Blockchain Papers

Chunbo Wang, Xu Liu, Hang Li, Xiaoqiang Di · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Chanik Park, Moonhyeon Chung, Donghyeon Ryu

Zero-knowledge proof is emerging to enable privacy. Among existing techniques, zk-SNARK (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) [1] supports the shortest verification time and the smallest proof size. However, using zk-SNARK requires the execution of trusted setup ceremony in advance. The trusted setup ceremony generates common reference string (CRS) which is shared with prover and verifier. Currently, an external trusted third party is assumed for trusted setup ceremony, which causes significant security vulnerability in zk-SNARK. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based protocol of trusted setup ceremony without trusted third party. Three different types of protocols are classified in terms of where to store CRS and how to validate CRS through pairing check. We analyze the protocol complexity of CRS pairing check computations and on-chain storage space.

R Harsha, E Indra, Thirugnana Sambandham, K. Panimozhi

The growth of blockchain over the last ten years has been astounding: from bitcoin to over 2,000 altcoins, and from decentralized electronic payments to programmable transactions, by complicated tokens and smart contracts controlled by autonomous entities. The technological aspects of blockchain are developing at the same time as the new generation of blockchain applications are also developing. This paper considers one such sphere, to develop a decentralized solution for accessing Educational Resources which will alleviate the issues due to the single point of failure of centralized systems, democratize access to educational content and provide a facile experience for users who are not exposed to web3 technologies. This platform was developed by implementing Smart Contracts using Solidity and deploying them on the Ethereum blockchain to store educational resource metadata and files on the Inter Planetary File System (IPFS). Interfacing of blockchain and the frontend is done using the web3.js. The platform is more tenacious and fault-tolerant than systems using a centralized architecture and provides a better user experience by incorporating a search mechanism for the files uploaded to the platform. This paper proposes a decentralized platform that allows users to upload educational resources that can be accessed by others and implemented a file meta-data-based search feature to remove the need for users to remember the IPFS hash of a file.

Bandi Doss, P. Balamuralikrishna, C. Nagaraju, Dayadi Lakshmaiah · 5 authors

In the cryptocurrency era, blockchain is single in regards to the rapid rise of information technologies with the intention of assisting to provide safety to information. Information interference and validation problems generally take place in central servers while allocating and stowing the information. Blockchain provides the place for large information and cloud deposit in increasing the safety by eluding destructive users. In this document, we have discussed the meticulous explanation of blockchain and its requirements, characteristics and uses. The study of blockchain is prepared for dissimilar domains such as large information, cloud, Internet of belongings and movable blur where the different V&s;s are compared with large information in addition to blockchain. The survey in aspects of information safety, information storage, and information distribution and information verification through blockchain automation be complete plus the summons be discuss to conquer difficulty that conducts large information. The full relative investigation shows blockchain knowledge conquers difficulties in large information storage and information safety in the cloud.

Deepika Kumari, Pankaj Kumar, Sunil Prajapat

No abstract is available for this record.

Khadija Manzoor, Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid

The Metaverse is rapidly evolving, bringing us closer to its imminent reality. However, the widespread adoption of this new automated technology poses significant research challenges in terms of authenticity, integrity, interoperability, and efficiency. These challenges originate from the core technologies underlying the Metaverse and are exacerbated by its complex nature. As a solution to these challenges, this paper presents a novel framework based on Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The framework employs the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, a blockchain-based technology, for data transaction, validation, and resource management. PoS efficiently consume energy and provide a streamlined validation approach instead of resource-intensive mining. This ability makes PoS an ideal candidate for Metaverse applications. By combining NFTs for user authentication and PoS for data integrity, enhanced transaction throughput, and improved scalability, the proposed blockchain mechanism demonstrates noteworthy advantages. Through security analysis, experimental and simulation results, it is established that the NFT-based approach coupled with the PoS algorithm is secure and efficient for Metaverse applications.

Fatemeh Stodt, Christoph Reich, Axel Sikora, Dominik Welte

As industrial networks continue to expand and connect more devices and users, they face growing security challenges such as unauthorized access and data breaches. This paper delves into the crucial role of security and trust in industrial networks and how trust management systems (TMS) can mitigate malicious access to these networks.The TMS presented in this paper leverages distributed ledger technology (blockchain) to evaluate the trustworthiness of blockchain nodes, including devices and users, and make access decisions accordingly. While this approach is applicable to blockchain, it can also be extended to other areas. This approach can help prevent malicious actors from penetrating industrial networks and causing harm. The paper also presents the results of a simulation to demonstrate the behavior of the TMS and provide insights into its effectiveness.

Garima Verma, Soumen Kanrar

No abstract is available for this record.

