Blockchain Papers

Khushbakh Farooq, Muhammad Ibrahim, Mukhtaj Khan, Irsa Manzoor · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Atish Peshattiwar, A. P. Mohanraj, Anand Gerald A, Dharmalingam S · 6 authors

Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management Blockchain can help scale to preparedness and enhance scalability, transparency, interoperability, security, and cost-efficiency. Existing implementations are facing significant challenges, such as considerable computational expense, scalability constraints, issues with interoperability, energy waste, and regulatory compliance. In response, this research presents a next-gen blockchain framework leveraging hybrid blockchain architectures, AI-integrated smart contracts, green consensus algorithms, and cross-platform interoperability strategies to bridge the gaps of the existing systems. In this paper, we present an architecture that incorporates Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP), Homomorphic Encryption, and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) for upholding data transparency and privacy without compromising on regulatory compliance. Furthermore, in order to facilitate the cost-effective adoption of blockchain for supply chain firms, the study presented BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-Service). AI-powered adaptive smart contracts to automate logistics operations in real-time are also included in the framework. This research proves that the proposed blockchain framework helps to increase the supply chain security level, decrease operational costs, improve transaction efficiency, and conformity with the regulations of global trade through the case study analysis and simulation testing approaches. The outcome indicates the comparative analysis demonstrating the improvement– a 40% reduction in latency, a 30% decrease in computational costs, and a 50% higher transaction processing speed compared to the existing blockchain technologies with respect to hybrid blockchain model. This research addresses major roadblocks to significant adoption of blockchain, and provides a robust, cost-efficient, and privacy-protective, scalable blockchain solution which can guarantee resilience and transparency of supply chain in current-day logistics networks.

Merino, Louis-Henri Manuel Jakob

Online voting promises greater convenience and accessibility, but moving from supervised polling places to unsupervised settings magnifies the risk of coercion and vote buying. A compelling strategy is to give voters fake credentials: credentials that look and behave like real voting credentials but whose ballots are silently excluded from the tally. Despite its conceptual appeal, practical realizations and usability evidence for fake credentials have remained limited. This dissertation presents Votegral, the first end-to-end verifiable, coercion-resistant online voting system with empirical evidence towards practical usability. Votegral has two components: TRIP and VLT. TRIP is a trust-limited, in-person registration scheme that issues voters a real credential and any number of fake credentials on paper, without trusted hardware. TRIP embeds an interactive zero-knowledge proof into the physical printing process so that real credentials carry sound proof transcripts while fake credentials carry identically formatted but unsound proof transcripts -- distinguishable only by the voter during issuance and not transferable thereafter. VLT is a tallying scheme that constrains ballots to registrar-issued credentials to enable linear-time filtering of fake ballots. VLT also introduces standing votes: a voter facing extreme coercion can, at registration, delegate their voting rights to a publicly registered political party and leave the booth with only fake credentials. Tallying then credits the party's ballot by the number of such delegations and publishes publicly auditable proofs, resulting in both transparency and coercion evidence -- evidence that an aggregate number of voters felt unsafe to leave the registrar with a real credential. Our prototype tallies 1 million ballots in about 14 hours on a 128 core, 256 GB RAM machine; this puts Votegral on par with modern end-to-end verifiable systems such as Swiss Post, while significantly outperforming prior JCJ-style systems such as Civitas. TRIP's end-to-end, voter-observable registration session completes in under 20 seconds on resource-constrained hardware. In our main user study with 150 demographically diverse participants recruited in Boston, Massachusetts, 83% successfully registered and cast a ballot in our mock election. Among the 120 participants exposed to fake credentials, 96% correctly understood the purpose of fake credentials. These promising results suggest a path for practical viability of coercion-resistant, end-to-end verifiable online voting using fake credentials.

Rahul Kundnani, Shri Kant, Khursheed Alam

No abstract is available for this record.

Suhang Wei, Jinfang Jia, Xiang Feng, Huiqun Yu

No abstract is available for this record.

