Habib, Kyle, Vladislav Kapitsyn, Giovanni Mazzeo, Faisal Mehrban
Current blockchain consensus protocols -- notably, Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) -- deliver global agreement but exhibit structural constraints. PoW anchors security in heavy computation, inflating energy use and imposing high confirmation latency. PoS improves efficiency but introduces stake concentration, long-range and "nothing-at-stake" vulnerabilities, and a hard performance ceiling shaped by slot times and multi-round committee voting. In this paper, we propose Proof of Trusted Execution (PoTE), a consensus paradigm where agreement emerges from verifiable execution rather than replicated re-execution. Validators operate inside heterogeneous VM-based TEEs, each running the same canonical program whose measurement is publicly recorded, and each producing vendor-backed attestations that bind the enclave code hash to the block contents. Because the execution is deterministic and the proposer is uniquely derived from public randomness, PoTE avoids forks, eliminates slot.time bottlenecks, and commits blocks in a single round of verification. We present the design of a PoTE consensus client, describe our reference implementation, and evaluate its performance against the stringent throughput requirements of the Trillion decentralized exchange.
IoT networks require secure coordination but cannot tolerate the heavy computational and energy burden of mainstream blockchain consensus mechanisms. This paper introduces an adaptive Proof-of-Probability (PoP) model designed for ultra-low-power devices. Unlike proof-of-work or stake-based models, PoP assigns block proposal probability based on device reliability, historical behavior, and real-time trust signals. Each node maintains a local trust vector updated through lightweight observations such as uptime, packet integrity, and peer confirmation. We design a probabilistic leader election protocol that minimizes message overhead and supports rapid convergence. Simulations across 10,000-node IoT clusters show PoP reduces energy consumption by 65–78% compared to PoS-lite variants, while maintaining strong resilience against Sybil and eclipse attacks. We also evaluate a real hardware deployment using ESP32 devices to measure runtime impact. Results show near-linear scalability. The paper concludes with security proofs and guidelines for practical deployments.
Reaching consensus in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based consensus protocols, requires supermajority agreement among participating validator nodes. Such protocols need significant network resources due to the concurrent voting of a large number of consensus nodes. As a solution, these nodes are divided into committees, with each committee voting individually at a dedicated time slot. In this paper, we introduce CliqueSensus, a protocol that, given a distribution of consensus nodes into committees, lets them self-organize into small, ephemeral clusters structured in clique topologies, to accelerate the voting process, while using only a small fraction of the network resources required by conventional message dissemination methods. Our evaluation demonstrates that our protocol exhibits rapid convergence and operates with minimal network overhead. We focus on the PoS consensus algorithm adopted by Ethereum 2.0. In addition to our protocol, we also analyze and simulate the clustering approach that Ethereum has adopted, showcasing that our protocol can reduce validation message dissemination time by 23% to 70%, while requiring about 190 times fewer validation message forwards.
Serverless computing promises on-demand elasticity and simplified deployment, yet today's production-grade serverless platforms remain tied to a single-provider, centrally scheduled control plane. This centralized scheduling model faces mounting challenges in handling heterogeneous policies, data governance constraints, and dynamic workloads for the modern web, where applications increasingly span multiple geo-distributed autonomous administrative domains. In this paper, we present Mocha, a decentralized, policy-aware framework for scheduling serverless functions across a federated ecosystem. At its core, Mocha proposes a hierarchically structured distributed hash table that embeds geographical and organizational context to facilitate locality-aware scheduling without any central authority. By implementing a formally specified compliance engine at each domain, Mocha guarantees that all regulatory, locality, and resource constraints are honored for function placement decisions. Experiments show that Mocha reduces scheduling tail latency by 4–9× compared to alternatives while maintaining full policy adherence.
