Blockchain Papers

Craig S Wright

No abstract is available for this record.

Puneet Bakshi, Saurabh Shinde, Sunita Dhavale

AI agents now coordinate cryptographic tasks such as key management, protocol negotiation, zero-knowledge verification, and anomaly response across heterogeneous systems. Despite rapid progress, practical deployments still face gaps in protocol interoperability, verifiable privacy, and post-quantum readiness that hinder trustworthy adoption. This survey systematizes the field across cryptanalysis, cryptographic design, and secure multi-agent coordination, structuring the discussion around protocol families (MCP, A2A, ACP, ANP) and core primitives (MPC, HE, ZKP, PQC). Contributions include a two-dimensional taxonomy, a transparent survey methodology, a state-of-the-art comparison using shared criteria (interpretability, robustness, scalability, PQC readiness, proof overhead), an explicit limitations analysis, and practice-oriented guidance for engineering and governance. The synthesis clarifies trade-offs and provides a deployment roadmap for agentic cryptography in IoT, finance, and identity systems.

Steven Paul Nohr

<b><i>State and event validation</i></b> are fundamental for ensuring the correctness and integrity of system states as they transition across decentralized networks. In decentralized systems, such as blockchain or distributed ledgers, maintaining state consistency, triggering actions based on events, and validating those actions across nodes require robust consensus protocols. This paper explores the architecture of state and event validation mechanisms, addressing challenges such as node synchronization, consensus-based event ordering, and error handling in invalid state transitions. By examining the role of validation in maintaining trust and reliability, we highlight its importance in secure and scalable decentralized applications, including smart contracts, financial transactions, and IoT systems.

D. Bernal, Paula Medina Lamo, J. Bermejo

No abstract is available for this record.

Steven Paul Nohr

<b><i>Liquidity Exit Drain</i></b>, also referred to as a <b><i>Rug Stream</i></b>, describes a class of gradual capital extraction attacks in decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin ecosystems. Unlike abrupt rug pulls or discrete exploit-based failures, Liquidity Exit Drains operate through prolonged, cumulative actions that remain within protocol-defined operational and governance boundaries. By exploiting trust persistence, governance opacity, and parameter flexibility, these attacks systematically siphon liquidity over extended time horizons while evading conventional audits and user detection. This paper formalizes <b><i>Liquidity Exit Drain</i></b> as a distinct economic attack class, examines its structural enablers and execution patterns, and outlines why existing security, audit, and monitoring frameworks frequently fail to detect it. The analysis highlights the need for longitudinal economic oversight and governance-aware risk assessment beyond static code correctness.

Богдан Петрович Віннічук

Кваліфікаційна робота бакалавра складається зі вступу, чотирьох розділів, висновків, списку використаних джерел та додатків. Перший розділ кваліфікаційної роботи присвячено дослідженню актуального стану досліджуваної проблематики, обґрунтуванню обраного напряму роботи, а також визначенню та відбору методів і засобів проектування. У другому розділі розглянуто та обґрунтовано підходи й технології для вирішення поставлених завдань. Також наведено функціонально-структурну схему об’єкта проектування та ER-діаграму бази даних. Третій розділ охоплює безпосередню розробку програмного забезпечення та практичне втілення проєктованого об’єкта. Четвертий розділ містить SEO-оптимізацію інформаційно-комп’ютерної системи. У висновках підсумовано результати, отримані в ході виконання всіх попередніх розділів роботи.

Steven Paul Nohr

Decentralized systems are increasingly required to operate across heterogeneous environments involving human presence, real-world assets, regulatory constraints, and adversarial network conditions. Traditional execution models, which assume static infrastructure, context-free computation, and pre-authorized identities, are insufficient for these emerging requirements. This paper introduces a Presence-Centric execution architecture that binds computational validity to verifiable environmental state at execution time. The proposed system is structured around two core components: the Crystal Validator, a context-aware validation layer, and an AI Feedback Loop, which enables adaptive policy enforcement based on observed outcomes. Central to this architecture is <b><i>Environment-Coupled Execution</i></b>, a model in which identity, intent, policy, and environment are jointly evaluated to determine execution validity. By treating environment as a first-class execution dependency, the system enables contextual non-repudiation, replay resistance, regulatory determinism, and post-execution auditability. The proposed approach is applicable to decentralized finance, stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization, governance systems, and presence-driven digital platforms.

Hang Zheng, Wenjie Li, Jiageng Chen

No abstract is available for this record.

