Related papers: The Balance Attack Against Proof-Of-Work Blockchai…
We describe and analyze perishing mining, a novel block-withholding mining strategy that lures profit-driven miners away from doing useful work on the public chain by releasing block headers from a privately maintained chain. We then…
Given the parallels between game theory and consensus, it makes sense to intelligently design blockchain or DAG protocols with an incentive-compatible-first mentality. To that end, we propose a new blockchain or DAG protocol enhancement…
We study an adversary who attacks a Proof-of-Work (POW) blockchain by selfishly constructing an alternative longest chain. We characterize optimal strategies employed by the adversary when a difficulty adjustment rule al\`a Bitcoin applies.…
Permissionless blockchains promise to be resilient against censorship by a single entity. This suggests that deterministic rules, and not third-party actors, are responsible for deciding if a transaction is appended to the blockchain or…
The application of Bitcoin enables people to understand blockchain technology gradually. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency that does not rely on third-party credit institutions, and the core of Bitcoin's underlying technology is…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a Sybil control mechanism adopted in blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. It prevents the attempt of malicious actors to manipulate distributed ledgers. Bitcoin has successfully suppressed double-spending by accepting…
In many blockchains, e.g., Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the primary representation used for wallet addresses is a hardly memorable 40-digit hexadecimal string. As a result, users often select addresses from their recent transaction…
While blockchains initially gained popularity in the realm of cryptocurrencies, their widespread adoption is expanding beyond conventional applications, driven by the imperative need for enhanced data security. Despite providing a secure…
In blockchain systems, the scarcity of a resource is used as a Sybil protection mechanism. In Proof-of-Work blockchains, that resource is computing power. In the event of a fork, the scarcity of this resource theoretically prevents miners…
Recent advances in the blockchain research have been made in two important directions. One is refined resilience analysis utilizing game theory to study the consequences of selfish behaviors of users (miners), and the other is the extension…
Smart contracts are stateful programs deployed on blockchains; they secure over a trillion dollars in transaction value per year. High-stakes smart contracts often rely on timely alerts about external events, but prior work has not analyzed…
We improve the fundamental security threshold of eventual consensus Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain protocols under the longest-chain rule by showing, for the first time, the positive effect of rounds with concurrent honest leaders. Current…
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.…
Ethereum is currently the main blockchain ecosystem providing decentralised trust guarantees for applications ranging from finance to e-government. A common criticism of blockchain networks has been their energy consumption and operational…
As all software, blockchain nodes are exposed to faults in their underlying execution stack. Unstable execution environments can disrupt the availability of blockchain nodes interfaces, resulting in downtime for users. This paper introduces…
Decentralization is a fundamental design element of the Web3 economy. Blockchains and distributed consensus mechanisms are touted as fault-tolerant, attack-resistant, and collusion-proof because they are decentralized. Recent analyses,…
Blockchain is based on a P2P network, supporting decentralized consensus of current cryptocurrencies. Since bitcoin and altcoins all utilize an underlying blockchain, they are therefore greatly affected by the performance of the P2P…
The development of quantum information platforms such as quantum computers and quantum simulators that will rival classical Turing computations are typically viewed as a threat to secure data transmissions and therefore to crypto-systems…
This article considered deficiencies of the flourishing blockchain technology manifested by the development of quantum computation. We show that the future blockchain technology would under constant threats from the following aspects: 1)…
Selfish mining is a well known vulnerability in blockchains exploited by miners to steal block rewards. In this paper, we explore a new form of selfish mining attack that guarantees high rewards with low cost. We show the feasibility of…