Related papers: 51% Attack via Difficulty Increase with a Small Qu…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography which has recently gained excessive popularity. Scientific research on bitcoin is less abundant. A paper at Financial Cryptography 2012…
The security of blockchain systems depends on the distribution of mining power across participants. If sufficient mining power is controlled by one entity, they can force their own version of events. This may allow them to double spend…
The consensus protocol named proof of work (PoW) is widely applied by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Although security of a PoW cryptocurrency is always the top priority, it is threatened by mining attacks like selfish mining. Researchers…
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom…
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…
We present and validate a novel mathematical model of the blockchain mining process and use it to conduct an economic evaluation of the double-spend attack, which is fundamental to all blockchain systems. Our analysis focuses on the value…
In this paper, we identify a new form of attack, called the Balance attack, against proof-of-work blockchain systems. The novelty of this attack consists of delaying network communications between multiple subgroups of nodes with balanced…
This paper studies a fundamental problem regarding the security of blockchain PoW consensus on how the existence of multiple misbehaving miners influences the profitability of selfish mining. Each selfish miner (or attacker interchangeably)…
Bitcoin and blockchain in general is a hot topic nowadays. In the paper we propose a quantum empowering of this technology and show how to speed-up the mining procedure using the modified Grover's algorithm.
In Proof-of-Work blockchains, difficulty algorithms serve the crucial purpose of maintaining a stable transaction throughput by dynamically adjusting the block difficulty in response to the miners' constantly changing computational power.…
GHOST, like the longest-chain protocol, is a chain selection protocol and its capability in resisting selfish mining attack has been validated in imperfect blockchains of Bitcoin and its variants (Bitcoin-like). This paper explores an…
A widespread security claim of the Bitcoin system, presented in the original Bitcoin white-paper, states that the security of the system is guaranteed as long as there is no attacker in possession of half or more of the total computational…
While cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications continue to gain popularity, their energy cost is evidently becoming unsustainable. In most instances, the main cost comes from the required amount of energy for the Proof-of-Work, and this…
An open distributed system can be secured by requiring participants to present proof of work and rewarding them for participation. The Bitcoin digital currency introduced this mechanism, which is adopted by almost all contemporary digital…
Blockchain is rapidly emerging as an important class of network application, with a unique set of trust, security and transparency properties. In a blockchain system, participants record and update the `server-side' state of an application…
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…
Proof of work cryptocurrencies began with the promise of a more egalitarian future with a decentralized monetary system with no powerful entities in charge. While this vision is far from realized, these cryptocurrencies are still touted to…
Since its advent in 2011, boson sampling has been a preferred candidate for demonstrating quantum advantage because of its simplicity and near-term requirements compared to other quantum algorithms. We propose to use a variant, called…
Cryptocurrencies that are based on Proof-of-Work (PoW) often rely on special purpose hardware to perform so-called mining operations that secure the system, with miners receiving freshly minted tokens as a reward for their work. A notable…
In this paper, the authors propose to increase the efficiency of blockchain mining by using a population-based approach. Blockchain relies on solving difficult mathematical problems as proof-of-work within a network before blocks are added…