Kamil JeĆŸek, Seongho Jeong, Yeonsoo Kim, Bernhard Scholz · 5 authors
Ethereumâs smart contracts operate on directly addressable storage that is represented as tries. The performance of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) suffers from slow storage access due to trie encoding, which hampers transaction throughput and scalability. To mitigate the Ethereum storage performance bottleneck, we propose a new storage representation for the EVM that supports asynchronous trie construction. Without changing the Ethereum protocol, we add a flat representation called Storage Replica to improve performance. Storage Replica provides a fast lookup of values in the programâs main thread, while a worker thread prepares the tries for subsequent cryptographic calculations. With a storage overhead of less than 5% (i.e., 10 GB), we achieve up to a 6Ă speedup in processing smart contracts and a 4Ă speedup in block commits for the initial 9 M blocks of the Ethereum blockchain.
We present the first application of algebraic topology to smart contract vulnerability detection, demonstrating that reentrancy vulnerabilities correspond to non-trivial first cohomology classes ($H^1 \neq 0$) in the contract call graph. Using the Eden Scanner's Hensel obstruction test, we identified a critical vulnerability in the Inverse Finance FiRM Convex sDola-scrvUSD Market contract (address \texttt{0x63D27fC9d463Ed727676367D3F818999962737E8}) within 48 hours of its addition to the Immunefi bug bounty scope. The vulnerability affects approximately \$605,500 in total value locked and enables direct theft of user collateral through a reentrancy attack via the \texttt{liquidate()} $\to$ \texttt{escrow.pay()} $\to$ callback path. We provide mathematical proof of exploitability through the Regularization Theorem and validate with a fork test against Ethereum mainnet. \end{abstract}
This study examines whether Ethereumâs market-wide influence strengthened relative to Bitcoin following the Ethereum Berlin upgrade in April 2021. Using one-minute Binance spot data for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and major large-cap cryptocurrencies, we estimate Granger-causality tests and vector autoregressions around the upgrade. The results suggest that Bitcoin retained its benchmark role, but Ethereumâs marginal contribution to short-horizon price discovery increased after Berlin. This shift is especially evident in high-liquidity states, where lagged Ethereum returns became stronger predictors of Bitcoin and other large-cap cryptocurrency returns. The evidence indicates that protocol-level developments may alter the hierarchy of information transmission in crypto markets at the margin, without overturning Bitcoinâs broader benchmark status.
Given that digital governance has achieved extensive spread and people rely increasingly on online services, affordable and trustworthy identity management is now one of the core pillars of contemporary e-Governance systems. Conventional identity systems are usually centralized, highly susceptible to cyber-attacks and most likely to breach privacy. Blockchain technology provides a decentralized, tamper-proof, and transparent system, which guarantees data integrity, data security, and the privacy of the user. In this paper, the authors research the adoption of blockchain-based identity management within e-Governance sites. We discuss available solutions, assess the risks along with their weaknesses and strengths, and suggest a design on how to introduce a safe blockchain-based identity system. Important efforts have been on developing a holistic system that brings smart contract, cryptographic protocols and distributed ledger technologies together to make citizen identification and authentication secure. The outcome of the results shows enhanced security, less identity fraud, and better data security, so there is a possibility of scalability and resilient e-Governance applications.
