Abusaid Manap, Gulnara Abitova, Gulzhan Uskenbayeva, Aigul Shaikhanova
In the era of pervasive digital data, ensuring secure file storage has become a paramount concern. This paper explores the significance of hybrid cryptography in the development of information technology for secure file storage. Hybrid cryptography, combining symmetric and asymmetric encryption, offers robust protection against unauthorized access, tampering, and data loss. The article reviews recent cryptography literature, highlighting the importance of secure file storage in today's interconnected world and examining the benefits of hybrid cryptography. The analysis of articles on cryptography reveals emerging trends and challenges. Post-quantum cryptography addresses concerns about quantum threats, while blockchain-based cryptography enhances security in IoT data sharing. Homomorphic encryption enables computations on encrypted data, and privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols facilitate secure multi-party computation. Machine learning's intersection with cryptanalysis introduces efficiency but raises ethical considerations. The paper further discusses advancements and trends in cryptography techniques, including post-quantum cryptography, homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, post-quantum key exchange, secure multi-party computation, and post-quantum signature schemes. These developments aim to ensure long-term security against quantum attacks, enable privacy-preserving computations, and enhance the confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of digital communication and data storage. In conclusion, the paper advocates for the adoption of hybrid cryptography in secure file storage systems. Its combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption, along with its adaptability to evolving security landscapes, positions hybrid cryptography as a formidable approach to data protection. By embracing hybrid cryptography and staying informed about the latest advancements, organizations can navigate the digital age with confidence, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of stored files.
Immanni Bhanu Prakash, Adarsh Kr Tiwari, U. Hariharan
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become known as a game-changing digital asset class, revolutionizing digital content ownership and trade. These one-of-a-kind tokens symbolize a variety of digital and physical goods, including art, music, antiques, and more. The metadata linked with each token is crucial to the value and legitimacy of NFTs, giving crucial details about the asset's authenticity, ownership history, and other pertinent factors. It is critical in this setting to ensure the security, longevity, and usability of this metadata. The novel method of storing NFT information on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized and distributed file storage technology, is explored in this research article. It then digs into IPFS's design and operations, describing how it works as a decentralized file storage system. The integration of IPFS with NFT collections is thoroughly examined, emphasizing the advantages it provides with regard to data integrity, accessibility, and security. This study highlights IPFS's potential as a game- changing solution for NFT metadata storage. Creating a web- based NFT minting and querying application using Next.js, Web3Modal, and Ethereum on the Mumbai test net user-friendly integration of decentralized NFT contracts, aiming to facilitate broader adoption of NFT applications. As a result, it adds to the continuing discussion about NFT technology and its integration with decentralized systems, paving the path for a more robust and permanent digital art and collectibles market.
Advanced Data Storage Technologies
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Smart contracts and the blockchain have recently been widely used in many application fields. Current smart contracts are executed on general-purpose CPUs and still have a large room to improve performance. In this paper, we first analyze the most popular public blockchain platform Ethereum and characterize smart contracts running on its ecosystem. After identifying its performance limitations, we propose a heterogeneous processor Smart Contract Unit (SCU), which is a hardware-based accelerator in place of the current EVM design. With our proposed novel RISC-style SCU ISA and heterogeneous architecture, SCU can leverage instruction-level parallelism and transaction-level parallelism during smart contract processing and boost its execution performance. Furthermore, SCU can be configured and adapted to different workloads in order to remove bottlenecks. We implement and evaluate the proposed SCU design on a Xilinx FPGA platform. Our design achieves a significant speedup compared to the software implementation on an Intel CPU and runs a few times faster than state-of-the-art design.
With the rapid development of the Internet, digital cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology have been widely used globally. However, the huge volatility and high risk of cryptocurrency prices pose challenges for investors. To address this issue, predicting the prices of digital cryptocurrencies has become a research focus. However, most existing studies mainly focus on Bitcoin price prediction. This paper proposes a GRU (Gated Recurrent Unit) model-based method for predicting the price of Dogecoin, a popular emerging cryptocurrency. The choice of Dogecoin is motivated by its high price volatility and prediction difficulty as a relatively new cryptocurrency. The GRU model is a variant of the recurrent neural network (RNN) that has better prediction performance compared to the LSTM model. With this method, we can effectively predict the price of Dogecoin, reducing investment risks for investors and providing reference for policymakers in regulating the digital currency market.
