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Most public blockchain protocols, including the popular Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, do not formally specify the order in which miners should select transactions from the pool of pending (or uncommitted) transactions for inclusion in…
Machine learning has recently enabled large advances in artificial intelligence, but these tend to be highly centralized. The large datasets required are generally proprietary; predictions are often sold on a per-query basis; and published…
Decentralised organisations use blockchains as a basis for governance: they use on-chain transactions to allocate voting weight, publish proposals, cast votes, and enact the results. However, blockchain-based governance structures have…
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) on Ethereum has undergone significant transformations since its emergence during the DeFi summer of 2020. With the introduction of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), the transaction…
Decentralized exchanges using automated market makers create arbitrage opportunities with centralized exchanges, where gas fees and transaction ordering are critical. Existing models largely overlook competition among arbitrageurs, despite…
We propose a model suggesting that honest-but-rational consensus participants may play timing games, and strategically delay their block proposal to optimize MEV capture, while still ensuring the proposal's timely inclusion in the canonical…
Traditional blockchain design gives miners or validators full control over transaction ordering, i.e., they can freely choose which transactions to include or exclude, as well as in which order. While not an issue initially, the emergence…
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…
Leader-based protocols for consensus, i.e., atomic broadcast, allow some processes to unilaterally affect the final order of transactions. This has become a problem for blockchain networks and decentralized finance because it facilitates…
Blockchains add transactions to a distributed shared ledger by arriving at consensus on sets of transactions contained in blocks. This provides a total ordering on a set of global transactions. However, total ordering is not enough to…
Despite broad use of BFT consensus in blockchains, censorship resistance is weak: leaders can exclude transactions, a growing concern for trading and DeFi. We address this by introducing a new abstraction and protocol stack. First, we…
Smart contracts have enabled blockchain systems to evolve from simple cryptocurrency platforms, such as Bitcoin, to general transactional systems, such as Ethereum. Catering for emerging business requirements, a new architecture called…
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) searching has gained prominence on the Ethereum blockchain since the surge in Decentralized Finance activities. In Ethereum, MEV extraction primarily hinges on fee payments to block proposers. However, in…
Blockchains enables tamper-proof, ordered logging for transactional data in a decentralized manner over open-access, overlay peer-to-peer networks. In this paper, we propose a decentralized framework of proactive caching in a hierarchical…
Liquid staking has become the largest category of decentralized finance protocols in terms of total value locked. However, few studies exist on its implementation designs or underlying risks. The liquid staking protocols allow for earning…
In this paper, we construct a decentralized clearing mechanism which endogenously and automatically provides a claims resolution procedure. This mechanism can be used to clear a network of obligations through blockchain. In particular, we…
The problem of a single point of failure in centralized systems poses a great challenge to the stability of such systems. Meanwhile, the tamperability of data within centralized systems makes users reluctant to trust and use centralized…
Blockchain-based Distributed Ledgers (DLs) promise to transform the existing financial system by making it truly democratic. In the past decade, blockchain technology has seen many novel applications ranging from the banking industry to…
The long-term success of cryptocurrencies largely depends on the incentive compatibility provided to the validators. Bribery attacks, facilitated trustlessly via smart contracts, threaten this foundation. This work introduces, implements,…
Decentralization, which has backed the hyper growth of many blockchains, comes at the cost of scalability. To understand this fundamental limitation, this paper proposes a quantitative measure of blockchain decentralization, and discusses…