Shihab Sarar, Ali Imran Mehedi, Fabbiha Tahsin Prova, Saha Reno
The modern metropolis essentially demands the use of stateâofâtheâart, realâtime surveillance systems, which should be reliable, scalable, and respectful of privacy at the same time. Critical shortcomings in traditional architectures are single points of failure, poor scalability, frequent data breaches, and inadequately managed privacy. These aspects of themselves make it inept for the demands of dynamic, fastâpaced city environments, without which reliability, security, and adaptability cannot be compromised at any cost. This brings to light the critical need for innovative and decentralized solutions that can overcome these challenges comprehensively. In our proposed approach, a decentralized framework integrates private blockchain technology via Ethereum, a hybrid cryptography model combining advanced encryption standard (AES) and RivestâShamirâAdleman (RSA) encryption, and stateâofâtheâart deep learning techniques such as YOLOv8, DeepSort, and ArcFace. Blockchain technology ensures metadata is immutable and transparent, thus saving metadata from unauthorized access and tampering. The hybrid cryptography model encrypts sensitive data through AES and securely shares the key of AES through RSA encryption, while decryption is efficiently done in a key management system (KMS). Furthermore, YOLOv8 and DeepSort can be used for highâprecision object detection and realâtime tracking, and ArcFace can be used for facial recognition, meeting the splitâsecond decisionâmaking required in urban surveillance. Extensive experiments are performed, and the results indicate that the proposed framework enhances detection precision, tracking accuracy, realâtime responsiveness (60 FPS), and resistance to tampering (>99% chain quality per quorum Byzantine fault tolerance [QBFT]) without compromising efficiency. The adaptive and reliable solution meets modern urban surveillance demands that are evolving at an everâincreasing pace. The scalability of the operation further ensures enhanced public safety. This paper discusses a decentralized urban surveillance system that is both tamperâproof and secure using current blockchain technologies, InterPlanetary file system (IPFS), hybrid AESâRSA, and deep learning technologies to mitigate the risks of a traditional centralized system, such as data tampering and privacy violations. The system uses the Ethereum blockchain to provide immutable metadata, the IPFS protocol to create a fully distributed storage system of video and image frames, and an offâchain KMS service to distribute the keys to the authorized edge devices. The system utilizes realâtime object detection (YOLOv8), tracking (DeepSort), and face recognition (ArcFace) to perform inference locally on the edge devices. We have performed experiments that demonstrate the tamperâproof and secure scalability with low latency and secure tamperâproof data integrity of this urban surveillance system in everâchanging urban environments.
Doaa I. Hasan, Mustafa Hamid Abd Alsadh, Hayder Makki Shakir, Hamsa Emad Mahmood · 7 authors
This is the newest technique to make sure that smart contracts are always secure in very important domains, like world banking. Quantum computers canât break blockchain rules, hence this is conceivable. The major purpose of this research is to see whether post-quantum cryptography can be combined with blockchain technology to make it safer to move money across borders. Quantum computers might easily get into older blockchain systems since they employ well-known encryption methods like ECC and RSA. This makes it easy for other people to hurt them. As quantum computing becomes more common, the safety of smart contracts used in international banking is becoming more and more at danger. We think that the Lattice-Based Cryptographic Integration Framework (LBCIF) might help with these issues. This system leverages lattice-based post-quantum algorithms like Kyber and Dilithium. These algorithms may keep cryptography safe against quantum assaults. You can use these algorithms to sign smart contracts, prove who you are, and agree on blockchains. The LBCIF is an excellent instrument for trade finance since it uses smart contracts to make settlements and letters of credit with banks all around the world automatic. The framework ensures secure key exchange, digital signature validation, and interoperable transactions across regulatory environments. Findings show that LBCIF maintains performance while significantly improving resistance to quantum threats. It enables secure, scalable, and regulation-compliant smart contract execution for global financial operations.