Yuki YASUNO, Shusuke Chida, 永田光葉, Daiki Izumi · 5 authors

Recent advances in distributed system design have shifted from centralized client–server models to decentralized frameworks that enable broad inter-organizational collaboration. While Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) leverage blockchain for governance and token-based transactions, existing platforms face two major limitations: the absence of decentralized authorization mechanisms and inadequate support for large-scale data management. This paper introduces Agentic DAO, a next-generation DAO architecture that integrates multi-agent authorization and scalable data governance into a blockchain-centric framework. The platform employs a Trust Scoring Agent using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to predict transactional reliability and a Data Management Agent to ensure consistency between blockchain and IPFS-based storage. Governance is reinforced through SoulBound Token (SBT)-based credentials to prevent Sybil attacks and enforce fair participation. A prototype implementation demonstrates the feasibility of trust-based access control and robust data synchronization. Experimental results confirm that Agentic DAO enhances transparency, scalability, and fairness compared to conventional DAO models, enabling secure and collaborative engagement in decentralized ecosystems.

Marc Herdina

The evolution of the World Wide Web is conventionally described in three eras-Web1 (read), Web2 (read-write), and Web3 (read-write-own)-each of which relocated a distinct form of power along the value chain: from publishers, to platforms, to ledger-anchored token holders. This paper introduces and defends a fourth: Web4 (read-write-own-act), in which sovereign ownership is not confined to tokens or ledger records but is co-specified across every operational plane of the network-identity, physical connectivity, compute, naming, developer tooling, application delivery, and consumer hardware-and in which autonomous agents act on behalf of that ownership under cryptographic, time-boxed capability grants. The central original contribution is the Ownership Thesis: the axiom that every layer of the stack must be reducible to a claim controlled by a decentralized identifier the subject holds directly, not one that is issued or held by an operator on the subject's behalf. From this axiom we derive a seven-layer reference architecture and formalize the Synthetic Web as the class of network activity structurally defined by agent-executed action under such capability grants. We position each layer against the relevant standards (W3C DID Core v1.1, W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0, Model Context Protocol, Agent-to-Agent v1.0.0, NIST CAISI AI Agent Standards Initiative) and provide a security analysis covering key management, alias unlinkability via BBS+ selective disclosure, Sybil resistance, delegated-authority scope creep, and data-sovereignty enforcement, with explicit identification of open problems that require further verification.

Radhakrishnan PN

No abstract is available for this record.

Bin Xie, Rui Song, Zecheng Li, Xiaotie Deng · 5 authors

Decentralized identity systems have emerged as a transformative paradigm, granting users unprecedented data sovereignty and privacy-preserving capabilities, fueling critical innovations in Web3 ecosystems. However, these systems primarily serve as identity-layer solutions, forcing verifiers to design special cryptographic protocols for access control deployment, which is an error-prone and expert-dependent process. Moreover, existing approaches fail to effectively combat credential fraud (e.g., credential theft and revoked credential reuse) without compromising privacy guarantees. This paper presents FRAC (Flexible Fraud-Resistant Access Control), an efficient decentralized access control framework that achieves two paradigm shifts: 1) Streamlined access control deployment: a logic-centric paradigm encodes access criteria through declarative verification rules, eliminating manual cryptographic protocol design while enabling instant verifier onboarding and efficient presentation generation; 2) Provable fraud resistance: a format-agnostic defensive mechanism based on Merkle trees prevents malicious credential use, requiring only lightweight hash operations and signature verification instead of computation-intensive operations. We conduct rigorous security analysis based on universally composable security and evaluate the performance, demonstrating FRAC’s security and efficiency.

