Blockchain Papers

Prateek Sharma

No abstract is available for this record.

Ezekiel Ologunde

Modern vehicles are distributed embedded computing platforms whose expanding network connectivity-CAN bus, Bluetooth, cellular telematics, and over-the-air (OTA) update channels-exposes them to the same class of adversarial attacks studied in cloud and enterprise environments. Machine learning (ML)-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) have emerged as the primary defensive response, yet these models are themselves vulnerable to adversarial perturbation: a well-crafted malicious CAN frame can evade an ML-based IDS in the same way that an adversarial image patch fools a computer-vision classifier. This paper traces the threat landscape from foundational automotive attack-surface studies through contemporary adversarial ML research, examines how resource-constrained embedded platforms limit defensive options, and proposes a defense architecture that combines behavioral anomaly detection with zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) attestation for invehicle control units. We argue that ZKP-based component attestation-previously dismissed as computationally impractical for embedded systems-is now feasible given recent advances in succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs), and that combining it with adversarially trained ML-IDS models yields defensein-depth that addresses both network-layer and hardware-layer attack vectors.

Mykola Khranovskyi, Andriy Kernytskyy

The growing use of biometric authentication systems has raised serious concerns about the privacy and security of sensitive user data. Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) provide a cryptographic solution that allows authentication without revealing the actual biometric templates. However, applying them in practice is often difficult due to the computational complexity of the circuits involved. It is commonly assumed that only simple metrics, such as Hamming distance, are suitable for these limited environments, while arithmetic metrics like Euclidean distance are considered too "heavy" or slow. This research challenges that assumption by comparing the performance of both metrics within a Groth16 Zero-Knowledge framework. For our methodology, we used a ResNet18 neural network to generate fixed-length biometric data (embeddings). To make this data compatible with the cryptographic system, we used a quantization strategy for the Euclidean metric and a binarization strategy for the Hamming metric. The experiments, conducted using the Circom compiler and snarkjs library, show very little difference in performance between the two approaches. The Euclidean circuit required 577 constraints, which is only 9% more than the 529 constraints of the Hamming circuit. Furthermore, both methods had an average proof generation time of approximately 0.5 seconds on standard hardware. These findings empirically prove that high-accuracy Euclidean comparisons can be used efficiently in Zero-Knowledge protocols. This allows developers to focus on biometric precision without sacrificing cryptographic performance.

Jin Zhou, Hongzhi Lu, Jianxin Xiong

The integration of continuous Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) into Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) networks introduces severe performance bottlenecks and physical constraints of the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU). Specifically, naively embedding massive Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) for per-packet authentication inevitably triggers catastrophic fragmentation and disrupts stateless forwarding. To address these fundamental limitations, this paper proposes a novel session-bound zero-knowledge authorization framework tailored for SRv6 programmable data planes. Our architecture explicitly decouples heavyweight cryptographic validations from the active forwarding path. Massive ZKP payloads are processed asynchronously via payload transmission in the control plane, while the data plane enforces line-rate access control using lightweight 32-byte capability tokens encapsulated in customized SRv6 extension headers. Furthermore, to mathematically balance robust security with forwarding efficiency, we formulate the dynamic verification process as a risk-aware Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). Using in-band network telemetry, we derive an Adaptive Threshold Verification (ATV) algorithm that yields a closed-form <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(1)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> complexity optimal scheduling policy. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that the decoupled mechanism seamlessly resolves the MTU bottleneck, maintaining stable baseline throughput under massive concurrent sessions. Concurrently, the ATV algorithm intelligently adapts to real-time threat intensities, conserving control-plane resources during safe periods while instantaneously triggering precise re-verifications against covert and volumetric cyberattacks.