Ankush Gupta, Soumya Remella

Digital supply chain payments increasingly rely on automated and distributed platforms, yet existing solutions struggle to balance transparency with the confidentiality required by commercial and financial stakeholders. While blockchain-based smart contracts enable tamper-evident settlement and traceability, they often expose sensitive transaction metadata, contractual terms, and risk indicators, limiting adoption in multi-party supply chain environments. This paper presents a privacy-preserving smart and secure contract framework for digital supply chain payments that separates correctness verification from information disclosure. The proposed model combines a permissioned or consortium blockchain with off-chain encrypted data storage, cryptographic commitment schemes, and zero-knowledge proofs to ensure that payment obligations, milestone fulfillment, and financing conditions can be verified without revealing proprietary business details. Tokenized payment obligations represent invoices and receivables on the ledger, while milestone-based smart contracts coordinate delivery confirmation, early financing, dispute resolution, and settlement. Sensitive financial data and documents remain off-chain, anchored to the ledger only through hashes, commitments, and succinct proofs. Optional confidential computing components further enable secure evaluation of dynamic pricing or credit logic. A comprehensive security analysis demonstrates resistance to unauthorized state modification, double financing, insider misuse, and inference attacks under both honest-but-curious and malicious adversary models. Performance evaluation shows that the computational and communication overhead introduced by privacy-preserving mechanisms remains practical for real-world supply chain payment workflows, with low latency, efficient storage growth, and scalable operation across multi-tier ecosystems. The results indicate that the proposed framework provides a viable foundation for secure, privacy-aware, and auditable digital supply chain finance.

Lev Goukassian

No abstract is available for this record.

Vanshika Sharma

No abstract is available for this record.

Laxmi Kumari, Tarun Kumar Mahato

Cryptography has been essential in securing communication and safeguarding sensitive information since ancient times. This paper offers a thorough review of the evolution of cryptographic techniques, tracing their journey from early encryption methods like Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Spartan scytale, and the Caesar cipher, to contemporary advancements in quantum-resistant security. The study emphasizes the shift from classical cryptographic methods, such as substitution and transposition ciphers, to advanced mathematical algorithms like AES, RSA, and ECC, which have significantly enhanced data security in today's digital landscape. The paper also examines key milestones in the history of cryptography, including the widespread adoption of cryptographic standards in the 20th century, the emergence of public-key cryptography, and the implications of quantum computing on existing security frameworks. Furthermore, it discusses modern cryptographic innovations, such as blockchain technology, homomorphic encryption, post-quantum cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, and quantum key distribution, which are influencing the future of secure communications. A comparative analysis of classical, modern, and emerging cryptographic techniques is provided, highlighting their strengths, weaknesses, and applications across various fields like finance, healthcare, and cyber-security. The paper concludes by addressing future directions in cryptographic research, underscoring the necessity for resilient and scalable security solutions to combat evolving cyber threats. This review serves as a valuable resource for researchers, cyber-security professionals, and policymakers looking for insights into the historical development and future direction of cryptographic technologies.

A. R. Khan

No abstract is available for this record.

H. Anwar Basha, R. Sivasubramanian, M. Rajasekhara Babu, P. Anitha · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Jamil Raja, D Hema Ruba, Sai Krishna, K Manasa · 6 authors

Blockchain technology has become a disruptive force that is quickly reshaping supply chain management by providing greater transparency, security, and efficiency. As promising as the Blockchain is, previous research fails to provide solutions for bringing Blockchain into real-world practice, for getting it up to mass scale, and for ensuring that it meets the regulators’ requirements and these factors limit a more widespread adoption of Blockchain. By offering a review of blockchain-based supply chain management initiatives, their pros and cons, and addressing under-researched topics related to optimized consensus mechanisms, interoperability solutions, and AI-driven solutions integration, this research fills the gaps to decrease inefficiencies in supply chains. As part of the latter, the study presents zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized identity verification and cross-chain protocols as potential solutions to address security concerns and enhance interoperability among multiple chains. Also, a deeper implementation roadmap is provided, enabling pragmatic applicability in real business operations across the global supply chain. By analyzing cases, the study emphasizes the practical contributions of blockchain in traceability, fraud prevention, inventory optimization, and automated contract execution. The results highlight blockchain as a scalable, secure, and legally compliant technology for solving modern supply chain problems, filling the gap between theory and practical adoption.

