Related papers: The Impact of Sanctions on decentralised Privacy T…
Sanctioning blockchain addresses has become a common regulatory response to malicious activities. However, enforcement on permissionless blockchains remains challenging due to complex transaction flows and sophisticated fund-obfuscation…
Regulatory authorities aim to tackle illegal activities by targeting the economic incentives that drive such behaviour. This is typically achieved through the implementation of financial sanctions against the entities involved in the…
Tornado Cash is a decentralised mixer that uses cryptographic techniques to sever the on-chain trail between depositors and withdrawers. In practice, however, its anonymity can be undermined by user behaviour and operational quirks. We…
The 2022 Russia Ukraine War has led to many sanctions being placed on Russia and Ukraine. The paper will discuss the impact the 2022 Russian Sanctions have on agricultural food prices and hunger. The paper also uses Instrumental Variable…
A common misconception among blockchain users is that pseudonymity guarantees privacy. The reality is almost the opposite. Every transaction one makes is recorded on a public ledger and reveals information about one's identity. Mixers, such…
Permissionless blockchains promise to be resilient against censorship by a single entity. This suggests that deterministic rules, and not third-party actors, are responsible for deciding if a transaction is appended to the blockchain or…
In blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, transactions represent the primary mechanism that the external world can use to trigger a change of blockchain state. Transactions serve as key sources of evidence and play a vital role in…
The Lightning Network is a scaling solution for Bitcoin that promises to enable rapid and private payment processing. In Lightning, multi-hop payments are secured by utilizing Hashed Time-Locked Contracts (HTLCs) and encrypted on the…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has the potential to disrupt centralized finance by validating peer-to-peer transactions through tamper-proof smart contracts, thus significantly lowering the transaction cost charged by financial…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) in Ethereum is a financial ecosystem built on the blockchain that has locked over 200 billion USD until April 2022. All transaction information is transparent and open when transacting through the DeFi protocol,…
User transactions on Ethereum's peer-to-peer network are at risk of being attacked. The smart contracts building decentralized finance (DeFi) have introduced a new transaction ordering dependency to the Ethereum blockchain. As a result,…
DEX, or decentralized exchange, is a prominent class of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on blockchains, attracting a total locked value worth tens of billions of USD today. This paper presents the first large-scale empirical study…
Cryptocurrency off-chain networks such as Lightning (e.g., Bitcoin) or Raiden (e.g., Ethereum) aim to increase the scalability of traditional on-chain transactions. To support nodes in learning about possible paths to route their…
In the age of Big Data, enabling task scheduling while protecting users' privacy is critical for various decentralized applications in blockchain-based smart contract platforms. Such a privacy-preserving task scheduler requires the task…
Privacy was one of the key points mentioned in Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper, and one of the selling points of Bitcoin in its early stages. In hindsight, however, de-anonymising Bitcoin users turned out to be more feasible than expected.…
This thesis presents techniques to investigate transactions in uncharted cryptocurrencies and services. Cryptocurrencies are used to securely send payments online. Payments via the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, use pseudonymous addresses…
Private blockchain networks are used by enterprises to manage decentralized processes without trusted mediators and without exposing their assets publicly on an open network like Ethereum. Yet external parties that cannot join such networks…
Programmable blockchains have long been a hot research topic given their tremendous use in decentralized applications. Smart contracts, using blockchains as their underlying technology, inherit the desired properties such as verifiability,…
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a novel governance mechanism in blockchain ecosystems, particularly within Decentralized Finance (DeFi). By enabling token holders to propose and vote on protocol changes, these…
Blockchains revolutionized centralized sectors like banking and finance by promoting decentralization and transparency. In a blockchain, information is transmitted through transactions issued by participants or applications. Miners…