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Despite the fact that it is publicly available, collecting and processing the full bitcoin blockchain data is not trivial. Its mere size, history, and other features indeed raise quite specific challenges, that we address in this paper. The…
Blockchain systems often employ proof-of-work consensus protocols to validate and add transactions into hashchains. These protocols stimulate competition among miners in solving cryptopuzzles (e.g. SHA-256 hash computation in Bitcoin) in…
There is a growing interest in understanding the energy and environmental footprint of digital currencies, specifically in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. These cryptocurrencies are operated by a geographically distributed…
The field of quantum computation currently lacks a formal proof of experimental feasibility. Qubits are fragile and sophisticated quantum error correction is required to achieve reliable quantum computation. The surface code is a promising…
Routing attacks remain practically effective in the Internet today as existing countermeasures either fail to provide protection guarantees or are not easily deployable. Blockchain systems are particularly vulnerable to such attacks as they…
We present three very simple variants of the classic Heads or Tails game using chips, each of which contributes to our understanding of the Bitcoin protocol. The first variant addresses the issue of temporary Bitcoin forks, which occur when…
In this paper, the authors propose to increase the efficiency of blockchain mining by using a population-based approach. Blockchain relies on solving difficult mathematical problems as proof-of-work within a network before blocks are added…
Miners play a key role in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin: they invest substantial computational resources in processing transactions and minting new currency units. It is well known that an attacker controlling more than half of the…
Quantum computing is a winsome field that concerns with the behaviour and nature of energy at the quantum level to improve the efficiency of computations. In recent years, quantum computation is receiving much attention for its capability…
Despite their potential in many respects, blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) technology have been the target of criticism for the energy intensity of the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm in general and of Bitcoin…
Due to Shor's algorithm, quantum computers are a severe threat for public key cryptography. This motivated the cryptographic community to search for quantum-safe solutions. On the other hand, the impact of quantum computing on secret key…
Permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin have long been criticized for their high computational and storage overhead. Unfortunately, while a number of proposals address the energy consumption of existing Proof-of-Work deployments, little…
Sharding has shown great potential to scale out blockchains. It divides nodes into smaller groups which allow for partial transaction processing, relaying and storage. Hence, instead of running one blockchain, we will run multiple…
This paper surveys innovative protocols that enhance the programming functionality of the Bitcoin blockchain, a key part of the "Bitcoin Ecosystem." Bitcoin utilizes the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model and a stack-based script…
Mining pools, the main components of the Bitcoin network, dominate the computing resources and play essential roles in network security and performance aspects. Although many existing measurements of the Bitcoin network are available,…
Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that ensures transparency, security, and immutability through cryptographic techniques. However, advancements in quantum computing threaten the security of classical cryptographic…
Spin qubits in silicon are strong contenders for realizing a practical quantum computer. This technology has made remarkable progress with the demonstration of single and two-qubit gates above the fault-tolerant threshold and entanglement…
Extensive research on Nakamoto-style consensus protocols has shown that network delays degrade the security of these protocols. Established results indicate that, perhaps surprisingly, maximal security is achieved when the network is as…
We provide a tight analysis of Grover's recent algorithm for quantum database searching. We give a simple closed-form formula for the probability of success after any given number of iterations of the algorithm. This allows us to determine…
We describe and analyze perishing mining, a novel block-withholding mining strategy that lures profit-driven miners away from doing useful work on the public chain by releasing block headers from a privately maintained chain. We then…