Systems and methods for conducting sales transactions are provided. Embodiments include portable, electronic, point of purchase devices configured to acquire identification information from articles to be purchased, to determine a purchase price, and to acquire payment information for the purchase price. The point of purchase devices may include one or more input devices such as a communication device, a camera, a scanner, and a sensor system for acquiring identification information and/or the payment information. The point of purchase devices also may contain an electronic display, communication interfaces (such as a near field communication interface, a local area network interface, Bluetooth® configurations, etc.) for transmitting and/or receiving information to/from connectable devices such as a mobile phone, BLE beacon and/or an external server. Additional provision is made for an embodiment that avoids battery depletion anxiety by shoppers, through the provision of a handheld portable charging point device.

A computer-readable medium that, when executed on a server, establishes processes for providing a brand sponsorship environment, the processes including providing a computer-implemented platform establishing a sponsorship junction involving, in case 1, a set of trigger-monitorable activities defined by a set of sponsoring brands or, in case 2, a subset of the trigger-monitorable activities defined by the set of sponsoring brands.

Child/family support payments are made on a multilayered consortium ledger network using blockchain, IoT, and other technologies to expedite the process and disbursement of child/family support payments. The multilayered consortium ledger network may cater to local and/or global child support agencies and/or local and global Parties/Parents/family members who elect to send child/family support payments to their family(ies) outside the traditional child support agencies/district attorney offices. The plurality of technologies used support payments made/received using, but not limited to, domestic/foreign fiat, cryptocurrency, tokens, an/or native tokens.

A wireless network, systems and methods, wherein each passenger-carrying rideable vehicle deployed in the system includes: a modular construction consisting of a lightweight body driven by an electric-battery driven motor, and specially adapted for receiving a customizable ornamental body having the appearance and personality of a particular or an inanimate object; motorized and/or animated elements disposed beneath the animal character skin covering for enabling animal behaviors and/or expressions that promote a fun and entertaining ride experience; an audio-transducers mounted within the animal character body for playing music from smartphone applications and animated animal character body portions to provide a sense of realism and excitement as the electric entertainment vehicle is ridden through an amusement facility.

An example operation may include one or more of connecting, by a multi-party smart contract server, to a blockchain network configured to store cryptographic proofs, generating, by the multi-party smart contract server, a proposed transaction, providing, by the multi-party smart contract server, the proposed transaction to a plurality of participant nodes, receiving, by the multi-party smart contract server, responses to the proposed transaction from the participant nodes, executing, by the multi-party smart contract server, a smart contract to request from respondent participant nodes attestations of required conditions of the smart contract, receiving and verifying, by the multi-party smart contract server, the attestations from the respondent participant nodes, and executing the proposed transaction and posting a cryptographic proof of a successful execution to the blockchain, by the multi-party smart contract server, in response to a satisfaction of the required conditions of the smart contract.

The computer-implemented invention provides a method and corresponding system for controlling access to and/or use of an internet-enabled resource. The invention uses an electronic ledger such as, for example, the Bitcoin blockchain. The resource may be an IoT device or system. Access to the resource is permitted or enabled upon provision of a cryptographic key e.g., a private key which corresponds to a public key which has been stored in memory. In one embodiment, the public key is stored in a DHT. Access to the resource is prevented or disabled by removing the public key from memory and using a redeem script of a second blockchain Transaction to spend a tokenised output of a first blockchain Transaction. The second transaction detokenizes the token (or ‘coloured coin’) contained within the first Transaction. In order to prevent further access to the resource, an encrypted message is sent to the internet-enabled resource, wherein the message communicates a public key and the redeem script. The resource then checks whether the public key in the message matches that stored in memory and, if it does, removes the stored version of the public key from memory. The resource then uses the redeem script to perform the detokenization.

A server apparatus and the like that improve operation efficiency of a marketplace for trading products are provided. The server apparatus includes a communication interface, and a controller configured to transmit and receive information to and from another apparatus via the communication interface. The controller calculates a time required until sale of a product at a display position based on a temporal change in captured images of the display position where the product is displayed until the product is sold, determines an exhibition fee for the display position based on the time required, informs a terminal apparatus of an exhibitor of the exhibition fee, and urges the exhibitor to exhibit the product for sale at the display position.

The technology described herein allocates resources in a cloud computing environment using a 5G network. The system can connect a device to the 5G network and collect data related to the device such as a location of the device and characteristics of use of the device with the 5G network. The system can create a device service profile of the device based at least in part on the data related to the device. The system can then dynamically partition computing resources within the cloud computing environment for the device based on the device service profile and a time-of-day in the location of the device to thereby provide on-demand access to content or services in the cloud computing environment to the device over the 5G network.

This application relates to the field of blockchain technologies, and specifically, to a transaction processing method and apparatus, a computer-readable medium, and an electronic device. The transaction processing method includes: performing availability detection on blockchain nodes according to transaction data recorded in a blockchain network, and determining whether each of the blockchain nodes is a normal node or an abnormal node; and transmitting, when a transaction request is generated through the abnormal node, the transaction request to the normal node, and cooperatively processing the transaction request through the abnormal node and the normal node. In the embodiments of this application, the transaction service continuity and stability and reliability can be improved.

An example billing management method with respect to a solution installed in an image forming apparatus includes detecting a solution newly installed in or removed from the image forming apparatus, based on a solution list indicating solutions installed in the image forming apparatus, verifying whether the detected solution is included in a solution subscription list corresponding to an account in which the image forming apparatus is registered, and processing billing with respect to the detected solution according to a verification result.