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2,350 results · page 23 of 98
Jiangfeng Ma, Xuetao Zhang, Xiangxue Li
No abstract is available for this record.
Zachary Painter, Christina Peterson, Victor Cook, Damian Dechev
Blockchain networks use consensus mechanisms so that participants can exchange transactions without the need to rely on a trusted third party. Consensus mechanisms using Proof of Work burn significant energy to select a block miner, and this delay limits performance. Other consensus mechanisms such as Proof of Stake or Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance still designate a single validator to append a block to the chain, preventing blocks from being built and published in parallel. In this article, we introduce a new consensus mechanism, Proof of Descriptor, enabling clients to work together to publish blockchain transactions using a descriptor object which stores information on the cooperative parallel execution of transactions. Proof of Descriptor consensus allows commutative transactions to be mined concurrently. It does not require a single leader to append transactions to the ledger, enabling clients to cooperate on publishing transactions. We also propose a novel graph-based ledger with multiple entry points to facilitate the scalability of Proof of Descriptor, as well as a secure hashing scheme to resist long-range attacks. We demonstrate that our approach is as secure as related works with respect to a malicious leader, 51% attack, and other known blockchain vulnerabilities. Furthermore, our experimental evaluation shows that our approach scales with the size of the network, experiencing up to a 4 \(\times\) improvement in throughput over the fastest sequential blockchain, Solana .
Viktor Valaštín, Dušan Morháč, Kristián Košťál, Ivan Kotuliak
Liquidity is critical for a healthy and thriving blockchain ecosystem, enabling value exchange between participants. However, achieving unified liquidity across heterogeneous blockchain platforms remains challenging due to disparities in architecture, virtual machines, and asset management logic. These disparities force assets to be wrapped into other formats to ensure compatibility with underlying systems, thus fragmenting liquidity into multiple pools. This paper proposes LiquiSpell, a novel protocol that aims to unify liquidity across multiple parachains within the Polkadot ecosystem. By leveraging the cross-chain message passing (XCMP), LiquiSpell introduces the concept of a universal transaction that can be constructed to be compatible with any parachain, regardless of its underlying architecture or asset management pallet. This approach overcomes the obstacles posed by the diverse nature of parachains, enabling seamless asset sharing and enhancing cross-chain interoperability. The proposed solution mitigates liquidity fragmentation within the Polkadot ecosystem. It presents a framework that can be extended to other multichain environments outside Polkadot. Ultimately, LiquiSpell aims to foster a thriving ecosystem by facilitating the introduction of new assets and increasing overall liquidity, thereby driving innovation and adoption within the decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape.
Arijet Sarker, Simeon Wuthier, Jinoh Kim, Jonghyun Kim · 5 authors
Cryptocurrency software implements cryptocurrency operations (including the distributed consensus protocol and peer-to-peer networking) and often involves the open-source community. We design a software assurance scheme for cryptocurrency and advance the cryptocurrency handshaking protocol by providing the verification capability of the Bitcoin software by peers and preventing any potential peer from establishing a connection with modified Bitcoin software. Since we focus on Bitcoin (the most popular cryptocurrency) for implementation and integration, we call our scheme Version++, built on and advancing the current Bitcoin handshaking protocol based on the Version message. Our Version++ protocol providing software assurance is distinguishable from previous research because it is permissionless, distributed, and lightweight for its cryptocurrency application. Our scheme is permissionless since it does not require a centralized trusted authority (unlike the remote software attestation techniques from trusted computing); it is distributed since the peer checks the software assurances of its own peer connections; and it is designed for efficiency/lightweight to support the dynamic nature of the peer connections and large-scale broadcasting in cryptocurrency networking. Utilizing Merkle Tree for the efficiency of the proof verification, we implement and test Version++ on Bitcoin software and conduct experiments in an active Bitcoin node prototype connected to the Bitcoin Mainnet. Our prototype-based performance analyses demonstrate the lightweight design of Version++. The peer-specific verification grows logarithmically with the number of software files in processing time and in storage. Furthermore, the Version++ verification overhead is small compared to the version-verack handshaking process; we measure the overhead to be 0.524% in our local networking environment between virtual machines and between 0.057% and 0.282% (depending on the peer location) in our more realistic cloud-based experiments with remote peer machines.