Jesús García-Rodríguez, Stephan Krenn, Jorge Bernal Bernabé, Antonio Skármeta

PREPRINT: The increasing user awareness and regulatory framework (e.g., GDPR) have contributed to considering data minimization and privacy-by-design as central guiding principles for new systems.<br> Among others, this has led to a paradigm shift towards Self-Sovereign Identity solutions to put the user in full control over their data.<br> Despite the promising landscape, privacy-preserving Attribute-Based Credentials (p-ABC) have not been widely adopted, mainly due to the lack of secure, flexible and efficient implementations that cover the basic and advanced needs in p-ABC systems. In this work, we tackle this gap by formalizing an improved zero-knowledge showing protocol of a distributed p-ABC scheme based on Pointcheval-Sanders Multi-Signatures to allow for modular extensions through commit-and-prove techniques. We use it to implement a flexible p-ABC system with decentralized issuance that, apart from the basic notions of p-ABCs, covers range proofs, pseudonyms, inspection and revocation. Lastly, we thoroughly evaluate the performance of the system under different testbed conditions, showing a significant efficiency improvement over previous implementations.

Xiao Chen, Guoliang Xue, Ruozhou Yu, Haiqin Wu · 5 authors

The maturing blockchain technology has gradually promoted decentralized data storage from cryptocurrencies to other applications, such as trust management, resulting in new challenges based on specific scenarios. Taking the mobile trust blockchain within a vehicular network as an example, many users require the system to process massive traffic information for accurate trust assessment, preserve data reliably, and respond quickly. While existing vehicular blockchain systems ensure immutability, transparency, and traceability, they are limited in terms of scalability, performance, and security. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel decentralized vehicle trust management solution and a well-matched blockchain framework that provides both security and performance. The paper primarily addresses two issues: i) To provide accurate trust evaluation, the trust model adopts a decentralized and peer-review-based trust computation method secured by trusted execution environments (TEEs). ii) To ensure reliable trust management, a multi-shard blockchain framework is developed with a novel hierarchical Byzantine consensus protocol, improving efficiency and security while providing high scalability and performance. The proposed scheme combines the decentralized trust model with a multi-shard blockchain, preserving trust information through a hierarchical consensus protocol. Finally, real-world experiments are conducted by developing a testbed deployed on both local and cloud servers for performance measurements.

Jalpa Khamar, Hiren Patel

Blockchain is a decentralized transaction and data management technology first developed for the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology is gaining popularity due to its core attributes which provides security, anonymity and data integrity without any involvement of third party. Consensus mechanism is a procedure by which all peers in the blockchain network agrees to a common agreement on the current state of the distributed ledger. It plays vital role in increasing efficiency of any blockchain environment. Though we have many consensus mechanisms working currently in different areas but they still lack in parameters like status of validators, latency, node failure etc. In Our proposed algorithm Proof of credibility, we have tried to incorporate all above factors in it. We have also implemented two or more factors of proposed algorithm and have evaluated and compared with existing consensus algorithm. In future research we aim to implement RPoC in any blockchain network and then we will evaluate it in terms of different evaluation parameters such as performance, security, scalability.

Gulshan Kumar, Rahul Saha, Mauro Conti, Tannishtha Devgun · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Yuzhou Fang, Daoyuan Wu, Yi Xiao, Shuai Wang · 8 authors

A smart contract is a piece of application-layer code running on blockchain ledgers and it provides programmatic logic via transaction-based execution of pre-defined functions. Smart contract functions are by default invokable by any party. To safeguard them, the mainstream smart contract language, i.e., Solidity of the popular Ethereum blockchain, proposed a unique language-level keyword called “modifier,” which allows developers to define custom function access control policies beyond the traditional “protected” and “private” modifiers in classic programming languages.

Qingsu He, Yuping Liu, Lihua Jiang, Zhiqiang Zhang · 6 authors

The new power system is an energy interconnection network based on renewable energy generation. Information interconnection, data security, and reliability are the basis for the digital transformation of the power grid. Data sharing, lifecycle management, security, and user information privacy are issues that need to be addressed urgently. This paper analyzes the characteristics of the multi-combination of power grid data across services and introduces smart contract, cross-chain, and security encryption-related technologies. Based on the effective combination of smart contract and CP-ABE, data sharing schemes, including data sharing mechanism and data access control model are designed. Given this scheme, the blockchain system’s overall architecture is proposed, including the main chain, side chain, data sharing, and cross-chain information interaction. Finally, the underlying blockchain service platform is built using the Hyperledger open-source framework. We deploy the platform to verify the feasibility of the scheme according to the requirements of the data center, trust center, and blockchain-distributed nodes.

