We Are Launching our Own NFT! Characterizing Fashion NFT Transactions-Preliminary Results

Paper presented @BRAINS2023, conference held in Paris (October 2023).

Abstract. Blockchain technology and Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been a hot topic for several years now, as proven by the multitude of brands launching their own NFT projects. In this paper, we will consider some popular fashion NFT collections, namely: adidas Originals Into the Metaverse, AMBUSH OFFICIAL POW! REBOOT, Azuki x AMBUSH IKZ, CULT & RAIN – The Genesis Collection, Dolce& Gabbana: DGFamily, Dolce& Gabbana: DGFamily Glass Box, Chito x Givenchy NFT, MUGLER – We Are All Angel, RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis CRYPTOKICK, Prada Timecapsule. First, we will analyze and examine if we can find salient characteristics of transactions pertaining to these collections. Second, we will attempt to propose a first taxonomy of fashion NFT transactions. From the results, we can state that most transactions occur at the NFT launch and that they belong to the Memberships category. Secondly, the results show that we can propose a taxonomy of four transaction groups or clusters. The findings can have practical implications for both researchers and practitioners, indeed the results: (i) can be a stepping stone for future research on (fashion) NFTs, (ii) can help practitioners analyze transactions using our preliminary taxonomy.

The Third BC4IS Workshop @ CAiSE2023

The third edition of BC4IS was held at CAiSE 2023, in Zaragoza. We are already planning the fourth edition. If you’re a researcher looking for a venue to submit your next paper, please consider BC4IS. Also, do not hesitate to share the information with anyone who might be interested in participating and/or attending the workshop in Limassol!

Blockchain technology offers a wide variety of opportunities to enable new kinds of collaborations and organizations, and to improve existing ones. However, engineering blockchain-based systems is a task that is particularly complex, and that requires specific considerations, along more traditional information systems engineering questions. In this context, research around the definition of requirements for, development, use and evolution of blockchain-based information systems are particularly relevant.

These opportunities and challenges have generated a strong and continuously growing interest from industry and academia in the engineering of blockchain-based information systems. To help further expand knowledge around this technology and to provide relevant answers to blockchain-specific engineering questions, we organized the second edition of the Blockchain for Information Systems (BC4IS) workshop.
The workshop was held in conjunction with the 35th International Confer-
ence on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’23). It is a well-
established and highly visible conference series, addressing contemporary topics in information systems engineering.

We invited researchers working in fields including conceptual modeling, ontology engineering, business process modeling and analysis and information systems to submit their contributions to the workshop. Ultimately, we merged BC4IS with DGD. Four papers were submitted in total, and each received two single blind reviews. A meta-review of each paper was then prepared by the workshop chairs and sent to the authors. Taking into consideration the reviews and the maximum acceptance rate of Springer (set around 50% in this case), two full papers and one short paper have been accepted and presented during the combined workshop.
Additionally, we had the chance to have a PhD presentation, as well as a compelling keynote, given by Felix Härer on the topic of Blockchain interoperability, attracting both blockchain aficionados and non-experts.

When Dashboard’s Content Becomes a Barrier-Exploring the Effects of Cognitive Overloads on BI Adoption

Two colleagues and I recently published and presented a paper entitled “When Dashboard’s Content Becomes a Barrier-Exploring the Effects of Cognitive Overloads on BI Adoption” in International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science.

Abstract. Decision makers in organizations strive to improve the quality of their decisions. One way to improve that process is to objectify the decisions with facts. Big data, business analytics, business intelligence, and more generally data-driven Decision Support Systems (data-driven DSS) intend to achieve this. Organizations invest massively in the development of data-driven DSS and expect them to be adopted and to effectively support decision makers. This raises many technical and methodological challenges, especially regarding the design of dashboards, which can be seen as the visible tip of the data-driven DSS iceberg and which play a major role in the adoption of the entire system. This paper advances early empirical research conducted on one possible root cause for data-driven DSS dashboard adoption or rejection, namely the dashboard content. We study the effect of dashboards over- and underloading on traditional Technology Adoption Models, and try to uncover the trade-offs to which data-driven DSS interface designers are confronted when creating new dashboards. The result is a Dashboard Adoption Model, enriching the seminal TAM model with new content-oriented variables to support the design of more supportive data-driven DSS dashboards.