ITI, Instituto Tecnológico de Informática
The coming of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) and blockchain, in the outlook of new technologiesduring the last decade, entailed a disruption in several spheres, such as the economy field and the identificationof entities and individuals, due to the great possibilities provided to them. Although their first application were cryptocurrencies, DLTs have been assimilated in other settings, suchas their introduction in enterprise-grade systems. The technology itself has been evolving, facing some of itslimitations and accommodating the extension of its potential use cases. SIGMA is conceived to broaden knowledge in two of the most novel aspects of DLTs: Layer-2 networksand decentralized self-sovereign identity. Its goal is to increase expertise in these areas to facilitate theirintegration and exploitation by our surrounding companies.
Mikel Cortes Goicoechea
(English) The advent of the internet, marked by pivotal developments such as the launch of Arpanet and the standardization of HTTP, has irrevocably changed the fabric of modern society. Centralized platforms like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon have dominated this digital landscape, offering many services ranging from cloud computing to online storage. However, the centralized nature of these services has raised significant concerns regarding user privacy, data integrity, and the potential for censorship. In response to these issues, the open-source community has explored peer-to-peer alternatives, notably in the realm of distributed file systems, ledgers, and blockchain technology. Blockchains, popularized by the emergence of Bitcoin, promote a democratized service model that challenges the centralized status quo. Yet, they are not without their own challenges, including decentralization, security, privacy, and performance. This thesis delves into the nuances of blockchain technology, focusing on Ethereum's transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) and its implications on network hardware requirements, topology, and overall performance. The development of Ethereum serves as a small-scale reflection of the broader ambitions and challenges in transitioning to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms. Despite significant theoretical advancements in consensus mechanisms and scalability solutions, real-world implementations and experimental validations remain sparse. This work aims to bridge this gap by comprehensively analysing Ethereum's PoS transition by examining the interlaced relationships between software logic, hardware configurations, and network dynamics. Through novel measurement models and tools, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of how Ethereum's architectural changes impact its ecosystem and its participants' behaviours. Lastly, the research presented in this thesis illustrates the technical and operational challenges facing Ethereum and similar blockchain platforms and proposes a series of contributions that advance the field. This work empirically analyses the future enhancements in blockchain technology by exploring the implications of the network and its topology, to the viability of decentralized validation processes, and the potential for scaling solutions like Data Availability Sampling. The open-source tools and methodologies developed within the thesis scope represent the commitment to transparency and collaboration, which follows the spirit of the decentralized communities it seeks to serve. Through a mix of theoretical exploration and empirical research, this thesis aims to provide a deeper and more detailed understanding of Ethereum PoS' design choices, its capabilities and the limitations this one represents in future steps and upgrades, leading the way for more resilient, scalable, and decentralized digital infrastructures. (Català) L'arribada d'Internet, marcada per avenços fonamentals com el llançament d'Arpanet i l'estandardització de HTTP, ha canviat irrevocablement el teixit de la societat moderna. Les plataformes centralitzades com Microsoft, Google, Apple i Amazon han dominat aquest panorama digital, oferint serveis que van des de la computació al núvol fins a l'emmagatzematge en línia. No obstant això, la naturalesa centralitzada d'aquests serveis ha generat importants preocupacions pel que fa a la privacitat de l'usuari, la integritat de les dades i la possibilitat de censura. En resposta a aquests problemes, la comunitat de codi obert ha explorat alternatives d'igual a igual, especialment en l'àmbit dels sistemes d'arxius distribuïts i la tecnologia blockchain. Les blockchains, popularitzades pel sorgiment de Bitcoin, han proposat fins i tot un model de servei democratitzat que desafia l'statu quo centralitzat. No obstant això, no estan exemptes de desafiaments, incloent la descentralització, la seguretat, la privacitat i el rendiment. Aquesta tesi aprofundeix en les dinàmiques de la tecnologia blockchain, centrant-se en la transició d'Ethereum de Proof of Work (PoW) a Proof of Stake (PoS) i les seves implicacions en els requisits, la topologia de la xarxa i el rendiment general del maquinari. El desenvolupament d'Ethereum serveix com un reflex a petita escala