Related papers: Blockchain Censorship
Public blockchains should be able to scale with respect to the number of nodes and to the transactions workload. The blockchain scalability trilemma has been informally conjectured. This is related to scalability, security and…
With the rise of cryptocurrencies, many new applications built on decentralized blockchains have emerged. Blockchains are full-stack distributed systems where multiple sub-systems interact. While many deployed blockchains and decentralized…
We consider front-running to be a course of action where an entity benefits from prior access to privileged market information about upcoming transactions and trades. Front-running has been an issue in financial instrument markets since the…
Ethereum has undergone a recent change called \textit{the Merge}, which made Ethereum a Proof-of-Stake blockchain, shifting closer to BFT consensus. Ethereum, which wished to keep the best of the two protocol designs (BFT and…
The proliferation of blockchain entities (persons or enterprises) exposes them to potential regulatory actions (e.g., being litigated) by regulatory authorities. Regulatory frameworks for crypto assets are actively being developed and…
Permissionless blockchains achieve consensus while allowing unknown nodes to join and leave the system at any time. They typically come in two flavors: proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS), and both are vulnerable to attacks. PoS…
This paper presents a study of the Poof-of-Stake (PoW) Ethereum consensus protocol, following the recent switch from Proof-of-Work (PoS) to Proof-of-Stake within Merge upgrade. The new protocol has resulted in reduced energy consumption and…
How to audit outsourced data in centralized storage like cloud is well-studied, but it is largely under-explored for the rising decentralized storage network (DSN) that bodes well for a billion-dollar market. To realize DSN as a usable…
The cryptocurrency is attracting more and more attention because of the blockchain technology. Ethereum is gaining a significant popularity in blockchain community, mainly due to the fact that it is designed in a way that enables developers…
Initially introduced to Ethereum via Flashbots' MEV-boost, Proposer-Builder Separation allows proposers to auction off blockspace to a market of transaction orderers, known as builders. PBS is currently available to validators through the…
Coconut is a novel selective disclosure credential scheme supporting distributed threshold issuance, public and private attributes, re-randomization, and multiple unlinkable selective attribute revelations. Coconut integrates with…
Privacy and anonymity of validators, especially regarding IP address linkability, are essential to protect the Ethereum network from various attacks. Network-level attacks, such as DoS, can interrupt validators and affect the overall…
Ethereum is currently the main blockchain ecosystem providing decentralised trust guarantees for applications ranging from finance to e-government. A common criticism of blockchain networks has been their energy consumption and operational…
Since the inception of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have attracted an increasing interest from both academia and industry. Among various core components, consensus protocol is the defining technology…
Many blockchain consensus protocols have been proposed recently to scale the throughput of a blockchain with available bandwidth. However, these protocols are becoming increasingly complex, making it more and more difficult to produce…
Decentralization has been widely acknowledged as a core virtue of blockchains. However, in the past, there have been few measurement studies on measuring and comparing the actual level of decentralization between existing blockchains using…
Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity due to their transparency, security, and accessibility compared to traditional financial systems, with Bitcoin, introduced in 2009, leading the market. Bitcoin's security relies on blockchain…
Decentralization is a foundational principle of permissionless blockchains, with consensus mechanisms serving a critical role in its realization. This study quantifies the decentralization of consensus mechanisms in proof-of-stake (PoS)…
The prosperity of decentralized finance motivates many investors to profit via trading their crypto assets on decentralized applications (DApps for short) of the Ethereum ecosystem. Apart from Ether (the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum),…
Blockchain technology has become a trusted method for establishing secure and transparent transactions through a distributed, encrypted network. The operation of blockchain is governed by consensus algorithms, among which Proof of Stake…