Y.Y.N. Li

We introduce behavior-bound signatures (BBS), a signature framework in which each signature attests not only to signer authenticity but also to the satisfaction of a prescribed behavioral policy. Unlike traditional digital signatures—whose acceptance is determined by identity validity alone—BBS enforces compliance at the level of the verification predicate: a signature is accepted if and only if a zero-knowledge proof establishes that a residual function value δ(x)=∣ϕ(x)−τ∣\delta(x)=|\phi(x)-\tau|δ(x)=∣ϕ(x)−τ∣ lies below a threshold ε\varepsilonε. Thus, compliance safety is reduced to zero-knowledge soundness rather than to external monitoring or honest-majority assumptions. We formalize policy-soundness under chosen-message attacks (PS-CMA), extending EUF-CMA by requiring that no adversary can produce a valid signature for any message whose induced action violates the policy predicate. We prove that BBS achieves PS-CMA security under standard assumptions: binding of Pedersen commitments, collision resistance of Poseidon, and soundness of the underlying zero-knowledge proof system (e.g., Bulletproofs or PLONK). Our construction instantiates the policy predicate via a private structure function ϕ(x)\phi(x)ϕ(x) and enforces δ(x)<ε\delta(x)<\varepsilonδ(x)<ε through a zero-knowledge range constraint, while revealing no information about the private parameters. Sequential signatures compose into a hash-linked trajectory, enabling verifiable ordering and completeness of action sequences. We additionally define the Function Approximation Inversion Problem (FAIP) as a conjectured hardness property of the structure function, and emphasize that the security of BBS does not rely on this conjecture.

Carl Kwan, Quang Dao, Justin Thaler

No abstract is available for this record.

Björn Johansson, Ferhat Karakoc, Karl Norrman

No abstract is available for this record.

Dhrumil Panchal, Hrushik Mehta, Pragati Shetty, Pratik Kanani · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Thomas den Hollander, M G Mula, Daniel Slamanig, Sebastian Spindler

No abstract is available for this record.

Yuki Sawai, Kyoichi Asano, Yohei Watanabe, Mitsugu Iwamoto

Range arguments are a type of zero-knowledge proofs that aim to prove that a prover's committed value falls within a specified range for a verifier. Previously, most range arguments were constructed based on the discrete logarithm (DLOG) assumption, and hence, exponentiation operation is required for proof generation and verification. In addition, it is generally known that splitting a zero-knowledge proof protocol into a preprocessing phase and an online phase makes computation after fixing the input efficient. Still, such protocol has yet to be known for range arguments. This paper proposes an efficient range arguments protocol with a preprocessing phase. Our proposal takes a new approach by using arithmetic circuits to express the constraints that the prover must prove. The prover (resp. verifier) can generate (resp. verify) a part of proof based on multiplication and addition operations instead of exponentiation operations. Our range argument is a generic construction that does not rely on any particular mathematical assumptions, which enables us to construct a post-quantum range argument. The implementation evaluation shows that the total computation time for the prover and verifier in the online phase is efficient compared to Bulletproofs, one of the state-of-the-art range proofs. Especially, the prover computation is efficient.

Rongjun Chen, Yun Sun, Feng Xue, Yongzhi Ma · 8 authors

Addressing the challenges of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) traceability systems, including heavy data storage burdens, poor privacy protection, and susceptibility to tampering, this study establishes a highly secure and trustworthy traceability supervision system for the entire Chinese medicine supply chain, which enhances product quality and safety assurance. Centred on the Hyperledger Fabric consortium blockchain as its core architecture, a multi-chain integration framework comprising one regulatory main chain plus five organisational sub-chains is proposed to achieve permission control, data isolation, and privacy. A multi-mode encrypted data storage mechanism is designed, integrating China’s national cryptographic algorithms SM4 and SM3 with CP-ABE attribute-based encryption to enable tiered management of private and non-private data. Zero-knowledge proof technology safeguards identity privacy during cross-chain data transmission, while QR codes and environmental data collection mechanisms enhance data entry efficiency and authenticity. The system achieves end-to-end traceability from cultivation and processing through transportation, warehousing, and sales. Comparative performance analysis shows that the proposed framework effectively alleviates data storage pressure, ensures data validity, enhances data security, and improves collaborative efficiency among organizations across the TCM supply chain. The proposed multi-chain integrated Chinese medicine traceability and supervision system enables efficient collaboration and trustworthy traceability across the entire Chinese medicine industry chain, while safeguarding data security and privacy, and has significant application and promotion value. Future integration with artificial intelligence and big data technologies could further enhance the system’s intelligent analysis and decision-support capabilities.

Behrang Forghani, David Robinson

We present an elementary proof that the asymptotic entropy of a random walk on a countable abelian group is zero when the entropy of the first step of the random walk is finite. Unlike the traditional proof, our approach does not rely on the boundary theory of random walks. To our best knowledge, our direct proof is new even for the group of integers.

