Smart Contract Implementation and Blockchain Traceability for Social Welfare and Donation Tracking: A Systematic Literature Review

Traditional donation management platforms and social welfare systems have traditionally been plagued by a TRUST crisis, due to administrative cost leakages, misappropriations, and even malicious fraud. Blockchain technology and smart contracts as new disruptive spread-out innovations have shown the potential to shield social finance systems from fragilities. This Systematic Literature Review (SLR) explores blockchain traceability, smart contracts, and concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) within social finance and crowdfunding systems. As PRISMA guidelines, this SLR has analysed 10 high quality peer-reviewed papers from the Scopus database, to determine architectural trends, digital trust mechanics, and existing technical open challenges. The results evidenced a qualitative shift in the traditional architecture from simple spread-out ledgers to more complex hybrid Blockchain & IoT enabled social ecosystems for full traceability of digital donations and physical humanitarian help. Also, smart contracts help the automation of conditional fund payment, which reduces the risk of embezzlement. AI's strong automated anti-fraud detection potential is promising, though the review finds that excessive AI use may undermine the community-led spirit of charitable giving. While the high theoretical security system transparency demonstrated by these split up fundraising platforms suggests their potential as attractive split up solutions, concerns surrounding their implementation remain, in particular with operational costs, regulatory uncertainty and interoperability. The study concludes by stressing the importance of human-cantered design, legal compliance across different jurisdictions, and digital interfaces in the development of transparent, scalable, and resilient multi-stakeholder donation platforms.