Related papers: The Scalability of Trustless Trust
In recent years, permissionless blockchains have gained significant attention for their ability to secure and provide transparency in transactions. The development of blockchain technology has shifted from cryptocurrency to decentralized…
In this paper we propose a comprehensive and scalable framework to build secure-by-design e-voting systems. Decentralization, transparency, determinism, and untamperability of votes are granted by dedicated smart contracts on a blockchain,…
Blockchain-based distributed computing platforms enable the trusted execution of computation - defined in the form of smart contracts - without trusted agents. Smart contracts are envisioned to have a variety of applications, ranging from…
Cryptocurrencies are poised to revolutionize the modern economy by democratizing commerce. These currencies operate on top of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. Existing permissionless blockchain-based protocols offer unparalleled…
Game theory is often used as a tool to analyze decentralized systems and their properties, in particular, blockchains. In this note, we take the opposite view. We argue that blockchains can and should be used to implement economic…
Blockchain offers a decentralized, immutable, transparent system of records. It offers a peer-to-peer network of nodes with no centralised governing entity making it unhackable and therefore, more secure than the traditional paper-based or…
The NFT ecosystem represents an interconnected, decentralized environment that encompasses the creation, distribution, and trading of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), where key actors, such as marketplaces, sellers, and buyers, utilize smart…
Multi-Agent Systems, a division of Intelligent Systems diversely applied in multiple disciplines. Desired for their efficiency in solving complex problems at a low cost. However, identified vulnerabilities include system security,…
This paper presents an architecture of a Personal Information Management System, in which individuals can define the access to their personal data by means of smart contracts. These smart contracts, running on the Ethereum blockchain,…
The potential for blockchain technology to eliminate the middleman and replace the top down hierarchical model of governance with a system of distributed cooperation has opened up many new opportunities, as well as dilemmas. Surpassing the…
Increasing the transactional throughput of decentralized blockchains in a secure manner has been the holy grail of blockchain research for most of the past decade. This paper introduces a scheme for scaling blockchains while retaining…
As the "agentic web" takes shape-billions of AI agents (often LLM-powered) autonomously transacting and collaborating-trust shifts from human oversight to protocol design. In 2025, several inter-agent protocols crystallized this shift,…
Blockchain technology has revolutionized contractual processes, enhancing efficiency and trust through smart contracts. Ethereum, as a pioneer in this domain, offers a platform for decentralized applications but is challenged by the…
Delegation of cryptographic signing rights has found many application in the literature and the real world. However, despite very advanced functionalities and specific use cases, existing solutions share the natural limitation that the…
Mobile edge computing (MEC) and next-generation mobile networks are set to disrupt the way intelligent and autonomous systems are interconnected. This will have an effect on a wide range of domains, from the Internet of Things to autonomous…
The deployment of autonomous agents in environments involving human interaction has increasingly raised security concerns. Consequently, understanding the circumstances behind an event becomes critical, requiring the development of…
Open and permissionless blockchains are distributed systems with thousands to tens of thousands of nodes, establishing novel platforms for decentralized applications. When realizing such an application, data might be stored and retrieved…
With the rapid development of blockchain technology, different types of blockchains are adopted and interoperability across blockchains has received widespread attention. There have been many cross-chain solutions proposed in recent years,…
Distributed trust is a nebulous concept that has evolved from different perspectives in recent years. While one can attribute its current prominence to blockchain and cryptocurrency, the distributed trust concept has been cultivating…
Smart contracts provide the means to stipulate rules of interaction between mutually distrustful organizations. They encode contractual agreements on the basis of source code, which else need to be contractualized in natural language. While…