Z. Liang, Bin Chen, Litao Ye, Chen Sun · 6 authors
The ERC4907 standard enables rentable Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) but is limited to single-user, single-time-slot authorization, which severely limits its applicability and efficiency in decentralized multi-slot scheduling scenarios. To address this limitation, this paper proposes Multi-slot ERC4907 (M-ERC4907) extension method. The M-ERC4907 method introduces novel functionalities to support the batch configuration of multiple time slots and simultaneous authorization of multiple users, thereby effectively eliminating the rigid sequential authorization constraint of ERC4907. The experiment was conducted on the Remix development platform. Experimental results show that the M-ERC4907 method significantly reduces on-chain transactions and overall Gas consumption, leading to enhanced scalability and resource allocation efficiency.
Jordan, Herbert, Jezek, Kamil, Subotic, Pavle, Scholz, Bernhard
The State Database of a blockchain stores account data and enables authentication. Modern blockchains use fast consensus protocols to avoid forking, improving throughput and finality. However, Ethereum's StateDB was designed for a forking chain that maintains multiple state versions. While newer blockchains adopt Ethereum's standard for DApp compatibility, they do not require multiple state versions, making legacy Ethereum databases inefficient for fast, non-forking blockchains. Moreover, existing StateDB implementations have been built on key-value stores (e.g., LevelDB), which make them less efficient. This paper introduces a novel state database that is a native database implementation and maintains Ethereum compatibility while being specialized for non-forking blockchains. Our database delivers ten times speedups and 99% space reductions for validators, and a threefold decrease in storage requirements for archive nodes.
Cross-chain technology enables interoperability among otherwise isolated blockchains, supporting interactions across heterogeneous networks. Similar to how multi-hop communication became fundamental in the evolution of the Internet, the demand for multi-hop cross-chain interactions is gaining increasing attention. However, this growing demand introduces new security and privacy challenges. On the security side, multi-hop interactions depend on the availability of multiple participating nodes. If any node becomes temporarily offline during execution, the protocol may fail to complete correctly, leading to settlement failure or fund loss. On the privacy side, the need for on-chain transparency to validate intermediate states may unintentionally leak linkable information, compromising the unlinkability of user interactions. In this paper, we propose the Cross-Chain Channel Network (CCN), a decentralized network designed to support secure and privacy-preserving multi-hop cross-chain transactions. Through experimental evaluation, we identify two critical types of offline failures, referred to as active and passive offline cases, which have not been adequately addressed by existing solutions. To mitigate these issues, we introduce R-HTLC, a core protocol within CCN. R-HTLC incorporates an hourglass mechanism and a multi-path refund strategy to ensure settlement correctness even when some nodes go offline during execution. Importantly, CCN addresses not only the correctness under offline conditions but also maintains unlinkability in such adversarial settings. To overcome this, CCN leverages zero-knowledge proofs and off-chain coordination, ensuring that interaction relationships remain indistinguishable even when certain nodes are temporarily offline.
This comprehensive technical specification details the ADN-NChain protocol, a first-of-its-kind Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). It introduces a revolutionary self-repairing neural blockchain architecture, leveraging biologically-inspired genetic algorithms for state management and unprecedented network resilience to systemic and quantum threats. The whitepaper thoroughly covers the robust system design, the novel Proof-of-Resonance (PoR) consensus mechanism, and a future-proof post-quantum cryptography implementation (CRYSTALS-Dilithium) essential for securing the next generation of crypto-assets and decentralized applications (dApps). Performance metrics confirm high scalability (12,000+ TPS) and exceptional data integrity with a 99.9% automatic corruption repair success rate. This work is critical for researchers, investors, and developers focused on next-generation blockchain, Web3, cryptocurrency security, and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) solutions.
