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        <title>Frontiers in Blockchain | New and Recent Articles</title>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/blockchain</link>
        <description>RSS Feed for Frontiers in Blockchain | New and Recent Articles</description>
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        <pubDate>2026-05-04T08:24:07.581+00:00</pubDate>
        <ttl>60</ttl>
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        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1825419</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1825419</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Can a universal digital ethics exist in a structurally unequal world? A critical theory perspective on Web3, metaverse, and the global south]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-22T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Opinion</category>
        <author>Jose Pablo Salazar Aguilar</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1762861</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1762861</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Bridging the governance gap in agricultural blockchain-based smart contracts: a bibliometric-driven architectural framework]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-22T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Systematic Review</category>
        <author>Huda M. Elmatsani</author><author>Arief Sartono</author><author>S. Joni Munarso</author><author>Sari Intan Kailaku</author><author>Yogi Purna Rahardjo</author><author>Noveria Sjafrina</author><author>Mochammad Jusuf Djafar</author><author>Ermi E. Koeslulat</author><author>Sitti Ramlah</author><author>Satrio Utomo</author><author>Boni Benyamin</author><author>Puji Astuti</author><author>Agung Hendriadi</author><author>Arief Arianto</author>
        <description><![CDATA[BackgroundAgricultural supply chains are characterized by high transaction costs and agency risks stemming from information asymmetry and biological variability. Although blockchain is widely proposed as a solution, existing literature predominantly focuses on passive traceability rather than active algorithmic governance.MethodsThis study conducts a bibliometric synthesis of 367 documents (2018–2025) to map the field’s intellectual structure and research orientation. Co-occurrence analysis was employed to reveal distinct thematic clusters and identify the evolution of technological infrastructure in the sector.ResultsThe analysis reveals a critical volume-impact paradox within the technological infrastructure group and a 16:1 asymmetry between traceability and automation research. This indicates a significant gap in leveraging smart contracts for economic enforcement and active supply chain management.ConclusionWe propose the Agri-Cognito framework, a prescriptive architecture designed to bridge the cognitive void through AI-driven pre-consensus validation. The framework provides a theoretical blueprint for transitioning agricultural blockchains from passive digital logbooks to autonomous governance ecosystems, offering a direct response to the “oracle problem” and structural inefficiencies in current implementations.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1785590</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1785590</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Ethics: essential infrastructure for governance of Web3 and the metaverse in the age of AI]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-20T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Jane Thomason</author>
        <description><![CDATA[As Web3 architecture, artificial intelligence (AI), immersive environments, and connected devices converge, societies are moving from digitally mediated interaction to digitally programmed organisations, reshaping how value, labour, identity, learning, and participation are produced and governed. Programmable money, decentralised identity, AI-driven avatars, digital twins, and immersive environments illustrate how programmability collapses traditional distinctions between infrastructure, governance, and social behaviour. While these systems offer significant potential for inclusion, efficiency, and innovation, they also introduce profound ethical risks. This means that ethical challenges should become core governance elements, as code, data, and automated systems increasingly mediate trust, agency, and power at scale. Ethical failures in digital systems can scale across platforms, populations, and jurisdictions. This paper conceptualises a structural shift in which institutional rules, incentives, and governance functions are increasingly executed directly within programmable digital infrastructure, making ethics, accountability, and trust intrinsic properties of system design.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1735510</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1735510</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain-integrated machine learning framework for transparent smart contract vulnerability detection]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-20T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Ankit Vishnoi</author><author>Varun Sapra</author><author>Luxmi Sapra</author><author>Preeti Narooka</author><author>Deepak Panwar</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionThe proliferation of dApps is increasing the attack surface for exploitable vulnerabilities in smart contracts, and thus there is a need for verifiable detection methodologies.MethodsIn this work, we propose a machine learning framework with blockchain integration for explainable and note that “explainable” implies “verifiable” smart contract vulnerability detection. The SmartBugs-curated data was systematically pre-processed with metadata filtering, feature correlation analysis and encoding for