Francesco Paolo Patti

No abstract is available for this record.

Ankita Sharma, Dr. Pritaj Yadav

No abstract is available for this record.

Kshitij Kumar, Dhiraj Kumar, Shivam Baghel, Kavita Arora

The decentralized, transparent, and immutable ledger system of blockchain has fundamentally changed data security and digital transactions. Blockchain has built-in security safeguards, yet it is still vulnerable to flaws and attacks. In this review paper, the authors will examine the threats and vulnerabilities that blockchain technology faces and the mitigation factors that can be used to overcome these issues. The authors discuss the significant threats like the 51% attack, double spending attack and many more that compromise the integrity of blockchain technology further authors discusses the vulnerabilities that are present in consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, network level, cryptography and privacy. These vulnerabilities expose blockchain networks to potential exploits and operational risks. To overcome these threats and challenges, the paper also discusses several countermeasures that are used for strengthening the blockchain network. It includes consensus mechanism enhancement through hybrid models and enhancing network-level protection against DDoS and routing attacks. This paper also discusses about the significance of quantum resistance cryptographic algorithms, privacy-enhancing technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, and scalability solutions such as layer 2 protocols and sidechains. This review paper also includes the current research and advancements in security blocks and provides a detailed understanding of the present work and future initiatives in the blockchain system.

Elyse John, Grace Collins

No abstract is available for this record.

Veri, Hans Kristjan

The rise of quantum computing threatens to break many of the cryptographic systems that secure today’s digital world. In response, researchers are developing new tools designed to remain secure in a post-quantum future. Most of the promising candidates for post-quantum digital signatures rely on security assumptions based on lattices or properties of hash functions. Another promising approach transforms secure multi-party computation protocols into zero-knowledge proofs, which are then turned into digital signatures. This technique, known as multi-party computation in-the-head (MPCitH), offers strong security properties and flexibility for distributed applications. This thesis investigates whether MPCitH digital signatures can be efficiently adapted for use by two cooperating parties to jointly produce a signature. Here we show how to construct two-party signatures based on syndrome decoding in-the-head (SDitH) signatures. We propose a provably secure scheme that achieves the smallest known communication overhead among two-party MPCitH signatures, while resulting in a signature size approximately double that of a single-prover variant. This result provides a new data point in the design space of multi-party MPCitH signatures and post-quantum digital signatures in general.

浩然 司

现有区块链交易通常使用加密货币作为抵押物并进行链上交易，但由于加密货币的波动性，面临清算风险。本文旨在区块链与链下资产的融合，降低区块链交易风险，并提出一种基于零知识证明的密码学方案，将链下资产绑定到链上交易作为抵押物。该方案在支持区块链交易的同时，确保数据隐私性、数据源认证和低Gas消耗。在性能方面，我们对所提方案进行了功能分析和实验评估，研究了不同实体在各个阶段产生的计算成本。实验结果表明，该方案在功能上可行，并且计算效率较高。综上，该方案为区块链交易提供了一种安全且高效的基于零知识证明的解决方案。Existing blockchain transactions typically use cryptocurrencies as collateral for on-chain trading. However, the volatility of cryptocurrencies exposes these transactions to significant liquidation risks. This paper aims to integrate blockchain with off-chain assets to mitigate such risks and proposes a cryptographic scheme based on zero-knowledge proofs that links off-chain assets to on-chain transactions as collateral. The proposed scheme enables secure blockchain transactions while ensuring data privacy, authentication of data sources, and low gas cost. From a performance perspective, this paper conducts a functional analysis and experimental evaluation, assessing the computational costs incurred by different entities at various stages. Experimental results demonstrate that the scheme is both functionally viable and computationally efficient. In conclusion, this work presents a secure and efficient zero-knowledge-proof-based solution for blockchain transactions.