Traditional digital trust architectures suffer from the âLibrary Problemâ: dependency on pre-compiled, static lookup tables or binaries that must be trusted blindly, creating supply-chain vulnerabilities. This paper proposes a paradigm shift to Intrinsic Trust, where encoding infrastructure is mathematically regenerated at runtime rather than distributed. We introduce the 0MXI Calculus, a deterministic lattice system anchored on universal transcendental constants:the golden ratio Ί â 1.618033988749895 and Ï â 3.141592653589793, with a contraction ratio λ â 0.339949771344778. Operations on a quantized F15 lattice ensure cross-platform determinism, bounded by a Prime Boundary Horizon (N = 23) that guarantees injective reversibility (Theorems 1 and 2).This framework underpins TreeOS, an operating system that bootstraps from a âMath Root-of-Trustâ via autogenesis, regenerating a bijective Tick Table for byte encoding without stored dependencies. TreeBABEL, the verifiable data transport protocol, packages data as JSON artifacts with mathematical manifests for independent receiver validation. Extending this, the VMEM Node Architecture transforms online repositories into externalized memory banks, enabling AI models to scrape and derive OS state on demand, eliminating internal weight bloat and static knowledge cutoffs.We demonstrate adaptability to constrained ledgers (e.g., 280-character limits) for efficient chunking. Through rigorous proofs and a Python reference implementation, we show that trust can be calculated, not stored, decoupling systems from physical hardware and fostering entropy-neutral, zero-trust computation.
We present FADP (the Fluid Agentic Payment Protocol), an HTTP-native twophase protocol for secure DeFi agent-to-agent transactions and agentic payments that couples on-chain transactions with cryptographic identity attestation in a single round-trip. Every FADP identity proof is unique per agent, unforgeable under standard cryptographic assumptions, and unreplayable by construction via four-dimensional nonce protection â making it the first HTTP payment protocol with formal guarantees on all three properties simultaneously. FADP extends RFC 7231's HTTP 402 status code [1] with three header namespaces â X-FADP-* for payment challenge and proof, XPauli-* for zero-knowledge identity binding [2], and X-FLDP-* for ECDSA request signing â yielding a wire format in which the server can verify who placed an order, that the request is fresh, and that the payment is on-chain final, all from headers alone. The protocol operates in a strict two-phase model: Phase α (initialization) provisions seven keys across three categories (local private, server public, internal proving), and Phase ÎČ (runtime) executes the 402 â onchain settlement â 200 cycle. Private keys never cross the network at any phase; the server holds only public material; the chain is the source of truth for payment finality. We prove four theorems â protocol correctness, liveness independence, replay impossibility, and identity-payment binding â and introduce three new metrics for HTTP-native payment protocols: Authentication Round-Trip Count (ART), Payment Atomicity Score (PAS), and Sovereignty Inheritance (SI). The reference implementation is deployed on Base Mainnet as a beta MVP prototype and submitted to the IETF as draft-fluid-fadp-01. Median end-to-end cycle latency is ~160â215 ms (analytical from measured components: 2 RTT plus on-chain confirmation), and per-call cost is approximately $0.001â$0.01 in stablecoin payment. To our knowledge, FADP is the first published HTTP payment protocol that (i) couples payment with cryptographic identity attestation in a single response, (ii) operates entirely within the existing RFC 7231 status-code framework with no L4 or L3 modifications, and (iii) inherits strict self-custody guarantees (ÎŁ = 5) from a companion identity standard.
Bitcoin solved the double-spend problem. The security model is sound. The computation produces no output beyond the security it purchases. SHA-256 hashing generates heat and irreversible work, both of which are discarded the moment a block is verified. The network accumulates ledger entries. It accumulates nothing else.
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), as the core infrastructure of intelligent transportation systems, face critical security challenges such as privacy leakage and difficulties in tracing malicious behavior due to open wireless channels and high node mobility. While blockchain-based identity authentication offers inherent advantages like decentralization, making it suitable for the distributed networking scenarios of VANETs, current solutions still suffer from notable shortcomings, including a lack of compliance with the SM9 standard and insufficient regulatory oversight. To resolve the fundamental tension between vehicle identity privacy protection and regulatory traceability in VANETs, this paper proposes an efficient SM9-ABS vehicle identity authentication scheme on blockchain for VANETs. By optimizing SM9 parameters, the scheme integrates Attribute-Based Signature (ABS) and Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) primitives to construct an efficient fine-grained attribute signature generation and verification algorithm, ensuring both security and computational efficiency. An SM9-based threshold identity tracing mechanism is designed to prevent single-point authority abuse, achieving privacy-preserving authentication with controllable accountability. Finally, a complete formal security proof is provided under the q-Strong Diffie-Hellman (q-SDH) hardness assumption, and comparative experiments demonstrate the superior comprehensive performance of the proposed scheme.
