Forks in the Bitcoin network result from the natural competition in the blockchain's Proof-of-Work consensus protocol. Their frequency is a critical indicator for the efficiency of a distributed ledger as they can contribute to resource waste and network insecurity. We introduce a model for the estimation of natural fork rates in a network of heterogeneous miners as a function of their number, the distribution of hash rates and the block propagation time over the peer-to-peer infrastructure. Despite relatively simplistic assumptions, such as zero propagation delay within mining pools, the model predicts fork rates which are comparable with the empirical stale blocks rate. In the past decade, we observe a reduction in the number of mining pools approximately by a factor 3, and quantify its consequences for the fork rate, whilst showing the emergence of a truncated power-law distribution in hash rates, justified by a rich-get-richer effect constrained by global energy supply limits. We demonstrate, both empirically and with the aid of our quantitative model, that the ratio between the block propagation time and the mining time is a sufficiently accurate estimator of the fork rate, but also quantify its dependence on the heterogeneity of miner activities. We provide empirical and theoretical evidence that both hash rate concentration and lower block propagation time reduce fork rates in distributed ledgers. Our work introduces a robust mathematical setting for investigating power concentration and competition on a distributed network, for interpreting discrepancies in fork rates -- for example caused by selfish mining practices and asymmetric propagation times -- thus providing an effective tool for designing future and alternative scenarios for existing and new blockchain distributed mining systems.
S M Habibullah, Sahabul Alam, Shivnath Ghosh, Arindam Dey · 5 authors
Blockchain is a decentralized electronic account book that is secure, open, and impervious to manipulation, and records transactions across numerous computers. Internet of Things (IoT) deployed sensors are limited in bandwidth, processing power, and battery life. Energy efficiency is a vital factor and a decisive matter for energy-bound IoT-based networks. This paper provides an idea of the working principle of blockchain technology in IoT-enabled energy systems. It investigates the fundamentals of blockchain technology, clarifying its decentralized nature, cryptographic mechanisms, and consensus algorithms that ensure data immutability and transparency. It explores how blockchain technology can be integrated with various IoT fields for energy efficiency. The paper investigates the blockchain-based energy consumption approaches in IoT qualitatively, and quantitatively with future research directions and challenges. It is seen that the hybrid blockchain model is suitable for energy efficiency in IoT.
Bitcoin, launched in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, established a new digital economy where value can be stored and transferred in a fully decentralized manner - alleviating the need for a central authority. This paper introduces a large scale dataset in the form of a transactions graph representing transactions between Bitcoin users along with a set of tasks and baselines. The graph includes 252 million nodes and 785 million edges, covering a time span of nearly 13 years of and 670 million transactions. Each node and edge is timestamped. As for supervised tasks we provide two labeled sets i. a 33,000 nodes based on entity type and ii. nearly 100,000 Bitcoin addresses labeled with an entity name and an entity type. This is the largest publicly available data set of bitcoin transactions designed to facilitate advanced research and exploration in this domain, overcoming the limitations of existing datasets. Various graph neural network models are trained to predict node labels, establishing a baseline for future research. In addition, several use cases are presented to demonstrate the dataset's applicability beyond Bitcoin analysis. Finally, all data and source code is made publicly available to enable reproducibility of the results.
Background: Land records have traditionally derived their credibility from a central database of local government records, with copies issued to land owners. Physical records are the only credible source of any information related to land ownership that has been in existence for a long time. However, physical records are prone to manipulation and fraud. Recently, some academic research has begun to address the potential use of blockchain technology to improve the security and reliability of land registration processes. Objective: The purpose of the present work is to propose an architecture for blockchain-based access control for distribution, ensuring information privacy. We take advantage of the benefits of blockchain technology in improving land record management while granting access to electronic data through user permissions. Methods: This approach replicates cryptographic primitives, while smart contracts are used to assist land record owners and users in interacting with each other using the Ethereum blockchain in the proposed system. The approach includes performance evaluation by the execution of a smart contract and security analysis to check the system robustness. Results: The performance evaluation and security analysis prove the proposed blockchain architecture to be secure and feasible for practical implementation in managing land records. Conclusion: The research proves how the application of blockchain technology can significantly enhance both security and reliability in land registration processes, giving credibility to tamper-resistant systems for maintaining information about land ownership.
