Kai Li, Yuzhe Tang, Jiaqi Chen, Yibo Wang · 5 authors
Ethereum relies on a peer-to-peer overlay network to propagate information. The knowledge of Ethereum network topology holds the key to understanding Ethereum's security, availability, and user anonymity. From a measurement perspective, an Ethereum network's topology is routing-table information hidden inside individual Ethereum nodes, measuring which poses challenges and remains an open research problem in the existing literature. This paper presents TopoShot, a new method uniquely repurposing Ethereum's transaction replacement/eviction policies for topology measurement. TopoShot can be configured to support Geth, Parity, and other major Ethereum clients. As validated on local nodes, TopoShot achieves 100% measurement precision and high recall 88% - 97%. To efficiently measure the large Ethereum networks in the wild, we propose a non-trivial schedule to run pair-wise measurements in parallel. To enable ethical measurement on Ethereum mainnet, we propose workload-adaptive configurations of TopoShot to minimize the service interruption to target nodes/network. We systematically measure a variety of Ethereum networks and obtain new knowledge including the full-network topology in major testnets (Ropsten, Rinkeby and Goerli) and critical sub-network topology in the mainnet. The results on testnets show interesting graph-theoretic properties, such as all testnets exhibit graph modularity significantly lower than random graphs, implying resilience to network partitions. The mainnet results show biased neighbor selection strategies adopted by critical Ethereum services such as mining pools and transaction relays, implying a degree of centralization in real Ethereum networks.
Çin, ilk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vakasını 31.12.2019 tarihinde Dünya Sağlık Örgütü'ne (DSÖ) bildirmiştir. Bununla birlikte söz konusu virüs kısa sürede Dünya'da 200'den fazla ülkeye yayılmıştır. 07.04.2021 tarihi itibariyle Dünyada 133 milyondan fazla vaka tespit edilirken, yaklaşık 2.9 milyon kişi hayatını kaybetmiştir. Pandemi koşullarında hükümetler vatandaşlarını korumak için farklı politikalar izlediler. Pandemi, bu ülkelerdeki sağlık sistemine ek olarak borsaları ve altın, petrol, kripto para gibi çeşitli küresel varlıkları da etkilemiştir. Bu çalışmada, 26.06.2018 - 07.04.2021 dönemi için piyasa değeri en yüksek olan kripto para birimlerinde fiyat balonlarının varlığının incelenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında, pandemi öncesi ve pandemi döneminde on kripto para birimindeki fiyat balonlarının araştırılması için SADF testi uygulanmıştır. Buna göre, on kripto para biriminden sekizinin fiyat balonuna sahip olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Pandemi öncesi dönemde en yüksek fiyat balonu sayısının toplam 84 işlem günü ile Binance Coin'de görüldüğü belirlenmiştir. Sırasıyla, Bitcoin, Chainlink (Bitcoin ile aynı gün sayısı), Litecoin ve Tether bu kripto para birimini takip etmiştir. Bununla birlikte, COVID-19 salgınında işlem günü bazında en yüksek fiyat balonu, toplam 230 gün ile Theta'da görülmüştür. Pandemi döneminde, Chainlink, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cordano, Binance Coin ve Litecoin, Theta'yı sırasıyla 183, 140, 104, 94, 66 ve 28 işlem günü ile takip etmiştir. Fiyat balonlarının yaklaşık yüzde yetmiş beşi pandemi döneminde görülmüştür. Bu sonuçlar, kripto para birimlerinin yeni yatırımlar için spekülatif varlıklar olduğunu göstermektedir. Tüm analiz dönemi değerlendirildiğinde ise toplam 234 gün ile Chainlink'te en yüksek fiyat balonu tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca, Bitcoin 131 gün ile aralıksız en uzun fiyat balonunu göstermiş, Theta ve Ethereum bu kripto parayı takip etmiştir.
