Related papers: Improving Bitcoin Transaction Propagation by Lever…
The bitcoin peer-to-peer network has drawn significant attention from researchers, but so far has mostly focused on publicly visible portions of the network, i.e., publicly reachable peers. This mostly ignores the hidden parts of the…
We design and validate new block propagation protocols for the peer-to-peer (P2P) network of the Bitcoin blockchain. Despite its strong protection for security and privacy, the current Bitcoin blockchain can only support a low number of…
Bitcoin is based on a P2P network that is used to propagate transactions and blocks. While the P2P network design intends to hide the topology of the P2P network, information about the topology is required to understand the network from a…
Bitcoin is a top-ranked cryptocurrency that has experienced huge growth and survived numerous attacks. The protocols making up Bitcoin must therefore accommodate the growth of the network and ensure security. Security of the Bitcoin network…
Existing permissionless blockchain solutions rely on peer-to-peer propagation mechanisms, where nodes in a network transfer transaction they received to their neighbors. Unfortunately, there is no explicit incentive for such transaction…
The Bitcoin Lightning network is a mechanism to enable fast and inexpensive off-chain Bitcoin transactions using peer-to-peer (P2P) channels between nodes that can also be composed into a routing path. Although the resulting possible…
Bitcoin is the first and the most extensive decentralized electronic cryptocurrency system that uses blockchain technology. It uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) network to operate without a central authority and propagate system information such as…
Blockchain is based on a P2P network, supporting decentralized consensus of current cryptocurrencies. Since bitcoin and altcoins all utilize an underlying blockchain, they are therefore greatly affected by the performance of the P2P…
Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency that relies on cryptography rather than trusted third parties such as central banks for its security. Underpinning the operation of the currency is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network that facilitates…
Over the past decade, the Bitcoin P2P network protocol has become a reference model for all modern cryptocurrencies. While nodes in this network are known, the connections among them are kept hidden, as it is commonly believed that this…
Bitcoin is a popular alternative to fiat money, widely used for its perceived anonymity properties. However, recent attacks on Bitcoin's peer-to-peer (P2P) network demonstrated that its gossip-based flooding protocols, which are used to…
Improving transaction throughput is an important challenge for Bitcoin. However, shortening the block generation interval or increasing the block size to improve throughput makes it sharing blocks within the network slower and increases the…
Bitcoin recently introduced a new protocol for the encryption of peer-to-peer (P2P) communication. The protocol, known as V2 P2P transport, represents a big step towards securing the overlay network against various previously-known attack…
Bitcoin is a digital currency which relies on a distributed set of miners to mint coins and on a peer-to-peer network to broadcast transactions. The identities of Bitcoin users are hidden behind pseudonyms (public keys) which are…
The Bitcoin P2P network currently represents a reference benchmark for modern cryptocurrencies. Its underlying protocol defines how transactions and blocks are distributed through all participating nodes. To protect user privacy, the…
A recent spam wave of IP addresses in the Bitcoin P2P network allowed us to estimate the degree distribution of reachable peers in the network. The resulting distribution shows that about every second reachable peer runs with Bitcoin Core's…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a layer 2 protocol designed to facilitate fast and inexpensive Bitcoin transactions. It operates by establishing channels between users, where Bitcoin is locked and transactions are conducted off-chain until…
Cryptocurrencies are distributed systems that allow exchanges of native (and non-) tokens among participants. The complete historical bookkeeping and its wide availability opens up an unprecedented possibility, i.e. that of understanding…
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency attracting a lot of interest both from the general public and researchers. There is an ongoing debate on the question of users' anonymity: while the Bitcoin protocol has been designed to ensure that the activity…
Off-chain transaction networks can mitigate the scalability issues of today's trustless electronic cash systems such as Bitcoin. However, these peer-to-peer networks also introduce a new attack surface which is not well-understood today.…