de les ambicions i els desafiaments més amplis en la transició a plataformes de finances descentralitzades (DeFi). Malgrat els importants avenços teòrics en els mecanismes de consens i les solucions d'escalabilitat, les implementacions al món real i les validacions experimentals segueixen sent escasses. Aquesta tesi té com a objectiu tancar aquesta bretxa analitzant exhaustivament la transició PoS d'Ethereum mitjançant l'examen de les relacions entrellaçades entre la lògica del programari, les configuracions de maquinari i la dinàmica de la xarxa. A través de nous models i eines de mesura, aquesta tesi contribueix a una comprensió més profunda de com els canvis arquitectònics d'Ethereum impacten en el seu ecosistema i els comportaments dels seus participants. Per últim, la investigació presentada en aquesta tesi il·lustra els desafiaments tècnics i operatius que enfronten Ethereum i plataformes blockchain similars, i proposa una sèrie de contribucions que esperem serveixin per fer avançar el mon de les blockchains. La tesi analitza empíricament les millores futures en la tecnologia blockchain explorant les implicacions de la xarxa i la seva topologia, la viabilitat dels processos de validació descentralitzats i el potencial per escalar solucions com el mostreig de disponibilitat de dades. Les eines i metodologies de codi obert desenvolupades dins de l'abast de la tesi representen el compromís amb la transparència i la col·laboració, que segueix l'esperit de les comunitats descentralitzades a les que busquem servir. A través d'una combinació d'exploració teòrica i investigació empírica, aquesta tesi té com a objectiu proporcionar una comprensió més profunda i detallada de les opcions de disseny d'Ethereum PoS, les seves capacitats i les limitacions que això representa en futurs passos i actualitzacions, obrint el camí cap a una solució més resilient i escalable per a infraestructures digitals descentralitzades. (Español) La llegada de Internet, marcada por avances fundamentales como el lanzamiento de Arpanet y la estandarización de HTTP, ha cambiado irrevocablemente el tejido de la sociedad moderna. Plataformas centralizadas como Microsoft, Google, Apple y Amazon han dominado este panorama digital, ofreciendo servicios que van desde computación en la nube hasta almacenamiento en línea. Sin embargo, la naturaleza centralizada de estos servicios ha generado importantes preocupaciones con respecto a la privacidad del usuario, la integridad de los datos y la posibilidad de censura. En respuesta a estos problemas, la comunidad de código abierto ha explorado alternativas de igual a igual, especialmente en el ámbito de los sistemas de archivos distribuidos, los libros de contabilidad y la tecnología blockchain. Las blockchains, popularizadas por el surgimiento de Bitcoin, promueven un modelo de servicio democratizado que desafía el status quo centralizado. Sin embargo, no están exentos de desafíos, incluida la descentralización, la seguridad, la privacidad y el rendimiento. Esta tesis profundiza en los matices de la tecnología blockchain, centrándose en la transición de Ethereum de Proof of Work (PoW) a Proof of Stake (PoS) y sus implicaciones en los requisitos, la topología de la red y el rendimiento general del hardware. El desarrollo de Ethereum sirve como un reflejo a pequeña escala de las ambiciones y desafíos más amplios en la transición a plataformas de finanzas descentralizadas (DeFi). A pesar de los importantes avances teóricos en los mecanismos de consenso y las soluciones de escalabilidad, las implementaciones en el mundo real y las validaciones experimentales siguen siendo escasas. Esta tesis tiene como objetivo cerrar esta brecha analizando exhaustivamente la transición PoS de Ethereum mediante el examen de las relaciones entrelazadas entre la lógica del software, las configuraciones de hardware y la dinámica de la red. A través de novedosos modelos y herramientas de medición, esta tesis contribuye a una comprensión más profunda de cómo los cambios arquitectónicos de Ethereum impactan su ecosistema y los comportamientos de sus participantes. Por último, la investigación presentada en esta tesis ilustra los desafíos técnicos y operativos que enfrentan Ethereum y plataformas blockchain similares y propone una serie de contribuciones que hacen avanzar el campo. La tesis analiza empíricamente las mejoras futuras en la tecnología blockchain explorando las implicaciones de la red y su topología, la viabilidad de los procesos de validación descentralizados y el potencial para escalar soluciones como el muestreo de disponibilidad de datos. Las herramientas y metodologías de código abierto desarrolladas dentro del alcance de la tesis representan el compromiso con la transparencia y la colaboración, que sigue el espíritu de las comunidades descentralizadas a las que busca servir. A través de una combinación de exploración teórica e investigación empírica, esta tesis tiene como objetivo proporcionar una comprensión más profunda y detallada de las opciones de diseño de Ethereum PoS, sus capacidades y las limitaciones que esto representa en futuros pasos y actualizaciones, abriendo el camino hacia una solución más resiliente y escalable. e infraestructuras digitales descentralizadas.