Sophia Shim, Caleb Lee

We introduce the ω-Protocol, a zero-knowledge proof framework for the verification of elliptic curve–based homomorphic digital signatures. The protocol is constructed on top of the Elliptic Curve Homomorphic Digital Signature Algorithm (EHDSA) and enables zero-knowledge verification of signature validity while preserving signer privacy. The core contribution of the ω-Protocol is a signature-integrated zero-knowledge construction that combines homomorphic properties of EHDSA with algebraic commitment mechanisms over elliptic curve groups. We formalize the protocol model and define security notions capturing zero-knowledge, soundness, and unlinkability of signature verification. Under standard cryptographic assumptions over elliptic curve groups, we prove that the ω-Protocol achieves zero-knowledge and unforgeability-preserving verification without revealing signature components or ephemeral key material. We further analyze the computational complexity of the protocol and show that it incurs only minimal overhead compared to standard EHDSA verification. Our results establish a principled cryptographic framework for zero-knowledge verification of homomorphic digital signatures and provide a foundation applicable to privacy-preserving authentication and verification protocols.

Vinay Kumar Kasula, Santosh Reddy Addula, Supraja Ayyamgari, Chaitanya Tumma

No abstract is available for this record.

Raniyah Wazirali, Fatma Foad Ashrif, Rami Ahmad

The rapid adoption of smart-home and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices has intensified the need for privacy-preserving biometric authentication that is both secure and computationally efficient. This paper presents Hybrid-HE LLE, a practical framework that combines Locally Linear Embedding (LLE) with selective homomorphic encryption to protect face-recognition features in resource-constrained IoT environments. Unlike cloud-centric outsourcing, the proposed system performs all heavy linear-algebra operations within a semi-trusted Insider Hub, ensuring data sovereignty, low latency, and verifiable computation without revealing raw facial features. A sparse orthogonal or Toeplitz transform first obfuscates feature vectors, after which sensitive coefficients are selectively encrypted using CKKS-based polynomial encoding. Homomorphic hashing and optional zero-knowledge proofs guarantee the integrity and auditability of outsourced results. Experiments on the ORL and LFW datasets demonstrate over 94 % Rank-1 accuracy, while reducing client computation by 92 %, uplink bandwidth by 80 %, and energy usage by 55 %, with authentication latency below 120 ms on a Raspberry Pi 4-class edge device. The framework provides formal protection against IND-CPA, EUF-CMA, and IND-CCA adversaries and maintains compliance with GDPR/HIPAA requirements. Hybrid-HE LLE thus offers a scalable, secure, and real-time solution for privacy-preserving biometric access in modern IoT communication systems.

Sourav Kayal, Amit Kumar Rana, Sanjib Kundu

No abstract is available for this record.

Michael A. Forbes, Andrei Staicu

A set of multivariate polynomials is algebraically independent if they exhibit no non-trivial algebraic relations, and this notion is fundamental in algebra. When these polynomials are given as algebraic circuits, deciding algebraic independence has several applications in algebraic complexity theory. Over fields of zero (or exponentially large) characteristic, this problem is known to have an efficient randomized algorithm. Over finite fields of small characteristic, a sequence of works has culminated in showing that algebraic independence admits Arthur-Merlin proofs, in particular giving the complexity bound of AM∩coAM ([Guo et al., 2019]). We improve the complexity of deciding algebraic independence over finite fields by showing that it admits zero-knowledge proofs, in particular giving the upper bound of NISZK ⊆ AM∩coAM, the class of problems admitting non-interactive statistical zero-knowledge proofs. This is achieved by arguing that algebraically independent polynomials yield maps whose output distribution has high-entropy, while algebraically dependent polynomials yield maps with low-entropy. We can then reduce to the question of approximating entropy, which is a known NISZK-complete problem. We also more generally show that transcendence degree, which quantifies the independence of a set of possibly dependent polynomials, can be computed in NISZK.

W. Ricky Singha, Sumit Hazowary, Sahil Silhotra, Moirangthem Tiken Singh

No abstract is available for this record.

Kyriaki Tsantikidou, Nicolas Sklavos, Iraklis Symeonidis

No abstract is available for this record.