Yu Quan Ang

The retail landscape in Singapore has grown increasingly competitive over the years, with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) facing mounting pressure from rising operational costs while lacking the capital to develop proprietary customer loyalty systems. Existing third-party cashback platforms such as ShopBack, while effective in driving customer retention, impose commission based fees that further erode slim profit margins. Beyond cost, these centralised platforms often suffer from single points of failure, a lack of transparency and reward fragmentation across separated ecosystems that diminishes long term customer engagement. Existing blockchain based loyalty implementations confirm commercial interest in decentralised rewards but remain constrained by permissioned architectures that exclude open merchant participation and retain centralised governance. This final year project proposes ShiokPay, a fully decentralised cashback rewards platform designed to eliminate these limitations for SME merchants and their customers. ShiokPay was designed and implemented using a Web3 architecture deployed on the Arbitrum Layer 2 Ethereum network. Three Solidity smart contracts form the core of the system. ShiokCoin, an ERC-20 rewards token. MerchantRegistry, which manages on-chain merchant onboarding and role based access control (RBAC). Along with MinimalForwarder, which enables gasless customer redemptions via EIP-712 meta-transactions. These contracts are integrated using React for the frontend, decentralised off-chain storage via IPFS and a GraphQL subgraph for real time blockchain transaction indexing. The Arbitrum L2 network was chosen to address Ethereum's scalability and gas fee limitations, while EIP-712 meta- transactions were implemented to remove the requirement for customers to hold cryptocurrency. This lowers the barrier to Web3 adoption in everyday retail environments. System validation was conducted entirely on the Arbitrum Sepolia testnet. A comprehensive test suite of 105 unit and integration test cases achieved a 100% pass rate across all three smart contracts, validating the correctness of RBAC, EIP-712 signature verification, nonce- based replay prevention and the simulated full eight-step merchant and customer lifecycle. Gas cost research evaluation confirmed that all transaction types consistently remain below $0.01, representing an approximately 98% cost reduction compared to equivalent Ethereum L1 operations. This satisfies ShiokPay's financial viability requirement for SME merchants. System latency evaluation confirmed that subgraph indexing updates averaged within seconds with optimistic UI updates reducing perceived end-user latency, meeting retail point- of-sale responsiveness requirements. ShiokPay successfully demonstrates that a permissionless, low-cost and user-friendly decentralised cashback rewards system is both technically feasible and commercially viable. By eliminating centralised intermediaries and covering customer gas fees through the meta-transaction model, ShiokPay provides SME merchants with a transparent, cost-efficient alternative to current cashback platforms. These are done while delivering a frictionless Web3 experience accessible to non-technical consumers.

Abbas Yazdinejad, Hadis Karimipour

Memory-enabled large language model (LLM) agents, particularly those deployed in long-horizon, tool-using settings such as Web3-style autonomous workflows, introduce security risks that extend beyond single-prompt injection. By persisting and reusing information across interaction steps and sessions, these agents enable memory poisoning attacks in which adversarial inputs modify persistent agent state and influence future decisions after benign intermediate interactions. Recent work on context manipulation and “fake memories” demonstrates that adversarial content can be injected into an agent’s prompt-visible inputs or persistent memory; however, existing evaluations largely analyze such attacks at isolated interaction steps or static context snapshots, obscuring their temporal dynamics. In this paper, we present the first large-scale, trajectory-level measurement framework for analyzing temporal memory poisoning in memory-enabled LLM agents. We construct a schema-constrained dataset of 2,614 multi-step attack trajectories spanning four attack families,chain poisoning, policy rewriting, backdoor triggering, andslow drift, executed over shared persistent memory. We define temporal risk metrics over multi-step interaction trajectories that capture delayed activation, non-monotonic escalation, and the earliest point at which attacks become distinguishable from benign behavior. Our empirical results show that a substantial fraction of attacks remain indistinguishable from benign behavior until late-stage activation, despite exhibiting low or medium risk at all earlier steps. Slow-drift and backdoor-trigger attacks, in particular, systematically evade step-local evaluation until terminal interactions, while chain poisoning and policy rewriting exhibit non-monotonic risk trajectories. These findings demonstrate that memory poisoning risk is inherently temporal and cannot be reliably assessed using prompt-level or step-isolated evaluation, motivating trajectory-aware benchmarks for agent security.

Павло Жержерунов, Oleksandr Shmatko

Dockerised blockchain solution can mitigate the low levels of distributed technology adoption in small and medium enterprises. It can be done via designing and implementing an environment which inherits ease of deployment and scalability of containerized systems with safety and transparency of distributed applications. Practical implementation of a dockerized blockchain solution designed as a demonstrative implementation for existing client–server architecture is described in this paper. This solution uses Docker containers to simplify the setup and deployment of a private blockchain network, a mediator server and a reverse proxy. Implementation of this system on a low scale demonstrates feasibility of integrating blockchain technology into existing business processes without fundamental architectural changes and acknowledges deployment and maintaining challenges that usually accompany distributed systems using private blockchain. Discussed implementation is a demonstration of designed architecture being potentially a reproducible and easily maintainable environment for logging and validating data through an immutable ledger on a smaller scale. Proof of concept successfully validates the core idea. The implementation shows a mediator server intercepting client request, recording them on a private Ethereum blockchain via a JSON-RPC interface, and then forwarding them to the original server. This confirms the solution’s ability to introduce a trusted, intermediate layer for data immutability. The project demonstrates a working framework for embedding distributed ledger technologies into client–server ecosystems. While the current Proof of Work consensus mechanism presents scalability limitations, the architecture provides a strong foundation for future research, including migrating to more efficient consensus mechanisms and integrating smart contracts.