Junke Duan, Wei Wang, Licheng Wang, Lize Gu
Ring confidential transactions (RingCT) is a classical protocol that enhances transaction privacy within blockchain technology. It is primarily utilized in anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero. In recent years, to counter the security threats posed by quantum computing to classical RingCT (C-RCT), several post-quantum RingCT (P-RCT) protocols were proposed. However, prior studies do not address the account transition from C-RCT to P-RCT, which is essential to ensure the quantum resistance and usability of user accounts following the upgrade from C-RCT to P-RCT. In this article, we introduce a RingCT account transition protocol (RAT), which allows users to migrate their accounts from the blockchain with C-RCT to that with P-RCT. The protocol consists of two cryptographic components: 1) a zero-knowledge proof scheme used to prove that two group generators correspond to the same witness and 2) a cross-cryptosystems commitment transition protocol. RAT is fully decentralized and does not require any trusted third parties. Additionally, the transition process does not disclose the account balance and maintains both atomicity and consistency. The security of our protocol relies on the cryptographic components within RingCT, without the need for additional security assumptions, such as a trusted setup. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our protocol in practice.
Lingyue Zhang, Zongyang Zhang, Tianyu Li, Shancheng Zhang
Intelligent blockchain is an emerging field that integrates Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques with blockchain networks, with a particular emphasis on improving the performance of blockchain, especially in cryptocurrencies exchanges. Meanwhile, arbitrage bots are widely deployed and increasing in intelligent blockchain. These bots exploit the characteristics of cryptocurrencies exchanges to engage in frontrunning, generating substantial profits at the expense of ordinary users. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a more efficient asynchronous Byzantine ordered consensus protocol, which can be used to prevent arbitrage bots from changing the order of the transactions for profits in intelligent blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Specifically, we present two signal asynchronous common subset protocols, the more optimal one with only constant time complexity. We implement both our protocol and the optimal existing solution Chronos with Go language in the same environment. The experiment results indicate that our protocols achieve a threefold improvement over Chronos in consensus latency and nearly a tenfold increase in throughput.
Vincenzo Arceri, Saverio Mattia Merenda, Greta Dolcetti, Luca Negrini · 6 authors
Ethereum enables the creation and execution of decentralized applications through smart contracts, that are compiled to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bytecode. Once deployed in the blockchain, the bytecode is immutable; hence, ensuring that smart contracts are bug-free before their deployment is of utmost importance. A crucial preliminary step for any effective static analysis of EVM bytecode is the extraction of the control-flow graph (CFG): this presents significant challenges due to potentially statically unknown jump destinations. In this paper we present a novel approach, based on abstract interpretation, aiming at building a sound CFG from EVM bytecode smart contracts. Our analysis, which is implemented in our static analyzer EVMLiSA, is based on a parametric abstract domain that approximates concrete execution stacks at each program point as an l-sized set of abstract stacks of maximal height h; the results of the analysis are then used to resolve the jump destinations at jump nodes. In our preliminary experiments, by fine-tuning the analysis parameters, EVMLiSA builds sound CFGs for all smart contracts where permanent storage-related opcodes do not influence jump destinations.
Hanze Guo, Yebo Feng, Cong Wu, Zengpeng Li · 5 authors
With the rapid development of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), particularly Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (SNARKs), benchmarking various ZK tools has become a valuable task. ZK-friendly hash functions, as key algorithms in blockchain, have garnered significant attention. Therefore, comprehensive benchmarking and evaluations of these evolving algorithms in ZK circuits present both promising opportunities and challenges. Additionally, we focus on a popular ZKP application, privacy-preserving transaction protocols, aiming to leverage SNARKs' cost-efficiency through "batch processing" to address high on-chain costs and compliance issues. To this end, we benchmarked three SNARK proving systems and five ZK-friendly hash functions, including our self-developed circuit templates for Poseidon2, Neptune, and GMiMC, on the bn254 curve within the circom-snarkjs framework. We also introduced the role of "sequencer" in our SNARK-based privacy-preserving transaction scheme to enhance efficiency and enable flexible auditing. We conducted privacy and security analyses, as well as implementation and evaluation on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chains. The results indicate that Poseidon and Poseidon2 demonstrate superior memory usage and runtime during proof generation under Groth16. Moreover, compared to the baseline, Poseidon2 not only generates proofs faster but also reduces on-chain costs by 73% on EVM chains and nearly 26% on Hedera. Our work provides a benchmark for ZK-friendly hash functions and ZK tools, while also exploring cost efficiency and compliance in ZKP-based privacy-preserving transaction protocols.
