparency, and full transaction history for the users (Nakamoto, 2008;
Gipp et al., 2015; Mattila, 2016; Zheng et al., 2018). Timestamps in
combination with a cryptographic hash can also be used, for example, as a
Proofof-Existence for certain information at a particular time (Gipp et al.,
2015).

 Immutability (Append-Only): Data, once stored on the blockchain, cannot be

altered or deleted anymore; the cryptographic hashing and decentralized
validation (consensus) process ensure that (Swan, 2015a; Yli-Huumo et al.,
2016). Exceptions are specific attacks like the 51%-attack, see Dowd and
Hutchinson (2015) for more information.

 Consensus Mechanism: They define how users validate transactions in a

blockchain among each other (Abraham and Mahlkhi, 2017; Zheng et al.,
2017). Since the Bitcoin blockchain and PoW, many new unique methods and
combinations of existing consensus procedures got developed and
implemented in new blockchains. For more information about consensus
mechanisms, see Zheng et al. (2017), Abraham and Mahlkhi (2017), and
Nguyen and Kim (2018)
  Access and Governance System: Every blockchain gets also characterized
through its access (public/consortium/private) (Peters and Panayi, 2016; Lin
and Liao, 2017) and governance system (permissionless/permissioned)
(Gervais et al., 2016; Peters and Panayi, 2016). These properties are crucial
to the potential use cases (Lin and Liao, 2017).

Note, that the characteristics mentioned above are not exclusive to BT. As mentioned in the introduction,
there exist other approaches that also have one or more of these properties.

4.2 Blockchain Technology as an Open Science Infrastructure

Altogether, in this section, we describe, along with different examples, how the specific
blockchain characteristics meet the requirements of an open science infrastructure. We do not claim to
make a detailed model or concept of an ecosystem

 In a permissionless network, everyone is equal in all aspects, but it also opens ways to
system abuse. Therefore, a suitable consensus mechanism is mandatory to make
collaborative decisions about how the underlying blockchain system is developing and
also to prevent malicious behavior in the network. PoW is not the right choice for open
science, not least because of its high energy consumption. Instead, more appropriate are
mechanisms like PoS, which could be adopted to open science purposes.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, and it depends on many factors which
method is better. There are even more ways to build such a system. A detailed examination of these
approaches would be the next step toward a blockchainbased open science infrastructure but goes far
beyond the goal and scope of this manuscript. In the following, we concentrate on the comparison of the
identified requirements for an open science infrastructure with blockchain features.

Overall, an open science infrastructure based on BT can provide such a censorship-free

environment.

Linking every account to a real person allows creating a research curriculum vitae that shows the
chronological research history of an individual along with all positive (prizes, awards) but also negative
(proved plagiarism) milestones. An interesting optional function would be anonymous publishing that
allows researchers to work on controversial or critical data and topics without the fear of negative
consequences like discrediting. The user name expanded by some random characters can get hashed to
prevent any traceability and create a pseudonym for publishing.

Technical infrastructures need to be sustainable. A key factor here is to provide extensible

systems. The possibility to expand a blockchain is equivalent to other systems; for example, APIs are
enabling to link software with an ecosystem. So, it is possible to communicate with external software and
platforms to exchange all kind of content but also to use web-services and functionalities from them.
Thus, the range of application scenarios can be steadily expanded. An additional reason is the speed of
how technologies are developing today, which makes it crucial to provide opportunities to easily extend
existing systems to avoid the need for the time and cost-intensive creation of new software. The
consensus mechanism of a blockchain also plays a role since the majority of authorized users must accept
a system change so that it gets implemented.

Another incentive is decentralization that makes sure everyone has the current version of all data hence
assists the dissemination of published work. People are expecting a kind of counter-value when they
contribute knowledge what shall be satisfied through the access to published content of others. Another
positive aspect is constructive feedback of the community for the provided material (scientific self-
correction or open peer-reviews). The technology can further provide monetary incentive systems that
use coins/tokens as a reward for contributions; a consensus mechanism can serve as technical
implementation (more on this in sections 5.2, 5.3). So, on a technical level, BT offers the possibility to
create new forms of reputation and incentives.

Also, the consensus model is a relevant factor since it partially defines how much resources of storage
space and computing power are needed to participate in the network. In the end, the users shall still use
their familiar software to manage their projects and data but with the possibility to benefit from the
provided features of a blockchain-based open science infrastructure

In terms of sharing data and content, a blockchain guarantees that there is no single point of failure due
to its decentralized characteristic. So, there is no potential data loss, and the network ensures availability
as long as the connection to it exists. For storing new data in a blockchain ...

[ .. ] Finally, the decentralization ensures that there is no central authority or system that users need to
trust; data is always available (no single point of failure). The reuse of acquired results enables other
researchers to make additional insights and to give feedback. So, they do not need to make another time-
consuming/costly experiment to gather already existing information.