model evaluation. Four ensemble learning methods, Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost were tested under identical experimental settings for comparison.ResultsThe Random Forest classifier initially achieved the best balance in terms of stability and performance with an accuracy of 87.67%, successfully detecting important vulnerability classes such as re-entrancy, unchecked low-level calls, etc. To enhance the applicability of our blockchain-based machine learning framework for vulnerable smart contract analysis we extend it from the initial 143-contract dataset SmartBugs-Curated to evaluate it on on large-scale set, namely, SmartBugs-Wild which contains 47,398 real-world Ethereum contracts. Based on 29 static contract-level features, unsupervised clustering (k = 4, silhouette score = 0.3735) identifies discrete structural archetypes present in the dataset. Ensemble classifiers (such as XGBoost, CatBoost, Random Forest and LightGBM) can get excellent discriminative performance on these cluster labels: LightGBM achieves 99% accuracy and 0.98918 macro-F1.DiscussionThe additional results show that the approach scales, is robust and leads to stable models, even if interpretable. After injecting SHAP-based explainability, the interpretability and predictive power of CatBoost became similar to those of Random Forest. In order to guarantee end-to-end trust and traceability of our optimised classifier, this was linked to a blockchain oracle that independently store the outcomes as well as confidence scores for predictions directly onto an Ethereum-compatible ledger through a Vulnerability Registry smart contract. This integration provides the data is immutable, auditable and transparent in reporting.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1767169</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1767169</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The impact of bank size on blockchain technology adoption: empirical evidence from Nigerian deposit money banks]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-15T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Dolapo Faith Sule</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Evidence from developed countries has shown that larger banks usually have more financial and technical resources to finance and implement blockchain technology more effectively, compared to smaller banks. Even though interest in blockchain is rising in the Nigerian banking sector, there is little empirical research on how bank size affects blockchain adoption. In view of this gap, this study examines the influence of bank size on the adoption of blockchain technology within Nigerian Deposit Money Banks (DMBs). A longitudinal research design was used, and secondary data were extracted from the published annual reports of the banks from 2015 to 2024. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the findings of the study. Findings revealed that the size of banks has a positive and significant effect (coeff = 0.124, p = 0.000) on blockchain technology adoption of banks in Nigeria. This demonstrates that larger banks tend to adopt blockchain technology compared to smaller ones. Similarly, return on assets (ROA) has a positive and significant impact (coeff = 0.133, p = 0.0162) on the extent of blockchain adoption of the examined banks. Because ROA was used to proxy the profitability of the banks, this result suggests that an increase in the profitability of banks is an advantage in terms of blockchain adoption. A negative relationship exists between leverage and blockchain technology adoption (−0.0071) as anticipated, but the impact is not significant (p = 0.5731). Lastly, this study found that age has a positive and significant (coeff = 0.0158, p = 0.016) impact on blockchain technology adoption among Nigerian banks, as older banks are investing in this technology more than younger ones. The study concludes that larger banks demonstrate a higher tendency to adopt blockchain technology due to greater resource availability, enhanced technical capacity, and stronger strategic incentives. This study, therefore, concludes that policymakers and industry players should provide supportive policies and programmes to promote blockchain adoption across all bank sizes. Partnerships between smaller banks and fintech firms can help bridge resource gaps, allowing smaller banks to benefit from fintech expertise and innovations without incurring full development costs.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1784449</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1784449</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Trustless intelligent rooms: a blockchain-enabled federated learning framework with lightweight neural networks for privacy-preserving healthcare]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-10T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Ramesh Kumar Veerapaneni</author><author>Radhakrishnan Delhibabu</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The rapid aging of the global population necessitates automated healthcare environments, yet current Intelligent Room architectures relying on centralized cloud servers face critical challenges regarding data opacity and single points of failure. This paper proposes a novel architecture that synergizes Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) with Federated Learning (FL) to create a trustless, immutable audit trail for patient monitoring. Unlike traditional FL approaches, we introduce a blockchain-based aggregation mechanism that eliminates the central authority. Furthermore, to address the resource constraints of edge devices such as smartphones, we implement a specific Lightweight Neural Network (L-CNN) utilizing depthwise separable convolutions. The proposed system ensures that patient data remains local while model updates are cryptographically verified on-chain, offering a scalable, low-cost solution for resource-constrained healthcare environments.