Ali Samanipour, Omid Bushehrian, Gregório Robles
No abstract is available for this record.
Christian Berger, Sadok Ben Toumia, Hans P. Reiser
Novel Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) state machine replication protocols improve scalability for their practical use in distributed ledger technology, where hundreds of replicas must reach consensus. Assessing that BFT protocol implementations meet their performance expectations requires careful evaluation. We propose a new methodology using scalable network simulations to predict BFT protocol performance. Our simulation architecture allows for the integration of existing BFT implementations without modification or re-implementation, offering a cost-effective alternative to large-scale cloud experiments. We validate our method by comparing simulation results with real-world cloud deployments, showing that simulations can accurately predict performance at larger scales when network limitations dominate. In our study, we applied this methodology to assess the performance of several “blockchain-generation” BFT protocols, including HotStuff, Kauri, Narwhal & Tusk, and BullShark, under realistic network conditions (with constrained 25 Mbit/s bandwidth) and induced faults. Kauri emerges as the top performer, achieving 6,742 operations per second (op/s) with 128 replicas, outperforming BullShark (2,318 op/s) and Tusk (1,952 op/s). HotStuff, using secp256k1 and BLS signatures, reaches 494 op/s and 707 op/s, respectively, demonstrating the efficiency of BLS-signature aggregation for saving bandwidth. This study demonstrates that state-of-the-art asynchronous BFT protocols can achieve competitive throughput in large-scale, real-world scenarios.
Rong Wang, Minfu Yuan, Zhenyu Wang, Yin Li
Recent Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) State Machine Replication (SMR) protocols increasingly focus on scalability and security to meet the growing demand for Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) applications across various domains. Current BFT consensus algorithms typically require a single leader node to receive and validate votes from the majority process and broadcast the results, a design challenging to scale in large systems. We propose a fast-response consensus algorithm based on improvements to HotStuff, aimed at enhancing transaction ordering speed and overall performance of distributed systems, even in the presence of faulty copies. The algorithm introduces an optimistic response assumption, employs a message aggregation tree to collect and validate votes, and uses a dynamically adjusted threshold mechanism to reduce communication delay and improve message delivery reliability. Additionally, a dynamic channel mechanism and an asynchronous leader multi-round mechanism are introduced to address multiple points of failure in the message aggregation tree structure, minimizing dependence on a single leader. This adaptation can be flexibly applied to real-world system conditions to improve performance and responsiveness. We conduct experimental evaluations to verify the algorithm's effectiveness and superiority. Compared to the traditional HotStuff algorithm, the improved algorithm demonstrates higher efficiency and faster response times in handling faulty copies and transaction ordering.
Christopher Adiguna Ginting
Ethereum is rapidly expanding through cross-chain linkages with its layer 2 and EVM-compatible blockchains. As it is already the largest ecosystem in terms of the number of users, applications, and economic value, it is of a great importance to study the speed, network activity and power consumption of its protocols. Furthermore, understanding the correlation between network activity and power consumption is important to gain insight into those protocols' scalability. An examination of Ethereum, Ethereum Layer 2 (Arbitrum and Optimism), and EVM-compatible (Avalanche, BSC, and Harmony) blockchain protocols revealed that emerging Ethereum Layer 2 and EVM-compatible blockchains are faster than Ethereum. Pearson analysis between power consumption and network activity showed weak correlations. Furthermore, there is no evidence of Granger causality between the power consumption and the network activity in either direction for any blockchain protocol. This finding suggests that power consumption is independent of network activity, indicating that protocols that consume less power do not do so because of their low network activity, but rather because of protocol-specific optimization. This also shows that these protocols can potentially scale with user growth. This study, therefore, serves as a valuable insight for those planning to implement blockchain protocols tailored to their industry requirements.
