Related papers: Evolving Bitcoin Custody
Blockchain is a radical innovation with a unique value proposition that shifts trust from institutions to algorithms. Still, the potential of blockchains remains elusive due to knowledge gaps between computer science research and…
The emergence of quantum computing presents a formidable challenge to the security of blockchain systems. Traditional cryptographic algorithms, foundational to digital signatures, message encryption, and hashing functions, become vulnerable…
Blockchain protocols come with a variety of security guarantees. For example, BFT-inspired protocols such as Algorand tend to be secure in the partially synchronous setting, while longest chain protocols like Bitcoin will normally require…
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…
It is no exaggeration to say that since the introduction of Bitcoin, blockchains have become a disruptive technology that has shaken the world. However, the rising popularity of the paradigm has led to a flurry of proposals addressing…
Cooperation is fundamental for human prosperity. Blockchain, as a trust machine, is a cooperative institution in cyberspace that supports cooperation through distributed trust with consensus protocols. While studies in computer science…
Heretofore the concept of "blockchain" has not been precisely defined. Accordingly the potential useful applications of this technology have been largely inflated. This work sidesteps the question of what constitutes a blockchain as such…
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system proposed by Nakamoto in 2008. Based on the Nakamoto consensus, Bagaria, Kannan, Tse, Fanti, and Viswanath proposed the Prism protocol in 2018 and showed that it achieves near-optimal blockchain…
With the advent of decentralised digital currencies powered by blockchain technology, a new era of peer-to-peer transactions has commenced. The rapid growth of the cryptocurrency economy has led to increased use of transaction-enabling…
Bitcoin introduced delegation of control over a monetary system from a select few to all who participate in that system. This delegation is known as the decentralization of controlling power and is a powerful security mechanism for the…
A proof of the security of the Bitcoin protocol is made rigorous, and simplified in certain parts. A computational model in which an adversary can delay transmission of blocks by time $\Delta$ is considered. The protocol is generalized to…
Transaction processing systems underpin modern commerce, finance, and critical infrastructure, yet their security has never been studied across the full evolutionary arc of these systems. Over five decades, transaction processing has…
Covenants are linguistic primitives that extend the Bitcoin script language, allowing transactions to constrain the scripts of the redeeming ones. Advocated as a way of improving the expressiveness of Bitcoin contracts while preserving the…
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…
The average cryptocurrency user today faces a difficult choice between centralized custodial wallets, which are notoriously prone to spontaneous collapse, or cumbersome self-custody solutions, which if not managed properly can cause a total…
We study to what extent the Bitcoin blockchain security permanently depends on the underlying distribution of cryptocurrency market outcomes. We use daily blockchain and Bitcoin data for 2014-2019 and employ the ARDL approach. We test three…
Blockchain has come a long way: a system that was initially proposed specifically for cryptocurrencies is now being adapted and adopted as a general-purpose transactional system. As blockchain evolves into another data management system,…
Bitcoin has been subject to illicit activities more often than probably any other financial assets, due to the pseudo-anonymous nature of its transacting entities. An ideal detection model is expected to achieve all the three properties of…
Bitcoin is built on a blockchain, an immutable decentralised ledger that allows entities (users) to exchange Bitcoins in a pseudonymous manner. Bitcoins are associated with alpha-numeric addresses and are transferred via transactions. Each…
Providing reliable and surreptitious communications is difficult in the presence of adaptive and resourceful state level censors. In this paper we introduce Tithonus, a framework that builds on the Bitcoin blockchain and network to provide…