Juseong Jeon, Sejin Park, Deokwoo Lee, Juncheol Ahn
The blockchain market has been experiencing rapid growth recently. Alongside this, Web3 services based on blockchain technology are expanding and gaining attention. These services can support not only encompass gaming and financial services but also leverage the numerous nodes existing in the network to distribute tasks, thereby supporting parallel computing. However, there is no way to directly access web3 services in the current network topology, which limits the expansion of services. Therefore, the current Web3 relies on centralized web servers as access points for services, resulting in the inevitable loss of benefits associated with decentralization, such as the shift in data sovereignty.
The Web3 gaming and blockchain gaming landscapes have emerged as dynamic and transformative forces within the entertainment industry. A comprehensive analysis encompassing qualitative and quantitative approaches is essential to grasp these emerging sectorsâ potential and trajectory fully. The study delves into the intricacies of Web3 gaming and blockchain gaming, exploring their current market size, growth drivers, prevailing challenges, and anticipated future trends. A thorough analysis of industry reports provided insights into current trends, challenges, and promising startups within the gaming space. As per our results, the Web3 gaming and blockchain gaming markets are experiencing and expecting significant growth, especially in future outlooks. The integration of Web3 into blockchain gaming is expected to accelerate, further enhancing player ownership, control, and monetization opportunities. The capital attraction of Web3 and blockchain gaming is highly correlated with the overall cryptocurrency market, suggesting that investor interest in these projects tends to rise and fall with cryptocurrency prices.
Abstract Modern public blockchains like Ethereum rely on p2p networks to run distributed and censorship-resistant applications. With its wide adoption, it operates as a highly critical public ledger. On its transition to become more scalable and sustainable, shifting to PoS without sacrificing the security and resilience of PoW, Ethereum offers a range of consensus client implementations to participate in the network. In this paper, we present a methodology to measure the performance of the consensus clients based on the latency to receive messages from the p2p network. The paper includes a study that identifies the incentives and limitations that the network experiences, presenting insights about the latency impact derived from running the different consensus implementations at different locations. Our study highlights the need for a holistic approach to node deployment, where hardware, software, and geographic factors have to be carefully considered. Properly dimensioned hardware is essential to mitigate latency-related performance issues and ensure the reliable operation of beacon nodes, especially in geographically distant locations.
Committee-based blockchain consensus is a fusion of permissionless consensus and the permissioned Byzantine Fault- Tolerant (BFT) classical protocol. However, three enduring challenges remain: the formal framework for the Proof-of-Stake (PoS)-based hybrid consensus, the dynamic adjustment of committee size and the definition of consensus time-bound. To tackle these challenges, in this paper, we present a Stackelberg game-driven fair committee-based blockchain consensus protocol, dubbed SG-FCB, which combines PoS and reputation-based blockchain hybrid BFT consensus. The SG-FCB protocol lever-ages an unbiased BLS-threshold signature and a random shuffle algorithm to achieve fair leader election and committee reconfiguration seamlessly. Specifically, the variant-BFT is designed to maintain the low communication cost of$\mathcal{O}(n)$, and a Stackelberg game-based incentive mechanism is proposed to jointly maximize the individual profit of the validators and the expected consensus committee responsiveness efficiency of blockchain user. Rigorous security analysis shows that for an adversary with a stakeholding fraction less than 1/3 and sufficient reputation value, we define the time bound for consensus, and the SG-FCB protocol achieves consistency and liveness properties by reasonably setting a corruption parameter and liveness parameter within a formal framework.
The latest study sheds light on distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) outside blockchain systems. The first section of this article introduces DLTs, focusing on blockchain as the main paradigm. It highlights three critical characteristics of blockchain: decentralisation, transparency, and security, and emphasises how blockchain is transforming various industries, including supply chain management and finance. Subsequently, the discussion shifts to new developments and approaches in the DLT space. It introduces next-generation ledgers designed to address traditional blockchains' scalability, energy efficiency, and interoperability challenges. The study delves into modern innovations that achieve higher transaction speeds and greater flexibility, such as hybrid models and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). A significant portion is dedicated to how these advanced DLTs are used to transform sectors like healthcare government, secure patient data management, and enhance transparency and citizen participation. The article also addresses the challenges and ethical considerations of using these technologies. Finally, the paper predicts that DLTs will improve efficiency and innovation in industries outside blockchain technology. To maximise these new technologies' potential, research and interdisciplinary collaboration are essential.
The Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm has been criticized, in the literature and in several cryptocurrencies communities, due to the so-called compounding effect: who is richer has more coins to stake, therefore higher probability of being selected as a block validator and obtaining the corresponding rewards, thus becoming even richer. In this paper, we present a PoS simulator written in the Julia language that allows one to test several variants of PoS-based consensus algorithms, tweaking their parameters, and observe how the distribution of cryptocurrency coins among the users evolves over time. Such a tool can be used to investigate which combinations of parameters values allow to obtain a âfairâ and stable consensus algorithm, in which, over the long term, no one gets richer or poorer by the mere act of validating blocks. Based on this investigation, we also introduce a new PoS-based consensus mechanism that allows the system to keep the wealth distribution stable even after a large number of epochs.
The Ethereum Global Network (EGN) hosts a complete ecosystem of decentralized services, including blockchains such as Ethereum mainnet but also exchange markets, content delivery networks, and many more. Service discovery is a fundamental mechanism in the EGN, allowing new nodes to look up and connect to other nodes already participating in one of these services. The current service discovery of the EGN, DISCv5, is not scalable and efficient enough to support the current and future needs of the ecosystem. We present DISC-NG, a novel service discovery protocol for the EGN that is scalable, efficient, and secure. DISC-NG leverages the EGN-wide DHT to allow service participation advertisements to meet service discovery requests. DISC-NG compensates the unbalance in service popularity and minimizes the potential for abuse by malicious nodes. We implement DISC-NG in devp2p, the network stack used by the majority of clients connecting to the EGN, as well as in a large-scale simulator. DISC-NG can discover services in the EGN faster than DISCv5 while being more robust to malicious nodes. DISC-NG is now in a staging phase and scheduled for deployment as an improvement to DISCv5.
The rise of prosumers â individuals who both produce and consume energy â presents a significant opportunity to reshape energy markets and achieve carbon neutrality. However, current energy trading models struggle to effectively track emissions and incentivize sustainable consumption behaviors. This study introduces a novel, blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) platform for trading carbon allowances, designed to empower prosumers and revolutionize energy consumption patterns. Utilizing blockchain technology, the platform enables direct, transparent, and secure transactions between prosumers, creating a decentralized market where they can set their own prices for carbon allowances. This dynamic and competitive environment empowers prosumers to take control of their energy consumption and incentivizes the adoption of sustainable practices. The platform also incorporates a decentralized reward system targeting specific consumption habits, promoting behaviors that reduce carbon emissions. Empirical evidence and theoretical justification within the study highlight the platformâs potential to transform energy consumption patterns. The transparent and verifiable nature of blockchain technology addresses the limitations of existing centralized and aggregator-based trading methods. The proposed platform provides a robust framework for tracking carbon emissions, promoting sustainable consumption, and empowering prosumers to actively participate in the energy transition. This innovative solution addresses the challenges faced by prosumers in the energy market, paving the way for a more sustainable and equitable future.
Giovanni Quattrocchi, Filippo Scaramuzza, Damian A. Tamburri
Bitcoin and Ethereum, respectively the first and the second generations of blockchains, exhibit two main problems, mostly connected to the increase of network traffic and load onto their respective networking and service models: scalability and interoperability. To solve these issues, several technologies have been introducedâthus paving the way to the so-called third-generation blockchainsâwhich are divided into three main categories: (1) Layer 1 solutions, (2) rollups, and (3) side-chains. We present a validated framework for the evaluation and comparison of these categories, based on the three main non-functional aspectsâreflecting therefore a trilemmaâthat discriminate their use for the design and orchestration of complex blockchain-oriented service applications, namely: scalability, decentralization, and security.
