Related papers: Bitcoin-NG: A Scalable Blockchain Protocol
Bitcoin has created a new exchange paradigm within which financial transactions can be trusted without an intermediary. This premise of a free decentralized transactional network however requires, in its current implementation, unrestricted…
Previous work presented a theoretical model based on the implicit Bitcoin specification for how an entity might issue a protocol native cryptocurrency that mimics features of fiat currencies. Protocol native means that it is built into the…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) is designed to improve the scalability of blockchain systems by using off-chain payment paths to settle transactions in a faster, cheaper, and more private manner. This work aims to empirically study LN's…
Blockchain like Bitcoin and Ethereum suffer from scalability issues. Sharding is one of the most promising and leading solutions to scale blockchain. The basic idea behind sharding is to divide the blockchain network into multiple…
Bitcoin and other similar digital currencies on blockchains are not ideal means for payment, because their prices tend to go up in the long term (thus people are incentivized to hoard those currencies), and to fluctuate widely in the short…
Blockchains lie at the heart of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have shown great promise to revolutionize finance and commerce. Although they are gaining increasing popularity, they face technical challenges when it comes to scaling…
We propose a bitcoin generalization as a solution to the problem of scalability. The block is redefined as a sequence of sub-blocks of increasing sizes that coexist as different levels of compromise between decentralization and transactions…
Threshold cryptography is essential for many blockchain protocols. For example, many protocols rely on threshold common coin to implement asynchronous consensus, leader elections, and provide support for randomized applications. Similarly,…
Permissioned blockchains employ Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) state machine replication (SMR) to reach agreement on an ever-growing, linearly ordered log of transactions. A new paradigm, combined with decades of research in BFT SMR and…
Blockchains offer a useful abstraction: a trustworthy, decentralized log of totally ordered transactions. Traditional blockchains have problems with scalability and efficiency, preventing their use for many applications. These limitations…
Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus forms the foundation of many modern blockchains striving for both high throughput and low latency. A growing bottleneck is transaction execution and validation on the critical path of consensus,…
Blockchain offers an innovative approach to storing information, executing transactions, performing functions, and establishing trust in an open environment. Many consider blockchain as a technology breakthrough for cryptography and…
This thesis introduces a formal general framework for scaling blockchain protocols by sharding. The framework is modular and it can be adjusted for different needs or sets of assumptions. We prove that sharded protocols obtained by…
Bitcoin's design promises resilience through decentralization, yet the physical infrastructure supporting the network creates hidden dependencies. We present the first longitudinal study of Bitcoin's resilience to submarine cable failures,…
This paper presents a new blockchain network simulator that uses bitcoin's original reference implementation as its main application. The proposed simulator leverages the use of lightweight virtualization technology to build a fine tuned…
Blockchain is one of the most discussed and highly accepted technologies, primarily due to its application in almost every field where third parties are needed for trust. Blockchain technology relies on distributed consensus for trust,…
We focus on the problem of botnet orchestration and discuss how attackers can leverage decentralised technologies to dynamically control botnets with the goal of having botnets that are resilient against hostile takeovers. We cover critical…
We present Union, a trust-minimized bridge protocol that enables secure transfer of BTC between Bitcoin and a secondary blockchain. The growing ecosystem of blockchain systems built around Bitcoin has created a pressing need for secure and…
Cyber-physical systems and the Internet of things (IoT) is becoming an integral part of the digital society. The use of IoT services improves human life in many ways. Protection against cyber threats is an important aspect of the…
Payment channel networks, and the Lightning Network in particular, seem to offer a solution to the lack of scalability and privacy offered by Bitcoin and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Previous research has focused on the…