Related papers: Two Attacks On Proof-of-Stake GHOST/Ethereum
Layer 1 (L1) blockchains such as Ethereum are secured under an "honest supermajority of stake" assumption for a large pool of validators who verify each and every transaction on it. This high security comes at a scalability cost which not…
Fault-tolerant distributed systems move the trust in a single party to a majority of parties participating in the protocol. This makes blockchain based crypto-currencies possible: they allow parties to agree on a total order of transactions…
In the proof-of-stake (PoS) paradigm for maintaining decentralized, permissionless cryptocurrencies, Sybil attacks are prevented by basing the distribution of roles in the protocol execution on the stake distribution recorded in the ledger…
An important feature of Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains is full dynamic availability, allowing miners to go online and offline while requiring only 50% of the online miners to be honest. Existing Proof-of-stake (PoS), Proof-of-Space and…
Like most modern blockchain networks, Ethereum has relied on economic incentives to promote honest participation in the chain's consensus. The distributed character of the platform, together with the "randomness" or "luck" factor that both…
Trustless systems, such as those blockchain enpowered, provide trust in the system regardless of the trust of its participants, who may be honest or malicious. Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols and DAG-based approaches have emerged as a better…
Maximal extractable value (MEV) in which block proposers unethically gain profits by manipulating the order in which transactions are included within a block, is a key challenge facing blockchains such as Ethereum today. Left unchecked, MEV…
Single Secret Leader Elections have recently been proposed as an improved leader election mechanism for proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains. However, the security gain they provide has not been quantified. In this work, we present a comparison…
Ethereum is undergoing significant changes to its architecture as it evolves. These changes include its switch to PoS consensus and the introduction of significant infrastructural changes that do not require a change to the core protocol,…
Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain in the world, supported by the immense hash power of its Proof-of-Work miners. Proof-of-Stake chains are energy-efficient, have fast finality but face several security issues: susceptibility to…
In this paper we propose a double-linked blockchain data structure that greatly improves blockchain performance and guarantees single chain with no forks. Additionally, with the proposed proof-of-refundable-tax (PoRT) consensus algorithm,…
Blockchain protocols incentivize participation through monetary rewards, assuming rational actors behave honestly to maximize their gains. However, attackers may attempt to harm others even at personal cost. These denial of profit attacks…
The distributed consensus mechanism is the backbone of the rapidly developing blockchain network. Blockchain platforms consume vast amounts of electricity based on the current consensus mechanism of Proof of Work. Here, we point out an…
Bitcoin is the first fully-decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol to achieve a high level of security, but at the expense of poor throughput and latency. Scaling the performance of Bitcoin has a been a major recent direction of…
Blockchain protocols differ in fundamental ways, including the mechanics of selecting users to produce blocks (e.g., proof-of-work vs. proof-of-stake) and the method to establish consensus (e.g., longest chain rules vs. Byzantine…
The introduction of Bitcoin fueled the development of blockchain-based resilient data management systems that are resilient against failures, enable federated data management, and can support data provenance. The key factor determining the…
The security of most existing cryptocurrencies is based on a concept called Proof-of-Work, in which users must solve a computationally hard cryptopuzzle to authorize transactions (`one unit of computation, one vote'). This leads to enormous…
Blockchain technology is widely used in various fields due to its ability to provide decentralization and trustless security. This is a fundamental understanding held by many advocates, but it is misunderstood, leading participants to fail…
The Decentralized-Consistent-Scale (DCS) Triangle defines three dimensions that illustrate the tradeoffs of the blockchain consensus mechanism. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid consensus protocol, called Deterministic Proof of Work…
Eclipse attacks isolate blockchain nodes by monopolizing their peer-to-peer connections. The attacks were extensively studied in Bitcoin (SP'15, SP'20, CCS'21, SP'23) and Monero (NDSS'25), but their practicality against Ethereum nodes…