Jun 17, 2024·Proceedings of the 2024 Workshop on Advanced Tools, Programming Languages, and PLatforms for Implementing and Evaluating algorithms for Distributed systems
Reaching consensus despite faulty or corrupted nodes is a central question in distributed computing; it has received renewed attention over the last years because of its importance for cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks. Modern consensus protocols in this space have relied on a number of different methods for the nodes to influence protocol decisions. Such assumptions include (1) traditional voting, where each node has one vote, (2) weighted voting, where voting power is proportional to stake in an underlying asset, and (3) proof-of-X, which demonstrates a cryptographically verifiable investment of a resource X, such as storage space, time waited, or computational work.
This conceptual modelling research investigates infrastructure designs supporting decentralized social media leveraging blockchain verified identities and non-fungible token (NFT) facilitated content transactions.Diagrammatic analysis following the object-oriented methodology depicts economic and software mechanisms allowing participant monetization of original posts through cryptocurrency micropayments and resale royalties.Systematic ownership protections aim to foster trust and transparency deactivated in conventional models exploiting uncompensated user data.While limitations persist in underlying platform maturity, regulatory uncertainty, and mass adoption prerequisites, envisioned participatory architectures offer renewed pathways to reconcile open exchange with personal agency and value.
Eduardo Jorge Lira Antunes da Silva, Cristina Souza de AraĂșjo, Jucimar Maia da Silva, Roberto Junio Rodrigues Gomes · 7 authors
The development of software aligned with Web3 innovations is essential to stimulate discussions on the application of these technologies in the scientific realm. This study presents the development of a 'cryptogame,' a game that integrates blockchain technology to incorporate Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into its functionalities. The paper explores fundamental Web3 concepts, with references to relevant literature, and details the development process, including the methodologies and models adopted. As a result, a puzzle game was created that utilizes NFTs as playable characters, allowing for the transfer of these assets between digital wallets. Furthermore, the study investigates the application of these concepts in adapting a traditional mobile game for the use of NFTs, demonstrating the necessary changes in user interface and game mechanics to support the integration with digital assets.
Charusheela Nehete, Anish Lohiya, Meet Mulik, V. H. Patil · 5 authors
Decentralized social media is a social media platform that aims to transform the social networking platforms. This solution defines development of the decentralized social media platform. Using distributed ledger technology, smart contracts, and peer-to-peer networks, a platform was built that redistributes control and data ownership to users while avoiding the risks of censorship, data leaks in day-to-day social media. Through feedback, advantages of the decentralized model were showcased like enhanced privacy, reduced content manipulation, and resistance to centralized control of user content. By placing the ownership and governance of social networks into the hands of the community,a way for a more transparent, and user-centric digital social media application is paved.
Research has indicated that the appeal of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games lies in ownership and socialization. Strategies such as reducing the operation fees and ensuring credible game operations enhance player loyalty. Incidents such as the 2016 New Year's Gacha event controversy highlight the need for transparency in MMO games, which can be provided through verifiable transactions and ownership offered by blockchain and non-fungible tokens. This paper suggests the decentralization of game servers using blockchain to ensure credible data. It also emphasizes the need for practical testing of stability, security, and other important factors before the widespread implementation of MMO games.
David Guzman, Dirk Trossen, Trinh Viet Doan, Joerg Ott
In distributed consensus systems (DCSs), a single peer exposes functionality to other peers to agree on a shared state for a computational problem, such as for cryptocurrencies and distributed file systems. We observe, however, that this original, peer-centric model has evolved towards deploying several peers at a single network location, thus exposing the same DCS services many times, driven by the fees and rewards that can be gained by doing so. We refer to this trend as the service-centric model and provide in our paper evidence for this trend, its growth, and its impact on DCS operations, using empirical observations in the Ethereum system. Specifically, we shed light on the opposing observations of increasing reliance on highly available cloud infrastructures and large numbers of non-reachability events in the DCS. We provide recommendations on how to tackle this impact through changes to the Ethereum platform and identifier generation, believing that those recommendations and our empirical observations provide useful insights for building resilient and bias-free DePIN platforms.