This paper presents a peer-to-peer electricity trading framework with dynamic pricing designed to enhance energy availability and economic returns for market participants. A key feature of the proposed model is the use of federated learning for predictive pricing for energy, ensuring data privacy while considering user preferences. Simulation results validate that this approach significantly improves energy availability and financial benefits. The method is implemented on the Ethereum public blockchain, providing a secure and transparent trading environment. Real-world data tests further confirm the efficacy of the system, demonstrating enhanced reliability and economic gains for participants in decentralized energy markets.
Blockchain technology's decentralized and immutable data storage has changed a number of sectors. But typical blockchain networks scalability issues prevent them from being widely used for large-scale applications. By dividing the blockchain network into smaller, more controllable sections known as shards, sharding has become a viable remedy for scalability issues. This paper offers a thorough introduction to sharding as a blockchain network scalability solution. We explore the basic ideas of sharding as well as its advantages, drawbacks, and several sharding strategies. We also analyze experimental results and real-world implementations to assess how well sharding contributes to increased blockchain scalability. Lastly, we talk about possible developments in sharding approaches and future research paths to further improve the scalability of blockchain networks.
Cache poisoning and DDoS attacks are just two of the many ways that the Domain Name System (DNS), an essential part of the Internet infrastructure, can be attacked. Countermeasures have been suggested, although they are not without restrictions. This article introduces D-DNS, a domain name system built on blockchain technology that can offer effective and safe DNS services. D-DNS solves two issues with current blockchain-based DNS systems: the inefficient query handling and the computationally demanding Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol. D-DNS accomplishes this by putting in place a domain index and a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. To evaluate the security of D-DNS versus legacy DNS in terms of attack success rate, attack cost, and attack surface, a new quantitative comparison is presented.. According to experimental results, the attack surface of D-DNS is substantially less than that of legacy DNS, the attack cost is a million times higher, and the chance of a successful attack on D-DNS is 1% of a successful attack on legacy DNS. When D-DNS query performance is compared to the most advanced commercial DNS implementations, it is demonstrated to achieve equivalent or even reduced query latency.
Andrey L. Bulgakov, Anna V. Aleshina, Sergey D. Smirnov, Alexey D. Demidov · 6 authors
This article addresses the issues of scalability and security in blockchain networks, with a focus on sharding algorithms and decentralized data storage. Key challenges include the low throughput and high transaction latency in public networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Sharding is examined as a method to enhance performance through data distribution, but it raises concerns regarding node management and reliability. Sharding schemes, such as Elastico, OmniLedger, Pyramid, RepChain, and SSchain, are analyzed, each presenting its own advantages and drawbacks. Alternative architectures like Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) demonstrate potential for improved scalability but require further refinement to ensure decentralization and security. Protocols such as Brokerchain, Meepo, AHL, Benzene, and CycLedger offer unique approaches to addressing performance and transaction consistency issues. This article emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach, including dynamic sharding, multi-level consensus, and inter-shard coordination. Additionally, a conceptual model is proposed that incorporates the sharding of transactions, states, and networks, which enables greater scalability and efficiency.