Nothing prevents several Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to be associated to the same digital asset, for instance, an image. As a consequence, the NFTs ecosystem is flooded with NFT replicas associated to the same assets of famous NFTs. The purpose of this paper is to propose creating NFTs in such a way that NFT/asset combination can not be replicated. We call the NFTs created in this way, Authentic NFTs. NFT token ids are known in advance, before creating the NFTs. Our approach is to include the NFT token id in the digital asset, and have the asset being digitally signed by it’s creator (author/artist). Given that NFT IDs are unique, our main finding is that any Authentic NFT replica can not be authentic. Either the NFT replica id does not match the NFT ID in the asset (if the asset was not modified), or the NFT replica asset is not signed by the asset creator (if the asset was modified).
Open access
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Ethereum introduced Transaction Access Lists (TALs) in 2020 to optimize gas costs during transaction execution. In this work, we present a comprehensive analysis of TALs in Ethereum, focusing on adoption, quality, and gas savings. Analyzing a full month of mainnet data with 31,954,474 transactions, we found that only 1.46% of transactions included a TAL, even though 42.6% of transactions would have benefited from it. On average, access lists can save around 0.29% of gas costs, equivalent to approximately 3,450 ETH (roughly US$ 5 Mio) per year. However, 19.6% of TALs included by transactions contained imperfections, causing almost 11.8% of transactions to pay more gas with TAL than without. We find that these inaccuracies are caused by the unknown state at the time of the TAL computation as well as imperfect TAL computations provided by all major Ethereum clients. We thus compare the gas savings when calculating the TAL at the beginning of the block vs. calculating it on the correct state, to find that the unknown state is a major source of TAL inaccuracies. Finally, we implement an ideal TAL computation for the Erigon client to highlight the cost of these flawed implementations.
As digital interaction intensifies with the proliferation of internet usage, there is a consequent surge in digital data storage needs. Recognizing this trend, numerous enterprises have extended file storage solutions for consumers to securely archive their data. Traditionally, this data resides on centralized servers and employs location-based addressing, optimizing distribution, management, security, and the scaling capacities of both servers and clients. Nonetheless, this centralized paradigm presents challenges, notably concerning security, privacy, and operational efficiency. Under this framework, there exists the potential for users’ data to be accessed, altered, or deleted by those administering the server. A promising avenue to address these challenges is the inception of a web-based decentralized file storage application characterized by precision and robust security. This innovative application leverages the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for its data storage layer, capitalizing on IPFS’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network architecture which fosters decentralized and distributed file sharing across a plethora of computers or nodes. To maintain a comprehensive record of all distributed files, the system incorporates a smart contract, enabling the execution of business logic on the blockchain. In this study, we undertake a systematic examination of deployment costs at the laboratory scale, focusing on platforms such as Ganache and the Ropsten network. We then juxtapose these findings within the context of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), analyzing comparative metrics across networks including Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and Ethereum.
The Log-Structure Merged tree (LSM-tree) based key-value (KV) store has been widely adopted as the storage engine for blockchain systems, such as Ethereum, in which blockchain data are uniformly transformed into randomly distributed KV items for persistence. However, blockchain semantics are ignored during this process, making the blockchain storage suffer from heavy read/write amplification problems. Moreover, as the Ethereum network scales up, tremendous data further exacerbates its storage burden. Until now, most studies have focused on sharding, data archiving, decentralized distributed storage, etc., to mitigate the burden of the storage layer. However, the incompatibility between Ethereum semantics and the characteristics of the storage engine is ignored. In this paper, we present ChainKV, a new semantics-aware storage paradigm to improve the storage management performance for the Ethereum system. Firstly, based on Ethereum blockchain semantics, ChainKV separately stores different types of data in multiple storage zones in the KV store to mitigate the read/write amplification problem. Secondly, following the mechanism of the verification process in the authenticated data structure (ADS), a new ADS data transformer is proposed to exploit the data locality when persisting ADS. Moreover, a new space gaming caching policy is adopted to coordinate the cache space management for two independent storage zones. Finally, we propose an optional lightweight node crash recovery mechanism to eliminate functional redundancy between the Ethereum protocol and the storage engine. The experimental results indicate that ChainKV outperforms the prior Ethereum systems by up to 1.99× and 4.20× for synchronization and query operations, respectively
Saidu Sokoto, Michał Król, Vladimir Stanković, Étienne Rivière
Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) serve as the backbone of numerous modern decentralized systems like the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Ethereum. As these systems evolve and expand, there is a growing need to enhance and optimize their underlying network support. In response to these challenges, we embark on the development of a new class of DHTs, marked by efficiency, security, and suitability for real-world deployments. We achieve this by making changes in the routing procedures, incorporating latency-aware routing, and harnessing recent hardware advancements.