Distributed ledger technology such as blockchain is considered essential for supporting large numbers of micro-transactions in the Machine Economy, which is envisioned to involve billions of connected heterogeneous and decentralized cyber-physical systems. This stresses the need for performance and scalability of distributed ledger technologies. Addressing this, sharding techniques that divide the blockchain network into multiple committees are a common approach to improve scalability. However, with current sharding approaches, costly cross-shard verification is needed to prevent double-spending. This article proposes a novel and more scalable distributed ledger method named ScaleGraph that implements dynamic sharding by using routing and logical proximity concepts from distributed hash tables. ScaleGraph addresses cybersecurity in terms of integrity and availability to support frequent micro-transactions between autonomous devices. Benefits of ScaleGraph include a total storage space complexity of \(O(t)\) , where \( t \) is the global number of transactions (assuming a constant replication degree). This space is sharded over \( N \) nodes so that each node needs \(O(t/N)\) storage in expectation, which provides a high level of concurrency and data localization as compared to other delegated consensus proposals. ScaleGraph allows for a dynamic grouping of validators that are selected based on a distance metric. We analyze the consensus requirements in such a dynamic setting and show that a synchronous consensus protocol allows shards to be smaller than an asynchronous one, and likely yields better performance. Moreover, we provide an experimental analysis of security aspects regarding the required size of the consensus groups with ScaleGraph. Our analysis shows that dynamic sharding based on proximity concepts brings attractive scalability properties in general, especially when the fraction of corrupt nodes is small.
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) has recently gained considerable attention. While prior research has focused on understanding its performance characterization and application support, it remains unclear: (1) what kind of files/content are stored in IPFS, (2) who are providing these files, (3) are these files always accessible, and (4) what affects the file access performance. To answer these questions, in this paper, we perform measurement and analysis on over 4 million files associated with CIDs (content IDs) that appeared in publicly available IPFS datasets. Our results reveal the following key findings: (1) Mixed file accessibility: while IPFS is not designed for a permanent storage, accessing a non-trivial portion of files, such as those of NFTs and video streams, often requires multiple retrieval attempts, potentially blocking NFT transactions and negatively affecting the user experience. (2) Dominance of NFT (non-fungible token) and video files: about 50% of stored files are NFT-related, followed by a large portion of video files, among which about half are pirated movies and adult content. (3) Centralization of content providers: a small number of peers (top-50), mostly cloud nodes hosted by tech companies, serve a large portion (95%) of files, deviating from IPFS's intended design goal. (4) High variation of downloading throughput and lookup time: large file retrievals experience lower average throughput due to more overhead for resolving file chunk CIDs, and looking up files hosted by non-cloud nodes takes longer. We hope that our findings can offer valuable insights for (1) IPFS application developers to take into consideration these characteristics when building applications on top of IPFS, and (2) IPFS system developers to improve IPFS and similar systems to be developed for Web3.
Recently, sharding has become a popular direction to scale out blockchain systems by dividing the network into shards that process transactions in parallel. However, secure and efficient cross-shard transaction processing remains a vital and unaddressed challenge. Existing work handles a cross-shard transaction via transaction division: dividing it into sub-transactions, processing them separately, and combing the processing results. Such an approach is unfavorable for decentralized blockchain due to its reliance on trustworthy parties, e.g., the client or a reference node, to perform the transaction division and result combination. Furthermore, the processing result of one transaction can affect another, violating the important property of transaction isolation. In this work, we propose Sharon, a novel sharding protocol that processes cross-shard transactions via shard rotation rather than transaction division. In Sharon, shards rotate to merge pairwisely and process cross-shard transactions when merged. Sharon eliminates reliance on trustworthy parties and provides transaction isolation in nature because transactions are no longer divided. Nevertheless, it poses a scientific question of when and how to merge the shards to improve system performance. To answer the question, we formally define the shard scheduling problem to minimize transaction confirmation latency and propose a novel construction algorithm. The proposed algorithm is proven optimal and runs in polynomial time. We conduct extensive experiments on Amazon EC2 instances using Bitcoin and Ethereum data. The results indicate that Sharon achieves nearly linear scalability, improves the system throughput by 139%, and saves the transaction processing latency by 72.4% compared with state-of-the-art approaches.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Peiyao Sheng, Chenyuan Wu, Dahlia Malkhi, Michael K. Reiter · 7 authors
This paper introduces and develops the concept of ``ticketing'', through which atomic broadcasts are orchestrated by nodes in a distributed system. The paper studies different ticketing regimes that allow parallelism, yet prevent slow nodes from hampering overall progress. It introduces a hybrid scheme which combines managed and unmanaged ticketing regimes, striking a balance between adaptivity and resilience. The performance evaluation demonstrates how managed and unmanaged ticketing regimes benefit throughput in systems with heterogeneous resources both in static and dynamic scenarios, with the managed ticketing regime performing better among the two as it adapts better. Finally, it demonstrates how using the hybrid ticketing regime performance can enjoy both the adaptivity of the managed regime and the liveness guarantees of the unmanaged regime.