Kun Wang, Qianhong Wu, Tianxu Han, Yujue Wang · 6 authors

Decentralized storage is an essential infrastructure for the stable operation of Web 3.0. The difficulty of decentralized storage is solving the problem of continuous data storage. Many solutions have been proposed to address this issue, such as Filecoin, Storj, and Sia. However, these solutions have many problems, such as sacrificing more storage space, using centralized website interfaces, and contributing useless space in exchange for tokens. This paper proposes a smart contract-based Data Continuous Storage Scheme (DCSS) to address these problems. Specifically, this paper proposes an improved Proof-of-Storage time (iPoSt) algorithm to protect data privacy. In order to reduce the token and resource consumption associated, this paper uses general state channel to scale the chain. The formal and informal security analysis of the proposed scheme is conducted, and the performance analysis is performed through experiments, which show that the proposed DCSS scheme can achieve continuous data storage with low resource consumption in a decentralized environment.

Xiangman Li, Xiaodong Wu, Jianbing Ni

Secure data deletion enables data owners to have full control over the erasure of their data stored on local or cloud data centers, and it is essential for preventing data leakage, especially in cloud storage. However, traditional data deletion methods based on unlinking, overwriting, and cryptographic key management are either ineffective in cloud storage or rely on impractical assumptions. In this paper, we introduce SevDel, a secure and verifiable data deletion scheme that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to achieve verification of the encryption of outsourced data without retrieving the ciphertexts. Meanwhile, the deletion of encryption keys is guaranteed based on Intel SGX. SevDel implements secure interfaces for performing data encryption and decryption in secure cloud storage. It also utilizes smart contracts to enforce the operations of the cloud service provider, ensuring compliance with service level agreements with data owners and imposing penalties on the service provider for disclosing cloud data on its servers. Evaluation using real-world workloads demonstrates that SevDel efficiently achieves data deletion verification and maintains high bandwidth savings.

Dylan Warman, David Tien, Muhammad Ashad Kabir

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the significant literature in the area of user data security with a specific focus on how this integrates with the area of blockchain technologies and zero-knowledge proofs within the context of educational data storage. The overall objective of this review is to provide an in-sight into what has already been made available, with regards to implementation, and how these form an overall direction for the field. The purpose of which is to assist in the efforts to provide a solution that unifies the existing solutions and frameworks and provides real world benefits by targeting the highlighted research gaps.

Rui Song, Bin Xiao, Yubo Song, Songtao Guo · 5 authors

Data immutability, transparency and decentralization of blockchain make it widely used in various fields, such as Internet of things, finance, energy and healthcare. With the advent of the Big Data era, various companies and organizations urgently need data from other parties for data analysis and mining to provide better services. Therefore, data sharing and data exchange have become an enormous industry. Traditional centralized data platforms face many problems, such as privacy leakage, high transaction costs and lack of interoperability. Introducing blockchain into this field can address these problems, while providing decentralized data storage and exchange, access control, identity authentication and copyright protection. Although many impressive blockchain-based schemes for data sharing or data exchange scenarios have been presented in recent years, there is still a lack of review and summary of work in this area. In this paper, we conduct a detailed survey of blockchain-based data sharing and data exchange platforms, discussing the latest technical architectures and research results in this field. In particular, we first survey the current blockchain-based data sharing solutions and provide a detailed analysis of system architecture, access control, interoperability, and security. We then review blockchain-based data exchange systems and data marketplaces, discussing trading process, monetization, copyright protection and other related topics.

Alvaro Perez‐Diaz, Héctor Kaschel

Communication and information technologies have accelerated the implementation of electronic medical records, but at the same time, have put patient privacy, information security and health data at risk. An alternative to address the problem of security and privacy of medical data is the use of blockchain. Scalability has become one of the biggest challenges facing the development of blockchain-based electronic health records (EHRs). The purpose of this article is to implement and test a scalable blockchain-based EHR management system. For this reason, we present a scalable blockchain-based EHR management architecture. In this paper, we propose an EHR management model based on entities and user roles, adapt, and then implement with Hyperledger Fabric in a two-channel configuration. We develop a prototype in Fabric using a one-and two-channel configuration. We then designed and conducted an experiment to verify the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of scalability improvement. This scalable blockchain-based EHR management solution, such as the Hyperledger Fabric platform, offers a viable alternative to address scalability issues, as well as to protect patient’s privacy and the security of their medical data.