Junhee LEE, Yixi Cai Lili lei Lei Li, Gweonho Jeong, Jihye Kim · 6 authors
Forward-secure digital signatures protect the integrity of past signatures, even if the current signing key is compromised. Among forward-secure signature schemes, the method introduced by Lee et al. [1], based on zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs), is particularly notable for achieving constant complexity across all metrics without requiring a predefined maximum time period. However, a naive approach to recursive proof composition results in an excessive amount of redundant computation being repeated for each signing process, which our method reduces significantly. In this paper, we advance a zk-SNARK-based forward-secure signature scheme by significantly improving the efficiency of its signing algorithm. By incorporating commit-and-prove SNARKs, we replace the inner verification process with commit verification within the signing circuit. Furthermore, we employ efficient recursive zk-SNARKs with accumulation and folding schemes to improve the setup and update algorithms. Our implementation demonstrates the practicality of our approach: the signing procedure completes in 0.18 seconds, achieving a 75-fold speedup over the previous scheme, setup time is reduced to 0.71 seconds - over 61 times faster, and public parameters are reduced to 25 MB, more than 16 times smaller.
Andreu Pere Isern-DeyĂ , M. Francisca Hinarejos, Josep LluĂs Ferrer Gomila
Online transactions are becoming increasingly popular, and the purchase and delivery of digital assets is a prominent example. In these transactions, buyers are hesitant to pay for an asset until they receive it, whereas sellers are reluctant to send the asset until they are paid. Unfortunately, actual solutions do not always meet all the requirements to conduct a secure exchange, with fairness being one of the requirements that needs more attention. Historically, solutions to this problem have relied on trusted third parties (TTPs) serving as trusted intermediaries among participants, but the advent of blockchain has enabled the reduction or elimination of TTP involvement in many cases. In this paper, we present a fair blockchain-based solution that does not require any TTP for the secure delivery of digital assets, proving its technical feasibility and cost-effectiveness through assessments on blockchains based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
A protocol-level transaction tax faces a structural privacy tradeoff: jurisdictional attribution requires releasing aggregates from which an adversary with auxiliary information may attempt to learn properties of the underlying transactions. This paper formalizes the tradeoff and proves two mechanism-level theorems. Theorem 1 establishes that the composition of Pedersen commitments with zero-knowledge validity proofs preserves individual-transaction hiding under standard cryptographic assumptions, with no distributional requirement on transaction amounts. Theorem 2 separates two cohortaggregation threats that prior analyses have conflated and bounds each. Theorem 2a (event detection): against an adversary attempting to detect that an anomalous transaction of magnitude đ occurred in a cohort of size đ, the optimal likelihood-ratio-test.
This paper presents the post-quantum integrity architecture designed and being implemented within Smart Astro among the rst known platforms delivering Deterministic Engine Computed, AI-Narrated, Blockchain-Veried life guidance at scale. Smart Astro operates across 18 active life-decision intents and over 40 auspicious-timing categories, serving users globally through a real-time, pay-per-question model. Classical asymmetric cryptography underpinning current blockchain infrastructure is vulnerable to Shor's algorithm on fault-tolerant quantum computers. Smart Astro addresses this proactively by integrating NIST-standardised post-quantum cryptographic primitives FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA), and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA) alongside a Solana-anchored proof chain already live in production. The central architectural contribution is a layered separation of concerns: the deterministic engine computes a structured, repeatable output; cryptographic proof generation runs asynchronously outside the delivery path; the AI narration layer is isolated from the proof chain; and only a commitment hash is written to the Solana ledger, with the full postquantum signature bundle stored o-chain. Every paid answer carries an independently veriable SA-PROOF identier with zero personally identiable information (PII) on-chain. A hybrid ML-DSA + SLH-DSA signature scheme provides defence in depth against both lattice cryptanalysis and harvest-now-decrypt-later adversaries. This architecture establishes a replicable standard for cryptographic integrity in AI-narrated deterministic knowledge systems.