Umi Marfuah, Yandra Arkeman, a Machfud, Indah Yuliasih
Indonesians are the worlds largest chilli enthusiasts, mostly consuming fresh chilli. Because of chilli products generally perishable characteristics, its price has become unstable.The growing number of agricultural safety and risk issues has revealed a substantial need for an effective traceability solution, which serves as an essential agricultural supply chain method to ensure adequate product safety. Blockchain is the technology that disrupts goods in supply chains of agriculture and offers a revolutionary solution for their traceability. Today, farm supply chains are a dynamic ecosystem with multiple stakeholders, making it difficult to verify a range of main parameters, including the country of origin, stage in crop production, quality compliance, and yield monitoring. This paper suggests using the Ethereum blockchain and intelligent contracts to monitor and traceability operations across the agricultural supply chain effectively. Our proposed solutions remove the need for trustworthy centralized subjects, intermediaries, transaction records, performance, and security enhancements that are highly integral, accurate, and stable. The approach suggested focuses on using intelligent agreements to monitor and manage all communications and transactions between all actors in the supply chains ecosystem. All transactions are registered in the immutable blockchain lead with connections to a decentralized system (IPFS), ensuring the ecosystem is safe, confident, reliable and booming for everyones high degree of transparency and traceability.
A key component of blockchain technology is the ledger, viz., a database\nthat, unlike standard databases, keeps in memory the complete history of past\ntransactions as in a notarial archive for the benefit of any future test. In\nsecond-generation blockchains such as Ethereum the ledger is coupled with smart\ncontracts, which enable the automation of transactions associated with\nagreements between the parties of a financial or commercial nature. The\ncoupling of smart contracts and ledgers provides the technological background\nfor very innovative application areas, such as Decentralized Autonomous\nOrganizations (DAOs), Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Decentralized Finance\n(DeFi), which propelled blockchains beyond cryptocurrencies that were the only\nfocus of first generation blockchains such as the Bitcoin. However, the\ncurrently used implementation of smart contracts as arbitrary programming\nconstructs has made them susceptible to dangerous bugs that can be exploited\nmaliciously and has moved their semantics away from that of legal contracts. We\npropose here to recompose the split and recover the reliability of databases by\nformalizing a notion of contract modelled as a finite-state automaton with\nwell-defined computational characteristics derived from an encoding in terms of\nallocations of resources to actors, as an alternative to the approach based on\nprogramming. To complete the work, we use temporal logic as the basis for an\nabstract query language that is effectively suited to the historical nature of\nthe information kept in the ledger.\n
David Opeoluwa Oyewola, Emmanuel Gbenga Dada, Juliana Ngozi Ndunagu, Daniel Eneojo Emmanuel
In the wake of recent pandemic of COVID-19, we explore its unprecedented impact on the demand and supply of cryptocurrencies’market using machine learning such as Naïve Bayes (NB), Decision Trees (C5), Decision Trees Bagging (BG), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Long Short Term Memory and Noise Bagging (NBG). The study employed Noise filters to enhance the performance of Decision Trees Bagging named NBG. Dataset utilized for this analysis were obtained from the website of Coin Market Cap, including: Binance Coin (BCN), BitCoin Cash (BCH), BitCoin (BTC), BitCoinSV (BSV), Cardano (CDO), Chainlink (CLK), CryptoCoin (CCN), EOS (EOS), Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC), Monero (MNO), Stellar (SLR), Tether (TTR), Tezos (TZS), XRP (XRP), and daily data collected from exchange markets platforms spans from 2nd January 2018 to 7th July 2020. Auto encoder was utilized for the labelling of the trading strategies buy-hold-sell.
Beyhan Adanur Dedetürk, Ahmet Soran, Burcu Bakır-Güngör
The tremendous boost in the next generation sequencing technologies and in the "omics" technologies resulted in the generation of hundreds of gigabytes of data per day. Nowadays, via integrating -omics data with other data types, such as imaging and electronic health record (EHR) data, panomics studies attempt to identify novel and potentially actionable biomarkers for personalized medicine applications. In this respect, for the accurate analysis of -omics data and EHR, there is a need to establish secure and robust pipelines that take the ethical aspects into consideration, regulate privacy and ownership issues, and data sharing. These days, blockchain technology has picked up significant attention in diverse fields, including genomics, since it offers a new solution for these problems from a different perspective. Blockchain is an immutable transaction ledger, which offers secure and distributed system without a central authority. Within the system, each transaction can be expressed with cryptographically signed blocks, and the verification of transactions is performed by the users of the network. In this review, firstly, we aim to highlight the challenges of EHR and genomic data sharing. Secondly, we attempt to answer "Why" or "Why not" the blockchain technology is suitable for genomics and healthcare applications in detail. Thirdly, we elucidate the general blockchain structure based on the Ethereum, which is a more suitable technology for the genomic data sharing platforms. Fourthly, we review current blockchain-based EHR and genomic data sharing platforms, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of these applications, and classify these applications using different metrics. Finally, we conclude by discussing the open issues and introducing our suggestion on the topic. In summary, to facilitate the diagnosis, monitoring and therapy of diseases with the effective analysis of -omics data with other available data types, through this review, we put forward the possible implications of the blockchain technology to life sciences and healthcare.
