Blockchain Lab

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Introduction

Since 2019 the Blockchain Lab is part of the Institute for Internet Security if(is) headed by Prof. Dr. (TU NN) Norbert Pohlmann. The international and interdisciplinary research team has a diverse skill set to deliver high quality research and enable industry partners to use blockchain in a secure and contemporary manner. Our research is fundamental, aimed for evaluation of blockchain technologies, implementation and uses cases across private, governmental and organizational level. The research includes context analysis for certain scenarios or technologies, empirical research (deploying, testing, evaluation), literature research and analysis. The goal is always to create or validate safe & secure concepts with different blockchain technologies which are in compliance with current data privacy guidelines and the GDPR. We are the competence center for Blockchain and try to establish blockchain technologies as enablers of new business models and efficient business processes. Blockchain technology as a collaboration tool. The blockchain technology generates an encrypted chain of networked data blocks. In these tamper-proof, distributed and redundant data structures, all transactions in the time sequence are logically traceable, immutable and mapped without a central instance.



Projects

Security of Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technology

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GovChain

A private Goverment Blockchain infrastructure for municipalities and SMEs in NRW enables various regional actors to efficiently advance digitization. Security, decentralization and usability applications are in the foreground. Management services can be optimized using Distributed Ledger Technology. Local data centers in NRW bring themselves into the blockchain infrastructure as nodes. Administrative and business processes should not only be available digitally, but at the same time be implemented safely in accordance with the GDPR. These include, for example, resident registration certificates, resident parking permits, business registration and driver's license.



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Connect Emscher Lippe

Blockchain technology, as a trusted service, provides a foundation for distributed and trusted collaboration, providing great potential for new business models and ecosystems. The elements, principles, and architecture of Blockchain technology demonstrate the technical background and interesting opportunities, security, and trust to achieve. All IT security and trust functions are inherently integrated into the blockchain technology as a security-by-design. The Blockchain infrastructure has complex communication, security, and trustworthiness capabilities that work in concert to provide the necessary security and trusting capabilities. For many companies, Blockchain is an ideal technology for trusted, distributed collaboration. Trust services, such as the blockchain, will certainly play an increasingly important role in the future.



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IDunion

The IDunion consortium creates an open ecosystem for decentralised identity management. It aims to improve the management of sensitive and personal identifiable information by the concept of Self-Sovereign-Identity (SSI). The SSI approach uses Decentralized Identifiers (DID) and Verifiable Credentials (VC) according to international standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Decentralised Identity Foundation (DIF) and the Trust over IP Foundation (ToIP). The anchor of trust is established by a network consisting of decentralised, heterogeneously distributed nodes and agents that comply with the European legal framework (GDPR and eIDAS).

The Blockchain Lab is contributing to three work packages of the IDunion project: (1) Cyber-security in terms of the consensus algorithm, threat modelling, and penetration testing (2) research and open-source development of the SSI components (3) building the IDunion network and creating its governance structure.

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Research

Blockchain Governance – eBGF

The eco Blockchain Governance Framework (eBGF) is an initiative to create a framework that will support organisations that have the intention to set up a dedicated public-permissioned, consortial blockchain network.

A transparent documentation of the goals and values as well as the technology of the network will enhance the trust in the consortium and the blockchain. And it will improve the reliability and quality of the network, its services and the community in order to operate a professional, production-grade, public-permissioned blockchain.

The eBGF offers guidelines, recommendations for all relevant topics and links to best practice implementations of consortial blockchain networks. The framework suggests a structure and possible paths for the creation of a specific network governance and possible paths for the actual writing process.
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Standardization in the field of blockchain

Standardization in this emerging field of blockchain and cryptocurrencies is highly relevant. The Blockchain Lab of the if(is) is engaged in standardisation work at the following committees:

Blockchain for Science

The bloxberg blockchain is based on a public Ethereum blockchain network. Bloxberg was initiated by the bloxberg consortium at the beginning of 2019 under the leadership of the Max Planck Digital Library to provide scientists with decentralized services worldwide. The consortium consists of leading research organisations, worldwide. The bloxberg consortium aims to foster collaboration among the global scientific community, empowering researchers with robust, autonomous services that transcend institutional boundaries. For research purposes, the Blockchain Lab of the if(is) is supporting bloxberg by running a validation node.

Financial Analysis of Cryptocurrency Markets

Cryptocurrencies are innovative payment systems that operate mostly based on decentralized digital ledgers using blockchain technology. As they’re getting more applications in financial transactions, more people and financial firms urge them to invest in this market. However, due to high volatility and sharp price fluctuations of these assets, developing some trustable models to forecast the market behavior is critical for portfolio management and optimized trading. Large number of unpredictable and uncertain factors makes financial analysis of cryptocurrency one of the most interesting and challenging prediction problems. Here, we are investigating Machine Learning (ML) methods to obtain a comprehensive model to forecast the future behavior of Ether price, the cryptocurrency built on the open source network of Ethereum. Finding effective factors among a vast set of features such as network technical information, macro-economic and financial indicators and even trends of social media, and the way they are correlated to the price movements will be the most important issues in this study.

Blockchain-based Climate Action and Accounting

Climate change represents an existential threat to humanity and will require the greatest mobilization of resources and collaboration in human history. In this effort, the Hyperledger Climate Action & Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG) is focused on supporting the development of an open global climate accounting system to support stakeholders’ efforts to manage our single planetary carbon budget and help achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement (the United Nations global climate accord). To accomplish this, the CA2SIG is fostering a collaborative network of stakeholders to explore how to use digital technologies such as blockchain DLT, open source software, AI, IOT, Big Data, machine learning, etc. to create a transparent climate accounting system that is capable of balancing global climate emissions against global climate actions in order to achieve a net-zero carbon future.

Content Certification

The Open Content Certification Protocol (OCCP) provides a description of the general concept, the method, and involved technologies that can be used by creative individuals, media organisations, or consumers to generate or verify certificates for digital media content. The OCCP is suggesting a process to create and verify content certificates by using open, content-derived, decentralised content identifier technology on public blockchain networks (ISCC). Just like websites use SSL certificates to create trust, security, and provide relevant and reliable information to users online, trustable and verifiable content certificates can act as a building block to create trust in online publications, data and information, verify the authenticity of digital media assets, reduce illegitimate misappropriation of content and support a fair competition and remuneration for creative individuals and media organisations.

Our Project Partners

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Activities

Our recent activities

Team

A Collaborative & Diverse Group

Team Members:

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Robin Klemens

Academic Researcher and PhD Graduate Student with a focus on the topics of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), blockchain-based carbon accounting, and trading of tokenized carbon certificates.
linkedin.com/in/robinklemens/

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Daniel Theis

Academic Researcher and PhD Graduate Student with a focus on the topics of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), Digital Identities, Threat Modeling, Privacy and Usability.
linkedin.com/in/daniel-theis21

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Sebastian Posth

Academic Researcher and PhD Graduate Student with a focus on the topics of content certification, blockchain governance and decentralisation in the cultural and creative industries.
linkedin.com/in/posth

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Dominik Krakau

Student Research Assistant

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Moritz Kappels

IT-Employee

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Kevin Wollowski

Scientific Research Assistant and M.Sc. Student. Currently focused on Blockchain consensus algorithms.

Connect with us

Contact Details

If you have any questions, please feel free to send us an E-mail.

Blockchain Team, Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, Neidenburger Str. 43, Gelsenkirchen
Phone: 0209/9596-696
blockchain@internet-sicherheit.de

Campus Gelsenkirchen