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Blockchains are among the most powerful technologies to realize decentralized information systems. In order to safely enjoy all guarantees provided by a blockchain, one should maintain a full node, therefore maintaining an updated local…
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…
Blockchains provide environments where parties can interact transparently and securely peer-to-peer without needing a trusted third party. Parties can trust the integrity and correctness of transactions and the verifiable execution of…
While much research focuses on different methods to secure blockchain, information on the chain needs to be accessed by end-users to be useful. This position paper surveys different ways that end-users may access blockchains. We observe…
Blockchain protocols implement total-order broadcast in a permissionless setting, where processes can freely join and leave. In such a setting, to safeguard against Sybil attacks, correct processes rely on cryptographic proofs tied to a…
Validating a blockchain incurs heavy computation, communication, and storage costs. As a result, clients with limited resources, called light nodes, cannot verify transactions independently and must trust full nodes, making them vulnerable…
Decentralized marketplace applications demand fast, cheap and easy-to-use cryptocurrency payment mechanisms to facilitate high transaction volumes. The standard solution for off-chain payments, state channels, are optimized for frequent…
This chapter contributes to evolving the versatility and complexity of blockchain-enabled services through extending the functionality of blockchain-enforced smart contracts. The contributions include: (i) a method for automated management…
Options are fundamental to blockchain-based financial services, offering essential tools for risk management and price speculation, which enhance liquidity, flexibility, and market efficiency in decentralized finance (DeFi). Despite the…
Public blockchains provide a decentralized method for storing transaction data and have many applications in different sectors. In order for users to track transactions, a simple method is to let them keep a local copy of the entire public…
Micropayment channels are the most prominent solution to the limitation on transaction throughput in current blockchain systems. However, in practice channels are risky because participants have to be online constantly to avoid fraud, and…
Layer 2 systems have received increasing attention due to their potential to scale the throughput of L1 blockchains. To avoid the cost of putting data on chain, these systems increasingly turn to off-chain data availability solutions such…
The Metaverse is rapidly evolving, bringing us closer to its imminent reality. However, the widespread adoption of this new automated technology poses significant research challenges in terms of authenticity, integrity, interoperability,…
Blockchain enables novel, trustworthy Process-Aware Information Systems (PAISs) by enforcing the security, robustness, and traceability of operations. In particular, transparency ensures that all information exchanges are openly accessible,…
With the increasing adoption of decentralized information systems based on a variety of permissionless blockchain networks, the choice of consensus mechanism is at the core of many controversial discussions. Ethereum's recent transition…
Bitcoin demonstrated the possibility of a financial ledger that operates without the need for a trusted central authority. However, concerns persist regarding its security and considerable energy consumption. We assess the consensus…
A blockchain, such as Bitcoin, is an append-only, secure, transparent, distributed ledger. A fair blockchain is expected to have healthy metrics; high honest mining power, low processing latency, i.e., low wait times for transactions and…
The unique properties of blockchain enable central requirements of distributed secure logging: Immutability, integrity, and availability. Especially when providing transparency about data usages, a blockchain-based secure log can be…
Clients of permissionless blockchain systems, like Bitcoin, rely on an underlying peer-to-peer network to send and receive transactions. It is critical that a client is connected to at least one honest peer, as otherwise the client can be…
Blockchain is a novel technology that is rising a lot of interest in the industrial and re- search sectors because its properties of decentralisation, immutability and data integrity. Initially, the underlying consensus mechanism has been…