5 STATE-OF-THE-ART

This section starts with a description of how we analyzed the current state of research and how we
categorized relevant blockchain projects to clarify our approach (section 5.1). After that, we give an
overview of available literature (section 5.2) and projects (section 5.3). Finally, we summarize and discuss
the state-of-the-art (section 5.4)

5.2. Literature

. She summarizes that the technology, whether it is widely established or not, will be probably unnoticed
anyway by non-geeks; the future will show if blockchains prove themselves as a game-changer or as a
hype. Sandner sees the potential for using BT and SCs in science; as application examples, he mentions
funding, publishing, scholarly communication, and incentive systems. Further literature and a web article
by Bell et al. (2017), Brock (2018), and Opoku-Agyemang (2017) likewise describe the many possibilities
of BT to improve science and all kind of research activities as statistical analyses, data evaluations, and
medical trials.

In a multi-disciplinary study of Tennant et al. (2017) about innovations in peer-review, they

identified the BT as a potential future model with promising possibilities. Examples are incentive systems
with coins or tokens that reward the reviewers for their efforts, and authentication/certification methods
for fraud control and author protection. They conclude that the technology can enhance the quality and
responsiveness of the review process. Both Avital (2018) and Spearpoint (2017), are independently
underpinning these statements by proposing two different blockchain-based systems that use monetary
incentives along with new metrics to address inefficiencies of the review process. Jan et al. (2018) are
also sharing the opinion and utilized BT and SCs to develop a peer-review prototype

A further blockchain infrastructure that focuses especially on the validation of data integrity in
biomedical studies is TrialChain (Dai et al., 2018). This idea is also interesting for other scientific areas
because data integrity plays a central role in all kinds of studies/experiments. One more noteworthy and
ambitious approach is Project Aiur (Project Aiur, 2018), which envisions building an open platform for
validated knowledge without access barriers, publication bias, and information overload while all
research is reproducible. To achieve their vision, they aim to combine a repository and a community-
governed artificial intelligence that is capable of automating knowledge validation

A concept named Coalition of Automated Legal Applications Intellectual Property (COALA IP)
(De Filippi et al., 2016) aims to be a free community-driven protocol for establishing an open global
standard in intellectual property licensing to form a consistent framework and to eliminate the
dependence on central organizations. Also interesting for researchers and their contributions is
Vaultitude (Vaultitude, 2018) which is a large-scale project whose team is cooperating with international
authorities and law firms to establish a blockchain supported Proof of Authorship for the digital assets of
their users. The projects Bookchain (Scenarex, 2019), Attribution Ledger (Prescient, 2019), and ChainPrint
(ChainPrint, 2017) are concentrating on protecting and publishing intellectual property, mainly
documents, books, and creative works. So, their target groups are authors, publishers, and partially
printing houses, but also researchers may use such services if they want to disseminate papers, studies,
or other writings. In all three cases, the uploaded data gets recorded via blockchain to create an
immutable trail of information to provide trust and security before and after the publication process.

5.3.5. Resource Sharing

Besides sharing storage space and data, there are also approaches to share computing power in a
blockchain network. We think a method of that kind is promising to enable, for instance, researchers to
execute specific demanding computing tasks such as complex simulations. A project that aims to provide
exactly this functionality hence to operate like a distributed “supercomputer” is Golem (Golem, 2016).
Their approach works with various nodes (providers) which are offering their unused computing power as
a resource in exchange for monetary tokens. In general, other network participants (requestors) can use
that provided performance to calculate, for example, algorithms, photogrammetry reconstructions,
renderings of movies/CGI, and machine learning applications in an associated sandbox environment. The
Golem network supports the distribution and monetization of software as well.

5.3.6 Customizable Infrastructure

 Customizable infrastructures are serving as a fundament on which developers can build their
designed blockchain-based networks. In contrast to custom-built blockchains, the source code gets
already provided, and less know-how is needed for their realization. So, this approach saves time and
funds, but it is limited in its possibilities because the underlying systems usually prescribe certain aspects
like the consensus model and the basic structure of the network. Most of the projects in this category are
focusing on private permissioned blockchains that have mainly companies as their target group, but still,
universities and research groups can benefit from these infrastructures. Exemplary science and academic-
related use cases are data tracking and auditing, education/training of students, project management,
distribution of digital assets, timestamping, and the issuance of certifications. Further, it is possible to use
customizable infrastructures to partly build similar applications like the projects we mentioned in the
sections 5.3.1–5.3.5

In every case, the requirements of a project need to get evaluated to decide whether the
possibilities of a provided customizable infrastructure are sufficient to fulfill them or a custom blockchain
application is necessary. If the estimated quality is satisfying, there is no necessity to incur the additional
effort for a new development. We found several projects that aim to provide such an infrastructural
framework to build blockchains or blockchain-based applications, for example, Hyperledger (Androulaki
et al., 2018) from IBM, Openchain (Openchain, 2015), Multichain (Greenspan, 2015), Blockstack (Ali et
al., 2019), and DCore (DECENT, 2019). In summary, we see customizable infrastructures as a perfect
introduction to the BT to test its potential and suitability for diverse application scenarios and to gather
the first experience in their development