This article presents a token aimed at ensuring the implementation of recurring bill-pay functionality on decentralized platforms utilizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Automatic periodic payments, including subscription-based services, have gained significant traction in traditional fiat-money industries due to the various advantages they offer to both service providers and customers. However, current Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) lack inherent non-custodial mechanisms to support such payment schemes. In this study, we propose an approach implemented through a smart contract that issues tokens on EVM-based networks, enabling the inclusion of recurring payments. This contract ensures compatibility with ERC-20 and ERC-777 standards, offering the potential to establish a novel token standard.
Digital currencies have become an increasingly popular topic of discussion in recent years. Digital currencies are virtual forms of currency that operate outside the traditional banking system. They are based on cryptographic technologies and are often decentralized, meaning they are not controlled by a central authority. The most well-known digital currency is Bitcoin, but there are many other types of digital currencies in existence. Digital currencies can be used to purchase goods and services online or transferred between users directly without intermediaries like banks. They have gained popularity due to their potential for increased security, transparency, and efficiency in financial transactions. In today's digital currency, a variety of digital currencies emerge in an endless stream, and crypto technology is also constantly developing to improve the security of digital currency payments. In section 2, this paper briefly introduces several common digital currencies and encryption algorithms, and in section 3, this paper introduces these typical digital currencies in detail through the analysis of representative literature. Bitcoin is mainly encrypted based on blockchain technology, and its encryption principle is mainly divided into three parts: public key encryption, hash function, and proof of work. Ethereum is a distributed blockchain platform with encryption principles similar to Bitcoin, including public key encryption and hashing algorithms. Ripple is a distributed cryptocurrency. Its encryption principle mainly adopts the public-private key encryption system. In terms of encryption technology, blockchain technology, the Hash algorithm and symmetric and asymmetric encryption are also popular encryption algorithms in digital currencies.
Fragmented energy data silos pose a significant obstacle to efficient data management and collaboration in the European energy sector. Creating a unified European energy dataspace aligned with GAIA-X principles (transparency, data security, data protection, interoperability and scalability) is crucial to overcoming this challenge. This paper presents a solution that combines a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based data marketplace with the International Data Spaces (IDS) Architecture. By utilizing DLT, the proposed marketplace enables secure and transparent tracking of energy datasets within the dataspace. Integration with the IDSA ensures compliance with GAIA-X, promoting interoperability and seamless data exchange. It enables the consolidation of diverse data sources into a unified dataspace, eliminating silos. This fosters efficient and secure data exchange, promotes transparency and trust, and supports collaboration and innovation in the energy sector.
The peer-to-peer (P2P) based distributed file system known as IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) has recently garnered significant attention as a decentralized storage solution in the Web3 landscape. However, IPFS operates on a voluntary participation basis, which can limit data availability. To enhance automated data availability on IPFS, an extended solution known as IPFS Cluster is being developed. This solution leverages a data replication approach. This paper proposes a Reed-Solomon based distributed content storage mechanism for IPFS, enhancing data availability and significantly improving storage efficiency compared to traditional replication methods. This technology is anticipated to serve as a fundamental building block for efficiently storing, managing, and utilizing large-scale, high-capacity digital content in various Web3 environments.
Logging is a critical function to enable auditing and enhance security of distributed applications. This paper describes the design of Mnemosyne, a distributed logger running over Named Data Networking(NDN), to meet this need for NDN-based distributed applications. Mnemosyne assures the immutability of logged events by interlocking all event records in a DAG-based ledger. Mnemosyne provides a high logging throughput and system resiliency against network component failures. We implemented Mnemosyne and evaluated its design through an emulated deployment setting.
