About this Research Topic
Blockchain is fundamentally a technology of trust, but transformative possibilities to benefit society more broadly are emerging. As blockchain has trust, openness and transparency built into its design, its benefits are wide-ranging and impact multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a list of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 for the year 2030. Among the list of 17 SDGs, four of them namely good health and well-being, sustainable cities and communities, clean water and sanitation, and affordable and clean energy are of great interest for blockchain researchers. Applications of SDGs in healthcare, smart cities, and green energy are the main research areas to be considered. Blockchain has a strong potential to be used for SDGs and social business — a non-profit business model where the investments are being made in social causes for the socio-economic development of underprivileged communities. For example, NGOs operate similar to any other business as they have people working in accounting, management, fundraising and operations. However, NGOs often encounter problems of their own while trying to solve the problems of others. They run into difficulty in terms of gaining and maintaining the support of the general population as well as from larger donors, raising funds, and ensuring transparency around how their organization functions. Blockchain technology provides solutions that enhance trust, transparency and auditability.
Current models of government can include bureaucracy and inefficiencies, which does not allow good governance of society. The direct participation of citizens in decision making may be limited, and most of the background information is not accessible to everyone. The main properties of blockchain technology are decentralisation, transparency and immutability and the biggest advantage of using blockchain is trust between public and institutions. Blockchain provides this trust by information sharing to all parties. However, several technical challenges are present with blockchain as an application for SDGs. The biggest challenge is the throughput of blockchain. Bitcoin provides approximately 4-6 transactions per second while Ethereum can handle approximately 10-15 transactions per second. For the purpose of real-life applications of blockchain to implement SDGs, we need higher throughput. Few blockchain communities worked in this direction, and increased throughput but the proposed solutions are not truly decentralized and distributed. Network scalability is another issue for higher throughput systems as several newly proposed blockchain systems are not suitable for bigger networks and only support small networks. In addition, the storage scalability is another issue of any blockchain system, as the blocks only store a minimal amount of data and are only suitable to store transactions. These problems need to be addressed when considering the efficient application of Blockchain for SDG’s.
The Research Topic offers a venue for presenting novel research in blockchain for both applicative and theoretical research. All papers must clearly define what ‘good’ and ‘value’ will mean within the context of the work. ‘Good’ should not be assumed, but rather developed and explained. What is good and how does the work achieve good? The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Blockchain for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• Scalability issues of blockchain implementation for SDGs;
• Integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain for SDGs;
• Handling big data used for SDGs through Blockchain and IoT;
• Privacy preservation in blockchain ledger for SDGs;
• Challenges and Opportunities in the Blockchain for SDGs;
• Game theory and blockchain-based security framework for SDGs;
• Trust and Security management in the Blockchain for SDGs.
Current models of government can include bureaucracy and inefficiencies, which does not allow good governance of society. The direct participation of citizens in decision making may be limited, and most of the background information is not accessible to everyone. The main properties of blockchain technology are decentralisation, transparency and immutability and the biggest advantage of using blockchain is trust between public and institutions. Blockchain provides this trust by information sharing to all parties. However, several technical challenges are present with blockchain as an application for SDGs. The biggest challenge is the throughput of blockchain. Bitcoin provides approximately 4-6 transactions per second while Ethereum can handle approximately 10-15 transactions per second. For the purpose of real-life applications of blockchain to implement SDGs, we need higher throughput. Few blockchain communities worked in this direction, and increased throughput but the proposed solutions are not truly decentralized and distributed. Network scalability is another issue for higher throughput systems as several newly proposed blockchain systems are not suitable for bigger networks and only support small networks. In addition, the storage scalability is another issue of any blockchain system, as the blocks only store a minimal amount of data and are only suitable to store transactions. These problems need to be addressed when considering the efficient application of Blockchain for SDG’s.
The Research Topic offers a venue for presenting novel research in blockchain for both applicative and theoretical research. All papers must clearly define what ‘good’ and ‘value’ will mean within the context of the work. ‘Good’ should not be assumed, but rather developed and explained. What is good and how does the work achieve good? The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Blockchain for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• Scalability issues of blockchain implementation for SDGs;
• Integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain for SDGs;
• Handling big data used for SDGs through Blockchain and IoT;
• Privacy preservation in blockchain ledger for SDGs;
• Challenges and Opportunities in the Blockchain for SDGs;
• Game theory and blockchain-based security framework for SDGs;
• Trust and Security management in the Blockchain for SDGs.
Keywords: Applications of Blockchain, Sustainable Development Goals, Internet of Things (IoT), Cryptography, Game Theory
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
