# Blockchain for Doping Control Applications in Sports: A Conceptual Approach
## 2 Background
### Analysis of the Current AD Ecosystem  
This section summarizes the main problems encountered in terms of data management within the AD domain. A thorough analysis was conducted so as to obtain a perspective of the social, political, processual, operational, and technological interactions within the current domain. The literature related to AD subject matter includes special reports [5; 7], books [31], research articles [32; 33; 34; 35; 36; 37; 38; 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 44; 45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 52], documentaries [53], and official WADA publications (WADC, standards, guidelines, press releases, and statistics) [54; 55; 56; 57; 58; 59; 60; 61; 62; 63; 64; 65; 66; 67; 68; 69; 70; 71; 72]. It has been observed that the effectiveness of AD efforts is repetitively questioned by the scientific community. This affirmation is ratified by the low official statistics of violations over the years compared to the estimated prevalence of doping [4; 51]. Despite the declared commitment of organizations and stakeholders with a doping-free ecosystem, several scandals reported in literature indicate that dishonest participants may not be deterred from utilizing or supporting doping practices and finding gaps to cheat AD policies [7]. Hence, the sports ecosystem is permeated with a tacit conflict of interests [6; 7; 31]. Competitive athletes, trainers, and sport organizations, in their will for victory, control organizations, trying to guarantee the fair play and eliminate the problem of doping [7; 31]. This work does not intend to discuss anti-doping in its entirety or suggest that a new technological approach would be a panacea. Nevertheless, DLTs can certainly play a role in guaranteeing more trustworthy processes and less centralization. By identifying the vulnerabilities of current systems and processes, new approaches can be proposed to difficult cheating attempts. The main challenges in terms of data management are summarized hereafter:  
**Siloed/Centralized Decision Making and Databases:** From a political standpoint, the way WADA deals with anti-doping activities is still considered monopolistic, as the agency keeps most of the decision making with itself or delegated to a restricted number of international sport federations [52]. Each organization manages its own AD database. With WADA being the global authority for doping control, ADAMS should be fed with all doping-related data produced by the various participating organizations, but in practice, it does not happen effectively [5; 7]. From 2015 to 2017, two committees of the UK parliament conducted an inquiry that relied on oral and written evidence, academic research, investigative journalism, and whistleblowers. The findings are described in a report published in 2018, where acute failures in several different organizations have been found: failure in sharing appropriate medical records with anti-doping organizations; failure in keeping proper internal records of the medical substances given to athletes; and failure in outlawing the use of potentially dangerous drugs in certain sports [7]. Reported cases indicate that AD data are often kept within their silos and not shared appropriately. One of the several examples presented in the cited report describes that an important international federation (IF) did not share a few thousands of suspicious test results with the relevant ADOs, and the data were kept isolated in the IF's data silo and used by corrupt members for extorting athletes. As a result, potential ADRVs could not be pursued by ADOs [7]. Concurrently, a point of concern occurs when data are transferred to ADAMS. As ADAMS gathers data belonging to the different stakeholders, but is controlled by a single organization, WADA, this asymmetry is viewed as too much power concentrated on a single organization, a potential conflict of interests, and a barrier for a consistent trust model [5; 50]. A central database is also a single point of failure; cyber-attacks have already occurred, with athletes' sensitive data being leaked into public domain [49; 67; 71].