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Blockchain technology promises to democratize finance and promote social equity through decentralization, but questions remain about whether current implementations advance or hinder these goals. Through a mixed-methods study combining…
Decentralized finance, i.e., DeFi, has become the most popular type of application on many public blockchains (e.g., Ethereum) in recent years. Compared to the traditional finance, DeFi allows customers to flexibly participate in diverse…
The trustless nature of permissionless blockchains renders overcollateralization a key safety component relied upon by decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Nonetheless, factors such as price volatility may undermine this mechanism. In…
A niche corner of the Web3 world is increasingly making use of hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to build decentralized infrastructure. One of the motivations to use TEEs is to go beyond the current performance…
Blockchain technologies are taking the world by storm. Public blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, enable secure peer-to-peer applications like crypto-currency or smart contracts. Their security and performance are well studied. This…
Cryptocurrency introduces usability challenges by requiring users to manage signing keys. Popular signing key management services (e.g., custodial wallets), however, either introduce a trusted party or burden users with managing signing key…
Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) protect sensitive code and data from the operating system, hypervisor, or other untrusted software. Different solutions exist, each proposing different features. Abstraction layers aim to unify the…
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have made payment transactions possible without a trusted third party, but they have a scalability issue due to their consensus mechanisms. Payment networks have emerged to overcome this…
We investigate identity lease, a new type of service in which users lease their identities to third parties by providing them with full or restricted access to their online accounts or credentials. We discuss how identity lease could be…
Increasingly, information systems rely on computational, storage, and network resources deployed in third-party facilities such as cloud centers and edge nodes. Such an approach further exacerbates cybersecurity concerns constantly raised…
The proliferation of blockchain-backed cryptocurrencies has sparked the need for cross-chain exchanges of diverse digital assets. Unfortunately, current exchanges suffer from high on-chain verification costs, weak threat models of central…
In recent years, many Blockchain based frameworks for transacting commodities on a congestible network have been proposed. In particular, as the number of controllable grid connected assets increases, there is a need for a decentralized,…
Web3 applications require execution platforms that maintain confidentiality and integrity without relying on centralized trust authorities. While Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) offer promising capabilities for confidential computing,…
Secure aggregation enables a group of mutually distrustful parties, each holding private inputs, to collaboratively compute an aggregate value while preserving the privacy of their individual inputs. However, a major challenge in adopting…
An increasing number of distributed platforms combine Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) with blockchains. Indeed, many hail the combination of TEEs and blockchains a good "marriage": TEEs bring confidential computing to the blockchain…
Confidential Computing enhances privacy of data in-use through hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) that use attestation to verify their integrity, authenticity, and certain runtime properties, along with those of the…
The decentralized and trustless nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology leads to a shift in the digital world. The possibility to execute small programs, called smart contracts, on cryptocurrencies like Ethereum opened doors to…
Distributed ledger systems (i.e., blockchains) have received a lot of attention. They promise to enable mutually untrusted participants to execute transactions while providing the immutability of the data and censorship resistance. Although…
Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are gradually adopted by major cloud providers, offering a practical option of \emph{confidential computing} for users who don't fully trust public clouds. TEEs use CPU-enabled hardware features to…
The exponential growth of wireless-based solutions, such as those related to the mobile smart devices (e.g., smart-phones and tablets) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, has lead to countless advantages in every area of our society. Such…