A key component of blockchain technology is the ledger, viz., a database that, unlike standard databases, keeps in memory the complete history of past transactions as in a notarial archive for the benefit of any future test. In second-generation blockchains such as Ethereum the ledger is coupled with smart contracts, which enable the automation of transactions associated with agreements between the parties of a financial or commercial nature. The coupling of smart contracts and ledgers provides the technological background for very innovative application areas, such as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Decentralized Finance (DeFi), which propelled blockchains beyond cryptocurrencies that were the only focus of first generation blockchains such as the Bitcoin. However, the currently used implementation of smart contracts as arbitrary programming constructs has made them susceptible to dangerous bugs that can be exploited maliciously and has moved their semantics away from that of legal contracts. We propose here to recompose the split and recover the reliability of databases by formalizing a notion of contract modelled as a finite-state automaton with well-defined computational characteristics derived from an encoding in terms of allocations of resources to actors, as an alternative to the approach based on programming. To complete the work, we use temporal logic as the basis for an abstract query language that is effectively suited to the historical nature of the information kept in the ledger.
Abstract We study the economic determinants of transaction fees in the Ethereum blockchain. We estimate an empirical model based on queueing theory and analyze the factors determining the “gas price” (transaction cost per unit of service, “gas”). Using block‐ and transaction‐level data from the Ethereum blockchain, we show that changes in service demand significantly affect the gas price—when there is high block utilization, per‐unit fees increase on average, with strong nonlinear effect above 90% utilization. The transaction type is another important factor—larger fraction of regular transactions (direct transfers between users) is associated with higher gas price.
Nur Arifin Akbar, Andi Sunyoto, M. Rudyanto Arief, Wahyu Caesarendra
Today, there is a tendency to reduce the dependence on local computation in favor of cloud computing. However, this inadvertently increases the reliance upon distributed fault-tolerant systems. In a condition that forced to work together, these systems often need to reach an agreement on some state or task, and possibly even in the presence of some misbehaving Byzantine nodes. Although non-trivial, Byzantine Agreement (BA) protocols now exist that are resilient to these types of faults. However, there is still a risk for inconsistencies in the application state in practice, even if a BA protocol is used. A single transient fault may put a node into an illegal state, creating a need for new self-stabilizing BA protocols to recover from illegal states. As self-stabilization often comes with a cost, primarily in the form of communication overhead, a potential lowering of latency - the cost of each message - could significantly impact how fast the protocol behaves overall. Thereby, there is a need for new network protocols such as QUIC, which, among other things, aims to reduce latency. In this paper, we survey current state-of-the-art agreement protocols. Based on previous work, some researchers try to implement pseudocode like QUIC protocol for Ethereum blockchain to have a secure network, resulting in slightly slower performance than the IP-based blockchain. We focus on consensus in the context of blockchain as it has prompted the development and usage of new open-source BA solutions that are related to proof of stake. We also discuss extensions to some of these protocols, specifically the possibility of achieving self-stabilization and the potential integration of the QUIC protocol, such as PoS and PBFT. Finally, further challenges faced in the field and how they might be overcome are discussed.
Ballots are often hold for fair decisions such as party theme selecting, however, the existing traditional ballot has some problems involving amount of human resources, cost of places, equipment, time and traffic, and repeated procedures. In order to solve the issues aforementioned, a ballot blockchain system is designed and implemented based on the smart contract of Ethereum. It is designed on the core blockchain technologies of the decentralized ledger technology, using a secure hash algorithm, anonymous user, incorruptible data, and adopting a public blockchain. The ballot blockchain system is implemented based on the MetaMask verification and the Remix interface development environment. The smart contract plays the role of the decision-maker for controlling ballot activities instead of numerous human tasks. All ballot transactions are recorded in the ballot blockchain permanently when the ballot completed. The aim of the ballot blockchain system is to achieve a fair, less time-consuming, secured, and transparent environment.
