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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>2026-04-11T11:03:56.219+00:00</pubDate>
        <ttl>60</ttl>
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        <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.2026.1768301</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.2026.1770848</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.2026.1801364</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>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1766092</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1766092</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain meets AI in healthcare: a review of convergent technologies for digital health transformation]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-17T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Systematic Review</category>
        <author>Jialin Liu</author><author>Xiaowen Hu</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionBlockchain and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are shaping a new medical ecosystem as two key technologies for the digital transformation of healthcare.MethodsThis paper provides systematic review and theoretical framework for understanding the evolutionary logic, key themes and future trends of blockchain‐artificial intelligence integration.Results and DiscussionThis study discusses the digital health transformation path of blockchain and AI in the healthcare field from dimensions such as theme clustering, trend evolution, technical background, application, and future challenges. Blockchain has advantages in building a trusted data infrastructure. Artificial intelligence has a natural talent for enhancing the efficiency of clinical decision‐making and operations. The deep integration between the two is driving the transformation of healthcare from single‐point digitalization to system intelligence. Despite challenges such as regulatory systems, cross‐institutional collaboration, talent structure, and medical ethics, reliable intelligent healthcare systems have become the development direction of future healthcare models.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1745200</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1745200</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Sustainability assessment of blockchain systems in timber supply chains: environmental and economic impacts]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-12T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Lukas Stopfer</author><author>Eugen Buss</author><author>Alexander Kaulen</author><author>Ferréol Berendt</author><author>Felipe De Miguel</author><author>Marcel Püls</author><author>Stefan Lier</author><author>Mirella Elias</author><author>Stelian Alexandru Borz</author><author>Marc Hanewinkel</author><author>Thomas Purfürst</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This study quantifies the energy use, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions, and transaction-related costs of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in the context of timber traceability. It combines: (i) a PRISMA-guided systematic review of empirical studies on DLT energy consumption; and (ii) benchmark values derived from continuously updated online monitoring sources, captured at defined access dates and fully documented in the . Comparable metrics are reported at the level of individual traceability events (kWh/tx, gCO2e/tx, and USD/tx) and are related to a realistic timber supply chain transaction model that was empirically validated in a pilot study. The results reveal substantial differences in sustainability performance across consensus mechanisms. Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks exhibit prohibitively high energy demand and CO2e emissions for frequent traceability notarizations. In contrast, Proof-of-Stake (PoS), PBFT-based, hybrid, and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) architectures enable low-energy and low-cost event logging. This study bridges the gap between established DLT sustainability research and the operational requirements of regulated forestry traceability by providing a transparent and reproducible benchmarking workflow that includes URLs, access dates and calculation spreadsheets.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1783805</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1783805</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The evidentiary value of blockchain in civil litigation: comparative insights and future directions]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-10T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Serkan Kaya</author><author>Nesibe Kurt Konca</author><author>Emre Kıyak</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This article examines the evidentiary value of blockchain technology in civil litigation through a comparative legal analysis. While blockchain’s technical features offer significant potential for creating reliable evidence, the study demonstrates that technical security alone does not establish legal certainty. The research analyses how different legal systems approach blockchain evidence, including China’s direct integration into internet courts, the United States’ cautious application within existing electronic evidence frameworks subject to hearsay rules, the European Union’s technology-neutral approach through eIDAS regulations, and the varied national practices in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Türkiye. The findings reveal that blockchain records face inherent functional limitations, particularly in proving physical-world events, as they can only guarantee data integrity within the digital environment. The study identifies three scenarios where blockchain evidence proves most effective: proving transactions executed directly on blockchain networks, serving as an electronic detection instrument for transactions occurring outside the network, and recording real-world events directly onto blockchain systems. However, challenges persist across jurisdictions, including the absence of harmonised standards, difficulties in establishing attribution, concerns about the “garbage in, garbage out” principle, and the need for expert testimony in evaluating blockchain evidence. The article concludes that the effective integration of blockchain into evidence law requires clear normative frameworks that balance technical reliability with procedural safeguards. It recommends establishing specific admissibility criteria for blockchain records, developing standardised verification mechanisms, providing judicial training on the technology, and coordinating with international standards such as UNCITRAL and EU regulations to ensure uniformity across jurisdictions.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1644115</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1644115</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) tokenomics]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-03-09T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Muneer Maher Alshater</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) utilize crypto-economic incentives to orchestrate the crowdsourced deployment and operation of real-world infrastructure. The design and long-term viability of their tokenomic systems are central to their potential but represent a complex and rapidly evolving field. This scoping review provides a structured synthesis of DePIN tokenomics, moving beyond descriptive mapping to organize its core design primitives into a coherent analytical model. Following the Arksey and O'Malley framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, this review charts and synthesizes data thematically. Key findings reveal a prevailing “DePIN Flywheel” pattern grounded in a Burn-and-Mint Equilibrium, where demand is monetized through fiat-denominated usage credits created by burning the network’s native token. This mechanism, alongside governance-calibrated issuance and collateral requirements, forms the core of DePIN’s economic architecture. However, the literature consistently highlights significant challenges: the impact of token price volatility on provider economics, ensuring robust incentive alignment, generating sufficient non-speculative demand, and navigating regulatory uncertainty. We conclude with a research agenda prioritizing empirical event studies of governance changes, quality-adjusted reward measurement, and the development of valuation frameworks appropriate for these hybrid utility-governance assets.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1762781</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1762781</link>
        <title><![CDATA[TeleZK-L2: a scalable zk-SNARK framework for privacy-preserving telehealth data verification on Layer-2 blockchain]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-02-18T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Prabhavathi Jayaraman</author><author>Radhakrishnan Delhibabu</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionIn the contemporary digital health landscape, securing personal health data against unauthorized access while ensuring its verifiability is a paramount challenge. A critical conflict exists between the transparency required for data verification and the privacy mandated by global regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR. Existing Layer-1 blockchain solutions suffer from prohibitive gas costs and high latency, rendering them unsuitable for real-time monitoring of high-volume health data streams.MethodsThis paper proposes TeleZK-L2, a novel framework that synergizes distributed Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) with Layer-2 scaling solutions. The architecture introduces a Distributed Prover Network (DPN) to parallelize heavy cryptographic computations and utilizes Optimistic Proof Aggregation to minimize on-chain data footprints. The verification logic is anchored on the Polygon zkEVM to ensure high throughput and low-cost settlement.ResultsExtensive simulations on a 16-node high-performance cluster demonstrate that TeleZK-L2 generates proofs at a rate 40% faster than the standard Groth16 baseline. Furthermore, the framework reduces on-chain verification costs by approximately 52%. The system maintains constant-time verification complexity regardless of batch size, achieving a peak throughput of 260 TPS.DiscussionTeleZK-L2 provides the technical privacy guarantees necessary to support adherence to HIPAA and GDPR data minimization mandates while maintaining cryptographic soundness. By resolving the "Scalability-Privacy Trilemma," this framework demonstrates significant potential for large-scale deployment in national telehealth infrastructures and remote patient monitoring ecosystems.]]></description>
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