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1743242</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1743242</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The impact of blockchain technology on corporate governance: empirical evidence on American firms]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-10T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Hanene Ezzine</author><author>Ines Abdelkafi</author><author>Aida Smaoui</author><author>Kwadria Takwa</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Technological innovation has generated an increasing number of technologies that have transformed financial services and corporate governance structures. Among these innovations, blockchain technology represents a decentralized and transparent system capable of reshaping governance mechanisms. This study examines the relationship between blockchain technology (BT) and corporate governance (CG) using panel data from 35 U.S. firms over the period 2010–2021. The empirical analysis employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and fixed-effects regression models, with the Hausman test guiding model selection. The findings reveal that blockchain adoption is significantly and positively associated with corporate governance, with larger firms being more likely to adopt such technology, thereby enhancing governance quality. In addition, corporate performance is found to have a positive and significant relationship with governance, while leverage, research intensity, and sales size do not show significant effects. These results provide important theoretical and empirical contributions by highlighting blockchain as a strategic tool for improving transparency, accountability, and trust in corporate operations. The study also offers practical implications for policymakers and regulators to develop supportive frameworks that encourage blockchain adoption while ensuring data protection, as well as for corporate decision-makers seeking to enhance governance efficiency, reduce agency conflicts, and promote long-term sustainability in an increasingly digitalized economy.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1840145</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1840145</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Editorial: DAO, governance and fairness]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-09T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Editorial</category>
        <author>Qin Wang</author><author>Xu Wang</author><author>Guangsheng Yu</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1616018</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1616018</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain’s impact on key stakeholders in the seafood supply chain: a systematic review]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-02T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Katrina Xue-Lønmo</author><author>Asle Fagerstrøm</author><author>Nikola Ljusic</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Blockchain technology can potentially enhance transparency, traceability, and trustworthiness within the seafood supply chain, effectively addressing seafood fraud and safety. This systematic review synthesizes 99 relevant academic publications from six databases from 2018 to 2025, examining blockchain adoption and its impacts on key stakeholders. Our findings show that the key stakeholders are the production sector, distribution sector, market sector, and governance and regulatory sector. The key stakeholders’ role is related to traceability and sustainability compliance, preventing seafood fraud and mislabeling, and enhancing market trust and consumer awareness. Findings regarding adoption highlight positive factors, including cost-efficiency, operational improvements, sustainability, and enhanced consumer trust and loyalty, alongside challenges like regulatory uncertainty, scalability concerns, and coordination complexities. In addition, blockchain-enabled information notably benefits fishmongers from improved traceability, reduced costs, and strengthened market positioning. Our analysis is that blockchain adoption in the seafood industry remains limited due to fragmented governance structures, inconsistent standards, and constrained Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) capacity, which hinder data interoperability and coordinated implementation. Moving forward, regulatory alignment, institutional coordination, and technological standardization are essential to transform fragmented pilot projects into scalable, production-level traceability systems. Future research should validate blockchain’s real-world performance through empirical and cross-cultural studies, refine stakeholder roles, and develop interoperable, regulation-ready authentication frameworks that promote adoption among SMEs.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1744921</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1744921</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Clustering cryptocurrencies market through the innovative DM-MSTP method]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-02T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Souhail Dhouib</author><author>Hanene Ezzine</author><author>Mouna Abdelhedi</author><author>Siwar Ellouz</author><author>Habib Chabchoub</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Cryptocurrencies illustrate rapid technological transformation, market diversification, and growing adoption by investors. Clustering cryptocurrencies into homogeneous groups enables investors and portfolio managers to better understand and control risk transmission mechanisms and market co-movements, ultimately optimizing portfolio construction and enhancing risk-return management. This paper introduces a new Artificial Intelligence method, Dhouib-Matrix-MSTP (DM-MSTP), to cluster the cryptocurrencies market. At first, the correlation matrix between the whole thirty-five cryptocurrencies is converted as a distance matrix. At second, the DM-MSTP method is developed to present the minimum spanning tree joining the all thirty-five cryptocurrencies (as a topological representation). Finally and to help the decision-maker, the minimum spanning tree represented by DM-MSTP can be used to cluster the cryptocurrencies by groups.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1770848</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1770848</link>