Oct 1, 2024·Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing
In this paper, we consider a blockchain-based energy trading (BBET) system with the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. The system designer aims to minimize system cost by considering the prosumers' strategic token allocation between blockchain staking and energy purchase for their applications. This is challenging as the system designer does not know prosumers' private information of impatience levels towards different applications. To this end, we propose an online learning mechanism (OLM), which includes incentive mechanisms to guide both prosumers' private information reporting and staking decisions in two phases. In the exploration phase, we design a randomized staking reward to encourage prosumers' truthful reporting of their private information for the learning of impatience level distributions. Based on the threshold structure of the prosumers' equilibrium staking strategies, in the exploitation phase, we propose a learning-error-based reward to minimize the system cost considering the finite-sample bias. By characterizing the optimal exploration duration, we prove that OLM achieves an asymptotic zero-regret against the complete information benchmark, with the regret bounded by [EQUATION] when operating for T time slots. We implement the corresponding smart contract in Ethereum to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach. Experiment results show that our mechanism reduces regret by an average of 74% compared to the state-of-art mechanism.
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) promise decentralization, transparency, and security, yet the reality often falls short due to fundamental governance flaws. Poorly designed governance frameworks leave these systems vulnerable to coercion, vote-buying, centralization of power, and malicious protocol exploits-threats that undermine the very principles of fairness and equity these technologies seek to uphold. This article surveys the state of DLT governance, identifies critical vulnerabilities, and highlights the absence of universally accepted best practices for good governance. By bridging insights from cryptography, social choice theory, and e-voting systems, we not only present a comprehensive taxonomy of governance properties essential for safeguarding DLTs but also point to technical solutions that can deliver these properties in practice. This work underscores the urgent need for robust, transparent, and enforceable governance mechanisms. Ensuring good governance is not merely a technical necessity but a societal imperative to protect the public interest, maintain trust, and realize the transformative potential of DLTs for social good.
Juhani Latvakoski, Jouni Heikkinen, Jari Palosaari, Vesa Kyllönen · 5 authors
The aim of this research has been to enable the management of trustworthy relationships between stakeholders, service providers, and physical assets, which are required in critical energy and mobility cyber–physical systems (CPS) applications. The achieved novel contribution is the concept of trustworthy communities with respective experimental solutions, which are developed by relying on verifiable credentials, smart contracts, trust over IP, and an Ethereum-based distributed ledger. The provided trustworthy community solutions are validated by executing them in two practical use cases, which are called energy flexibility and hunting safety. The energy flexibility case validation considered the execution of the solutions with one simulated and two real buildings with the energy flexibility aggregation platform, which was able to trade the flexibilities in an energy flexibility marketplace. The provided solutions were executed with a hunting safety smartphone application for a hunter and the smartwatch of a person moving around in the forest. The evaluations indicate that conceptual solutions for trustworthy communities fulfill the purpose and contribute toward making energy flexibility trading and hunting safety possible and trustworthy enough for participants. A trustworthy community solution is required to make value sharing and usage of critical energy resources and their flexibilities feasible and secure enough for their owners as part of the energy flexibility community. Sharing the presence and location in mobile conditions requires a trustworthy community solution because of security and privacy reasons, but it can also save lives in real-life elk hunting cases. During the evaluations, the need for further studies related to performance, scalability, community applications, verifiable credentials with wallets, sharing of values and incentives, authorized trust networks, dynamic trust situations, time-sensitive behavior, autonomous operations with smart contracts through security assessment, and applicability have been detected.
In recent years, a more advanced form of phishing has arisen on Ethereum, surpassing early-stage, simple transaction phishing.This new form, which we refer to as payload-based transaction phishing (PTXPHISH), manipulates smart contract interactions through the execution of malicious payloads to deceive users.PTXPHISH has rapidly emerged as a significant threat, leading to incidents that caused losses exceeding $70 million in 2023 reports.Despite its substantial impact, no previous studies have systematically explored PTXPHISH.In this paper, we present the first comprehensive study of the PTXPHISH on Ethereum.Firstly, we conduct a long-term data collection and put considerable effort into establishing the first ground-truth PTXPHISH dataset, consisting of 5,000 phishing transactions.Based on the dataset, we dissect PTXPHISH, categorizing phishing tactics into four primary categories and eleven sub-categories.Secondly, we propose a rule-based multidimensional detection approach to identify PTXPHISH, achieving an F1-score of over 99% and processing each block in an average of 390 ms.Finally, we conduct a large-scale detection spanning 300 days and discover a total of 130,637 phishing transactions on Ethereum, resulting in losses exceeding $341.9 million.Our in-depth analysis of these phishing transactions yielded valuable and insightful findings.Scammers consume approximately 13.4 ETH daily, which accounts for 12.5% of the total Ethereum gas, to propagate address poisoning scams.Additionally, our analysis reveals patterns in the cash-out process employed by phishing scammers, and we find that the top five phishing organizations are responsible for 40.7% of all losses.Furthermore, our work has made significant contributions to mitigating real-world threats.We have reported 1,726 phishing addresses to the community, accounting for 42.7% of total community contributions during the same period.Additionally, we have sent 2,539 on-chain alert messages, assisting 1,980 victims.This research serves as a valuable reference in combating the emerging PTXPHISH and safeguarding users' assets.
