Related papers: CoMMA Protocol: Towards Complete Mitigation of Max…
Traditional blockchain untraceability schemes, such as mixers and privacy coins, obscure the sender-receiver relationship by placing transfers within an anonymity set. This paper studies a stronger goal: whether the transfer event itself…
Proof of work blockchain protocols using multiple hash types are considered. It is proven that the security region of such a protocol cannot be the AND of a 51\% attack on all the hash types. Nevertheless, a protocol called Merged Bitcoin…
Complex DeFi services are usually constructed by composing a variety of simpler smart contracts. The permissionless nature of the blockchains where these smart contracts are executed makes DeFi services exposed to security risks, since…
We frame Ethereum transactions reverted by invariants-require(<invariant>)/ assert(<invariant>)/if (<invariant>) revert statements in the contract implementation-as a positive signal of active on-chain defenses. Despite their value, the…
Blockchains, and specifically smart contracts, have promised to create fair and transparent trading ecosystems. Unfortunately, we show that this promise has not been met. We document and quantify the widespread and rising deployment of…
A growing body of literature is aimed at designing private mempools in blockchains. The ultimate goal of this research is addressing several phenomena broadly classed under MEV with sandwich attacks as the canonical example. The literature…
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…
Financial fraud cases are on the rise even with the current technological advancements. Due to the lack of inter-organization synergy and because of privacy concerns, authentic financial transaction data is rarely available. On the other…
Payment channel networks provide a fast and scalable solution to relay funds, acting as a second layer to slower and less scalable blockchain protocols. In this paper, we present an accessible, low-cost attack in which the attacker…
In permissionless blockchains, transaction issuers include a fee to incentivize miners to include their transactions. To accurately estimate this prioritization fee for a transaction, transaction issuers (or blockchain participants, more…
This study explores the intricacies of waiting games, a novel dynamic that emerged with Ethereum's transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS)-based block proposer selection protocol. Within this PoS framework, validators acquire a distinct…
The Ethereum block-building process has changed significantly since the emergence of Proposer-Builder Separation. Validators access blocks through a marketplace, where block builders bid for the right to construct the block and earn MEV…
Blockchain transactions are signed by private keys. Secure key storage and tamper-proof computers are essential requirements for deploying a trusted infrastructure. In this paper, we identify some threats against blockchain wallets and…
Maximum extractable value (MEV) has been extensively studied. In most papers, the researchers have worked with the Ethereum blockchain almost exclusively. Even though, Ethereum and other blockchains have dynamic gas prices this is not the…
With the rapid development of blockchain technology, transaction logs play a central role in various applications, including decentralized exchanges, wallets, cross-chain bridges, and other third-party services. However, these logs,…
This paper addresses the lack of research on quantifying Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) on Ethereum Layer 2 networks (L2s). Our findings reveal a substantial amount of MEV to be extracted on L2s, particularly on Polygon, with a lower bound…
In blockchain systems, the design of transaction fee mechanisms is essential for stability and satisfaction for both miners and users. A recent work has proven the impossibility of collusion-proof mechanisms that achieve both non-zero miner…
Clients of permissionless blockchain systems, like Bitcoin, rely on an underlying peer-to-peer network to send and receive transactions. It is critical that a client is connected to at least one honest peer, as otherwise the client can be…
We describe and analyze perishing mining, a novel block-withholding mining strategy that lures profit-driven miners away from doing useful work on the public chain by releasing block headers from a privately maintained chain. We then…
This study analyzes proposer-builder data and MEV-Boost payment data following the Ethereum merge in September 2022 to identify patterns of multi-block MEV. Our findings reveal fewer multi-slot sequences of builders than predicted by a…