        <title><![CDATA[An agentic AI marketplace for prelitigation analyses with ZKP-integrated ethical verifications]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Chibuzor Udokwu</author><author>Vimal Dwivedi</author><author>Adam Buick</author><author>John Keers</author><author>Jun Liu</author>
        <description><![CDATA[An agentic AI system could assist in reducing case workloads in the judiciary by providing a probable outcome for litigating parties and eliminating the need to go to court. However, agentic AI uses different ML and LLM models in its workflows, and these models may reflect biases present in their training data. These biases could affect the outcome of the pre-litigation proceedings, favouring one litigating party over the other, depending on demographic representations in the training dataset. We consider an Agentic AI marketplace where litigants can verify demographic representation in the training data of ML/LLM models used in each Agentic AI before selecting a suitable system for pre-trial analyses. ZKPs provide cryptographic primitives for verifying such claims without disclosing full information about the underlying dataset. This paper outlines a conceptual framework for performing these verifications within the European regulatory context. First, we demonstrate the implementation of an Agentic AI system for prelitigation analyses and then conceptualize an Agentic AI marketplace, outlining different technological interactions. We then formalise demographic representation as a verifiable property and outline a ZKP framework for verification, comprising different tech stacks like BBS+ signatures, bulletproofs, zk-SNARKs, and smart contract oracles. This paper presents a conceptual and architectural framework rather than an empirical system evaluation, and aims to establish a foundational design space for privacy-preserving bias verification in agentic legal AI.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1768301</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1768301</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain-enabled tokenization for health insurance claims: trends, challenges, and future directions]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Bhawana Tyagi</author><author>Naga Priyadarsini R</author><author>Priyadharsini M</author><author>Vimal Dwivedi</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The vaccine of blockchain technology has quickly altered the processing, validation, and settlement of health insurance claims by bringing transparency, automation, and tamper-proof data exchange. The traditional insurance claims systems continue to suffer from fragmented workflows, inconsistent data standards and high risk of fraud. This paper provides a detailed survey of the issues currently affecting claim management and the increasing importance of blockchain as a trust-enhancing technology. The present advancements in healthcare insurance blockchain research are established through a review of current literature that identifies required research areas. To enhance understanding of frauds, we organize healthcare insurance fraud into a framework that shows different attack methods that tokenization can protect. The fundamental principles of blockchain and data tokenization as healthcare assets are explained which led to the development of a complex survey system that operates on blockchain-based tokenization platforms. The research identifies five essential elements which include smart contracts, identity tokens, claim tokens, off-chain medical data orchestration, and interoperability systems as the core subjects of the study. The paper presents its research findings about digital transformation advantages which include fraud reduction and automated adjudication and real-time tracking and increased participant trust. The paper establishes an essential discussion about multiple obstacles which include universal token standardization issues and privacy concerns and legal compliance requirements that create scalability and interoperability challenges. The survey not only covers the technology, operations and regulation, but it also points out the future of health insurance as being secure, fast and easily scalable through tokenization.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1730645</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1730645</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Self-sovereign identity for verifiable authorship consent and privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest screening in academic publishing: a permissioned blockchain registry approach]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Kamal Al-Sabahi</author><author>Yousuf Khamis Al Mabsali</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionAcademic publishing, a cornerstone of knowledge dissemination and scientific advancement, increasingly faces ethical threats such as unconsented authorship, gift authorship, author ambiguity, and undisclosed conflicts of interest. Although infrastructures such as ORCID support researcher identity disambiguation, they do not adequately enforce explicit authorship consent, verify contributor roles, or enable privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest