English
Related papers

Related papers: Side Contract Commitment Attacks on Blockchains

200 papers

Today's blockchains suffer from low throughput and high latency, which impedes their widespread adoption of more complex applications like smart contracts. In this paper, we propose a novel paradigm for smart contract execution. It…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-06-09 Jian Liu , Peilun Li , Raymond~Cheng , N. Asokan , Dawn Song

Game theory is often used as a tool to analyze decentralized systems and their properties, in particular, blockchains. In this note, we take the opposite view. We argue that blockchains can and should be used to implement economic…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-10-02 Akaki Mamageishvili , Jan Christoph Schlegel

Smart contracts are self-executing programs on blockchain platforms like Ethereum, which have revolutionized decentralized finance by enabling trustless transactions and the operation of decentralized applications. Despite their potential,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Gerardo Iuliano , Dario Di Nucci

We examine normal-form games in which players may \emph{pre-commit} to outcome-contingent transfers before choosing their actions. In the one-shot version of this model, Jackson and Wilkie showed that side contracting can backfire: even a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-12 Ivan Geffner , Caspar Oesterheld , Vincent Conitzer

Smart contracts have recently been adopted by many security protocols. However, existing studies lack satisfactory theoretical support on how contracts benefit security protocols. This paper aims to give a systematic analysis of smart…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-04-21 Rujia Li , Qin Wang , Qi Wang , David Galindo

Coding theory revolves around the incorporation of redundancy into transmitted symbols, computation tasks, and stored data to guard against adversarial manipulation. However, error correction in coding theory is contingent upon a strict…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Hanzaleh Akbari Nodehi , Viveck R. Cadambe , Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali

Smart contracts enable contract terms to be automatically executed and verified on the blockchain, and recent years have witnessed numerous applications of them in areas such as financial institutions and supply chains. The execution logic…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Lantian Li , Yuyu Chen , Jingwen Wu , Yue Pan , Zhongxing Yu

Blockchain technology (BT) Ethereum Smart Contracts allows programmable transactions that involve the transfer of monetary assets among peers on a BT network independent of a central authorizing agency. Ethereum Smart Contracts are programs…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-05-21 Noama Fatima Samreen , Manar H. Alalfi

Blockchain is a distributed ledger, which is protected against malicious modifications by means of cryptographic tools, e.g. digital signatures and hash functions. One of the most prominent applications of blockchains is cryptocurrencies,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-12-20 E. O. Kiktenko , M. A. Kudinov , A. K. Fedorov

There appears to be an insatiable desire for spawning new bespoke blockchains to harness the functionality provided by blockchain technologies, resulting in a constant stream of blockchain start-up companies entering the market with their…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-03-25 Sandra Johnson , Peter Robinson , John Brainard

It is undeniable that artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain concepts are spreading at a phenomenal rate. Both technologies have distinct degree of technological complexity and multi-dimensional business implications. However, a common…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-10-24 Tshilidzi Marwala , Bo Xing

We put forward the idea that classical blockchains and smart contracts are potentially useful primitives not only for classical cryptography, but for quantum cryptography as well. Abstractly, a smart contract is a functionality that allows…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-07-04 Andrea Coladangelo

Smart contract access control mechanisms can introduce centralization into supposedly decentralized ecosystems. In our view, such centralization is an overlooked risk of smart contracts that underlies well-known smart contract security…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-12-12 Metin Lamby , Valentin Zieglmeier , Christian Ziegler

With the advent of blockchain technologies, the idea of decentralized applications has gained traction. Smart contracts permit the implementation of application logic to foster distributed systems that are capable of removing…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-02-12 Martin Westerkamp

Smart Contracts (SCs) are programs stored in a Blockchain to ensure agreements between two or more parties. Due to the unchangeable essence of Blockchain, failures or errors in SCs become perpetual once published. The reliability of SCs is…

Since it takes time and effort to put a new product or service on the market, one would like to predict whether it will be a success. In general this is not possible, but it is possible to follow best practices in order to maximise the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-09-02 Pieter Hartel , Ivan Homoliak , Daniël Reijsbergen

Proof-of-Stake blockchains based on a longest-chain consensus protocol are an attractive energy-friendly alternative to the Proof-of-Work paradigm. However, formal barriers to "getting the incentives right" were recently discovered, driven…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Matheus V. X. Ferreira , S. Matthew Weinberg

We provide a game-theoretic analysis of the problem of front-running attacks. We use it to distinguish attacks from legitimate competition among honest users for having their transactions included earlier in the block. We also use it to…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-01-11 Andrea Canidio , Vincent Danos

We study game-theoretic models for capturing participation in blockchain systems. Permissionless blockchains can be naturally viewed as games, where a set of potentially interested users is faced with the dilemma of whether to engage with…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-06 Pyrros Chaidos , Aggelos Kiayias , Evangelos Markakis

The cybersecurity of modern systems has dramatically increased attention from both industrial and academia perspectives. In the recent era, the popularity of the blockchain-based system has traditionally been emergent among various…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-09-13 Abdul Khalique Shaikh A. K. Al-Alawi , L. R. , Al-Busaidi , R. , Shaikh