We present Areon, a family of latency-friendly, stake-weighted, multi-proposer proof-of-stake consensus protocols. By allowing multiple proposers per slot and organizing blocks into a directed acyclic graph (DAG), Areon achieves robustness under partial synchrony. Blocks reference each other within a sliding window, forming maximal antichains that represent parallel ``votes'' on history. Conflicting subDAGs are resolved by a closest common ancestor (CCA)-local, window-filtered fork choice that compares the weight of each subDAG -- the number of recent short references -- and prefers the heavier one. Combined with a structural invariant we call Tip-Boundedness (TB), this yields a bounded-width frontier and allows honest work to aggregate quickly. We formalize an idealized protocol (Areon-Ideal) that abstracts away network delay and reference bounds, and a practical protocol (Areon-Base) that adds VRF-based eligibility, bounded short and long references, and application-level validity and conflict checks at the block level. On top of DAG analogues of the classical common-prefix, chain-growth, and chain-quality properties, we prove a backbone-style $(k,\varepsilon)$-finality theorem that calibrates confirmation depth as a function of the window length and target tail probability. We focus on consensus at the level of blocks; extending the framework to richer transaction selection, sampling, and redundancy policies is left to future work. Finally, we build a discrete-event simulator and compare Areon-Base against a chain-based baseline (Ouroboros Praos) under matched block-arrival rates. Across a wide range of adversarial stakes and network delays, Areon-Base achieves bounded-latency finality with consistently lower reorganization frequency and depth.
The fundamental limitation of blockchain architecture lies not in cryptographic primitives or consensus mechanisms, but in a conceptual mistake: the bundling of state transitions with asset custody. Every distributed ledger since Bitcoin has conflated these two concerns, creating an artificial ceiling on performance that no amount of clever engineering can overcome. This paper presents Virtual Rollups, a post-blockchain architecture that achieves what was previously thought impossible—sub-millisecond finality with full self-custody—by recognizing that state and escrow need not travel together. We formalize the Virtual Rollup construction, prove its security properties under Byzantine conditions, and demonstrate how its unified liquidity layer solves the multi-chain fragmentation problem that plagues decentralized finance. The result is not merely an incremental improvement but a categorical leap: trading venues can now match centralized exchanges in performance while exceeding them in security.
The Byzantine Generals Problem, introduced by Lamport, Shostak, and Pease, fundamentally addresses how a distributed system can achieve consensus even when some of its components are unreliable or malicious. This paper delves into the mathematical bounds that govern the solvability and efficiency of Byzantine Agreement (BA) protocols, specifically exploring the role of network topology in these limits. We examine classical impossibility results, such as the n $>$ 3f requirement for unauthenticated synchronous systems and the Fischer-Lynch-Paterson impossibility for deterministic asynchronous systems. Furthermore, we introduce "treasonous topologies" as a conceptual framework to systematically analyze how graph-theoretic properties like connectivity and diameter influence the minimum number of honest nodes required, message complexity, and time complexity. Special attention is paid to authenticated protocols which can relax certain bounds by employing digital signatures. This study elucidates the intricate relationship between adversarial capabilities, network structure, and the inherent mathematical constraints on achieving robust agreement in the presence of malicious nodes. We also touch upon modern applications in blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, where these theoretical bounds translate into practical considerations for security, scalability, and decentralization. A core contribution of this work is the synthesis of these established bounds with a detailed examination of how varying network structures fundamentally dictate protocol design and performance, offering a clearer lens through which to understand the vulnerabilities and strengths of real-world distributed systems.
Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocols are fundamental to achieving consensus in distributed systems where some nodes may behave maliciously. However, traditional BFT mechanisms often rely on strong trust assumptions in a majority of honest participants or incur significant communication overhead for extensive verification, thereby limiting scalability and introducing explicit points of trust. This paper proposes a novel approach to verifiable Byzantine agreement that leverages the power of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to enhance trustlessness and verifiability. By integrating ZKPs into the consensus process, participants can cryptographically prove the correctness of their protocol actions and proposed states without revealing the underlying sensitive information or requiring every other node to re-execute complex computations. This paradigm shift enables a new class of BFT protocols where agreement is not merely reached but is {em verifiably} correct by any observer, reducing implicit trust and increasing transparency. We outline a conceptual framework for such a ZKP-enhanced BFT protocol, discussing the key integration points for zero-knowledge proofs, the expected benefits in terms of security and scalability, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Our approach aims to pave the way for more robust, scalable, and genuinely trustless decentralized systems.
