Blockchain Papers

Shlomi Dolev, Ehud Gudes, Daniel Shlomo

No abstract is available for this record.

Alireza Arbabi, Ardeshir Shojaeinasab, Homayoun Najjaran

ABSTRACT This manuscript presents an exhaustive review of blockchain‐based mixing services, aiming to fill the existing gap between academic innovations and real‐world implementations. Starting with an identification of the core functionalities and techniques employed by mixing services, the paper delves into detailed explanations of these operational mechanisms. It further outlines an evaluation framework tailored for a rigorous assessment, highlighting the key vulnerabilities and strengths of various solutions. In addition, the study identifies potential attack vectors that compromise these services. The paper explores the dual nature of mixing services: while they contribute to the preservation of privacy—a cornerstone of blockchain technologies—they can also facilitate illicit activities. By addressing key research questions, this study not only offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of mixing services but also sets the stage for future academic discourse in this evolving field.

Christian Delgado‐von‐Eitzen, Manuel J. Fernández Iglesias, Luis Anido, Fernando A. Mikic-Fonte

No abstract is available for this record.

David Krause

No abstract is available for this record.

Cihat Çetinkaya

Blockchain-based applications rely on a decentralized structure wherein the transactions are recorded on a public ledger that is maintained by every node in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The transactions and blocks are propagated using a multi-hop broadcast and verified by every node in the network. Application Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO), on the other hand, is a network protocol developed and maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to provide network related information to the P2P applications to increase their performance. In this study, a novel peer selection method based on the network information provided by ALTO protocol is proposed to decrease the block propagation delay of the Bitcoin P2P network. The simulations show that the proposed peer selection method can effectively decrease the block propagation time and fork rate compared to Bitcoin’s random peer selection and region-based peer selection methods.

Mallik Mahalingam, N. Suresh Kumar, R. Kanniga Devi, J. Logeshwaran

No abstract is available for this record.

V Kumaraguru, K.C. Nithyasree, N. Palanivel, V.T. Rithikka · 6 authors

The Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure is essential to contemporary regulatory and financial frameworks. Its goals are to stop illegal activity and confirm the identification of clients. Traditional KYC procedures, however, have issues with accessibility, privacy, and data security. In order to overcome these obstacles, this article presents an innovative integration of the Stroj decentralized storage network into blockchain-based KYC systems. Numerous built-in characteristics of blockchain technology can improve KYC procedures. Transparency and immutability are two of these qualities. Blockchain guarantees that KYC-related data cannot be changed or tampered with by using a distributed ledger. Furthermore, the KYC process may be audited and held more accountable because to blockchain's transparency. The problems that conventional KYC systems have can be uniquely solved by the decentralized storage network Stroj. Stroj's distributed data storage features minimize the possibility of data loss or manipulation by ensuring that KYC information is safely saved among several nodes. The suggested KYC solution makes it possible to securely and effectively share KYCrelated data by fusing blockchain technology with the Stroj decentralized storage network. Cryptographic methods and smart contracts are employed to guarantee that the data is only accessible to those who are permitted. This preserves sensitive information's security and privacy while enabling smooth cooperation between financial institutions, authorities, and clients.

Junyuan Liang, Peiyuan Yao, Wuhui Chen, Zicong Hong · 8 authors

Sharding is a promising solution to scale blockchain by separating the system into multiple shards to process transactions in parallel. However, due to state separation and shard isolation, it is still challenging to efficiently support smart contracts on a blockchain sharding system where smart contracts can interact with each other, involving states maintained by multiple shards. Specifically, existing sharding systems adopt a costly multi-step collaboration mechanism to execute smart contracts, resulting in long latency and low throughput. This article proposesSparrow, a blockchain sharding protocol achieving one-step execution for smart contracts. To break shard isolation, inspired by non-local hotspot data caching in traditional databases, we propose a new idea ofinter-shard caching, allowing a shard to prefetch and cache frequently accessed contract states of other shards. The miner can thus use the inter-shard cache to pre-execute a pending transaction, retrieve all its contract invocations, and commit it to multiple shards in one step. Particularly, we first propose a speculative dispersal cache synchronisation mechanism for efficient and secure cache synchronization across shards in Byzantine environments. Then, we propose a multi-branch exploration mechanism to solve the rollback problem during the optimistic one-step execution of contract invocations with dependencies. We also present a series of conflict resolution mechanisms to decrease the rollback caused by inherent transaction conflicts. We implement prototypes forSparrowand existing sharding systems, and the evaluation shows thatSparrowimproves the throughput by$2.44\times$and reduces the transaction latency by 30% compared with the existing sharding systems.

