Related papers: Proposer selection in EIP-7251
Smart contracts written in Solidity are programs used in blockchain networks, such as Etherium, for performing transactions. However, as with any piece of software, they are prone to errors and may present vulnerabilities, which malicious…
In September 2022, Ethereum transitioned from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) during "the merge" - making it the largest PoS cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. With this work, we present a comprehensive…
Blockchains have attracted a great deal of attention as a technology for the distributed management of register information at multiple nodes without a centralized system. However, they possess the drawbacks of low transaction throughput…
In recent publications, we presented a novel formal symbolic process virtual machine (FSPVM) framework that combined higher-order theorem proving and symbolic execution for verifying the reliability and security of smart contracts developed…
The exploitation of smart-contract vulnerabilities can have catastrophic consequences such as the loss of millions of pounds worth of crypto assets. Formal verification can be a useful tool in identifying vulnerabilities and proving that…
We study the economics of the Ethereum improvement proposal 4844 and its effect on rollups' data posting strategies. Rollups' cost consists of two parts: data posting and delay. In the new proposal, the data posting cost corresponds to a…
We present Solythesis, a source to source Solidity compiler which takes a smart contract code and a user specified invariant as the input and produces an instrumented contract that rejects all transactions that violate the invariant. The…
We present solc-verify, a source-level verification tool for Ethereum smart contracts. Solc-verify takes smart contracts written in Solidity and discharges verification conditions using modular program analysis and SMT solvers. Built on top…
The main problem faced by smart contract platforms is the amount of time and computational power required to reach consensus. In a classical blockchain model, each operation is in fact performed by each node, both to update the status and…
Optimistic rollups rely on fraud proofs -- interactive protocols executed on Ethereum to resolve conflicting claims about the rollup's state -- to scale Ethereum securely. To mitigate against potential censorship of protocol moves, fraud…
Optimistic responsiveness -- the ability of a consensus protocol to operate at the speed of the network -- is widely used in consensus protocol design to optimize latency and throughput. However, blockchain applications incentivize…
Numerous blockchain simulators have been proposed to allow researchers to simulate mainstream blockchains. However, we have not yet found a testbed that enables researchers to develop and evaluate their new consensus algorithms or new…
This paper analyzes the Execution Tickets proposal on Ethereum Research, unveiling its potential to revolutionize the Ethereum blockchain's economic model. At the core of this proposal lies a novel ticketing mechanism poised to redefine how…
In the blockchain-based, distributed computing platform Ethereum, programs called smart contracts are compiled to bytecode and executed on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Executing EVM bytecode is subject to monetary fees---a clear…
Existing blockchain networks are often large-scale, requiring transactions to be synchronized across the entire network to reach consensus. On-chain computations can be prohibitively expensive, making many CPU-intensive computations…
Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are gaining unprecedented popularity and understanding. Meanwhile, Ethereum is gaining a significant popularity in the blockchain community, mainly due to the fact that it is designed in a way that enables…
Achieving low-latency consensus in geographically distributed systems remains a key challenge for blockchain and distributed database applications. To this end, there has been significant recent interest in State-Machine-Replication (SMR)…
Proof-of-stake (PoS) is a promising approach for designing efficient blockchains, where block proposers are randomly chosen with probability proportional to their stake. A primary concern with PoS systems is the "rich getting richer"…
In Tendermint blockchains, the proof-of-stake mechanism and the underlying consensus algorithm entail a dynamic fault model that implies that the active validators (nodes that sign blocks) may change over time, and a quorum of these…
The rise of decentralized applications (dApps) has made smart contracts imperative components of blockchain technology. As many smart contracts process financial transactions, their security is paramount. Moreover, the immutability of…