There has been an exponential rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and autonomous systems, which have thrown light on the weaknesses of centralized cloud computing, especially in latency, bandwidth, and security. This paper will solve such problems by suggesting an integrated blockchain-edge architecture, which uses distributed trusting mechanisms to protect and optimize edge networks. The process of the methodology consists of four steps: architectural modeling, lightweight consensus design, performance-security trade-off analysis, and real-life validation. Experiments with iFogSim and BlockSim showed that edge networks enhanced with blockchain cuts latency and bandwidth consumption by 37 and 36 percent respectively compared to cloud-centric models. Consensus protocols such as Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT), Proof-of-Elaboration (PoE) and Leased Proof-of-Stake (LPoS) were designed and tested, using much less energy and having much faster transaction finality compared to Proof-of-Work. High resilience to Sybil, tampering, and 51% attacks was proven with Raspberry Pi clusters, and an 8% latency trade-off was observed, when smart contracts were used to enforce automated access control. Lastly, experimental validation with healthcare and industrial IoT datasets demonstrated that blockchain decreased attempts to access information unauthorized to nearly zero in the healthcare industry and minimized manipulations with machine logs by 70 percent in the industrial IoT. These results highlight blockchain-edge convergence as a potential direction towards the construction of scalable, secure and trustful decentralized systems.
Matteo Bjornsson, Taylor Hardin, Taylor Heinecke, Marcin Furtak · 6 authors
Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) rely on distributed consensus mechanisms to reach agreement over the order of transactions and to provide immutability and availability of transaction data. Distributed consensus suffers from performance limitations of network communication between participating nodes. BLOCKY ZipperChain guarantees immutability, agreement, and availability of transaction data, but without relying on distributed consensus. Instead, its construction process transfers trust from widely-used, third-party services onto ZipperChains's correctness guarantees. ZipperChain blocks are built by a pipeline of specialized services deployed on a small number of nodes connected by a fast data center network. As a result, ZipperChain transaction throughput approaches network line speeds and block finality is on the order of 500 ms. Finally, ZipperChain infrastructure creates blocks centrally and so does not need a native token to incentivize a community of verifiers.
A system implementaion paper on a decentralized application for transparent charity transactions built on hardhat , next js ,and django that combines the web2 and web3 dynamics.
In timing-sensitive blockchain applications, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), achieving first-come-first-served (FCFS) transaction ordering among decentralized nodes is critical to prevent frontrunning attacks. Themis [CCS'23], a state-of-the-art decentralized FCFS ordering system, has become a key reference point for high-throughput fair ordering systems for real-world blockchain applications, such as rollup chains and decentralized sequencing, and has influenced the design of several subsequent proposals. In this paper, we critically analyze its core system property of practical batch-order fairness and evaluate the frontrunning resistance claim of Themis. We present the Ambush attack, a new frontrunning technique that achieves nearly 100% success against the practical batch-order fair system with only a single malicious node and negligible attack costs. This attack causes a subtle temporary information asymmetry among nodes, which is allowed due to the heavily optimized communication model of the system. A fundamental trade-off we identify is a challenge in balancing security and performance in these systems; namely, enforcing timely dissemination of transaction information among nodes (to mitigate frontrunning) can easily lead to non-negligible network overheads (thus, degrading overall throughput performance). We show that it is yet possible to balance these two by delaying transaction dissemination to a certain tolerable level for frontrunning mitigation while maintaining high throughput. Our evaluation demonstrates that the proposed delayed gossiping mechanism can be seamlessly integrated into existing systems with only minimal changes.
Layer 2 rollups offer promising solutions to address Ethereum's scalability issues. However, the centralized nature of the sequencer in these rollups makes them vulnerable to denial of service attacks, in which adversaries overwhelm the sequencer with invalid transactions that cannot be included in blocks, thereby exhausting its computational resources for transaction processing. To mitigate such threat, layer 2 rollups implement the legality check mechanism to filter out invalid transactions before they reach the sequencer.
