# January 2025
Construction Blockchain Newsletter
Welcome to this first CBC Newsletter of 2025! We are excited to bring you the latest updates and insights in DLT, Blockchain, Construction, and Smart Environments. Please click on the heading of each news for the full article.
World & Blockchain
Worldwide
Blockchain technology has rapidly evolved over the past decade, emerging as the fastest-growing industry worldwide. Its transformative capabilities offer transparency, security, and decentralization across multiple sectors, including healthcare, real estate, and governance. While critics argue its real-world impact remains unproven, its adoption has expanded beyond speculation-driven cryptocurrency trading. This article challenges the notion that blockchain is solely a speculative tool, highlighting diverse practical applications, breakthroughs, and emerging trends that promise to reshape the technological landscape in 2025, leading this innovation.
North America
Trump Signs Executive Actions Related to Cryptocurrency, AI
President Donald Trump signed executive actions related to cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, moves that could bolster two nascent industries. The president was joined by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, a venture capitalist and major political donor.
Asia
South Korea Launches Blockchain-Based Digital ID Pilot
South Korea has embarked on a pilot program to introduce a blockchain-powered digital identity card, modernizing a system that has been in place for nearly six decades. The initiative is being rolled out in nine regions, including Sejong, Yeosu, and the counties of Geochang and Yeongnam. Eligibility for the program extends to all residents aged 17 and above in these areas.
Europe
ECB pitches digital euro as response to Trump's crypto push
Euro zone banks need a digital euro to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump's push to promote stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the U.S. dollar, European Central Bank board member Piero Cipollone said on Friday.
Middle East
Dubai developer DAMAC signs $1 bln deal with blockchain platform MANTRA
MANTRA, a blockchain platform focused on real-world assets (RWAs), has signed a deal with Dubai developer DAMAC Group to tokenise assets in the Middle East worth at least $1 billion, the two firms said on Thursday. Asset tokenisation allows rights to, or ownership of assets, including RWAs, to be converted into digital tokens on a blockchain, which can then be owned and traded online.
Research & Development Digest
This monthly Research Digest features some notable papers produced or suggested by our academic and industry Members and Partners that we hope will be of interest.
Blockchain & AI
Lingming Kong, Rui Zhao, Chimay J. Anumba, Weisheng Lu & Fan Xue, 2025
Building information modeling (BIM) has become prevalent in construction engineering management. However, the efficiency of traditional file-based BIM exchange between multidisciplinary teams remains low due to the transmission of redundant data from mostly unchanged BIM objects. Additionally, the traceability of changes between BIM files is limited. This paper proposes a traceable semantic differential transaction (tSDT) approach for open BIM exchange, which minimizes data redundancy and enables semantic-level traceability of BIM changes. Furthermore, openBIMdisk implements the tSDT and provides a Blockchain 3.0 virtual disk to support efficient, traceable, and secure BIM exchanges across multiple blockchain services. A pilot study of a modular construction project demonstrated the effectiveness of tSDT and open-BIMdisk. Experimental results indicated that tSDT achieved minimal BIM redundancy for storing and restoring all BIM changes, using a sheer 0.007% of disk space on average. openBIMdisk facilitated BIM version management and object-level semantic traceability with a response time of 5.3 ms. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, tSDT offers a novel and efficient approach for semantic BIM change traceability. Second, openBIMdisk provides BIM practitioners with a Blockchain 3.0 application featuring intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for BIM exchange.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-024-4006-x
Deep Learning and Blockchain-Driven Contract Theory: Alleviate Gender Bias in Construction
Zijun Zhan, Yaxian Dong, Daniel Mawunyo Doe, Yuqing Hu, Shuai Li, Shaohua Cao, Wei Li, and Zhu Han, 2025
In the construction industry, the advent of teleoperation and robotic technologies is revolutionizing traditional recruitment practices, introducing new criteria for identifying qualified workers. This evolution presents significant challenges for employers aiming to recruit workers who can maximize organizational utility. Although contract theory offers a promising solution to these challenges, its inherent self-disclosure property could inadvertently lead to privacy breaches, such as revealing gender-related information. Such disclosure risk might intensify existing biases, notably gender bias, within the sector. To this end, we proposed deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based contract theory. Firstly, the trained DRL model will produce unpredictable contract bundles, restricting employers’ access to workers’ privacy. Subsequently, to ensure employers adopt DRL-based contract theory, we utilized blockchain to supervise contract bundle generation. Finally, given that the DRL models are homogenous among employers, we integrated transfer learning to reduce unnecessary overhead. Simulation experiments conducted using US labor force statistical data demonstrated that our work can effectively mitigate potential gender bias by augmenting the contract selection rights for female workers from 72.73% and 60% to 96.97% and 95% in comparison with traditional contract theory while maximizing employers’ utility. In addition, with the integration of transfer learning, the training overhead of DRL-based contract theory can decrease by 50%. The meaning and significance of the results lie in the innovative integration of contract theory, deep reinforcement learning, and transfer learning into the recruitment framework, significantly advancing the body of knowledge in unbiased workforce development.
https://doi.org/10.1061/JCEMD4.COENG-15330
Botao Zhong, Xiaowei Hu, Xing Pan, Xinglong Chen and Zheming Liu, 2025
Hazard-related data are a critical component in construction quality hazard management (CQHM). However, data security and latency issues in CQHM cannot be guaranteed in centralized systems currently and prevent it from achieving the goals of secure and efficient hazard analysis and further real-time quality process control. Focusing on these goals, a decentralized CQHM framework is proposed by introducing blockchain (BC) and deep learning (DL) technology. Moreover, considering the blockchain’s limited storage capacity and block size, a deep learning–based multimodal storage strategy is designed with smart contracts and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for data lightweight. In accordance with the proposed framework, comparative experiments were conducted to demonstrate its feasibility by analyzing related metrics like accuracy, cost, and throughput. This study deepens the understanding of data security and latency issues in CQHM and offers technical guidance in establishing BC and DL solutions. Besides, the DL-based multimodal storage strategy provides a substantial data-driven advancement for lightweight on-chain data storage. Moreover, the proposed framework is promising to smooth the quality hazard analysis progress in improving on-site decision efficiency, promoting cooperation and standardizing quality process control.
https://doi.org/10.1061/JCEMD4.COENG-14839
Events Agenda
The Linux Foundation Member Summit
18-20 March 2025. Napa, California.
An annual gathering for Linux Foundation members that fosters collaboration, innovation, and partnerships among the leading projects and organizations working to drive digital transformation with open source technologies.
Paris Blockchain Week 2025
8–10 April 2025. Paris, France.
Paris Blockchain Week is Europe’s biggest blockchain and digital assets event, covering all aspects of blockchain technology, including NFTs."
2025 European Conference on Computing in Construction
14-17 July 2025. Porto, Portugal.
EC³ is the premier European Conference for information, communication and technological research, innovation and policy for the Construction Sector as a whole in Europe.
Knowledge Upgrade
Quantum Blockchain mines bitcoin with AI
Quantum Blockchain claims AI-based Bitcoin mining with a 30% efficiency boost, but provides limited proof. Skeptics question its short live testing and unclear methodology. The FT advises readers to use official sharing tools, as copying breaches FT.com T&Cs.
Navigating Decentralized Derivatives and Governance in Blockchain
TorontoX’s course covers advanced blockchain and DeFi concepts, focusing on derivatives, decentralized fund management, and protocol governance. Delivered by the Rotman School of Management, students learn about perpetual futures under Synthetix, ETF-like products under SetProtocol, and oracles along the way.
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