Nikhil Kumar Goyal, Seema Kaloria, Ashwarya Vijai, Deshraj Bairwa · 5 authors

Originally developed to power cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, Distributed Ledger Technology or DLT is rapidly expanding its influence across all kinds of industries. Its attributes-decentralization, transparency, security, and immutability-are being applied in finance, healthcare, supply chain management, governance, among other sectors, offering solutions that streamline the conduct of operations, cost cuts, and increase trust.

Wenrui Zhao

This work proposes a complete set of optimization techniques that improve the performance of distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems over cloud storage environments under big data conditions and experimentally verifies several strategies’ efficiency in regard to storage and consistency. First, at the storage level, a compression optimization method manages to drastically reduce the occupied space by DLT data. Experimental results show that an appropriate compression ratio can improve storage efficiency and effectively manage access delay to maintain the overall responsiveness of the system. In terms of data consistency strategies, it uses an eventual consistency strategy that can be used to guarantee data reliability and consistency to achieve a DXGI-level throughput improvement. This approach will be able to satisfy the real-time responsiveness and accuracy of data of DLT systems in big data scenarios while further optimizing resource utilization. Furthermore, the comparison of several experimental results can show how different optimization strategies influence some key metrics, such as storage efficiency, access delay, throughput, and consistency, under different parameter settings. These findings serve both a theoretical and practical foundation for DLT systems that can work more efficiently in cloud environments. The result of this research carries high values in showing lessons for the future cloud storage optimization of DLT, and also lays a foundation for its wider application and promotion in big data-driven scenarios.

P. Ramya, Yanamadini Harshini, Prof.T.Kiruba Rani, Turaga Naga Vidya Harini

No abstract is available for this record.

Md Jobair Hossain Faruk, Pratusha Raya, K. Siam, Jerry Cheng · 7 authors

The Internet has opened the floor to stakeholders by redefining the way of organizing, communicating, and collaborating that was initiated by the Web’s development. The advancement of the World Wide Web is an outright phenomenon and significant and we witnessed the evolution of the Web. As decentralized technologies continue to gain traction, Web3, or the decentralized internet, has emerged as a promising approach to enable a more secure, transparent, and privacy-preserved digital landscape. In this paper, we thoroughly conduct a systematic study to explore the challenges and opportunities encountered by blockchain developers in the context of decentralized applications (dApps) in Web3. We analyze a set of peer-reviewed research articles, whitepapers, and technical reports and present an in-depth understanding of the current state of Web3 development and its implications. Our finding indicates the opportunities that Web3 can facilitate, such as expanded use cases, enhanced security and privacy, decentralized infrastructure, and the potential for enabling inclusive development resources for blockchain developers. Additionally, we highlight various challenges that blockchain developers deal with including scalability, security, privacy, interoperability, and the need for standardized tools and frameworks along with various challenges in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). While there are significant challenges to overcome, the potential benefits of Web3 are substantial and could lead to a more inclusive, secure, and transparent digital ecosystem. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of continued research, collaboration, and innovation among stakeholders to address the identified challenges and capitalize on Web3’s opportunities.

Xiaohui Hu, Hang Feng, Pengcheng Xia, Gareth Tyson · 7 authors

The Web3 ecosystem is increasingly evolving to multi-chain, with decentralized applications (dApps) distributing across different blockchains, which drives the need for cross-chain bridges for blockchain interoperability. However, it further opens new attack surfaces, and media outlets have reported serious attacks related to cross-chain bridges. Nevertheless, few prior research studies have studied cross-chain bridges and their related transactions, especially from a security perspective. To fill the void, this paper presents the first comprehensive analysis of cross-chain transactions. We first make efforts to create by far the largest cross-chain transaction dataset based on semantic analysis of popular cross-chain bridges, covering 13 decentralized bridges and 7 representative blockchains, with over 80 million transactions in total. Based on this comprehensive dataset, we present the landscape of cross-chain transactions from angles including token usage, user profile and the purposes of transactions, etc. We further observe that cross-chain bridges can be abused for malicious/aggressive purposes, thus we design an automated detector and deploy it in the wild to flag misbehaviors from millions of cross-chain transactions. We have identified hundreds of abnormal transactions related to exploits and arbitrages, etc. Our research underscores the prevalence of cross-chain ecosystems, unveils their characteristics, and proposes an effective detector for pinpointing security threats.

Usha BA, S Aruna

Current file sharing solutions have problems such as data loss, unauthorized access and have only one point of failure are insecure and unreliable. To overcome these challenges, this work proposes a Decentralized File Sharing System that optimizes the transfer of data securely and with high reliability. Others include decentralised storage by use of IPFS and Pinata, and safety of the file through AES encryption. Password de- cryption is ensured only by the recipient keeping the password, while MetaMask authentication is connected to the Ethereum network. To protect information integrity every file has a Content Identifier coded as CID. The benchmark assessments reveal that the execution time increases with lower variance for smaller file sizes and varies slightly with larger files. As for decentralized approaches they are protected from focused attacks, more reliable in terms of failures, and have much better scalability than the centralized ones providing a much better solution for file sharing.