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has revolutionized network management by providing unprecedented flexibility, control, and efficiency. However, its centralized architecture introduces critical security vulnerabilities. This paper introduces a novel approach to securing SDN environments using IOTA 2.0 smart contracts. The proposed system utilizes the IOTA Tangle, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure, to improve scalability and efficiency while eliminating transaction fees and reducing energy consumption. We introduce three smart contracts: Authority, Access Control, and DoS Detector, to ensure trusted and secure network operations, prevent unauthorized access, maintain the integrity of control data, and mitigate denial-of-service attacks. Through comprehensive simulations using Mininet and the ShimmerEVM IOTA Test Network, we demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in enhancing SDN security. Our findings highlight the potential of IOTA 2.0 smart contracts to provide a robust, decentralized solution for securing SDN environments, paving the way for the further integration of blockchain technologies in network management.
Shezon Saleem Mohammed Abdul, Anup Shrestha, Jianming Yong
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is rapidly evolving, promising to revolutionize financial services through blockchain technology. Successful integration of asset transfers across diverse DeFi platforms hinges on effective interoperability and transaction finality, ensuring security and cost efficiency. This paper introduces CrossDeFi, a novel cross-chain communication protocol tailored to address the challenges posed by heterogeneity in consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, and token systems. CrossDeFi introduces two key mechanisms: Miner and bridge selection (MBS) and improved transfer confirmation (ITC). The MBS mechanism optimizes the selection of miners and bridges based on the unique characteristics of each blockchain, significantly improving transfer accuracy, cost efficiency, and speed. Meanwhile, the ITC mechanism leverages cryptographic primitives to secure asset transfer confirmations, ensuring robust transaction finality. The protocol’s effectiveness is demonstrated through detailed efficiency and security analyses, complemented by a prototype evaluation that showcases its capabilities in reducing transfer durations and costs. These findings underscore the potential of CrossDeFi to transform the DeFi ecosystem.
As the next generation of the internet, Web 3.0 is expected to revolutionize the Internet and enable users to have greater control over their data and privacy. Federated learning (FL) enables data to be usable yet invisible during its use, thereby facilitating the transfer of data ownership and value. However, the issues of data size and blockchain computing power are of paramount importance for FL in Web 3.0. Due to the openness of Web 3.0, individuals can freely join or leave training and adjust data size, creating population uncertainty and making it difficult to design incentive mechanisms. Therefore, we propose a Poisson game-based FL incentive mechanism that motivates participants to contribute more data and computing power, considering the variability of data size and computing power requirements, and provides a feasible solution to the uncertainty of the number of participants using a Poisson game model. Additionally, our proposed FL architecture in Web 3.0 integrates FL with Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), utilizing smart contracts for contribution calculation and revenue distribution. This enables an open, free, and autonomous federated learning environment. Experimental evaluation shows that our incentive mechanism is feasible in blockchain with efficiency, robustness, and low overhead.
This article addresses critical health data integrity by proposing an HF (Hyperledger Fabric)-based architecture with integration into the global health data architecture based on distributed content-addressable storage networks.
