Related papers: Characterizing Orphan Transactions in the Bitcoin …
Multiple works have leveraged the public Bitcoin ledger to estimate the revenue cybercriminals obtain from their victims. Estimations focusing on the same target often do not agree, due to the use of different methodologies, seed addresses,…
A blockchain replaces central counterparties with time-consuming consensus protocols to record the transfer of ownership. This settlement latency slows cross-exchange trading, exposing arbitrageurs to price risk. Off-chain settlement,…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network (BLN), a so-called "second layer" payment protocol, was launched in 2018 to scale up the number of transactions between Bitcoin owners. In this paper, we analyse the structure of the BLN over a period of 18…
Scalability has been a bottleneck for major blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Despite the significantly improved scalability claimed by several high--profile blockchain projects, there has been little effort to understand how their…
To improve transaction rates, many cryptocurrencies have implemented so-called ''Layer-2'' transaction protocols, where payments are routed across networks of private payment channels. However, for a given transaction, not every network…
Public blockchains group submitted transactions into batches, called blocks. A natural question is how to determine which transactions are included in these batches. In this note, we show a gap between the welfare of so-called `fair'…
When analyzing Bitcoin users' balance distribution, we observed that it follows a log-normal pattern. Drawing parallels from the successful application of Gibrat's law of proportional growth in explaining city size and word frequency…
Cryptocurrencies are considered relevant assets and they are currently used as an investment or to carry out transactions. However, specific characteristics commonly associated with the cryptocurrencies such as irreversibility,…
Conflicting transactions within blockchain networks not only pose performance challenges but also introduce security vulnerabilities, potentially facilitating malicious attacks. In this paper, we explore the impact of conflicting…
With the rapid increase of threats on the Internet, people are continuously seeking privacy and anonymity. Services such as Bitcoin and Tor were introduced to provide anonymity for online transactions and Web browsing. Due to its…
Stubborn mining attack greatly downgrades Bitcoin throughput and also benefits malicious miners (attackers). This paper aims to quantify the impact of block receiving delay on stubborn mining attack severity in imperfect Bitcoin networks.…
Payment channel networks (PCNs) such as the Lightning Network offer an appealing solution to the scalability problem faced by many cryptocurrencies operating on a blockchain such as Bitcoin. However, PCNs also inherit the stringent…
Airdrops are a popular mechanism used by blockchain protocols to bootstrap communities, reward early adopters, and decentralize token distribution. Despite their widespread adoption, the effectiveness of airdrops in achieving long-term user…
Dark markets are commercial websites that use Bitcoin to sell or broker transactions involving drugs, weapons, and other illicit goods. Being illegal, they do not offer any user protection, and several police raids and scams have caused…
The payment channel, which allows two parties to perform micropayments without involving the blockchain, has become a promising proposal to improve the scalability of decentralized ledgers such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Payment channels have…
Blockchain technology, which has been known by mostly small technological circles up until recently, is bursting throughout the globe, with a potential economic and social impact that could fundamentally alter traditional financial and…
Many classical blockchains are known to have an embarrassingly low transaction throughput, down to Bitcoin's notorious seven transactions per second limit.Various proposals and implementations for increasing throughput emerged in the first…
This paper formally examines the network structure of Bitcoin CORE (BTC) and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) using complex graph theory to demonstrate that home-hosted full nodes are incapable of participating in or influencing the propagation…
On February 2014, $650.000.000 worth of Bitcoins disappeared. Currently it is unclear whether hackers or MtGox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, are to be blamed. In either case, the anonymous and unregulated nature of the Bitcoin system makes…
Wash trading in decentralized markets remains a significant concern magnified by the pseudonymous and public nature of blockchains. In this paper we introduce an innovative methodology designed to detect wash trading activities beyond…