Leonhard Balduf, Maciej Korczyński, Onur Ascigil, Navin V. Keizer · 7 authors
Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) is one of the largest peer-to-peer filesystems in operation. The network is the default storage layer for Web3 and is being presented as a solution to the centralization of the web. In this paper, we present a large-scale, multi-modal measurement study of the IPFS network. We analyze the topology, the traffic, the content providers and the entry points from the classical Internet. Our measurements show significant centralization in the IPFS network and a high share of nodes hosted in the cloud. We also shed light on the main stakeholders in the ecosystem. We discuss key challenges that might disrupt continuing efforts to decentralize the Web and highlight multiple properties that are creating pressures toward centralization.
BRC-20 (short for Bitcoin Request for Comment 20) token mania was a key storyline in the middle of 2023. Setting it apart from conventional ERC-20 token standards on Ethereum, BRC-20 introduces non-fungibility to Bitcoin through an editable field in each satoshi (0.00000001 Bitcoin, the smallest unit), making them unique. In this paper, we pioneer the exploration of this concept, covering its intricate mechanisms, features, and state-of-the-art applications. By analyzing the multi-dimensional data spanning over months with factual investigations, we conservatively comment that while BRC-20 expands Bitcoin's functionality and applicability, it may still not match Ethereum's abundance of decentralized applications and similar ecosystems.
ANDREI BOGDAN STANESCU, CATALIN VAJAIALA, Dragoş Cocîrlea
Abstract In the current digital world, ensuring efficient storage capabilities and increased data privacy, as well as high data availability and redundancy, are critical key performance indicators for organizations striving for customer excellence. To achieve these, a modern two-layer technical architecture is proposed in this study. The core layer of the solution is an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) Cluster that leverages the distributed storage concept, and the second is an Ethereum-based blockchain that leverages privacy and immutability mechanisms. Next, the two-layer architecture is implemented and deployed to enhance data protection, as well as optimize data storage and access for a mid-size organization. The results reveal the enhancement of IPFS to overcome its privacy concerns via role-based access and cryptographic techniques. Moreover, the benefits of utilizing IPFS for data redundancy, efficient storage, and transfer through its distributed nature were reported. Finally, the integration of the IPFS Cluster with the Ethereum-based blockchain, as well as the overall benefits, we described.
K. Suganthi, Krishnansh Singh, Sajal Tayal, Mandeep Singh
In today’s rapidly growing economy with everincreasing inflation, the purchasing power of money keeps decreasing as time pass by therefore it becomes important to invest money to counter the growing inflation. Real estate investment has been a proven hedge against inflation over many decades. The Real Estate sector despite so much contribution to the financial system has seen relatively less innovation in terms of technology. Blockchain has shown a great affinity towards managing real estate properties and all the transactions involved. Investment in this sector usually requires huge capital as a result, small retail investors are not able to invest. This is where Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) comes to the rescue of retail investors. This paper focuses on the ERC721M token standard and proposed architecture as to how a REIT company can make use of ERC721M to design their Decentralized Asset organization, or simply DAO, which will help them in adapting web3 technologies and bring automation in their procedure of operations with maximum transparency, We have also done a comparative analysis of ERC721Mv/s Standard Deployment and why ERC721M is the best token standard to be suited for creating smart contract interface for such an operation.
Abstract This paper presents a quantitative model to assess the performance of a NFT (Non-Fungible Token)-centered chain as referred to as a NFT Chain in this paper. The model was introduced in [17] and more extensive simulations are conducted and the results are presented in this work. NFT chain in general stores its data distributed across on chain (e.g., NFT registration ledger data and an address pointing at the data located off chain such as meta data table and ultimate digital asset's data) due to the high cost to store the potentially high volume of data for digital assets. Therefore, it is expected that the overall performance of NFT chain is primarily to be dominated and bound by the off-chain performance. The proposed performance model employing an embedded Markovian queueing process model, tracks a bivariate state of the NFT chain such that \(\left(\varvec{i},\varvec{j}\right)\) where \(\varvec{i}\) stochastically tracks the number of slots of the transactions executed on chain and \(\varvec{j}\) stochastically tracks the number of transactions off chain as well, and the states transition as determined by \({\varvec{\lambda }}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{n}}\), \({\varvec{\lambda }}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{f}\varvec{f}}\), \(\varvec{\mu }\), and the number of slots in the current block. Extensive numerical simulations are performed to validate the efficacy of the model. The primary set of variables used in the simulations consists of \({\varvec{\lambda }}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{n}}\), \({\varvec{\lambda }}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{f}\varvec{f}}\), \(\varvec{\mu }\) and the average number of slots of the transactions during a block posting, \(\varvec{L}\), is simulated based on both \({\varvec{L}}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{n}}\)and \({\varvec{L}}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{f}\varvec{f}}\); and the average waiting time \(\varvec{W}\) based on both \({\varvec{W}}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{n}}\)and \({\varvec{W}}_{\varvec{o}\varvec{f}\varvec{f}}\), in an intermingled manner in order to take into account of the nature of NFT transactions executed across on- and off-chain without loss of generality. The simulation results in [17] has demonstrated a good agreement with the expected and intuitive trends. The results of more extensive simulations are presented in this paper to further demonstrate the efficacy and versatility of the proposed model. Ultimately, the proposed NFT chain model will serve as a sound theoretical foundation for the design of NFT chains from the performance's perspective.