Riri Fitri Sari, Asri Samsiar Ilmananda, Daniela M. Romano
In the current digital era, information exchanges can be done easily through the Internet and social media. However, the actual truth of the news on social media platforms is hard to prove, and social media platforms are susceptible to the spreading of hoaxes. As a remedy, Blockchain technology can be used to ensure the reliability of shared information and can create a trusted communications environment. In this study, we propose a social media news spreading model by adapting an epidemic methodology and a scale-free network. A Blockchain-based news verification system is implemented to identify the credibility of the news and its sources. The effectiveness of the model is investigated by utilizing agent-based modelling using NetLogo software. In the simulations, fake news with a truth level of 20% are assigned a low News Credibility Indicator (NCI ± -0.637) value for all of the different network dimensions. Moreover, the Producer Reputation Credit is also decreased (PRC ± 0.213) so that the trust factor value is reduced. Our epidemic approach for news verification has also been implemented using Ethereum Smart Contract and several tools such as React with Solidity, IPFS, Web3.js, and Metamask. By showing the measurements of the credibility indicator and reputation credit to the user during the news dissemination process, this proposed smart contract can effectively limit user behaviour in spreading fake news and improve the content quality on social media.
Alan Rodrigues, Allysson Allex Araújo, Matheus Paixão, Pamella Soares
Blockchain tem sido enquadrada como uma nova infra-estrutura disruptiva baseada na internet. Parcela desse potencial advém do fortalecimento de plataformas públicas de blockchain, como a Ethereum, as quais viabilizam Aplicações Descentralizadas (dApps). Tais soluções são baseadas em contratos inteligentes (CIs) e lidam com restrições específicas que desafiam a evolução de software, como a imutabilidade de dados e o acesso transparente ao código-fonte. Em particular, a transparência de código pode ser observada através de ferramentas como o Etherscan, a qual provê acesso público a uma vasta quantidade de informações sobre os CIs implantados na Ethereum. Além disso, pode-se observar organizações oriundas desse ecossistema aderindo à prática de desenvolvimento open source dos CIs, incluindo o amplo uso do GitHub. Esse rico cenário motivou a necessidade de conduzir um estudo exploratório-descritivo baseado em mineração de repositórios de software para compreender a evolução de software de CIs através da avaliação de similaridade entre a versão disponível no GitHub e versão utilizada na Ethereum (e auditável via Etherscan). À luz de uma análise quali-quantititativa de 27 CIs, este artigo contribui ao 1) caracterizar quatro padrões que denotam diferentes comportamentos evolutivos dos CIs e 2) abordar um método experimental baseado em string para comparar a similaridade entre diferentes versões de CIs.
Sebastian Friebe, Oliver Stengele, Hannes Hartenstein, Martina Zitterbart
When software systems become more complex, it can be advantageous to partition their code into multiple, separate components. In this work, we examine how multiple smart contracts can be coupled to work together. When coupling smart contracts, different design approaches are possible with their own advantages and disadvantages. As an example, we couple two smart contract applications on the Ethereum blockchain: Palinodia and DecentID. Palinodia can be used to ensure the integrity of downloaded executable binaries by checking their hashes against the hashes stored in the blockchain. To make sure that not everyone can modify the data stored on the blockchain, an identity management system is required. This task is fulfilled by DecentID, which provides decentralized identities stored as smart contracts on the blockchain. We evaluate approaches of coupling these two applications and discuss their benefits and drawbacks for this use case.
Paulo Valente Klaine, Lei Zhang, Muhammad Ali Imran
Nowadays data is one of the most important assets that can be obtained, as many applications rely on data to generate useful services. However, a very few number of companies control, in a centralized manner, a large portion of data. That, combined with inefficiencies in centralized storage and recent data leak scandals, highlights the need for new ways in which data is shared and consumed, in which privacy and access control is guaranteed by design. Based on that, in this paper we present an implementation of a blockchain-based data marketplace utilizing the Go Ethereum (Geth) library. The implementation consists of an IoT node powered by a raspberry pi zero W, which is utilized to collect data from the environment and store it in an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) external server, a web page that displays the marketplace, and a private blockchain that records transactions. Regarding the private blockchain, three smart contracts are developed in order to: 1) record information about the data in the marketplace; 2) record transactions that occur between users; 3) allow sellers to white/blacklist buyers' access to the data. This implementation shows that a decentralized blockchain-based marketplace is feasible and scalable, and we hope it can serve as an early model for future frameworks.
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular sequential decision-making (SDM) algorithms, in blockchains can greatly improve their autonomy and general features. In this context, this paper proposes the protocol CONDOR (Connecting ai-based Oracles to blockchaiN via an auDitable auctiOn pRotocol) between a smart contract and some off-chain AI-based oracles to enable the smart contract to choose among AI solution proposals while inciting those oracles to provide non-forged results. The main principle is to consider the AI outcomes as auctions that can be challenged and audited through a dispute phase. An Ethereum implementation of the aforementioned protocol was built in order to assess its scalability and time performances.