Jing, Guanlin, Qi, Huayi

Existing agent communication frameworks face critical limitations in providing verifiable audit trails without compromising the privacy and confidentiality of agent interactions. The protection of agent communication privacy while ensuring auditability emerges as a fundamental challenge for applications requiring accurate billing, compliance verification, and accountability in regulated environments. We introduce a framework for auditing agent communications that keeps messages private while still checking they follow expected rules. It pairs zero-knowledge proofs with the existing Model Context Protocol (MCP) so messages can be verified without revealing their contents. The approach runs in lightweight networks, stays compatible with standard MCP exchanges, and adds asynchronous audit verification to confirm format and general message types without exposing specifics. The framework enables mutual audits between agents: one side can check communication content and quality while the other verifies usage metrics, all without revealing sensitive information. We formalize security goals and show that zk-MCP provides data authenticity and communication privacy, achieving efficient verification with negligible latency overhead. We fully implement the framework, including Circom-based zero-knowledge proof generation and an audit protocol integrated with MCP's bidirectional channel, and, to our knowledge, this is the first privacy-preserving audit system for agent communications that offers verifiable mutual auditing without exposing message content or compromising agent privacy.

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

No abstract is available for this record.

Kelly Vero

This chapter explores interoperability as the foundation for functional, inclusive and emotionally resonant digital experiences – from smart homes to the metaverse. Through critiques of Internet of Things (IoT), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Web3, it argues for human-centred design that prioritises discoverability, dignity and decentralised control. Drawing lessons from games like Bury Me My Love and platforms like Spatial , it shows how autonomy, mastery and purpose (AMP) can guide persistent virtual worlds. Interoperability is reframed not just as a technical goal, but also as a social, economic and ethical imperative – crucial to everything from refugee support to metaverse monetisation.

Kenneth Wong, Thein Lai Wong, Wei Jie Wong

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) empowers users to manage their digital identities independently, but many systems are constrained to specific blockchains. Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACA-Py), based on Hyperledger Aries, supports decentralized identity but is limited to Hyperledger Indy, excluding Ethereum ecosystems. This paper proposes an adaptation layer that integrates ACA-Py with Ethereum by converting identity operations to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible formats. The layer uses Python middleware (e.g., Registry.py, Wallet.py) and Solidity smart contracts (e.g., AnonCredRegistry, DIDManagement) for DID registration, schema publication, and credential management on-chain. Motivated by Ethereum's smart contract capabilities, this enhances SSI in EVM networks, enabling identity-based access controls and automated verifications. Unlike developing a new agent, this preserves ACA-Py's architecture, ensuring reusability and compliance with W3C DID/VC standards and Aries RFCs. Implemented with Python, Solidity, and Truffle Suite, the layer was tested on Ganache, validating credential issuance, verification, and DID anchoring. Evaluations showed low latencies (e.g., schema addition: 137 ms) and gas costs (e.g., DID registration: ~50,000 gas). A STRIDE-based security analysis confirms minimal vulnerabilities. This framework promotes interoperable SSI in EVM environments without core modifications.

Saurav Ghosh, Batuhan Tanrikulu, Reshmi Mitra, Indranil Roy · 5 authors

Access control in P2P network is extremely challenging due to several reasons such as decentrailized network, anonymous connectivity, high churn, resource constraints and large attack surface. The number of attributes to be tracked grows exponentially as P2P networks scale, exacerbating issues in traditional approaches such as RBAC, ABAC, RuBAC. This paper presents a novel blockchain-based access control framework for P2P networks using Ethereum smart contracts to offer an adaptable, decentralized, and scalable solution. Our token economy framework incentivizes nodes that demonstrate consistent compliance and penalize malicious actions using fungible ERC-20 tokens. Hierarchical static role-based structure consisting of regular members, primary and secondary group is the foundational layer of role management. Dynamic state management through a finite state machine classifies peers as benign, suspicious, or malicious mapping their behavior to the STRIDE threat model. We have used standard blockchain tool stack consisting of OpenZeppelin (contract library), Mocha (testing), and Web3.js (deployment). Our framework is tested with eight test cases, such as privilege escalation and denial-of-service attacks, and built using three types of Ethereum smart contracts. Our focus is on collecting four metrics gas cost, latency, execution time, simultaneous requests that provides a comprehensive view of realistic network activity. This study goes beyond conceptual nature of state-of-art architecture to showcase the realistic mapping between resources, peer roles and standard threats in a P2P network. The experimental results shows low gas costs (upto 1.4 million gas) and fast execution times (80–550 ms), confirming the design efficiency. The framework handles up to five concurrent requests with minimal performance impact, demonstrating strong scalability across roles and threat conditions. This framework enables scalable, behavior-driven governance in P2P networks, enhancing IoT and Web3 security.