Feel free to share any comment or question you might have regarding the paper or the topic.

To Fork or Not To Fork? Bitcoin Forks’ Success Analysis Using Twitter Data: Preliminary Results

Short paper presented @BRAINS2022, conference held in Paris.

Abstract. Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency. It is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls it and everyone can take part. And Bitcoin, just like any other open-source projects, has been subject to forks.

In this paper, we will consider some popular Bitcoin forks and we will examine if we can find a link between the value of the fork (i.e. its price) and the overall sentiment of the fork based on Twitter data. The forks we consider here are: Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin Diamond (BCD), Bitcoin Private (BTCP), Bitcoin Atom (BCA), and Bitcoin SV (BSV). From the results, we can state that, for most cryptocurrencies studied here, the number of tweets follows the price trend more closely than the sentiment evolution does.

The findings can have practical implications for both researchers and practitioners, indeed the results: (i) can be a stepping stone for future research on hard forks, (ii) can help practitioners identify the relevant indicators for hard forks price evolution.

The Second BC4IS Workshop @ CAiSE2022

The second edition of BC4IS was held at CAiSE 2022, at the KU Leuven. We are already planning the third edition. If you’re a researcher looking for a venue to submit your next paper, please consider BC4IS. Also, do not hesitate to share the information with anyone who might be interested in participating and/or attending the workshop in Zaragoza!

Blockchain technology offers a wide variety of opportunities to enable new kinds of collaborations and organizations, and to improve existing ones. However, engineering blockchain-based systems is a task that is particularly complex, and that requires specific considerations, along more traditional information systems engineering questions. In this context, research around the definition of requirements for, development, use and evolution of blockchain-based information systems are particularly relevant.

These opportunities and challenges have generated a strong and continuously growing interest from industry and academia in the engineering of blockchain-based information systems. To help further expand knowledge around this technology and to provide relevant answers to blockchain-specific engineering questions, we organized the second edition of the Blockchain for Information Systems (BC4IS) workshop.
The workshop was held in conjunction with the 34th International Confer-
ence on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’22). It is a well-
established and highly visible conference series, addressing contemporary topics in information systems engineering.

We invited researchers working in fields including conceptual modeling, ontology engineering, business process modeling and analysis and information systems to submit their contributions to the workshop. Four papers were submitted, and each received two single blind reviews. A meta-review of each paper was then prepared by the workshop chairs and sent to the authors. Taking into consideration the reviews and the maximum acceptance rate of Springer (set around 50% in this case), two papers have been accepted and presented during the workshop.
Considering the ongoing pandemic, the first edition of the workshop had to
be organized remotely. This year, we were very excited to hold the workshop
physically in Leuven. We also had the chance to have a compelling keynote,
given by Wim Laurier on the topic of “The Ontological Dimensions of Blockchain Initiatives”, attracting both blockchain aficionados and non-experts.

BRAINS 2020

The 2nd Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services took place in September 2020 (BRAINS2020) was supposed to be held in Paris, but unfortunately due to the COVID-2019 pandemic, the conference had to be held virtually.

In my very first poster session, I’ve presented the poster you can see above which focuses on the prediction of gas for transactions on Ethereum. Obviously, the conditions were not ideal for exchanges with the other attendees, but the organizers did a great job in enabling interactions despite the virtual setting.

Abstract. The author uses data about transactions onEthereum as sources for studying the relationship between thehistoric of transactions for a given address and the amountof gas consumed for a transaction. The author combines dataabout transactions, and blocks to predict the gas usage for atransaction. Specifically, how much gas will be consumed for the next transaction, given the initiator’s transaction history. The results demonstrate the value of considering the transactionhistory for gas usage predictions.

Feel free to leave any comment or question you might have regarding this poster in itself or the topic of the poster.