Lin Qi, Binbin Gu, Faisal Nawab
The interest in building blockchain Decentralized Applications (DApps) has been growing over the past few years. DApps are implemented as smart contracts which are programs that are maintained by a blockchain network. Building DApps, however, faces many challenges—most notably the performance and monetary overhead of writing to blockchain smart contracts. To overcome this challenge, many DApp developers have explored utilizingoff-chainresources—nodes outside of the blockchain network—to offload part of the processing and storage. In this paper, we propose RollStore, a data indexing solution for hybrid onchain-offchain DApps. RollStore provides efficiency in terms of reduced cost and latency, as well as security in terms of tolerating Byzantine (i.e., malicious) off-chain nodes. RollStore achieves this by: (1) a three-stage commitment strategy where each stage represents a point in a performance-security trade-off—i.e., the first stage is fast but less secure while the last stage is slower but more secure. (2) utilizing zero-knowledge (zk) proofs to enable the on-chain smart contract to verify off-chain operations with a small cost. (3) Combining Log-Structured Merge (LSM) trees and Merkle Mountain Range (MMR) trees to efficiently enable both access and verification of indexed data. We experimentally evaluate the cost and performance benefits of RollStore while comparing with BlockchainDB and BigChainDB.
Mikel Cortes-Goicoechea, Tarun Mohandas-Daryanani, José L. Muñoz, Leonardo Bautista-Gomez
Abstract Modern public blockchains like Ethereum rely on p2p networks to run distributed and censorship-resistant applications. With its wide adoption, it operates as a highly critical public ledger. On its transition to become more scalable and sustainable, shifting to PoS without sacrificing the security and resilience of PoW, Ethereum offers a range of consensus client implementations to participate in the network. In this paper, we present a methodology to measure the performance of the consensus clients based on the latency to receive messages from the p2p network. The paper includes a study that identifies the incentives and limitations that the network experiences, presenting insights about the latency impact derived from running the different consensus implementations at different locations. Our study highlights the need for a holistic approach to node deployment, where hardware, software, and geographic factors have to be carefully considered. Properly dimensioned hardware is essential to mitigate latency-related performance issues and ensure the reliable operation of beacon nodes, especially in geographically distant locations.
Mohammed Alghazwi, Tariq Bontekoe, Leon Visscher, Fatih Türkmen
Abstract Non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs of knowledge have proven to be highly relevant for securely realizing a wide array of applications that rely on both privacy and correctness . They enable a prover to convince any party of the correctness of a public statement for a secret witness . However, most NIZKs do not natively support proving knowledge of a secret witness that is distributed over multiple provers. Previously, collaborative proofs [54] have been proposed to overcome this limitation. We investigate the notion of composability in this setting, following the Commit-and-Prove design of LegoSNARK [19]. Composability allows users to combine different, specialized NIZKs (e.g., one for arithmetic circuits, one for boolean circuits, and one for range proofs) with the aim of reducing the proof generation time. Moreover, it opens the door to efficient realizations of many applications in the collaborative setting such as mutually exclusive prover groups, combining collaborative and single-party proofs and efficiently implementing publicly auditable secure multiparty computing (PA-MPC). We present the first, general definition for collaborative commitand- prove NIZK (CP-NIZK) proofs of knowledge and construct MPC protocols to enable their realization. We implement our protocols for two commonly used NIZKs, Groth16 and Bulletproofs, and evaluate their practicality in a variety of computational settings. Our findings indicate that composability adds only minor overhead, especially for large circuits. We also evaluated our construction in two application settings, one of which shows 18– $$55\times $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>55</mml:mn> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> runtime reduction when compared to prior works while requiring only a fraction ( $$0.2\%$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>0.2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) of the communication.
Yixiang Wang, Yu-Ling Hsueh
No abstract is available for this record.
Taotao Li, Huawei Huang, Lingyuan Yin, Siyuan Yao · 5 authors
Blockchain interoperability has become an essential functionality, which enables asset/data transfers across different blockchains. Sidechains have been deemed as a key technique to provide interoperability. However, sidechains are rarely used in practice, this is because sidechain technologies are impractical and non cost-efficient. To make sidechains practical, in this paper, we design a universal sidechain construction named USSC, which applies to a variety of blockchains without forking them. USSC also enables interoperability across heterogeneous blockchains regardless of underlying consensus. This is facilitated by three components: i) a committee selection method, ii) a cross-chain certificate, and iii) a cross-chain bridge based on smart contracts. The proposed committee-selection method guarantees an honest majority within a committee. Through a concrete implementation of USSC, we outline how the proof-of-stake (PoS) and the proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains enable asset transfers. Furthermore, our USSC is more storage-efficient because it produces a smaller size of certificate and only needs partial nodes instead of all sidechain nodes following a blockchain. Thus, USSC can reduce the overhead of storage and communication of nodes. In addition, we prove that USSC achieves a secure sidechain construction with desirable security properties. Finally, we develop a proof-of-concept implementation of USSC using Cardano and Ethereum. Experimental results demonstrate that USSC outperforms PoW and PoS sidechains, in terms of the certificate size.
