Related papers: The Scalability of Trustless Trust
Many systems today distribute trust across multiple parties such that the system provides certain security properties if a subset of the parties are honest. In the past few years, we have seen an explosion of academic and industrial…
Blockchain, like any other complex technology, needs a strong testing methodology to support its evolution in both research and development contexts. Setting up meaningful tests for permissionless blockchain technology is a notoriously…
Chainspace is a decentralized infrastructure, known as a distributed ledger, that supports user defined smart contracts and executes user-supplied transactions on their objects. The correct execution of smart contract transactions is…
In an increasingly complex contractual landscape, the demand for transparency, security, and efficiency has intensified. Blockchain technology, with its decentralized and immutable nature, addresses these challenges by reducing intermediary…
Smart contract technology is reshaping conventional industry and business processes. Being embedded in blockchains, smart contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be enforced automatically without the intervention of a…
Smart contract technology facilitates self-executing agreements on the blockchain, eliminating dependency on an external trusted authority. However, smart contracts may expose vulnerabilities that can lead to financial losses and…
Blockchain technology enables stakeholders to conduct trusted data sharing and exchange without a trusted centralized institution. These features make blockchain applications attractive to enhance trustworthiness in very different contexts.…
Blockchain technology offers a promising foundation for modernizing E-Voting systems by enhancing transparency, decentralization, and security. Yet, real-world adoption remains limited due to persistent challenges such as scalability…
The Ethereum blockchain is essentially a globally replicated public database. Programs called smart contracts can access this database. Over 10 million smart contracts have been deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. Executing a method of a…
Blockchain protocols typically aspire to run in the permissionless setting, in which nodes are owned and operated by a large number of diverse and unknown entities, with each node free to start or stop running the protocol at any time. This…
The interoperability across multiple or many blockchains would play a critical role in the forthcoming blockchain-based data management paradigm. In particular, how to ensure the ACID properties of those transactions across an arbitrary…
Classic BFT consensus protocols guarantee safety and liveness for all clients if fewer than one-third of replicas are faulty. However, in applications such as high-value payments, some clients may want to prioritize safety over liveness.…
Blockchains have sparked global interest in recent years, gaining importance as they increasingly influence technology and finance. This thesis investigates the robustness of blockchain protocols, specifically focusing on Ethereum…
Smart contracts are crucial elements of decentralized technologies, but they face significant obstacles to trustworthiness due to security bugs and trapdoors. To address the core issue, we propose a technology that enables programmers to…
Smart contracts are computer programs that are executed by a network of mutually distrusting agents, without the need of an external trusted authority. Smart contracts handle and transfer assets of considerable value (in the form of…
There is a need for a simulation framework, which is develop as a software using modern engineering approaches (e.g., modularity --i.e., model reuse--, testing, continuous development and continuous integration, automated management of…
Existing blockchain systems scale poorly because of their distributed consensus protocols. Current attempts at improving blockchain scalability are limited to cryptocurrency. Scaling blockchain systems under general workloads (i.e.,…
Research in blockchain systems has mainly focused on improving security and bridging the performance gaps between blockchains and databases. Despite many promising results, we observe a worrying trend that the blockchain landscape is…
Modern blockchains support a variety of distributed applications beyond cryptocurrencies, including smart contracts -- which let users execute arbitrary code in a distributed and decentralized fashion. Regardless of their intended…
Blockchain has received much attention in recent years. This immense popularity has raised a number of concerns, scalability of blockchain systems being a common one. In this paper, we seek to understand how Ethereum, a well-established…