This paper presents the post-quantum integrity architecture designed and being implemented within Smart Astro among the rst known platforms delivering Deterministic Engine Computed, AI-Narrated, Blockchain-Veried life guidance at scale. Smart Astro operates across 18 active life-decision intents and over 40 auspicious-timing categories, serving users globally through a real-time, pay-per-question model. Classical asymmetric cryptography underpinning current blockchain infrastructure is vulnerable to Shor's algorithm on fault-tolerant quantum computers. Smart Astro addresses this proactively by integrating NIST-standardised post-quantum cryptographic primitives FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA), and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA) alongside a Solana-anchored proof chain already live in production. The central architectural contribution is a layered separation of concerns: the deterministic engine computes a structured, repeatable output; cryptographic proof generation runs asynchronously outside the delivery path; the AI narration layer is isolated from the proof chain; and only a commitment hash is written to the Solana ledger, with the full postquantum signature bundle stored o-chain. Every paid answer carries an independently veriable SA-PROOF identier with zero personally identiable information (PII) on-chain. A hybrid ML-DSA + SLH-DSA signature scheme provides defence in depth against both lattice cryptanalysis and harvest-now-decrypt-later adversaries. This architecture establishes a replicable standard for cryptographic integrity in AI-narrated deterministic knowledge systems.
Open access
Cryptography and Data Security
Cryptographic Implementations and Security
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Every correction for backtest overfitting depends on N, the number of strategies a researcher tried. The deflated Sharpe ratio needs it. So do multiple-testing haircuts and the probability of backtest overfitting. And N is supplied by the researcher. Nobody has ever been able to check it. VTR-1 is an open standard that makes N a structural property of a cryptographic proof. The full set of candidate strategies is committed before evaluation, and N is the leaf count of that commitment. The winning result is forced in-circuit to be the maximum of the committed set. The anti-overfitting statistics are then recomputed inside a zero-knowledge proof, on committed price data, net of a committed cost floor. Any party can re-derive every asserted property in milliseconds against their own copy of the data. No trust is placed in the issuer at any step, and the strategy is never revealed. The standard sets out three conformance levels, a verification procedure, and an adversary model naming seven attack classes. Its normative appendices pin the estimators, the fixed-point arithmetic and the commitment constructions closely enough that an independent implementation can reproduce a credential exactly. Forty-one numbered requirements let a conformance claim be contradicted. Nine known-answer conformance vectors are published with it, so a second implementation can be tested against something. The standard is equally explicit about what it will not certify: future returns, capacity, market impact, and any strategy whose result depends on fills the committed data cannot justify. The reference implementation's first published verdict refused its own author's flagship strategy, deflated below significance and published permanently. Published under CC BY 4.0. Anyone may implement it, including competitors of its steward.
We explore the design and analysis of post-quantum cryptographic primitives with an emphasis on two angles. First, diversity of assumptions, by building and analysing cryptography that does not rely on structured lattices. Second, diversity of functionalities, focusing on various primitives that extend beyond standard encryption. Motivated by the rapid development of quantum computing and the consequent threat to classical public-key cryptography, we therefore consider two families of post-quantum assumptions: isogeny-based and code-equivalence problems from which we build and analyse various primitives. In the first part, we focus on isogeny-based cryptography. We start our study with digital signatures derived from SIDH squares and investigate their security by analysing a range of attack vectors, including higher-dimensional attack strategies (known as SIDH attacks), and consequently propose suitable parameters. Building on the powerful constructive tools that the SIDH attacks became, we design an updatable public-key encryption scheme from a variant of FESTA, a public-key encryption scheme by Basso, Maino and Pope, enabling an efficient instantiation of this primitive that allows an unbounded number of updates. Finally, we investigate isogeny-based group actions and propose a framework for general-purpose zero-knowledge proofs. The second part focuses on code-based cryptography, particularly tensor group actions and code-equivalence problems. We first analyze and break a commitment scheme based on a structured tensor isomorphism problem, and we propose a secure fix. Then, we study variants of code-equivalence problems that underlie the security of two blind signature schemes. For one variant, we provide a reduction to a standard problem, whilst for another one we show that its security has been largely over-estimated. Overall, this thesis contributes to the development of a diverse suite of post-quantum primitives by providing new constructions, security analyses, and insights into the use of alternative assumptions beyond lattice-based systems.