Eduardo Takeo Ueda, Marcelo Moro Da Silva, Anderson Silva, Norisvaldo Ferraz · 8 authors
Transparency and security in an electoral process are fundamental to the legitimacy of the results and the confidence of voters. Thus, it is necessary to assess opportunities to improve traditional voting systems. Among the main problems is the lack of transparency, due to the impossibility of a voter checking their vote and the lack of access to the source from which the results are obtained. Another problem is mobility, due to the impossibility of performing remote voting, as traditional voting systems continue to require the physical presence of the voter in an electoral zone. Thus, the objective of this work is to propose a voting system that is functional, transparent, safe, and accessible to everyone. Voters can vote through a mobile application with biometric authentication using fingerprint and password access. In our proposal, votes are registered in an Ethereum Blockchain through a Smart Contract, allowing the voter to check their vote. The results are expected to collaborate with the evolution of studies necessary to improve traditional voting systems, especially in fundamental aspects such as security, transparency, and mobility.
Juan Ma, Yuling Chen, Ziping Wang, Guoxu Liu · 5 authors
Abstract The delegating computation has become an irreversible trend, together comes the pressing need for fairness and efficiency issues. To solve this problem, we leverage game theory to propose a smart contract-based solution. First, according to the behavioral preferences of the participants, we design an incentive contract to describe the motivation of the participants. Next, to satisfy the fairness of the rational delegating computation, we propose a rational delegating computation protocol based on reputation and smart contract. More specifically, rational participants are to gain the maximum utility and reach the Nash equilibrium in the protocol. Besides, we design a reputation mechanism with a reputation certificate, which measures the reputation from multiple dimensions. The reputation is used to assure the client’s trust in the computing party to improve the efficiency of the protocol. Then, we conduct a comprehensive experiment to evaluate the proposed protocol. The simulation and analysis results show that the proposed protocol solves the complex traditional verification problem. We also conduct a feasibility study that involves implementing the contracts in Solidity and running them on the official Ethereum network. Meanwhile, we prove the fairness and correctness of the protocol.
In recent years, increasingly many companies have entered the pay-as-you-go business because it has become easier to monitor services constantly due to the development and increase in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Research is in progress to introduce cryptographic assets into the payment, but if a private key is stolen, the cryptographic assets associated with it can be stolen. To address this issue, this paper proposes a secure automated payment system using contract wallets. This method ensures the security of cryptographic assets even if the private key is stolen. Secure automated payments are enabled by issuing transactions from IoT devices and using internal transactions to link contract wallets and smart contracts that handle the payment of cryptographic assets. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated on the Ethereum blockchain as a proof of concept, and the cost of gas is measured.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Cryptography and Data Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
U ovom diplomskom radu je izrađena mobilna aplikacije za glasovanje koristeći blockchain tehnologiju. Aplikacija pruža funkcionalnost kreiranja vlastitih izbora i glasovanje na drugim izborima preko skeniranja QR koda ili unosom adrese glasovanja. Za autentikaciju je korišten Firebase servis dok je za pohranu podataka korišten ethereum blockchain uz pomoć alata Truffle, Ganache, web3 i Solidity programskog jezika. Mobilna aplikacija je kreirana unutar Flutter programskog okvira po DDD arhitekturalnom dizajnu programske podrške. Kroz rad je opisano i trenutno stanje elektroničkog glasovanja i njegove tehnologije, doprinos blockchaina konceptu mobilnog glasovanja i sigurnosne mane ovakvog načina glasovanja.
