Hedging Against Sore Loser Attacks in Cross-Chain Transactions

Abstract

A *sore loser attack* in cross-blockchain commerce rises when one party decides to halt participation partway through, leaving other parties' assets locked up for a long duration. Although vulnerability to sore loser attacks cannot be entirely eliminated, it can be reduced to an arbitrarily low level. This paper proposes new distributed protocols for hedging a range of cross-chain transactions in a synchronous communication model, such as two-party swaps, $n$-party swaps, brokered transactions, and auctions.