World Scientific Annual Review of Fintech

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations or DAOs are organizations governed by a set of pre-defined rules programmed as source code in smart contracts. Once implemented, a DAO can automatically execute tasks, coordinate, and facilitate decentralized decision-making, without any central authority. This new and emerging paradigm is still under development and has not been researched much until today. To our knowledge, the literature still lacks a comprehensive survey discussing DAOs and DAO governance. We conduct a systematic review of common characteristics, a DAO categorization, real-world DAO applications, DAO governance including voting schemes and dispute resolution mechanisms in DAOs to provide an initial overview. We anticipate that our work can provide useful insights and references for researchers and industrial practitioners who wish to delve deeper into this nascent area.

This paper presents an overview of sustainable finance and focuses on the crucial role of green and regenerative finance in promoting sustainability in the contemporary world. It discusses how green financial technology (green fintech) leverages technology to support sustainable finance and reviews the latest advancements in green technologies, and how they are utilized to mitigate the effects of climate change. In addition, it highlights the importance of governance in these two areas of sustainable finance. Several real-life case stories are also presented to illustrate the successful applications of green technologies by organizations and individuals to mitigate the effects of climate change and achieve sustainability goals. In sum, the overarching goal of this paper is to demonstrate how harnessing the power of green and regenerative finance and green fintech is crucial in ensuring a sustainable future for all.

In 2021, public blockchains have made remarkable progress with the support of investors and developers, ushering in the era of the multi-chain world, which represents a paradigm shift that is unlikely to be reversed. Cross-chain protocols have become an essential infrastructure in this new world, referring to a standardized set of rules and processes that enable the secure transfer of assets or information between different blockchain networks. To help researchers and industry practitioners better understand the concepts, advantages, and limitations of cross-chain technologies, this paper presents a comprehensive guide to cross-chain protocols. We cover a range of topics, including message transmission protocols, leading cross-chain bridges, and other cross-chain applications. Additionally, we discuss potential risks and challenges associated with cross-chain protocols and explore the future of cross-chain protocol development. Our work is intended to offer valuable insights and references for anyone looking to delve deeper into cross-chain protocols, whether they are academic researchers or industry professionals.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the different voting schemes used in DAO governance. We will examine the various features of these schemes and compare their differences. We propose a new hypothetical voting mechanism specifically designed for decentralized and permissionless DAO governance. This new scheme, which incorporates incentive designs, is intended to be more efficient than existing schemes and can be easily adapted to a permissioned scenario. Through this examination and proposal, we hope to contribute to the ongoing discourse on how to govern decentralized autonomous organizations effectively.

During the spring of 2021, the Chinese government profoundly changed its relationship with large digital platforms; the government had decided to strengthen their supervision, fight against monopolies, and promote fair competition. Until then, technology giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and JD.Com dominated a fast-growing market, especially in China, where Fintech represented a very important part of the retail market among middle-class consumers. Various political and economic reasons can be provided for this choice. This paper showcases the economic power of the two-sided markets approach of these platforms today and describes the late but violent reaction of the Chinese government, worried about its economic and monetary sovereignty.