In the Web3, the data distributed storage has become a crucial method for secure, reliable, and efficient data storage, and an efficient distributed scheduling and distribution strategy is essential for achieving rapid data response. This paper proposes a distributed data scheduling strategy that improves the firefly algorithm to achieve optimal scheduling path selection for regional data storage. By considering the storage nodes spatial status, it enables the rapid distribution and storage of data blocks. The storage path is implemented by smart contracts and stored on the blockchain with the data block identifier. Through simulation, our proposed scheduling algorithm demonstrates better performance and higher trustworthiness compared to traditional storage models.
Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2) marks a significant evolution from Ethereum 1.0 (ETHl), playing a central role in the Web3.0 infrastructure. At its core, the consensus protocol Gasper greatly affects system performance. Given that Gasper's parameters are empirically determined, there is a clear necessity for parameter tuning. This paper presents a simulation-based study that models the performance of the block proposing mechanism within Gasper. Our simulation results illustrate the impact of design parameters (e.g., block proposing interval) on throughput and non-forking probability. They may enable us to find optimal parameter configure to balance the two-performance metrics. These findings help enhance the system performance of ETH2.
Yi Gong, Boyuan Yu, Lei Yang, Fanke Meng · 7 authors
With the evolution of next-generation communication networks, ensuring robust Core Network (CN) architecture and data security has become paramount. This paper addresses critical vulnerabilities in the architecture of CN and data security by proposing a novel framework based on blockchain technology that is specifically designed for communication networks. Traditional centralized network architectures are vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, particularly in roaming scenarios where there is also a risk of private data leakage, which imposes significant operational demands. To address these issues, we introduce the Blockchain-Enhanced Core Network Architecture (BECNA) and the Secure Decentralized Identity Authentication Scheme (SDIDAS). The BECNA utilizes blockchain technology to decentralize data storage, enhancing network security, stability, and reliability by mitigating Single Points of Failure (SPoF). The SDIDAS utilizes Decentralized Identity (DID) technology to secure user identity data and streamline authentication in roaming scenarios, significantly reducing the risk of data breaches during cross-network transmissions. Our framework employs Ethereum, free5GC, Wireshark, and UERANSIM tools to create a robust, tamper-evident system model. A comprehensive security analysis confirms substantial improvements in user privacy and network security. Simulation results indicate that our approach enhances communication CNs security and reliability, while also ensuring data security.
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.
M. L. Sworna Kokila, R Sunitha, P. Kalyanakumar, J. Relin Francis Raj · 6 authors
This research investigates Blockchain-enabled energy trading within microgrids to enhance sustainable computing infrastructure. A novel algorithm, GridCoin, is proposed and evaluated against existing methodologies including Optimal Power Flow (OPF), Microgrid Energy Management System (MEMS), and Hierarchical Control Algorithms (HCA). The study employs simulation metrics such as Transaction Throughput, Energy Trading Efficiency, and Transaction Latency to compare the performance of these algorithms. GridCoin demonstrates superior capabilities in optimizing energy trading operations, achieving higher transaction throughput, improved efficiency in energy utilization, and reduced transaction latency. These results highlight the potential of Blockchain technology to revolutionize energy markets by providing secure, transparent, and decentralized transaction mechanisms. Future research directions include enhancing optimization techniques, integrating renewable energy sources, addressing scalability and security challenges, conducting real-world deployments, and analyzing economic and policy implications. This study contributes to advancing sustainable computing infrastructure through innovative Blockchain-based solutions.
Abstract This paper presents a comparative efficiency analysis of hashing algorithms from a perspective of their use in systems based on the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (zk-SNARK). Hash functions sha256, sha3, poseidon, mimc, and blake2, most commonly used in modern distributed ledgers, are considered. For parameter measurement experiments, an infrastructure using the ZoKrates toolbox is developed. Based on experimental data, the limits of practical applicability of the algorithms to the problem of proving knowledge of a hash preimage with zk-SNARK circuits in distributed ledgers are determined, and related efficiency problems are considered.