Rishik Yadav, Anurag Sharma, Sachin Kumar, Paramita De
Effective portfolio management tools are becoming more and more necessary as the cryptocurrency industry grows in order to assist investors in navigating the potential and hazards associated with it. The creation of an all-inclusive cryptocurrency portfolio management system that uses realtime data tracking and analysis to assist investors in making wise selections has been presented in this study. The trustworthy and dependable library for password hashing, bcrypt, is incorporated with a focus on user data protection. This is done in order to protect sensitive data and personal information. The platform gives users access to performance graphs and comprehensive details for each cryptocurrency, in addition to realtime statistics covering a wide range of cryptocurrencies. In addition, it can display the current live price of each supported cryptocurrency. One can keep an eye on price fluctuations around-the-clock and watch the assets in real time.
Ethereum 2.0 is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and a widely used smart contract platform. Therefore, examining the reliability of Ethereum 2.0's incentive mechanism is crucial, particularly its effectiveness in encouraging validators to adhere to the Ethereum 2.0's protocol. This paper studies the incentive mechanism of Ethereum 2.0 and evaluates its robustness by analyzing the interaction between block proposers and attesters in a single slot. To this end, we use Bayesian games to model the strategies of block proposers and attesters and calculate their expected utilities. Our results demonstrate that the Ethereum 2.0 incentive mechanism is incentive-compatible and promotes cooperation among validators. We prove that a Bayesian Nash equilibrium and an ex ante dominant strategy exist between the block proposer and attesters in a single slot. Our research provides a solid foundation for further analysis of Ethereum 2.0's incentive mechanism and insights for individuals considering participation as a validator in Ethereum 2.0.
With the large increase in the adoption of blockchain technologies, their underlying peer-to-peer networks must also scale with the demand. In this context, previous works highlighted the importance of ensuring efficient and resilient communication for the underlying consensus and replication mechanisms. However, they were mainly focused on mainstream, Proof-of-Work-based Distributed Ledger Technologies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. In this paper, the problem is investigated in the context of consensus-validation based blockchains, like the XRP Ledger. The latter relies on a Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) consensus mechanism which is proven to have a good scalability in regards to transaction throughput. However, it is known that significant increases in the size of the XRP Ledger network would be challenging to achieve. The main reason is the flooding mechanism used to disseminate the messages related to the consensus protocol, which creates many duplicates in the network. Squelching is a recent solution proposed for limiting this duplication, however, it was never evaluated quantitatively in real-life scenarios involving the XRPL production network. In this paper, our aim is to assess this mechanism using a real-life controllable testbed and the XRPL production network, to assess its benefit and compare it to alternative solutions relying on Named Data Networking and on a gossip-based approach.
Decentralized file storage has emerged as a transformative solution to address the challenges of centralized data storage, offering enhanced security, privacy, and resilience in the digital age. This research paper explores the significance of decentralized file storage systems and examines the technologies involved, including blockchain, Polygon, Web3, IPFS, and MetaMask. Through a comprehensive analysis of the architecture, implementation details, security considerations, performance evaluations, and real-world applications, key findings highlight the advantages of decentralized storage solutions over traditional centralized counterparts. The research underscores the importance of decentralization in fostering data sovereignty, transparency, and inclusivity, while offering insights into the potential impact on various industries and scenarios.