Related papers: Formalizing and Verifying Decentralized Systems wi…
Decentralization has been touted as the principal security advantage which propelled blockchain systems at the forefront of developments in the financial technology space. Its exact semantics nevertheless remain highly contested and…
Formal verification entails testing software to ensure it operates as specified. Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into lines of code. They run on blockchain platforms and…
INTRODUCTION: The proliferation of the amalgamation of IoT and edge computing has increased the demand for decentralised trust and security mechanisms capable of operating across heterogeneous and resource-limited devices. Approaches such…
In this paper we discuss how conventional business contracts can be converted into smart contracts---their electronic equivalents that can be used to systematically monitor and enforce contractual rights, obligations and prohibitions at run…
The number of attacks and accidents leading to significant losses of crypto-assets is growing. According to Chainalysis, in 2021, approx. $14 billion has been lost due to various incidents, and this number is dominated by Decentralized…
The complexity of digital embedded systems has been increasing in different safety-critical applications such as industrial automation, process control, transportation, and medical digital devices. The correct operation of these systems…
Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that ensures transparency, security, and immutability through cryptographic techniques. However, advancements in quantum computing threaten the security of classical cryptographic…
A key component of blockchain technology is the ledger, viz., a database that, unlike standard databases, keeps in memory the complete history of past transactions as in a notarial archive for the benefit of any future test. In…
The aim of this work is to study the use of decentralization and smart contracts on blockchain networks. We investigate the implementation and use of smart contracts on the platforms Bitcoin, Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. Additionally,…
Decentralization is widely recognized as a crucial characteristic of blockchains that enables them to resist malicious attacks such as the 51% attack and the takeover attack. Prior research has primarily examined decentralization in…
Blockchain is a continuously developing technology that has made digital transactions and related computing operations more transparent and secure through globally distributed and decentralized management of states, as well as the strong…
Programs executed on a blockchain - smart contracts - have high financial stakes; their correctness is crucial. We argue, that this correctness needs to be foundational: correctness needs to be based on the operational semantics of their…
Algorithms for the synchronisation of clocks across networks are both common and important within distributed systems. We here address not only the formal modelling of these algorithms, but also the formal verification of their behaviour.…
More than ten years ago the blockchain was acclaimed as the solution to overcome centralised trusted third parties for online payments. Through the years the crypto-movement changed and evolved, although decentralisation remained the core…
Blockchain systems and smart contracts provide ways to securely implement multi-party transactions without the use of trusted intermediaries, which currently underpin many commercial transactions. However, they do so by transferring trust…
With a market capitalisation of over USD 205 billion in just under ten years, public distributed ledgers have experienced significant adoption. Apart from novel consensus mechanisms, their success is also accountable to smart contracts.…
Financial markets are undergoing an unprecedented transformation. Technological advances have brought major improvements to the operations of financial services. While these advances promote improved accessibility and convenience,…
Censorship resistance with short-term inclusion guarantees is an important feature of decentralized systems, missing from many state-of-the-art and even deployed consensus protocols. In leader-based protocols the leader arbitrarily selects…
The exploitation of smart-contract vulnerabilities can have catastrophic consequences such as the loss of millions of pounds worth of crypto assets. Formal verification can be a useful tool in identifying vulnerabilities and proving that…
Throughput limitations of existing blockchain architectures are well documented and are one of the most significant hurdles for their wide-spread adoption. In our previous proof-of-concept work, we have shown that separating computation…