Vivek P Marakumbi, N Soumya, Preeti Goure, Priya Jadekar · 5 authors

Blockchain is an emerging technology that finds applications across various industries by providing secure transaction records that cannot be tampered with. It operates as a decentralized and open ledger, offering additional benefits such as traceability and immutability, which greatly contribute to its desirability. Two important blockchain applications include Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) Marketplaces and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). NFTs are unique digital assets like artwork or music that can be bought and sold using cryptocurrency, ensuring both security and efficiency. On the other hand, DAOs are transparent organizations that make decentralized decisions. In our work, we have developed an integrated NFT marketplace and DAO that leverages NFT ownership to determine the weights of choices. The implementation is based on Ethereum ERC-721 tokens. However, the Proof of Stake (POS) consensus algorithm used in Ethereum 2.0 lacks fairness. To tackle this issue, we introduce the Delegated Reputation-based Proof of Elapsed Time consensus algorithm (DRPoET). Evaluations conducted on an Ethereum testbed demonstrate that our integrated DAO benefits from fair weights and improved transaction latency and fairness compared to the POS algorithm.

Boming Xia, Dawen Zhang, Yue Liu, Qinghua Lu · 6 authors

The robustness of critical infrastructure systems is contingent upon the integrity and transparency of their software supply chains. A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is pivotal in this regard, offering an exhaustive inventory of components and dependencies crucial to software development. However, prevalent challenges in SBOM sharing, such as data tampering risks and vendors' reluctance to fully disclose sensitive information, significantly hinder its effective implementation. These challenges pose a notable threat to the security of critical infrastructure and systems where transparency and trust are paramount, underscoring the need for a more secure and flexible mechanism for SBOM sharing. To bridge the gap, this study introduces a blockchain-empowered architecture for SBOM sharing, leveraging verifiable credentials to allow for selective disclosure. This strategy not only heightens security but also offers flexibility. Furthermore, this paper broadens the remit of SBOM to encompass AI systems, thereby coining the term AI Bill of Materials (AIBOM). The advent of AI and its application in critical infrastructure necessitates a nuanced understanding of AI software components, including their origins and interdependencies. The evaluation of our solution indicates the feasibility and flexibility of the proposed SBOM sharing mechanism, positing a solution for safeguarding (AI) software supply chains, which is essential for the resilience and reliability of modern critical infrastructure systems.

Zhuo Xu, Xinyi Luo, Kaiping Xue, David S. L. Wei · 5 authors

The immutability of blockchains is an important security feature, but applications and studies have shown that it poses some problems. For instance, harmful information and vulnerable programs can be permanently stored on public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, causing continuous damage. Therefore, researchers proposed the redactable blockchain to delete or modify those harmful data. Existing schemes usually adopt the Chameleon hash function (CHF) to keep the block hash unchanged so that other blocks remain unaffected. However, these schemes suffer from two security problems: (i) (unknown-version) users cannot determine whether a received block is the up-to-date version because different versions have the same hash; and (ii) (lazy-redaction) miners have no motivations to update historical blocks, causing continuous spreading of data which should have been discarded. To solve the problems, we propose SEREDACT, a secure and efficient redactable blockchain protocol with verifiable modification. Specifically, we design a Merkle tree-based verification mechanism with efficient dynamic updating that supports quick version checks and forcible modification updates, and further integrate it with restricted redaction policies to guarantee security. Our security and performance analyses show that SEREDACT has adequate security as a redactable blockchain protocol and retains close efficiency compared with the immutable blockchain.

Yuhao Xue, Dong Du, Lei Zhang, Yubin Xia

Many cloud providers, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Alibaba Cloud, offer support for blockchain cloud services that rely on a runtime environment, such as the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), to execute smart contracts and ensure consistency between participants. However, existing runtime systems suffer from two main limitations. Firstly, traditional runtime systems like EVM cannot guarantee privacy protection as all the data uploaded to the blockchain is visible to all participants. This restricts the use of blockchain in limited scenarios. Secondly, each computation on the runtime system must be synchronized to all nodes in the network, resulting in a significant increase in computational overhead, which can be challenging to implement for more complex applications. One approach to address these limitations is to utilize Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) for blockchain runtime, which can provide privacy protection and mitigate redundant synchronization operations. However, using TEE for blockchain may significantly increase cloud costs. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes PL-EVM, a new runtime environment for smart contracts that utilizes jointcloud. PL-EVM achieves high-security guarantees by using TEE to protect privacy-sensitive data and incorporates dynamic migration and splitting mechanisms to achieve high efficiency and low costs. Our evaluation results show that PL-EVM can improve performance and reduce costs by 4% to 32.22%.

Saira Anwar

The integration of cloud computing and big data has revolutionized data storage, processing, and analytics. However, this convergence also presents significant challenges regarding data privacy, security breaches, and compliance with regulatory standards. This paper examines privacy and security concerns in cloud-integrated big data systems through a case study approach, identifying vulnerabilities, mitigation strategies, and best practices. By analyzing real-world implementations across healthcare, finance, and government sectors, this study provides actionable insights for designing more secure cloud-based big data infrastructures. Findings suggest that a combination of cryptographic techniques, decentralized architectures, and adaptive security models significantly enhances system resilience.