Taishi Higuchi, Akira Otsuka

Electronic cash (e-cash) systems must provide users with anonymity while preventing criminal misuse and enabling selective tracing of malicious actors, such as double-spenders. One of the most ingenious solutions, introduced by Chaum and Brands, involves deploying observers on users’ devices to enforce legitimate payment behavior without compromising anonymity. In this paper, we propose a novel e-cash scheme based on BBS+ signatures and open-source observers running within Attested Execution Secure Processors (AESPs). Our construction employs zero-knowledge proofs to conceal private information, while the open-source observer program—installed within a tamper-proof secure element—acts as a proactive gatekeeper, preventing double-spend attempts before they succeed. The AESP-based attestation mechanism binds each output to the program’s hash, guaranteeing that the officially vetted observer is indeed installed and operating unmodified on the user’s device. This scheme provides three key properties. First, it achieves anonymity and one-more unforgeability using a technique inspired by Brickell et al.’s EPID. Second, it ensures robust double-spend prevention and traceability of double-spenders, even if the AESP assumption is compromised. Third, the scheme remains reversible: if the observer is compromised, it gracefully reverts to the basic scheme without the observer, which preserves anonymity and unforgeability. Overall, this work bridges cryptographic privacy and practical regulatory oversight, providing a transparent and extensible foundation for secure digital payments.

Jonas Ryan Nouri

No abstract is available for this record.

Tianxiang Dai, Yufan Jiang, Yong Li, Jörn Müller‐Quade · 5 authors

In the secure two-party computation (2PC), an adversary is often categorized as semi-honest or malicious, depending on whether it follows the protocol specifications. Covert security (Aumann and Lindell, 2010) first looks into the “middle ground”, such that an active adversary who cheats will be caught with a predefined probability. Other security notions, such as publicly auditable security (Baum et al., 2014) and (robust) accountability family (Küsters et al., 2010; Graf et al., 2023; Rivinius et al., 2022), achieve public verifiability as a stronger security guarantee by relying on heavy offline and online constructions with zero knowledge proofs and (or) a bulletin board functionality. In this work, we propose a new security notion called honorific security, where an external arbiter can identify the cheater without a bulletin board. Specifically, we delay and outsource the verification steps to the arbiter, so that the original online computation is thus accelerated. We show that a maliciously secure garbled circuit (GC) (Yao, 1986) protocol can be constructed with only slightly more overhead than a passively secure protocol. Our construction performs up to 2.37 times and 13.30 times as fast as the state-of-the-art protocols with covert and malicious security, respectively.

Ben Charoenwong, Pratik Soni, Varun Shankar, Robert M. Kirby · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Joel Curado, Manila Bhandari, João C. Ferreira, Ana Martins

The maritime supply chain plays a vital role in global trade, but it continues to face major challenges, including transparency issues, fraud, and data privacy concerns. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution to make the supply chain more secure, efficient, and trustworthy across the system. However, it still encounters limitations, especially regarding privacy and the handling of large volumes of data. To address these issues, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) offer a viable solution, enabling the validation of documents and transactions without revealing sensitive information. This helps maintain confidentiality while meeting regulatory requirements, such as those set by the eFTI regulation. This paper investigates blockchain adoption in maritime supply chains with a focus on ZKP integration for secure document verification, fraud mitigation, and regulatory compliance. It evaluates computational overhead, scalability, and adoption barriers, and proposes a framework supported by simulation-based validation using Ethereum and ZoKrates to assess feasibility and performance. By combining ZKPs with blockchain, this approach enhances a secure, transparent, and efficient trade ecosystem, optimising resources and reducing risks. Future research directions are outlined to advance sustainable maritime logistics.

Israelin Insulata J, J. Roselin

No abstract is available for this record.