In a competitive market, online auction systems enable optimal trading of digital products and services. Bidders can participate in existing blockchain-based auctions while protecting the confidentiality of their bids in a decentralized, transparent, secure, and auditable manner. However, in a competitive market, parties would prefer not to disclose their interests to competitors, and to remain anonymous during auctions. In this paper, we firstly analyze the specific requirements for blockchain-based anonymous fair auctions. We present a formal model tailored to study auction systems that facilitate anonymity, as well as a generic protocol for achieving bid confidentiality and bidder anonymity using existing cryptographic primitives such as designated verifier ring signature. We demonstrate that it is secure using the security model we presented. Towards the end, we demonstrate through extensive simulation results on Ethereum blockchain that the proposed protocol is practical and has minimal associated overhead. Furthermore, we discuss the complexity and vulnerabilities that a blockchain environment might introduce during implementation.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The object of research is software for financial accounting and distribution of funds in a non-profit charitable foundation using smart contracts of the Ethereum platform. The work is aimed at designing and implementing a software application for a charitable foundation, which allows to exclude the misuse of funds of a non-profit charitable foundation. The paper proposes an implementation of the Ethereum smart contract for the software of a charitable foundation. In the app, users can apply for financial aid or make a charitable donation. The request for financial support is confirmed by administrators to avoid abuse by those seeking help. Anyone who has a crypto wallet can become a sponsor by transferring funds from its account to a selected request. The sponsor remains incognito when making a charitable contribution. After collecting the entire declared amount, the funds are automatically transferred to the crypto wallet of the request’s owner. A smart contract and a corresponding decentralized web application for interacting with it were experimentally deployed, and their joint work was tested. To implement the smart contract, the Solidity programming language was chosen; developed smart contract converted to bytecode using remix. The resulting bytecode is ready to be deployed on the Ethereum platform. Decentralized web application for interacting with the contract is implemented using Web3.js, Vue.js. A rough estimate of the cost of deploying a project on the Ethereum platform has been made. The deployment and operation of smart contracts and web applications comes with a certain overhead, which is most dependent on the cost of ether. However, this is a justified price to pay for the transparency of transactions and the shadowing of the turnover of funds of the charitable foundation. The results of the research can be used as a basis for further transformation into full-fledged software with the ability to submit all reporting documents to the relevant government agencies and sponsors.
The object of research is software for financial accounting and distribution of funds in a non-profit charitable foundation using smart contracts of the Ethereum platform. The work is aimed at designing and implementing a software application for a charitable foundation, which allows to exclude the misuse of funds of a non-profit charitable foundation. The paper proposes an implementation of the Ethereum smart contract for the software of a charitable foundation. In the app, users can apply for financial aid or make a charitable donation. The request for financial support is confirmed by administrators to avoid abuse by those seeking help. Anyone who has a crypto wallet can become a sponsor by transferring funds from its account to a selected request. The sponsor remains incognito when making a charitable contribution. After collecting the entire declared amount, the funds are automatically transferred to the crypto wallet of the request’s owner. A smart contract and a corresponding decentralized web application for interacting with it were experimentally deployed, and their joint work was tested. To implement the smart contract, the Solidity programming language was chosen; developed smart contract converted to bytecode using remix. The resulting bytecode is ready to be deployed on the Ethereum platform. Decentralized web application for interacting with the contract is implemented using Web3.js, Vue.js. A rough estimate of the cost of deploying a project on the Ethereum platform has been made. The deployment and operation of smart contracts and web applications comes with a certain overhead, which is most dependent on the cost of ether. However, this is a justified price to pay for the transparency of transactions and the shadowing of the turnover of funds of the charitable foundation. The results of the research can be used as a basis for further transformation into full-fledged software with the ability to submit all reporting documents to the relevant government agencies and sponsors.
The beacon chain is the backbone of the Ethereum's evolution towards a proof-of-stake-based scalable network. Beacon clients are the applications implementing the services required to operate the beacon chain, namely validators, beacon nodes, and slashers. Security defects in beacon clients could lead to loss of funds, consensus rules violation, network congestion, and other inconveniences. We reported more than 35 issues to the beacon client developers, including various security improvements, specification inconsistencies, missing security checks, exposure to known vulnerabilities. None of our findings appears to be high-severity. We covered the four main beacon clients, namely Lighthouse (Rust), Nimbus (Nim), Prysm (Go), and Teku (Java). We looked for bugs in the logic and implementation of the new security-critical components (BLS signatures, slashing, networking protocols, and API) over a 3-month project that followed a preliminary analysis of BLS signatures code. We focused on Lighthouse and Prysm, the most popular clients, and thus the highest-value targets. Furthermore, we identify protocol-level issues, including replay attacks and incomplete forward secrecy. In addition, we reviewed the network fingerprints of beacon clients, discussing the information obtainable from passive and active searches, and we analyzed the supply chain risk related to third-party dependencies, providing indicators and recommendations to reduce the risk of backdoors and unpatchable vulnerabilities. Our results suggest that despite intense scrutiny by security auditors and independent researchers, the complexity and constant evolution of a platform like Ethereum requires regular expert review and thorough SSDLC practices.