This paper presents the revolutionary Kera Protocol, a mathematically proven blockchain architecture that fundamentally solves the dual crises of accessibility and sustainability plaguing contemporary decentralized finance systems. The work addresses the stark reality that 99.95% of humanity remains excluded from blockchain validation due to prohibitive capital requirements. The paper's core contribution establishes the first provably sustainable economic model in blockchain history through a dynamic APY allocation algorithm that maintains the fundamental invariant OBLIGATIONS = REVENUE at every 12-second block interval. This mathematical constraint creates theoretical impossibility of protocol insolvency, directly addressing the $108 billion in losses from failed DeFi protocols like Terra/LUNA, Celsius, and BlockFi that promised unsustainable fixed returns. The research introduces an innovative vault-to-pool economic architecture leveraging 20x capital efficiency to deliver mathematically certain 102% APY returns—derived from real interest accrual rather than speculative mechanisms. Rigorous validation through the MALIV (Multi-Agent Long-term Investment Validator) model simulates 14,600 days across 40 years, incorporating realistic market cycles, black swan events (0.5% probability), and extreme stress scenarios including 99% revenue drops. Across 3,000+ simulation runs, the protocol demonstrated 100% sustainability with perfect equality maintenance. The paper details seven diversified revenue streams projected to scale from $87 million in Year 1 to $35.75 billion by Year 5, eliminating reliance on inflationary tokenomics. Technical innovations include autonomous validator bot systems that eliminate slashing risks, browser-based validation infrastructure, and deflationary token buyback mechanisms. The work represents PhD-level contributions to solving the DeFi Sustainability Trilemma, with planned submissions to leading academic journals in financial economics and computational economics.
Abstract Organizations increasingly require secure document management with integrity guarantees beyond traditional audit logs, particularly in regulated industries where external accountability is critical. While blockchain technologies provide strong tamper-detection, they present significant enterprise adoption challenges including cost volatility, low throughput, and unpredictable operational expenses. This thesis proposes a Centralized Ledger System (CLS) that provides blockchain-inspired integrity verification through self-hosted architecture without external dependencies. The system implements a three-phase entry lifecycle, signature collection and verification, supporting multi-party transactions with asynchronous workflows. A multi-ledger architecture enables organizational segregation of business domains while maintaining referential integrity. Key contributions include automated receipt generation for independent verification, selective payload erasure preserving cryptographic validation, entry linking for audit simplification, and integration of security services with two-factor authentication and key management. The modular design enables flexible deployment while maintaining cryptographic guarantees equivalent to blockchain systems. The solution addresses the gap between traditional audit systems and distributed ledgers by providing cost-predictable, vendor-independent functionality that integrates into existing workflows without specialized blockchain expertise.
Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) Validium is a Layer 2 blockchain scaling solution that processes transactions off-chain. It uses Polygon’s distinctive approach to Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) implemented within their Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM). A key factor in its successful deployment is robustness, ensuring that users can trust their transactions will be processed accurately and promptly. This research concerns developing robust validation methodologies and comprehensive testing strategies targeting the “double-spending” problem within Polygon CDK Validium. We indicate theoretical scenarios where double-spending vulnerabilities could arise in Polygon CDK Validium by identifying how execution errors can combine with a specific category of flawed constraints to create vulnerabilities. When combined with what we classify as Invalid PIL Constraints For EVM Specification Vulnerabilities (IPCFESV), these errors can trigger problematic behaviours. We further illustrate how erroneous behaviour resulting from IPCFESV can lead to cascading involvement in withdrawal operations resulting in irreversible cross-layer double-spending. We also illustrate how a protocol anti-censorship mechanism bypasses standard validation checks, thereby intensifying reliance on constraint correctness. We then propose ways to determine the correct behaviour. We propose a method to utilise Polygon’s integration testing framework for generating execution traces for de-facto ERC-20 fungible token standard. The outcomes of this study will form the foundational basis for the subsequent development of practical testing and verification methods for Polygon CDK Validium. Implementation and empirical validation remain as future work.
