Related papers: The Ethereum Scratch Off Puzzle
Ethereum Research team has proposed a family of Casper blockchain consensus protocols for Ethereum 2.0. It has been shown in the literature that Casper Friendly Finality Gadget (Casper FFG) for Ethereum 2.0's beacon network cannot achieve…
Blockchain consensus is a state whereby each node in a network agrees on the current state of the blockchain. Existing protocols achieve consensus via a contest or voting procedure to select one node as a dictator to propose new blocks.…
Smart contracts are autonomous and immutable pieces of code that are deployed on blockchain networks and run by miners. They were first introduced by Ethereum in 2014 and have since been used for various applications such as security…
Since 2004, different research was handling the challenges in the centralized voting systems, e-voting protocols and recently the decentralized voting. So electronic voting puts forward some difficulties regarding the voter anonymity, the…
Scalability is a common issue among the most used permissionless blockchains, and several approaches have been proposed accordingly. As Ethereum is set to be a solid foundation for a decentralized Internet web, the need for tackling…
We study decentralized cryptocurrency protocols in which the participants do not deplete physical scarce resources. Such protocols commonly rely on Proof of Stake, i.e., on mechanisms that extend voting power to the stakeholders of the…
Like most modern blockchain networks, Ethereum has relied on economic incentives to promote honest participation in the chain's consensus. The distributed character of the platform, together with the "randomness" or "luck" factor that both…
We present two attacks targeting the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Ethereum consensus protocol. The first attack suggests a fundamental conceptual incompatibility between PoS and the Greedy Heaviest-Observed Sub-Tree (GHOST) fork choice paradigm…
Smart contracts enable users to execute payments depending on complex program logic. Ethereum is the most notable example of a blockchain that supports smart contracts leveraged for countless applications including games, auctions and…
Mayers, Lo and Chau argued that all quantum bit commitment protocols are insecure, because there is no way to prevent an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) cheating attack. However, Yuen presented some protocols which challenged the previous…
ERC-20 is the most prominent Ethereum standard for fungible tokens. Tokens implementing the ERC-20 interface can interoperate with a large number of already deployed internet-based services and Ethereum-based smart contracts. In recent…
Smart contracts are central to a myriad of critical blockchain applications, from financial transactions to supply chain management. However, their adoption is hindered by security vulnerabilities that can result in significant financial…
In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based computing verification protocol, called EntrapNet, for distributed shared computing networks, an emerging underlying network for many internet of things (IoT) applications. EntrapNet borrows the…
Traditionally, threshold secret sharing (TSS) schemes assume all parties have equal weight, yet emerging systems like blockchains reveal disparities in party trustworthiness, such as stake or reputation. Weighted Secret Sharing (WSS)…
Trust is an absolute necessity for digital communications; but is often viewed as an implicit singular entity. The use of the internet as the primary vehicle for information exchange has made accountability and verifiability of system code…
This paper proposes a novel recursive polynomial commitment scheme (PCS) and a new polynomial interactive oracle proof (PIOP) protocol, which compile into efficient and transparent zk-SNARKs (zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive…
This paper is concerned with the stability of shares in a cryptocurrency where the new coins are issued according to the Proof of Stake protocol. We identify large, medium and small investors under various rewarding schemes, and show that…
The immutability of smart contracts on blockchain platforms like Ethereum promotes security and trustworthiness but presents challenges for updates, bug fixes, or adding new features post-deployment. These limitations can lead to…
We argue that the technical foundations of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) remain inadequately understood. Prior research has focused on market dynamics, user behavior, and isolated security incidents, yet systematic analysis of the standards…
We propose a refinement to the well known, and widely used, proof-of-work scheme of zeroing a cryptographic hash. Our refinement allows multiple autonomous users to cooperate on the proof-of-work for their own transactions in order to bring…