Burhan Ul Islam Khan, Asadullah Shah, Khang Wen Goh, Rusnardi Rahmat Putra · 6 authors

This paper presents a pioneering analytical framework for a secure payment system leveraging blockchain technology tailored to regions with suboptimal network connectivity. Contemporary payment mechanisms utilizing Ethereum are predominantly optimized for areas with robust network infrastructure, neglecting regions with less connectivity. To address this gap, the proposed model integrates novel security attributes and employs an analytical method to design a decentralized payment system. The framework facilitates communication between low-connectivity zones and Internet service providers through auxiliary nodes, creating a local blockchain network for residents, merchants, and auditors. A mathematical model quantifies operational costs, transaction processing, and synchronization of auxiliary nodes, ensuring a resilient and secure payment architecture. A unique aspect of the proposed approach is its robustness against auditor outages and network variability, coupled with an empirical analysis of incentive structures for auditors' block validation activities. Moreover, it delineates the minimum requirements for secure transaction completion. Empirical findings showed a significant improvement in system efficiency, including a 79% reduction in block time, a 28% increase in transaction throughput, a 30% decrease in energy consumption, a 68% shorter confirmation time, a 63% reduction in execution time, a 46% increase in block production rate, and 82% reduced network variability. This study's significant contribution lies in introducing a sustainable, cost-effective, and secure payment system for regions with inadequate network services.

Juseong Jeon, Sejin Park

DNS is an essential component for internet access, but the traditional centralized structure is not suitable for the rapidly growing Web3 ecosystem. Currently, Web3 services rely on Web2-based access paths, revealing limitations such as the Single Point of Failure (SPoF) issue and the compromise of decentralization principles. To address these issues, this paper proposes Setonix, a blockchain-based decentralized DNS. Experimental results of the implemented Setonix showed that it had only a marginal performance difference of up to approximately 5% compared to Google and Cloudflare DNS. Additionally, it demonstrated over 95% lower latency compared to Handshake DNS, proving its high efficiency. Setonix eliminates dependency on centralized access paths and brings the hierarchical address structure of existing domain names into the blockchain network, adhering to legacy systems to minimize user resistance. Additionally, it provides a blockchain-based architecture that supports cross-compatibility between traditional domain names and Web3 domain names through a simple interface. This design significantly enhances the scalability and accessibility of Web3, presenting a new standard for decentralized internet services. By doing so, it helps to establish a foundation that contributes to the growth and innovation of the Web3 ecosystem.

Yuqin Wang, Jiannong Cao, Shan Jiang, Shan Wang · 6 authors

Web3 has received considerable attention from industry and academia due to its groundbreaking revolution to decentralize the current centralized web. As a fundamental building block, blockchain provides web3 with the ability to rebuild trust in the trustless decentralized web. More and more blockchain-based web3 applications are taking place and becoming successful. Many web3 applications generate coupled data and transactions from multiple blockchains and demand efficient and atomic cross-blockchain transaction processing; however, existing approaches rarely consider transaction atomicity, and the processing efficiency is inferior. In this work, we formally model multi-blockchain systems and formulate the cross-blockchain transaction processing problem. Then, we propose a novel consensus mechanism, namely proof of credible contributions, to solve the efficiency and atomicity issues in cross-blockchain transaction processing. Inside, we define credible contributions as a measure of blockchain nodes’ credits and workload, so as to make nodes compete to handle as many cross-blockchain transactions as possible. Furthermore, we propose the flag-referenceconfirm protocol to guarantee transaction atomicity. Extensive experimental results indicate the efficiency and effectiveness of proof of credible contributions.

Ikramullah Khan, Sudip Phuyal, Ricardo Correia, João C. Ferreira

Abstract Healthcare providers face critical challenges in managing and exchanging patient health and medical records. Traditional health and medical data management systems, which often include paper-based records and work as closed, isolated silos, have demonstrated limitations in terms of data usability, interoperability, and patient privacy. This translates into limitations not only for providers but also for the patients, healthcare professionals, and other participants of the health-care value chain, hindering potential innovations and efficiency gains. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), such as the blockchain, is emerging as a possible solution to challenges in data management and beyond across several operational and administrative processes in healthcare services. This paper begins with an extensive overview of the literature with an emphasis on DLT implementations and applications in the healthcare industry. We examine how DLT has been used in real-world initiatives across the healthcare domain, highlight notable initiatives, and outline potential improvements. This may result from its adoption, namely in areas such as healthcare data sharing and interoperability, verifiability, transparency, or patient privacy and control. Overall, some of DLT’s native capabilities, such as data immutability, sharing and reconciliation across parties with varying levels of trust, and user self-sovereignty may translate into solutions for several caveats of the current healthcare technological infrastructures, and contribute to improving healthcare outcomes by fostering innovations, enabling broader sharing of healthcare data, enhancing transparency over the use of data, equipping patients with greater control over their data, and enabling new or improved services and processes in healthcare.