screening during peer review.MethodsThis study proposes a standards-aligned decentralized conceptual framework for ethical authorship validation. The framework integrates Self-Sovereign Identity, Decentralized Identifiers, and Verifiable Credentials to capture explicit co-author consent as verifiable events, embed verified authorship metadata in publications, and support privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest checks through zero-knowledge techniques. A permissioned ledger functions as a trust registry for hashes and status indicators, without storing personally identifiable information on-chain, and supports revocation. To assess the relevance of the proposed design, a stakeholder survey was conducted with researchers, editors, and reviewers.ResultsThe proposed framework addresses key gaps in existing scholarly identity and publishing infrastructures by introducing mechanisms for verifiable authorship consent, contributor-role validation, and privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest screening. Survey findings indicate strong stakeholder support for both consent enforcement and privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest checks.DiscussionThis work contributes a conceptual design for strengthening trust, accountability, and transparency in academic publishing through decentralized identity and verifiable credential technologies. The findings provide formative empirical support for future prototyping and evaluation.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1832534</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1832534</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Editorial: Blockchain, Web3, and the metaverse: legal, managerial, and financial pathways for future business and governance]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Editorial</category>
        <author>Isik Akin</author><author>Meryem Akin</author><author>Eda Sahin-Sengul</author><author>Beril Taskin Kapusuzoglu</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1801364</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1801364</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain based chain of custody and digital evidence legality in post conflict prosecutions]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-26T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Ibrahim Ahmed Haji</author><author>Sangar Dawood Mohammed</author><author>Kawar Mohammed Mousa</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Digital evidence has become central in post-conflict prosecutions for terrorism, war crimes, and organized violence, especially when material is recorded by civilians, NGOs, and digital platforms. Courts increasingly face disputes over authenticity and chain of custody, which often weaken cases or risk unfair outcomes. Existing legal scholarship discusses digital evidence and blockchain separately, yet it does not sufficiently explain how blockchain-based custody records should be treated within criminal procedure, particularly under conditions of weak institutions and unequal access to technology. This gap motivates the present study, which responds to growing reliance on digital infrastructures in post-conflict settings and the rising volume of contested digital material before courts. The aim of the study is to develop a reform-oriented theoretical framework for assessing the legality and reliability of blockchain-registered digital evidence in post-conflict prosecutions. Using doctrinal analysis and normative legal reasoning, the study develops a structured theoretical conceptual framework for a distributed chain of custody model based on provenance, continuity, and contestability, and examines how permissioned blockchain systems can support evidentiary review without replacing judicial assessment. Special attention is given to fair trial guarantees, especially the need to ensure that defendants can meaningfully challenge blockchain-based integrity claims. The study is important because it offers doctrinal guidance for courts and lawmakers seeking to modernize evidentiary rules while maintaining procedural fairness in fragile post-conflict justice systems, while also providing a structured conceptual design that can guide later empirical testing.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1770743</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1770743</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain as a model for granting trust in AI-mediated digital transactions]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-26T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Ghazi Ayed Alghathian</author><author>Karima Belabbes Mohammed Krim</author><author>Mohammad Khamaysa</author><author>Murad Altarawneh</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Digital transaction law traditionally relies on centralized trust service providers. However, the emergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence introduces decentralized and autonomous transaction systems that challenge existing legal frameworks of trust, accountability, and evidence. This study employs a techno-legal doctrinal and comparative methodology to examine whether blockchain architecture can functionally align with legally defined trust services under electronic transaction frameworks in Jordan, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and the European Union (eIDAS). The analysis demonstrates that blockchain can fulfill several core trust service functions, particularly data integrity preservation and reliable timestamping, but remains incompatible with qualified trust services where legal frameworks require centralized certification and formally recognized identity infrastructures. To address this regulatory gap, the study proposes a rebuttable presumption framework in which blockchain records establish prima facie evidence of transactional integrity in AI-mediated transactions, supported by a layered liability model that allocates responsibility among developers, system operators, and application-level actors.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1758395</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1758395</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Tokenomics design for local communities. Interdisciplinary method for co-design]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-26T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Methods</category>