Background: The inherent immutability of traditional blockchain technology fundamentally conflicts with the need for dynamic updates and secure sharing of medical data. Existing editable blockchain solutions also face limitations in update efficiency, key management security, and cross-institutional privacy protection. Objective: This paper aims to design a novel architecture that integrates chameleon hash with a permissioned blockchain to achieve secure, efficient, and auditable incremental updates and controlled sharing of medical data. Methods: We propose a hybrid architecture comprising: (1) a lightweight off-chain update protocol based on chameleon hash, enabling authorized institutions to swiftly modify off-chain data using a trapdoor key while only recording lightweight credentials on the blockchain; (2) a distributed trapdoor key management mechanism based on threshold signatures, which disperses critical authority across multiple trusted medical nodes to eliminate single points of failure; and (3) cross-institutional data sharing smart contracts with privacy protection, featuring an integrated Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) verification interface that allows third parties to verify data validity without accessing the original sensitive information. Results: Compared to traditional schemes, our method improves update throughput by 3.2Ă and reduces on-chain storage by 76%. Authorized updates and verification complete within 5 seconds in simulated cross-hospital scenarios, while distributed key management prevents unauthorized modifications. Conclusion: The proposed scheme balances dynamic updates with trustworthy auditing in medical data management. By addressing efficiency, security, and privacy limitations of existing solutions, it supports the development of a trusted, privacy-secure medical data ecosystem.
Quasi-adaptive non-interactive zero-knowledge (QA-NIZK) arguments are fundamental cryptographic primitives widely used in privacy-preserving technologies such as anonymous credentials, group signatures, e-cash, and blockchain-based applications. We present the first tightly secure unbounded simulation sound quasi-adaptive non-interactive zero-knowledge argument system from simple assumptions. The construction has a security loss ofO(1), a compact common reference string, constant size proofs, and its security relies on the hardness of the well-known SXDH assumption. Our result improves state-of-the-art (Couteau and Hartmann, CRYPTO 2020) in terms of the proof size (about three times), a lower security loss, and also with respect to the underlying hardness assumptions. The tight security reduction enables shorter key-length recommendations, leading to improved concrete efficiency. Our main technical contribution is a novel proof technique inspired by the randomization technique of the Naor-Yung double-encryption paradigm and the adaptive partitioning due to Hofheinz (EUROCRYPT 2017).
This paper presents a Blueprint theoretical-practical method for covert control over a decentralized network like Bitcoin by manipulating official distribution channels and modifying the client software. The attack, termed the "Great Tribulation Attack," transforms legitimate users into functional zombie nodes that validate blocks under hidden rules or preprogrammed transactions without their knowledge. This technique does not rely on the 51% hashing power but on client deception.
