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Monero is a privacy-centric cryptocurrency that makes payments untraceable by adding decoys to every real input spent in a transaction. Two studies from 2017 found methods to distinguish decoys from real inputs, which enabled traceability…
How to audit outsourced data in centralized storage like cloud is well-studied, but it is largely under-explored for the rising decentralized storage network (DSN) that bodes well for a billion-dollar market. To realize DSN as a usable…
Most popular blockchain solutions, like Bitcoin, rely on proof-of-work, guaranteeing that the output of the consensus is agreed upon with high probability. However, this probability depends on the delivery of messages and that the…
The trade-off of secrecy is the difficulty of verification. This trade-off means that contracts must be kept private, yet their compliance needs to be verified, which we call the secrecy-verifiability paradox. However, the existing smart…
Anonymous communication networks have emerged as crucial tools for obfuscating communication pathways and concealing user identities. However, their practical deployments face significant challenges, including susceptibility to artificial…
We increasingly live in a world where there is a balance between the rights to privacy and the requirements for consent, and the rights of society to protect itself. Within this world, there is an ever-increasing requirement to protect the…
The Bitcoin white paper introduced blockchain technology, enabling trustful transactions without intermediaries. Smart contracts emerged with Ethereum and blockchains expanded beyond cryptocurrency, applying to auctions, crowdfunding and…
With the advancement of digital payment technologies, central banks worldwide have increasingly begun to explore the implementation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). This paper presents a comprehensive review of the latest…
This paper explores how zero-knowledge proofs can enhance Bitcoin's functionality and privacy. First, we consider Proof-of-Reserve schemes: by using zk-STARKs, a custodian can prove its Bitcoin holdings are more than a predefined threshold…
Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges offer compelling security benefits over centralized exchanges: users control their funds and avoid the risk of an exchange hack or malicious operator. However, because user assets are fully accessible…
The rapid growth in digital data forms the basis for a wide range of new services and research, e.g, large-scale medical studies. At the same time, increasingly restrictive privacy concerns and laws are leading to significant overhead in…
As blockchain technology and cryptocurrency become increasingly mainstream, ever-increasing energy costs required to maintain the computational power running these decentralized platforms create a market for more energy-efficient hardware.…
We characterize digital cash as the digital equivalent of physical cash: secure, fungible, decentralized, directly controlled, privacy-preserving; but enhanced with qualitatively new functionality. It is extremely efficiently transferable…
Data privacy is critical in instilling trust and empowering the societal pacts of modern technology-driven democracies. Unfortunately, it is under continuous attack by overreaching or outright oppressive governments, including some of the…
This paper describes the process of remaining anonymous online and its concurrent operational security that has to be performed. It focusses particularly on remaining anonymous while purchasing online goods, resulting in anonymously bought…
Bitcoin, the first peer-to-peer electronic cash system, opened the door to permissionless, private, and trustless transactions. Attempts to repurpose Bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology have run up against fundamental limitations to…
Vulnerable individuals have a limited ability to make reasonable financial decisions and choices and, thus, the level of care that is appropriate to be provided to them by financial institutions may be different from that required for other…
Encrypted cloud storage services are steadily increasing in popularity, with many commercial solutions currently available. In such solutions, the cloud storage is trusted for data availability, but not for confidentiality. Additionally,…
Nowadays, there is a plethora of services that are provided and paid for online, like video streaming subscriptions, car or parking sharing, purchasing tickets for events, etc. Online services usually issue tokens directly related to the…
Unlike other industries in which intellectual property is patentable, the financial industry relies on trade secrecy to protect its business processes and methods, which can obscure critical financial risk exposures from regulators and the…