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To improve transaction rates, many cryptocurrencies have implemented so-called ''Layer-2'' transaction protocols, where payments are routed across networks of private payment channels. However, for a given transaction, not every network…
Proof-of-Stake blockchains based on a longest-chain consensus protocol are an attractive energy-friendly alternative to the Proof-of-Work paradigm. However, formal barriers to "getting the incentives right" were recently discovered, driven…
In the past decade, blockchain has emerged as a promising solution for building secure distributed ledgers and has attracted significant attention. However, current blockchain systems suffer from limited throughput, poor scalability, and…
Scalability problems in programmable blockchains have created a strong demand for secure methods that move the bulk of computation outside the blockchain. One of the preferred solutions to this problem involves off-chain computers that…
Optimistic rollups provide scalable smart-contract execution but remain unsuitable for regulated financial applications due to three structural gaps: semantic legitimacy, cross-layer state consistency, and ordering fairness. We introduce…
In the high-stakes race to develop more scalable blockchains, some platforms (Binance, Cosmos, EOS, TRON, etc.) have adopted committee-based consensus (CBC) protocols, whereby the blockchain's record-keeping rights are entrusted to a…
Public blockchains, though renowned for their transparency and immutability, suffer from significant privacy concerns. Network-level analysis and long-term observation of publicly available transactions can often be used to infer user…
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…
Blockchains offer a decentralized and secure execution environment strong enough to host cryptocurrencies, but the state-replication model makes on-chain computation expensive. To avoid heavy on-chain workloads, systems like Truebit and…
Blockchains use consensus protocols to reach agreement, e.g., on the ordering of transactions. DAG-based consensus protocols are increasingly adopted by blockchain companies to reduce energy consumption and enhance security. These protocols…
Simple commit-reveal beacons are vulnerable to last-revealer strategies, and existing descriptions often leave accountability and recovery mechanisms unspecified for practical deployments. We present Commit-Reveal$^2$, a layered design for…
In response to the growing demand for enhanced performance and power efficiency, the semiconductor industry has witnessed a paradigm shift toward heterogeneous integration, giving rise to 2.5D/3D chips. These chips incorporate diverse…
With the rise of cryptocurrencies, many new applications built on decentralized blockchains have emerged. Blockchains are full-stack distributed systems where multiple sub-systems interact. While many deployed blockchains and decentralized…
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…
Sharding is essential for improving blockchain scalability. Existing protocols overlook diverse adversarial attacks, limiting transaction throughput. This paper presents Reticulum, a groundbreaking sharding protocol addressing this issue,…
Blockchains with smart contracts are distributed ledger systems that achieve block-state consistency among distributed nodes by only allowing deterministic operations of smart contracts. However, the power of smart contracts is enabled by…
Blockchain is an essentially distributed database recording all transactions or digital events among participating parties. Each transaction in the records is approved and verified by consensus of the participants in the system that…
This study tackles the computational challenges of solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) for a restricted class of problems. It is motivated by the Last Revealer Attack (LRA), which undermines fairness in some Proof-of-Stake (PoS)…
A blockchain replaces central counterparties with time-consuming consensus protocols to record the transfer of ownership. This settlement latency slows cross-exchange trading, exposing arbitrageurs to price risk. Off-chain settlement,…
Given the parallels between game theory and consensus, it makes sense to intelligently design blockchain or DAG protocols with an incentive-compatible-first mentality. To that end, we propose a new blockchain or DAG protocol enhancement…