Chris Brzuska, Michael Klooß, Ivy K. Y. Woo

No abstract is available for this record.

Jiandong Zhang, Han Jiang, Chenkai Zeng, Qi Feng · 8 authors

Secure multiparty computation (MPC) over Z2kis more efficient than computations over fields, and studying MPC protocols under malicious security has practical application value. Malicious security with a dishonest majority over rings remains challenging. The most popular approach is SPDZ2k, however, this is a specific protocol that does not support the transformation of any existing semi-honest MPC protocols into malicious security protocols. The zero knowledge proof (ZKP)-based compiler satisfies this requirement. Existing state-of-the-art protocols have logarithmic online communication overhead in terms of the circuit size |C|, and their direct application to rings is nontrivial as they were originally designed for finite fields. In this work, we investigate the communication overhead to develop malicious security protocols. We bridge the gap between malicious security with abort and semi-honest security, by constructing a “GMW-style” verification protocol to achieve malicious security in a dishonest majority setting. This approach incurs a constant online communication overhead by enhancing the machinery of zero-knowledge fully linear interactive oracle proof (zk-FLIOP). Additionally, we extend the zk-FLIOP to work over any ring by invoking reverse multiplication friendly embeddings (RMFEs). Our results show that the online communication complexity of the verification process depends on only the security parameter, the number of parties, and the ring size. Furthermore, for small-scale circuits over Z2, we designed a distributed lookup table argument where both the total communication complexity and the computational cost are independent of the circuit size but of the input wires.

Saha Reno, Koushik Roy, G M Abdullah Al Kafi, Khandakar Md Shafin

ABSTRACT The simultaneous achievement of scalability, security and decentralisation remains an open problem for distributed ledger technologies. This paper introduces InternxtChain, a novel framework leveraging Internxt's decentralised storage infrastructure with zero‐knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and sharded proof‐of‐storage (SPoS) consensus. Specifically, erasure‐coded sharding ensures data availability and fault tolerance by splitting files into encoded fragments distributed across nodes; BLS‐381 aggregated signatures enable efficient consensus by compressing multiple signatures into a single short proof; and zk‐SNARK audits provide tamper‐evident storage verification without revealing user data. InternxtChain addresses this challenge through three synergistic mechanisms: (i) erasure‐coded sharding with (6,3) Reed–Solomon encoding, (ii) zk‐SNARKs for storage auditability and (iii) an SPoS consensus based on BLS‐381 aggregated signatures. Experimental evaluation on a testbed of 2048 nodes across 16 geographic regions shows that InternxtChain processes 2800 transactions per second (TPS) with a median latency of 420 ms, while maintaining 99.9% data integrity under up to 30% Byzantine nodes. These results establish a practical path toward harmonising Web3 principles with real‐world throughput, cost and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) auditability requirements.

Rayhan Abbrar

No abstract is available for this record.

Michael Adjedj, Constantin Blokh, Geoffroy Couteau, Arik Galansky · 6 authors

We present a novel protocol for two-party ECDSA that achieves two rounds (a single back-and-forth communication) at the cost of a single oblivious linear function evaluation (OLE). In comparison, the previous work of Boneh, Haitner, Lindell, and Segev (EUROCRYPT 2025) achieves two rounds but requires expensive zero-knowledge proofs on top of the OLE. We demonstrate this by proving that in the generic group model, any adversary capable of generating forgeries for our protocol can be transformed into an adversary that finds preimages for the ECDSA message digest function (e.g., the SHA family). Interestingly, our analysis is closely related to, and has ramifications for, the ‘presignatures’ mode of operation—Canetti, Gennaro, Goldfeder, Makriyannis, and Peled (CCS 2020), Groth and Shoup (EUROCRYPT 2022).Motivated by applications to embedded cryptocurrency wallets, where a single server maintains distinct, shared public keys with separate clients (i.e., a star-shaped topology), and with the goal of minimizing communication, we instantiate our protocol using Paillier encryption and suitable zero-knowledge proofs. To reduce computational overhead, we thoroughly optimize all components of our protocol under sound cryptographic assumptions, specifically small-exponent variants of RSA-style assumptions.Finally, we implement our protocol and provide benchmarks. At the 128-bit security level, the signing phase requires approximately 50 ms of computation time on a standard linux machine, and 2 KB of bandwidth.