5.4. Summary and Discussion

Our review shall serve as a snapshot of the current research situation of the BT for open science with an
additional view outside the box to other applications that offer useful functionalities for that scope.
During the last 7 months in that we collected and analyzed practical projects, we noticed that the market
is unstable. A few of them disappeared, got canceled with official statements of their developers, or are
subjectively dead based on long-time inactivity. In total, more new approaches were announced in these
months, so the trend we identified shows a steadily increasing number of active blockchain projects for
open science. That development is also retroactively observable over the past few years

In the end, a blockchain alone represents a database with a unique bulk of characteristics but without a
specific sense. An integrated application like Bitcoin or Ethereum gives a purpose and functionality to it.
So, we differentiate between the blockchain and application layer (includes the front-end), which need to
correspond with each other to use the technology as an advantage. Therefore, in open science projects,
both layers should get designed in harmony following the open principles to provide a cornerstone for a
transparent and trustable environment; the prevention of non-transparency and possibilities for
malicious behavior is fundamental

Would that shift the intention to create knowledge and progress in science to an economic focus? On the
other side, we agree to establish new incentives for the invested time and expertise of scientists who are
reproducing and confirming results/studies and peer-reviewing submitted research work for conferences
and journals. Further concerns are about how to deal with bugs in already deployed hence immutable
SCs, and how different nations are assessing proofs issued from a blockchain in their juristic processes

The current situation makes it difficult to identify serious blockchain-based applications. The
enthusiasm around this technology led to many new project announcements in the last few years, but in
the area of open science, most are in concept or prototype status as our analysis showed hence are not
suitable for full integration. To prevent the waste of resources, we advise making sure only to actively use
blockchain applications that are at a mature state and already providing the desired functionalities

A couple of the analyzed projects aim to make intermediaries in science obsolete. These would
primarily be publishers. However, the publishers can also use the BT for their good. It provides the
potential for them to partially automate distribution and peer-review processes via SCs, and to decrease
their costs to manage the steadily increasing amount of knowledge and number of publications. As a
synergy effect, these aspects can also be positive for researchers, for instance, through fewer publication
fees and faster feedbacks. Further, publishers can open up their operations to transparently show how
peerreviewing and other activities function in order to improve their trustworthiness

We also think, as mentioned in some literature, that the adoption rate of the BT will decide about
its future development both in science and in all other application fields. So, the number of users is a key
factor; a network without participants does not make sense. Most of the projects we analyzed had, from
a subjective point of view, a non-existent or small community, so we opine that the technology needs a
push explicitly for its usage in open science; maybe a big publisher, stakeholder, or a norm? Overall, it is
still a fairly new technology, so it is not yet possible to say for sure how the masses will interact with it
and what behavior will emerge.

6. Challenges and Research Potentials

In this section, we describe in the context of our third research question challenges and research
potentials that we identified during our analysis. Future works should address them in order to eliminate
technological and legal insecurities and to enhance the usability of the BT for open science and beyond.
We focused on some of the most relevant and promising topics in our view, which got not or
insufficiently investigated yet. They shall provide an impulse in the form of starting points for further
research; as a positive side effect, addressing these issues can partially also foster other non-scientific
areas

6.4. Scientific Metrics

The primary information sources of scientific metrics are research platforms, for instance,
ResearchGate, Mendeley32 , Altmetric33, Web of Science34, and Google Scholar. Each of them uses its
own database, which consists mainly of research profiles, publications, and their references to other
research work. One exemplary metric is the number of citations that is, among other things, an element
to calculate the impact factor of research papers and researchers. In that regard we compared, as short
examples, the overall quantity of citations of two researchers (Jöran Beel from the Trinity College Dublin
in Ireland and Melanie Swan from the Purdue University in Indiana, United States) and of the Bitcoin
Whitepaper between ResearchGate and Google Scholar - date: 20th July 2019 (see Table 2).

7. Conclusions
 So long as the adoption of the BT grows, we expect it to get more mature continuously. In this
regard, the addressing of the identified challenges will play a vital role in the future. The current situation
is comparable to a greenfield in which no specific constraints exist, and researchers have many
opportunities to implement new innovative blockchainbased systems and application scenarios.
Altogether, after our review, we summarize that the capabilities of the BT for open science are by far not
exhausted yet. We conclude that the technology can have a significant positive impact on scientific work
and its open ecosystems but that primarily depends on the technology’s acceptance of the scientific
community and all other associated stakeholders, which is currently unpredictable.
Referinte

[1] Nakamoto, 2008

[2] State Channels …

https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/362.pdf

[3] A review of Blockchain Technology and Blockchain Project Fostering Open Science

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00016/full