Alberto Leporati, Lorenzo Rovida
The Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm has been criticized, in the literature and in several cryptocurrencies communities, due to the so-called compounding effect: who is richer has more coins to stake, therefore higher probability of being selected as a block validator and obtaining the corresponding rewards, thus becoming even richer. In this paper, we present a PoS simulator written in the Julia language that allows one to test several variants of PoS-based consensus algorithms, tweaking their parameters, and observe how the distribution of cryptocurrency coins among the users evolves over time. Such a tool can be used to investigate which combinations of parameters values allow to obtain a “fair” and stable consensus algorithm, in which, over the long term, no one gets richer or poorer by the mere act of validating blocks. Based on this investigation, we also introduce a new PoS-based consensus mechanism that allows the system to keep the wealth distribution stable even after a large number of epochs.
Zhuolun Xiang, Sourav Das, Zekun Li, Zhoujun Ma · 5 authors
Threshold cryptography is essential for many blockchain protocols. For example, many protocols rely on threshold common coin to implement asynchronous consensus, leader elections, and provide support for randomized applications. Similarly, threshold decryption and threshold time-lock puzzles are often necessary for privacy. In this paper, we study the interplay between threshold cryptography and a class of blockchains that use Byzantine-fault tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols with a focus on latency. More specifically, we focus on blockchain-native threshold cryptosystem, where the blockchain validators seek to run a threshold cryptographic protocol once for every block with the block contents as an input to the threshold cryptographic protocol. All existing approaches for blockchain-native threshold cryptosystems introduce a latency overhead of at least one message delay for running the threshold cryptographic protocol. In this paper, we first propose a mechanism to eliminate this overhead for blockchain-native threshold cryptosystems with tight thresholds, i.e., in threshold cryptographic protocols where the secrecy and reconstruction thresholds are the same. However, many real-world proof-of-stake-based blockchain-native threshold cryptosystems rely on ramp thresholds, where reconstruction thresholds are strictly greater than secrecy thresholds. For these blockchains, we formally demonstrate that the additional delay is unavoidable. We then introduce a mechanism to minimize this delay in the optimistic case. We implement our optimistic protocol for the proof-of-stake distributed randomness scheme on the Aptos blockchain. Our measurements from the Aptos mainnet show that the optimistic approach reduces latency overhead by 71%.
Xiaohua Wu, Zirui Wang, Xiaoyu Li, Lei Chen
No abstract is available for this record.
Ankit Jain, Nishant Gupta, Brij B. Gupta
The process of reaching an agreement on a value within a distributed network, known as a consensus problem, is a defining feature of blockchain. This consensus problem can be seen in various applications like load balancing, transaction validation in blockchain, and distributed computing. In recent years, many researchers have provided solutions to this problem. Hence we have presented a survey in which we delved into blockchain consensus algorithms and conducted a comparative analysis of all the consensus algorithms to provide information about each protocol’s advantages and drawbacks. This survey starts with the standard proof-of-work consensus protocol applied in bitcoin cryptocurrency and its limitations on the ground of the following parameters: throughput (transactions per second), latency, forks, fault tolerance, double spending attacks, and power consumption. The rest of the consensus algorithms in this paper have been systematically covered to address the limitations of proof-of-work. This paper also covered Raft and PBFT consensus algorithms suitable for permissioned networks. Although the PBFT consensus protocol has a high throughput and a low latency, it has limited node scalability. The PBFT has a low byzantine fault tolerant rate. This paper also covers PoEWAL for blockchain-based IoT applications and WBFT, which prevents corrupt nodes from taking part in consensus. A comparative analysis of the consensus algorithms provides an explicit knowledge of the present research, which also offers guidance for future study.
Guilherme de Araújo Scheibe, Humberto Torres - Marques Neto, 2024-07-05
No abstract is available for this record.