        <author>Irene Domenicale</author><author>Cristina Toti</author><author>Cristina Viano</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Blockchain technologies are increasingly explored as tools for strengthening local, collaborative economies, yet existing tokenomics models remain rooted in financial incentives and market-based logics. This paper advances an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis and design of socially embedded tokenized systems for local communities. Drawing from token engineering, economic sociology, monetary theory, and research on digital platforms, we develop a multidimensional framework that captures the social, governance, economic, and technological dimensions of tokenized circuits of commerce. Building on this framework, we introduce a participatory co-design methodology based on four phases, from contextual framing to socioeconomic modeling, mechanism design, and technical token specification. The method emphasizes the need for aligning token design with community values, non-market forms of integration, and the relational and situated nature of money and digital artifacts. It is complemented by a civic-oriented blockchain wallet that can be customized to support different tokenized systems. The applicability of this methodology is preliminarily evaluated through a case study in the food-waste recovery domain, conducted as part of a feasibility study for a tokenized redistribution system addressing social inclusion.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1781539</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1781539</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Multivocal literature review of software architectures for blockchain networks]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-23T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Juan Manuel Sobral</author><author>Mario De los Santos</author><author>Martin Solari</author><author>Santiago Matalonga</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Blockchain technology continues to promise transformative impact across domains such as supply chains, finance, and the Internet of Things (IoT). However, the rapid growth and increasing heterogeneity of blockchain platforms have made architectural decision-making progressively more complex for software architects. This study extends and updates a previous Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) to systematically identify and characterize active blockchain networks across foundational protocol layers. We analyze key architectural dimensions including consensus mechanisms, decentralization and access control models, smart contract support, block and ledger structures, interoperability features, and architectural lineage. Drawing on both academic and gray literature, we characterize a total of 147 blockchain networks spanning Layers-0 through-2. Our findings reveal an ecosystem largely driven by industrial innovation, with limited consolidation in the formal academic literature. The resulting architectural mappings aim to support software architects in making informed, evidence-based decisions when integrating blockchain technologies into software-intensive systems.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1806905</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1806905</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Correction: A scaling distributed access control model for blockchain-based file storage systems]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-19T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Correction</category>
        <author>Obadah Hammoud</author><author>Ivan A. Tarkhanov</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1741756</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1741756</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Token design strategies for entrepreneurial crypto projects, a systematic literature review]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-18T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Systematic Review</category>
        <author>Zishan Ashraf Mohammad</author><author>Joachim Bauer</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study identifies major approaches in token design for founders in the cryptocurrency/web3/blockchain space. The high failure rate of blockchain companies means that successful long-term performance will depend greatly on well-designed tokens. This study will integrate all prior research to highlight the most important aspects of structured tokenomics, including token utility, governance, and security. The study also contributes to the literature by introducing the Business Model Canvas as a conceptual framework that enables the integration of best practices for token design, drawing on both academic and industry literature. The results indicate significant gaps in the literature. This study offers new and practical insights for founders to enhance stakeholders’ engagement, improve regulatory compliance, and ensure project viability in the volatile cryptocurrency market. Furthermore, this research generates new knowledge that bridges the gap between the theory and practice of tokenomics, laying the groundwork for future research to develop and refine token design strategies.]]></description>
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