Zhang Dayong, Nur Haliza Abdul Wahab, Juniardi Fadila, Arafat Al-Dhaqm · 8 authors
Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) serves as a cornerstone consensus protocol for distributed systems. However, its inherent limitations, including quadratic communication complexity, scalability bottlenecks, and insufficient privacy protection, hinder its applicability in large-scale and privacy-sensitive environments. This study presents a systematic and comprehensive review of cryptographic advancements aimed at addressing these challenges. By analyzing peer-reviewed literature from 2015 to 2025, we demonstrate that the integration of Verifiable Random Function (VRF) and BonehâLynnâShacham (BLS) aggregate signatures effectively reduces PBFT's communication complexity from O(NÂČ) to O(N) or even O(logN), significantly enhancing scalability and reducing consensus latency. Moreover, advanced cryptographic schemes such as zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, group signatures, ring signatures, hash ring, threshold signatures, attribute-based Encryption and lattice-based cryptography are shown to substantially strengthen consensus efficiency, privacy preservation and node security. Despite these improvements, trade-offs arise in terms of computational overhead and system complexity. The findings provide critical insights into the synergetic application of cryptography within PBFT-based systems and offer future directions for constructing scalable, secure, and privacy-preserving distributed architectures, particularly in Internet of Things and other resource-constrained scenarios.
With the rapid increase of terminal devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), it has become a significant challenge to achieve real-time and privacy-preserving data aggregation. To address this challenge, edge computing has emerged as an effective paradigm to reduce latency, where a privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme is exploited to preserve data privacy. However, most existing privacy-preserving data aggregation schemes are limited by fixed data dimensions, low scalability, and high communication or computational overhead. To address these shortcomings, this paper proposes a multidimensional privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme that supports flexible dimension expansion and privacy protection in edge computing systems. The scheme integrates the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) with an elastic modulus set to efficiently pack multidimensional data. This design enables terminal devices to add new data dimensions without interrupting current operations or modifying historical data. Furthermore, by exploiting Bulletproofs-based zero-knowledge proofs and Bellare-Neven (BN) signatures with half-aggregation, the proposed scheme enables lightweight and scalable batch verification of data integrity and authenticity. These mechanisms effectively reduce the verification workload and communication bandwidth in large-scale deployments. In addition, an optimized Paillier homomorphic encryption algorithm is used to enable efficient aggregation of encrypted multidimensional data. Experimental results and theoretical analysis show that the proposed scheme significantly reduces computational and communication costs compared with existing methods.
Decentralized finance and stablecoin systems rely extensively on off-chain data oracles to supply price feeds, reserve attestations, and external state signals. While often treated as neutral data providers, oracles constitute a critical enforcement surface vulnerable to coercion, capture, and strategic manipulation. This paper defines <b><i>Off-Chain Data Oracle Coercion</i></b> as a systemic risk whereby economic, governance, or infrastructural pressures distort oracle outputs without violating cryptographic correctness. We demonstrate how oracle coercion enables silent value extraction, destabilizes stablecoin pegs, and undermines regulatory compliance. A validator-enforced, logic-layer control model is proposed to restore oracle neutrality and ensure continuous, verifiable data integrity under MiCA-aligned supervision.
Interoperation across distributed ledger technology (DLT) networks hinges upon the secure transmission of ledger state from one network to another.This is especially challenging for private networks whose ledger access is limited to enrolled members.Existing approaches rely on a trusted centralized proxy that receives encrypted ledger state of a network, decrypts it, and sends it to members of another network.Though effective, this approach goes against the founding principle of DLT, namely avoiding single points of failure (or single sources of trust).In this paper, we leverage fully-distributed broadcast encryption (FDBE in short) to build a fully decentralized protocol for confidential information-sharing across private networks.Compared to traditional broadcast encryption (BE), FDBE is characterized by distributed setup and key generation, where mutually distrusting parties agree on a BE's public key without a trusted setup, and securely derive their decryption keys.Given any FDBE, two private networks can securely share information as follows: a sender in one network uses the other network's FDBE public key to encrypt a message for its members.The resulting construction is secure in the simplified universal composability (UC) framework.To further demonstrate the practicality of our approach, we present the first instantiation of an FDBE that enjoys constantsized decryption keys and ciphertexts, and evaluate the resulting performances through a reference implementation that considers two private Hyperledger Fabric networks within the Hyperledger Cacti interoperation framework.