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The smart contract-based markets for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain have seen tremendous growth in 2021, with trading volumes peaking at 3.5b in September 2021. This dramatic surge has led to industry observers…
Modern blockchain ecosystems comprise many heterogeneous networks, creating a growing need for interoperability. Cross-chain bridges provide the core infrastructure for this interoperability by enabling verifiable state transitions that…
Blockchain technology enhances transparency by maintaining a distributed ledger among mutually untrusting parties. Despite its advantages, scalability and availability remain critical bottlenecks that hinder widespread adoption. The…
Decentralised applications (dApps) that run on public blockchains have the benefit of trustworthiness and transparency as every activity that happens on the blockchain can be publicly traced through the transaction data. However, this…
Blockchains are maintained by a network of participants that run algorithms designed to maintain collectively a distributed machine tolerant to Byzantine attacks. From the point of view of users, blockchains provide the illusion of…
Blockchain technology, which has been known by mostly small technological circles up until recently, is bursting throughout the globe, with a potential economic and social impact that could fundamentally alter traditional financial and…
The number of users approaching the world of cryptocurrencies exploded in the last years, and consequently the daily interactions on their underlying distributed ledgers have intensified. In this paper, we analyze the flow of these digital…
Proof-of-work computation used in cryptocurrencies has witnessed significant growth in the U.S. and many other regions around the world. One of the most significant bottlenecks for the scalable deployment of such computation is its energy…
Bitcoin (BTC) is probably the most transparent payment network in the world, thanks to the full history of transactions available to the public. Though, Bitcoin is not a fully anonymous environment, rather a pseudonymous one, accounting for…
Sharding has shown great potential to scale out blockchains. It divides nodes into smaller groups which allow for partial transaction processing, relaying and storage. Hence, instead of running one blockchain, we will run multiple…
The availability of data on digital traces is growing to unprecedented sizes, but inferring actionable knowledge from large-scale data is far from being trivial. This is especially important for computational finance, where digital traces…
Existing blockchain systems scale poorly because of their distributed consensus protocols. Current attempts at improving blockchain scalability are limited to cryptocurrency. Scaling blockchain systems under general workloads (i.e.,…
Extensive research on Nakamoto-style consensus protocols has shown that network delays degrade the security of these protocols. Established results indicate that, perhaps surprisingly, maximal security is achieved when the network is as…
In this work, we investigate how the governance features of a managed currency (e.g., a fiat currency) can be built into a cryptocurrency in order to leverage potential benefits found in the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.…
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology provide an innovative model for reshaping digital services. Driven by the movement toward Web 3.0, recent systems started to provide distributed services, such as computation outsourcing or file…
The rise of blockchain technologies has given a boost to social good projects, which are trying to exploit various characteristic features of blockchains: the quick and inexpensive transfer of cryptocurrency, the transparency of…
Blockchain, often integrated with distributed systems and security enhancements, has significant potential in various industries. However, environmental concerns and the efficiency of consortia-controlled permissioned networks remain…
Cryptocurrency is a well-developed blockchain technology application that is currently a heated topic throughout the world. The public availability of transaction histories offers an opportunity to analyze and compare different…
All public blockchains are secured by a proof of opportunity cost among block producers. For example, the security offered by proof-of-work (PoW) systems, like Bitcoin, is due to spent computation; it is work precisely because it cannot be…
Encryption has increasingly been used in all applications for various purposes, but it also brings big challenges to network security. In this paper, we take first steps towards addressing some of these chal- lenges by introducing a novel…