# Notarization and Anti-Plagiarism: A New Blockchain Approach
## 1 Introduction  
In today's hyper-connected, data-centric society, there are still areas where some procedures or entire processes are performed in the manner of 100 years ago or so, with little modification over the decades.  
One example of many is all the processes that need a central institution to be completed reliably. The issuance of currency, the buying and selling of real estate, the signing of contracts between two or more parties (e.g., by means of signature [1]), and certification processes in general belong to this category.  
Currently, we have emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain at our disposal, which can come to the aid of overcoming the limitations of these outdated processes.  
Blockchain technology in recent years has disrupted finance by supporting the development and creation of self-regulated cryptocurrencies. Leading examples in this regard are Bitcoin [2, 3] and Ethereum [4, 5], two of the world's most popular cryptocurrencies. To understand the disruptive capacity of blockchain technology, simply consider that Bitcoin has reached a market capitalization of over $1 trillion as of February 2021 [6], outperforming the market capitalization of gold by about 7% as of January 2021 [7].  
Thus, having established that blockchain technology can be an operational lever in the previously listed areas (but also in many others), in this paper, we focus our attention on notarization and anti-plagiarism.  
One of the main problems in this context consists of the impossibility of objectively verifying the authenticity of documents (or media in general), without the help of a central body such as a public notary. In these cases, blockchain technology is perfectly suited to overcome the limitations of current methods and systems due to its intrinsic characteristics as, for example, the concept of trust, that technology allows not needing a central body to attest to the truthfulness and correctness of any transaction recorded between two or more parties. In fact, as also highlighted by [PERSON] et al. [8], through blockchain technology, it is possible to carry out secure transactions transcending trust, and it is very likely that,overcoming some limitations of scalability and related to the cost of transactions, this technology can completely replace the current processes and systems based on trust.  
Blockchain technology is proving to be promising in terms of developing disruptive models, methods, and techniques capable of shaping the economy and life in our society and future societies.  
We will focus on the potential of blockchain technology in notarization processes integrated with anti-plagiarism functionalities. In fact, there is currently no block-chain-based notarization tool available that integrates the functionalities of an anti-plagiarism system in order to verify the originality of media that users try to submit for notarization.  
Therefore, in the following, some concepts regarding notarization and anti-plagiarism will be introduced. Preferable features of a system in this area will be exposed. In addition, a census of the solutions currently on the market will be made, distinguishing notarization from anti-plagiarism. Finally, a proposed solution that integrates all the identified features either for notarization or anti-plagiarism will be described.