Ankit Garg, Neha Verma, Ritesh Kumar Singhal, Harsh Sharma · 6 authors

The effectiveness of distributed ledger technology (DLTs), in particular blockchain, in improving the security and administration of massive distributed systems made up of independent agents is examined in this research. It looks at how these technologies are making the leap from lab settings to practical robotics uses. Recently, solutions that are resilient to sporadic connectivity and provide scalable frameworks for managed or permissioned networks have been presented, despite persistent concerns over scalability and practical implementation. While highlighting the numerous applications in which DLTs facilitate multi-robot systems, the paper also points out that the majority of research on open, permissionless blockchains is only applicable to a small number of robotics applications. As an alternative, the emphasis is now on permissioned blockchains and creative DLT architectures, which are propelling adoption in more conventional and industrial sectors.

Boudreau, Keven

This paper introduces a novel gradient-based framework for maintaining protocol invariants in decentralized finance (DeFi) systems, representing a fundamental departure from traditional reactive monitoring approaches. Rather than detecting violations after they occur and adjusting system perceptions, this framework implements a proactive closed-loop control system that influences external market dynamics through calibrated protocol actions. The core innovation lies in tracking confidence gradients—including velocity, acceleration, and momentum—to predict potential invariant violations before they materialize. The system employs a nine-parameter calibration vector that dynamically adjusts based on confidence trends, enabling the protocol to respond appropriately to increasing (healthy), decreasing (crisis), or stable market conditions. During crisis scenarios, aggressive parameter adjustments trigger protocol actions such as enhanced lender incentives and borrower penalties, directly influencing market participant behavior to maintain critical constraints like maximum lending rates. The framework establishes mathematical foundations for confidence gradient metrics, parameter constraint spaces, and crisis level assessment. It demonstrates how calibrated algorithmic behavior generates measurable influence on external actors, effectively changing market reality rather than merely observing it. Theoretical analysis proves bounded confidence oscillations and probabilistic invariant maintenance guarantees under the proposed calibration schemes. Practical implementation considerations include smart contract architecture, gas optimization strategies through batched updates and fixed-point arithmetic, and parameter discretization for on-chain deployment. A numerical crisis response example illustrates the system's ability to prevent rate violations through coordinated supply increases and demand reductions. The paper positions this approach as foundational for the Kera Protocol ecosystem, with applications extending beyond DeFi lending to automated market makers, stablecoin protocols, governance systems, and cross-chain bridges. This paradigm shift from observation to calibrated influence represents a significant advancement in blockchain protocol stability mechanisms.

Liang Chen, Haozhe Zhao, Yinzhen Huang, Yang Luo · 11 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Yuanjie Liu, Wenpeng Xing, Ye Zhou, Gao-Wei Chang · 6 authors

The absence of a fully decentralized, verifiable, and privacy-preserving communication protocol for autonomous agents remains a core challenge in decentralized computing. Existing systems often rely on centralized intermediaries, which reintroduce trust bottlenecks, or lack decentralized identity-resolution mechanisms, limiting persistence and cross-network interoperability. We propose the Decentralized Interstellar Agent Protocol (DIAP), a novel framework for agent identity and communication that enables persistent, verifiable, and trustless interoperability in fully decentralized environments. DIAP binds an agent's identity to an immutable IPFS or IPNS content identifier and uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to dynamically and statelessly prove ownership, removing the need for record updates. We present a Rust SDK that integrates Noir (for zero-knowledge proofs), DID-Key, IPFS, and a hybrid peer-to-peer stack combining Libp2p GossipSub for discovery and Iroh for high-performance, QUIC based data exchange. DIAP introduces a zero-dependency ZKP deployment model through a universal proof manager and compile-time build script that embeds a precompiled Noir circuit, eliminating the need for external ZKP toolchains. This enables instant, verifiable, and privacy-preserving identity proofs. This work establishes a practical, high-performance foundation for next-generation autonomous agent ecosystems and agent-to-agent (A to A) economies.