Keyang Liu, Tsuyoshi Takagi

Verifying a secret element’s (non-)membership status to a private set is challenging yet valuable for access control and verifiable computing applications. On the other hand, blockchain technology, known for its decentralized and tamper-proof nature, allows one to commit any data publicly. This work proposes a zero-knowledge Dual Membership Set Commit (zkDMSC) scheme to bridge the two. Our scheme allows the provers to commit their private set on blockchain and prove a secret element’s membership status to the set in a zero-knowledge manner.We introduce the Perfect Hash Function(PHF) into the field of membership query and use the Merkle tree to construct an efficient zero-knowledge dual membership proof. The prover can combine our dual membership proof with other property proofs of the queried element for different verification requirements. In addition, our proposal does not require a trusted setup and only uses post-quantum cryptographic assumptions. We also implement the proposal and show the performance of our implementation that matches or surpasses the state of the art.

Lewis Tseng, Lokesh Ambarapu, Moayad Aloqaily

Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) is used for achieving robust routing and overlay for most Blockchain systems. In other words, DHT supports communication in a wide spectrum of Web3 and Blockchain applications, such as data sharing, content distribution, and distributed search engines. The decentralized nature of DHT introduces security and privacy vulnerabilities. Significant efforts have been devoted to making DHT more robust and augmenting DHT’s privacy guarantees. This paper proposes a novel design, namely NC-DHT, which has two main features: (i) NC-DHT tolerates Byzantine nodes, and (ii) NC-DHT provides initiator anonymity, query unlinkability and target privacy. To the best of our knowledge, NC-DHT is the first DHT that supports all these important features, which makes it suitable as an overlay for Blockchains. NC-DHT relies on a novel integration of quorum topology and network coding-based techniques.

Zhenchao Yan, Songlin He, Chase Q. Wu, Aiqin Hou

Peer-to-peer (P2P) content delivery networks (CDNs) have demonstrated immense potential to mitigate escalating network traffic. Meanwhile, blockchain emerges as a promising technology that can overcome the shortcomings confronted by P2P CDNs via acting as a trusted third party (TTP) to ensure critical security properties such as fairness and offering monetary incentivization. However, existing protocols for blockchain-based P2P CDNs still encounter the delivery efficiency issue, one of the primary reasons being the absence or failure to identify the most suitable deliverers. Specifically, some overlook the process of selecting deliverers, entrusting them haphazardly, and some merely consider a single evaluation dimension for a deliverer, resulting in a lack of comprehensiveness. Even when multiple dimensions are considered, the outcome of each dimension is not verifiable, leading to unreliability. To this end, we propose an optimized deliverer selection method in blockchain-based P2P CDNs. Our designs encompass a proof of delivery quality (PoQD) protocol to quantify the accumulative verifiable contributions of a deliverer, a comprehensive credibility evaluation mechanism based on neighborhood entropy, and a provider budget constraint optimized deliverer selection algorithm. Extensive experiments are conducted on Ethereum test network to justify our adaptive selection of k optimized deliverers, desired delivery efficiency and feasible on-chain costs. The experiment results indicate the efficacy and effectiveness of our proposed method.

Calebe P. Bianchini, Geraldo Lucas Fernandes do Amaral, Danilo Bizarria de Oliveira

Sistemas de processamento de transações são parte essencial de negócios online, e exigem tanto confiança quanto desempenho para entregar o serviço esperado. Uma ferramenta de blockchain é capaz de oferecer escalabilidade e confiança na validação de transações. A abordagem proposta neste trabalho é da avaliação do potencial de escalabilidade da rede Ethereum, e seu comportamento em cenários progressivamente mais distribuídos. Para tal, foram coletadas métricas de throughput e latência por meio da execução de redes em cinco diferentes escalas (de 1 a 16 nós, em progressão geométrica de razão 2). Destacam-se duas variações cuja significância estatística foi testada pelo Teste U de Mann-Whitney: um aumento de até dez vezes o número de transações por segundo, quando comparados um nó isolado e uma rede de 16 nós, e uma queda de até metade da latência com relação ao cenário centralizado. Os ambientes de testes foram escolhidos para tentar representar um ambiente com usuários reais.

Ken Huang, Youwei Yang, Fan Zhang, Xi Chen · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Han Peng, Linzhao Sun, Quang-Vi Ngo, Yuanyuan Li · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.