Blockchain Papers

Maria Carannante, Oday Masoudi, Alessandro Mazzoccoli

No abstract is available for this record.

Bhabani Sankar Samantray, K Hemant Kumar Reddy

Abstract In the era of artificial intelligence, the AI-generated image (AIGI) market is an emerging sector that faces significant challenges related to ownership, privacy, and security. These issues, especially prevalent in NFT markets, can be effectively addressed by the integration of advanced technologies such as blockchain, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). This study proposes a comprehensive trading framework that incorporates state-of-the-art methodologies and algorithms to simulate the entire AI image trading process. For image generation, the framework utilises diffusion models (LCM-LoRA + SDXL) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), employing LCM-LoRA and LCMScheduler from Stable Diffusion XL Base 1.0 to accelerate image generation and reduce inference steps. Implementation is carried out using PyTorch and the Diffusers library, running on a CUDA-enabled GPU. The generated images are securely stored in the distributed IPFS storage system, while decentralised trading is facilitated through integration with the Hyperledger MiniFab tool. The framework supports multiple trading mechanisms, including Blind English Sealed-Bid Auctions (BESEA), fixed-price auctions with a first-come, first-served (FCFS) model, Dutch auctions with royalty redistribution, and fractionalized auction trading. To ensure secure communication between buyers and sellers, the BB84 QKD protocol is employed to generate a shared secret key with information-theoretic security. The generated key is processed through key sifting to derive a symmetric key, which is zero-padded to the 256-bit length required by AES-256-CBC. It is then directly used as the encryption key to encrypt AI-generated images and their associated metadata before storage on IPFS. Experimental evaluation across four auction mechanisms and up to 250 NFTs shows the Dutch auction achieving the highest sales volume (up to 211 NFTs sold) and the Fractionalized auction the highest revenue ( 98,270). The IPFS storage maintains sub-0.75-second upload latency with 100% file verification success. Blockchain-layer benchmarking across 100–500 participants records mean chaincode latency ranging from approximately 22 to 53 seconds and throughput of 0.018–0.045 TPS.

Vaibhav Singh, Dr. Jogender

With the rapid expansion of digital communication and data storage, cybersecurity has become a critical concern for organizations and individuals. Cryptographic methods play a vital role in ensuring data confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. This study explores the mathematical foundations of encryption, blockchain security, and post-quantum cryptography. Traditional encryption methods such as symmetric and asymmetric encryption rely on number theory and complex mathematical problems like integer factorization and discrete logarithms. Blockchain security is reinforced by cryptographic hashing and digital signatures, ensuring tamper-proof transactions. However, the advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to existing cryptographic protocols, necessitating the development of post-quantum cryptographic methods. This research provides an in-depth analysis of current cryptographic techniques, evaluates their effectiveness, and discusses future advancements in quantum-resistant cryptography.

Bilal El Issaoui

MRS‑AUTH is a novel authentication framework that achieves deniability even against an active verifier who may adaptively query candidate credentials both before and after receiving a challenge. Unlike ring signatures or zero‑knowledge proofs – where the prover holds a single secret witness that can be extracted under coercion – MRS‑AUTH exploits the multiplicative structure of linear Diophantine equations. Through recursive decomposition, it generates a Diophantine forest of exponentially many syntactically valid credential chains. The authentic chain is sampled uniformly from this forest and committed together with k‑1 indistinguishable aliases using a fixed‑shape Merkle tree with dummy leaves, eliminating structure‑ and length‑based side‑channel leakage. The Forest Symmetry Theorem proves that all chains are structurally information‑theoretically indistinguishable. However, the full index‑anonymity against an active verifier is computational and bounded in Theorem 6.6 by k · ε_SHA3 + ε_coll + negl(λ). For cryptographic scales N ∼ 10⁴², the Ehrhart‑based continuous‑volume approximation yields an effective entropy exceeding 371 bits, with a statistical distance to the perfect uniform distribution of Δ ≤ 2⁻¹³⁵ – well below the 128‑bit security threshold. Empirical validation via exact enumeration and a chi‑squared test (χ²/dof ≈ 0.985) confirms the uniformity. A constant‑time Rust implementation, leveraging the subtle and zeroize crates, exhibits an execution time of approximately 0.12 ms across four orders of magnitude of N, demonstrating practical deployability. The work also formalises the Active Verifier Game model, a new adversarial definition that quantitatively captures coercion resistance in a post‑quantum setting.

Rayaan Pasha

This paper presents a threshold-cryptographic architecture for reducing the risk of premature leakage of digital examination papers during the interval between question-paper finalization and examination administration. The proposed design separates the data path from the control path. Examination content is encrypted using a fresh AES-256-GCM key, while the key is protected through envelope encryption under a key-release service. The capability to release that key is distributed using (k,n)-Shamir secret sharing across independent custodians, preventing any single custodian from unilaterally authorizing early release. At the scheduled release time, a quorum-based time authority provides an independently attested timestamp. Once the required time quorum and custodian threshold are satisfied, the key-release service reconstructs its private key within an HSM boundary, unwraps the examination key, and derives recipient-specific keys for individual examination centers. These keys are separately wrapped under each center's registered public key, limiting the impact of a compromise at any single examination center. The paper presents an actor and trust model, an explicit adversary model, a step-by-step release protocol, a threat-to-control security analysis, and a qualitative comparison with physical custody, blockchain-anchored distribution, and time-lock-puzzle-based timed-release cryptography. It also explicitly discusses residual risks, including custodian collusion, post-decryption optical or physical exfiltration, hardware and supply-chain trust, and compromise of the time-authority quorum. The architecture is presented as a research design rather than a claim of unconditional leak prevention. Future work includes implementing a prototype, evaluating quantitative performance, replacing reconstruct-and-zeroize key handling with threshold decryption, evaluating post-quantum key-encapsulation mechanisms, and conducting a formal mechanized security proof.

E D Baymurzina, A S Simakova, V D Poroshina, V N Yurina

No abstract is available for this record.