This study presents a blockchain-backed Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) service for distributed clouds, addressing auditable authorization under multi-region latency and consistency constraints. Although end-to-end costs and tail impacts of permissioned ledgers in RBAC are under-quantified, the present study implements a multi-region deployment with Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance (IBFT), batched commits, and an off-chain cache, with evaluation against centralized and event-sourced baselines, throughput reported in requests per second (RPS), and calibration via Expected Calibration Error (ECE) and Brier Score using multi-seed runs and moving-block bootstrap. At the target load, the candidate achieved 145.0 +/- 4.6 ms 95th percentile (p95) latency and 1008 +/- 13 RPS while meeting the 150.0 ms Service Level Objective at 1000 rps; the 99th percentile (p99) policy-update consistency lag measured 1750.0 +/- 150.0 ms. Connectivity remains the bottleneck. The parts are familiar; the sequencing is not, combining ledger finality with cache-assisted reads and bounded block intervals to narrow the gap to centralized designs under controlled failures. These findings indicate that tamper-evident auditing can be added with modest overhead for enterprise security operators planning multi-region cloud authorization.
Blockchain interoperability is increasingly recognized as the centerpiece for robust interactions among decentralized services. Blockchain ledgers are generally tamper-proof and thus enforce non-repudiation for transactions recorded within the same network. However, such a guarantee does not hold for cross blockchain transactions. When disruptions occur due to malicious activities or system failures within one blockchain network, foreign networks can take advantage by denying legitimate claims or mounting fraudulent liabilities against the defenseless network. In response, this paper introduces InterSnap, a novel blockchain snapshot archival methodology, for enabling auditability of cross blockchain transactions, enforcing non-repudiation. InterSnap introduces cross-chain transaction receipts that ensure their irrefutability. Snapshots of ledger data along with these receipts are utilized as non-repudiable proof of bilateral agreements among different networks. InterSnap enhances system resilience through a distributed snapshot generation process, need-based snapshot scheduling process, and archival storage and sharing via decentralized platforms. Through a prototype implementation based on Hyperledger Fabric, we conducted experiments using on-premise machines, AWS public cloud instances, as well as a private cloud infrastructure. We establish that InterSnap can recover from malicious attacks while preserving cross chain transaction receipts. Additionally, our proposed solution demonstrates adaptability to increasing loads while securely transferring snapshot archives with minimal overhead.
Today's distributed payment systems must function correctly despite the inherent presence of asynchrony, partial failures, and third-party integrations. Unlike typical RPC-based workflows used in software development, payment flows are heavily influenced by external delays, retries, timeouts, and nondeterministic state changes across multiple systems of record. A fault-tolerant ledger abstraction that decouples payment intent from execution enables safe retries and supports service events that may arrive out of order. Correctness and safety depend on distributed transaction constructs such as outbox/inbox patterns, compensation workflows, and time-bounded state machines to contain the effects of race conditions, double submissions, and ambiguous or indeterminate outcomes. A declarative reconciliation framework continuously verifies consistency between internal and external systems, enabling real-time anomaly detection and facilitating orchestration and recovery. These pragmatic engineering approaches, validated through simulations and production-level benchmarks, offer guidance for building resilient payment infrastructures in naturally asynchronous and failure-prone environments.
The absence of a fully decentralized, verifiable, and privacy-preserving communication protocol for autonomous agents remains a core challenge in decentralized computing. Existing systems often rely on centralized intermediaries, which reintroduce trust bottlenecks, or lack decentralized identity-resolution mechanisms, limiting persistence and cross-network interoperability. We propose the Decentralized Interstellar Agent Protocol (DIAP), a novel framework for agent identity and communication that enables persistent, verifiable, and trustless interoperability in fully decentralized environments. DIAP binds an agent's identity to an immutable IPFS or IPNS content identifier and uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to dynamically and statelessly prove ownership, removing the need for record updates. We present a Rust SDK that integrates Noir (for zero-knowledge proofs), DID-Key, IPFS, and a hybrid peer-to-peer stack combining Libp2p GossipSub for discovery and Iroh for high-performance, QUIC based data exchange. DIAP introduces a zero-dependency ZKP deployment model through a universal proof manager and compile-time build script that embeds a precompiled Noir circuit, eliminating the need for external ZKP toolchains. This enables instant, verifiable, and privacy-preserving identity proofs. This work establishes a practical, high-performance foundation for next-generation autonomous agent ecosystems and agent-to-agent (A to A) economies.