Blockchain has been widely deployed in various fields, such as finance, education, and public services. Blockchain has decentralized mechanisms with persistency and auditability and runs as an immutable distributed ledger. However, blockchain systems suffer from critical scalability issues. In this paper, we present three challenges of the scalability issues, namely, poor data synchronization, time-consuming query process, and excessive data load, and discuss possible research directions from the storage hierarchy perspective.
Decentralized and anonymous transactions have become possible with the advent of cryptocurrency. However, these characteristics make it challenging to trace the origins of illegally obtained funds. Furthermore, mixing services, which sever a connection between the previous and current owners of cryptocurrencies, are used to increase the anonymity of cryptocurrencies. Tornado Cash, which is frequently used as a mixing service, has been reported as a destination for a significant number of cryptocurrencies that are associated with criminal activity. In this research, we cluster and analyze the deposit addresses in Tornado Cash, list potential criminal addresses, and clarify the actual situation of money laundering in Tornado Cash. Moreover, we focus on NFT phishing incidents and determine the circumstances of the incidents and the total amount of damage relating to Tornado Cash.
Srivatsan Sridhar, Onur Ascigil, Navin V. Keizer, François Genon · 8 authors
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is currently the largest decentralized storage solution in operation, with thousands of active participants and millions of daily content transfers. IPFS is used as remote data storage for numerous blockchain-based smart contracts, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), and decentralized applications. We present a content censorship attack that can be executed with minimal effort and cost, and that prevents the retrieval of any chosen content in the IPFS network. The attack exploits a conceptual issue in a core component of IPFS, the Kademlia Distributed Hash Table (DHT), which is used to resolve content IDs to peer addresses. We provide efficient detection and mitigation mechanisms for this vulnerability. Our mechanisms achieve a 99.6\% detection rate and mitigate 100\% of the detected attacks with minimal signaling and computational overhead. We followed responsible disclosure procedures, and our countermeasures are scheduled for deployment in the future versions of IPFS.
Information is the key to success in every domain; this statement also applies to cryptocurrencies and blockchain domains. Beginning with Bitcoin back in 2009, which the anonymous Japanese Satoshi Nakamoto launched, blockchain technology emerged. This technology has revolutionized and continues to do so in digital transactions. In addition, this technology led to the further development of other cryptocurrencies that are active at these moments on the market. One class of cryptocurrencies obtained differently from classical bitcoin is those obtained due to web-based mining. The most known coins of this type are Monero, Dash, or Electroneum. This paper aims to analyze the web-based mining process of Monero and the whole process’s security. In addition, we want to explore the performance of the mining processes used in the user’s web browser. Moreover, finally, we aim to research the profitability of coins obtained due to web-browser mining, having as an object of study the cryptocurrency Monero.
Blockchains face many challenges in time, among which the ever-growing storage needs for blockchains’ data. In particular, Ethereum is quickly approaching the 1 TB storage limit for a node, what may significantly reduce the candidates able to run an Ethereum fullnode. In this paper, we propose a new synchronization and storage strategy for Ethereum that takes full advantage of the Distributed Hash Table implemented in all clients but left unused. By digging into the history of Ethereum’s synchronization and storage strategies, we justify why such distribution of storage duties among peers makes much sense today. We implemented our solution in the official Ethereum client Geth and validated its smooth operation on a private Ethereum instance. Our solution can save around 60% of the storage of a node (360 GB) which represents a total of 12 PB of data at the network scale, while being fully backward compatible with current clients.