Blockchain Papers

Kevin Wooldridge, Stephen Ashurst

Blockchain is often referred to as a Distributed Ledger Technology or DLT. One could argue that there are two-components to ledger-keeping: the ledger itself (the data) and the process of “keeping” it or amending the data.

Ayush Nainwal, Atharva Kamble, Nitin Awathare

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are central to secure and privacy-preserving computation, with zk-SNARKs and zk-STARKs emerging as leading frameworks offering distinct trade-offs in efficiency, scalability, and trust assumptions. While their theoretical foundations are well studied, practical performance under real-world conditions remains less understood. In this work, we present a systematic, implementation-level comparison of zk-SNARKs (Groth16) and zk-STARKs using publicly available reference implementations on a consumer-grade ARM platform. Our empirical evaluation covers proof generation time, verification latency, proof size, and CPU profiling. Results show that zk-SNARKs generate proofs 68x faster with 123x smaller proof size, but verify slower and require trusted setup, whereas zk-STARKs, despite larger proofs and slower generation, verify faster and remain transparent and post-quantum secure. Profiling further identifies distinct computational bottlenecks across the two systems, underscoring how execution models and implementation details significantly affect real-world performance. These findings provide actionable insights for developers, protocol designers, and researchers in selecting and optimizing proof systems for applications such as privacy-preserving transactions, verifiable computation, and scalable rollups.

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.

Omar El-Sharif

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.

Alexandros Antonov, Evangelos Kolyvas, Spyros Voulgaris

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.

Yuqiu Zhang, Hans-Arno Jacobsen

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.

Mathew Jyyothis Jimmy, Naveen John, V. Sreenath, Blerta Prevalla Etemi · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Monika Malik

The artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures have been centralized leading to limited accessibility, monopoly of computational resources, and an uneven distribution of services. CloudChain is a decentralized AI compute market that is made out of blockchain and can solve these challenges with a transparent, trustless, and fair system. It brings together decentralized storage, smart contracts, as well as token incentives to allow fairness, privacy, and auditing. Privacy is ensured through encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, task allocation, distribution of rewards and enforcement of SLA is automated through smart contracts. The performance metrics measured in a 30-day simulation of the major cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Hetzner, Lambda Labs) and the community nodes included the performance measures of latency, throughput, and SLA compliance, as well as token allocation and resource utilization. Findings indicate that CloudChain does provide the necessary balance in the workloads, high quality in the service delivery, and equitable rewards among heterogeneous members. The suggested framework envisioned will create a democratized, secure, and sustainable platform of decentralized AI, enabling innovation, openness, and diversity of global AI ecosystems.

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.

Minghui Xu, Guo, Yihao, Yanqiang Zhang, Zhiguang Shan · 8 authors

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.

Qingshui Xue, B. Li, Shurui Li

Blockchain is a decentralized distributed ledger technology in which consensus algorithms ensure data consistency and system security among mutually untrusted nodes. The choice of a consensus algorithm significantly affects key performance indicators of a blockchain system, such as transaction throughput and energy consumption. This paper presents a systematic review of blockchain consensus algorithms. Based on their underlying principles, mainstream consensus algorithms are categorized into two major types: proof-based and voting-based mechanisms. Proof-based algorithms, such as Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), rely on resource investment to obtain the right to produce blocks; voting-based algorithms, including Raft and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), achieve consensus through node collaboration and voting. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of nine representative consensus algorithms and compares them in terms of efficiency, scalability, fault tolerance, and complexity. Finally, the paper summarizes the current challenges and potential research directions in the field, offering theoretical support and reference for the design of future blockchain systems.

Al Thani, Jamil

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.

Castro-Castilla, Álvaro, Pawlowski, Marcin, Zhou, Hong-Sheng

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.

Alassa, Qais

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.

Zouaghi Mohamed, Addala Raed, Sofiane Ouni

Introduction: Since its inception with Bitcoin in 2008, blockchain technology has evolved into a foundational infrastructure for secure, transparent, and decentralized systems across various sectors, including finance, supply chains, healthcare, and the internet of things (IoT). The introduction of Ethereum and smart contracts in 2015 catalyzed the development of decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), significantly expanding blockchain’s utility. Methods: A new blockchain trend is being created to address IoT applications requiring fast transaction processing accuracy. It is built on fast consensus mechanisms, including PBFT, sharding, the clustering principle, and the parallel execution of smart contracts Results: In this paper, we address the problems of parallel transaction execution consistency with respect to having the same transaction and smart contract execution order. Discussion: We analyze how current consensus mechanisms affect transaction ordering and explore methods to ensure deterministic execution without compromising speed or scalability. Conclusion: We propose a new algorithm called unordered global distributed transaction, which is based on order verification instead of time-consuming transaction consensus ordering.

Revista, Zen, HISTORY, 10

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.

Revista, Zen, HISTORY, 10

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.

Chandra Sekhar Koppireddy, Poojitha Ramyadevi Madireddy

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.

Chenggang Mu, Tao Ding, Zhuopu Han, Shanying Zhu · 5 authors

Distributed computing faces a persistent multi agent trust dilemma. In the computation process, participants may maliciously attack the system for personal gain by providing false data. Blockchain provides a possible solution for this problem with its immutability and multi-party consensus. However, existing blockchain data throughput has long been queried owing to its exorbitant time and energy costs by consensus mechanisms. This paper proposes a light blockchain structure in distributed computing scenarios. A No-Proof consensus (NPC) mechanism is designed for distributed computing problems with no extra proving process such as Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake. This consensus mechanism notices that the distributed computing result has proven to be valid in the computation process automatically, which does not need to be verified again in the consensus mechanism. Further, the single-threaded data processing ability of the blockchain structure certainly leads to low efficiency when applied to distributed computation problems. An NPC-based blockchain is constructed in this paper to solve this problem. In this structure, the distributed computing is done off chain, and an oracle is designed to upload the computing results to the blockchain asynchronously. Upon the contribution in this paper, a distributed energy trading model is provided as a case study to verify the superiority of the designed blockchain in contrast with other similar structures.

Acharya, Kushal

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.

Yaron Kaner, Tal Moran

No abstract is available for this record.

Jitendra Gupta

This paper presents a decentralized, trustless architecture for IoT data trading, leveraging a subscription-based economic model, decentralized publish/subscribe communication, and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). The system addresses scalability, integrity, confidentiality, and privacy challenges while ensuring financial incentives through end-to-end encrypted transmission and blockchain-based smart contracts. By integrating established standards and decentralized identity management, the framework secures digital rights, clarifies data ownership, and enables flexible trading mechanisms. The proposed architecture supports trustless information exchange, guarantees secrecy in IoT-based sensor data sharing, and fosters economic incentives for stakeholders. Evaluations focus on system performance, efficiency in encrypted data transmission, and trading cost optimizations. Future work includes optimizing Gas usage, enhancing broker operations, implementing a decentralized search engine for data products, and refining qualifications for data providers and brokers. This research contributes to the development of secure, scalable, and privacy-preserving IoT data trading solutions, ensuring efficient and transparent transactions.