September list
If you feel a paper should belong to another category, or that we missed a relevant paper just let us know. Participation is most welcome!
Categories:
- Attacks and defenses
- Blockchain-general
- Blockchain-noncrypto uses
- Ethereum
- Financial
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Mathematical
- Proof of Work (PoW) alternatives
Attacks and defenses
Puncturable Signatures and Applications in Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol
Authors: Xinyu Li, Jing Xu, Xiong Fan, Yuchen Wang, Zhenfeng Zhang
Abstract: Proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain protocols are emerging as one of the most promising alternatives to the energy-consuming proof-of-work protocols. However, one particularly critical threat in the PoS setting is the well-known long-range attacks caused by secret key leakage (LRSL attack). Specifically, an adversary can attempt to compromise accounts possessing substantial stake at some past moment such that alter the chain history, violating the fundamental persistence property. Puncturable signatures, introduced by Bellare et al. (Eurocrypt’16), provide a satisfying solution to construct practical proof-of-stake blockchain resilient to the LRSL attack. In this paper, we provide an in-depth study of puncturable signatures and explore its applications in the proof-of-stake blockchain. We formalize a
security model that allows the adversary for adaptive signing and puncturing queries, and show a construction with efficient puncturing operations based on the Bloom filter data structure and strong Diffie-Hellman assumption. Finally, we use the puncturable signatures to construct practical proof-of-stake blockchain protocols to resist the LRSL attack, while previously the forward-secure signature (FS) is used to immunize this attack. We implement our scheme and provide experimental results showing that in comparison with FS our construction performs substantially better on signature size, signing and verification efficiency, significantly on key update efficiency.
Blockchain-general
SoK: Blockchain Technology and Its Potential Use Cases
Authors: Scott Ruoti, Ben Kaiser, Arkady Yerukhimovich, Jeremy Clark, Robert Cunningham
Abstract: Bitcoin’s success has led to significant interest in its underlying components, particularly Blockchain technology. Over 10 years after Bitcoin’s initial release, the community still suffers from a lack of clarity regarding what properties defines Blockchain technology, its relationship to similar technologies, and which of its proposed use-cases are tenable and which are little more than hype. In this paper we answer four common questions regarding Blockchain technology: (1) what exactly is Blockchain technology, (2) what capabilities does it provide, and (3) what are good applications for Blockchain technology, and (4) how does it relate to other approache distributed technologies (e.g., distributed databases). We accomplish this goal by using grounded theory (a structured approach to gathering and analyzing qualitative data) to thoroughly analyze a large corpus of literature on Blockchain technology. This method enables us to answer the above questions while limiting researcher bias, separating thought leadership from peddled hype and identifying open research questions related to Blockchain technology. The audience for this paper is broad as it aims to help researchers in a variety of areas come to a better understanding of Blockchain technology and identify whether it may be of use in their own research.
An Analysis of Blockchain Consistency in Asynchronous Networks: Deriving a Neat Bound
Authors: Jun Zhao
Abstract: Formal analyses of blockchain protocols have received much attention recently. Consistency results of Nakamoto’s blockchain protocol are often expressed in a quantity $c$, which denotes the expected number of network delays before some block is mined. With $μ$ (resp., $ν$) denoting the fraction of computational power controlled by benign miners (resp., the adversary), where $μ+ ν= 1$, we prove for the first time that to ensure the consistency property of Nakamoto’s blockchain protocol in an asynchronous network, it suffices to have $c$ to be just slightly greater than $\frac{2μ}{\ln (μ/ν)}$. Such a result is both neater and stronger than existing ones. In the proof, we formulate novel Markov chains which characterize the numbers of mined blocks in different rounds.
Onionchain: Towards Balancing Privacy and Traceability of Blockchain-Based Applications
Authors: Yue Zhang, Jian Weng, Jiasi Weng, Ming Li, Weiqi Luo
Abstract: With the popularity of Blockchain comes grave security-related concerns. Achieving privacy and traceability simultaneously remains an open question. Efforts have been made to address the issues, while they may subject to specific scenarios. This paper studies how to provide a more general solution for this open question. Concretely, we propose Onionchain, featuring a suite of protocols, offering both traceability and privacy. As the term implies, our Onionchain is inspired by Onion routing. We investigate the principles of Onion routing carefully and integrate its mechanism together with Blockchain technology. We advocate the Blockchain community to adopt Onionchain with the regards of privacy and traceability. To this end, a case-study of Onionchain, which runs in the context of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), is proposed, providing the community a guideline to follow. Systematic security analysis and extensive experiments are also conducted to validate our secure and cost-effective Onionchain.
A Tale of Two Trees: One Writes, and Other Reads. {Optimized Oblivious Accesses to Large-Scale Blockchains}
Authors: V. Duc Le, Tengana Lizzy Hurtado, Adil Ahmad, Mohsen Minaei, Byoungyoung Lee, Aniket Kate
Abstract: The Bitcoin network has offered a new way of securely performing financial transactions over the insecure network. Nevertheless, this ability comes with the cost of storing a large (distributed) ledger, which has become unsuitable for personal devices of any kind. Although the simplified payment verification (SPV) clients can address this storage issue, a Bitcoin SPV client has to rely on other Bitcoin nodes to obtain its transaction history and the current approaches offer no privacy guarantees to the SPV clients.
This work presents $T^3$, a trusted hardware-secured Bitcoin full client that supports efficient oblivious search/update for Bitcoin SPV clients without sacrificing the privacy of the clients. In this design, we leverage the trusted execution and attestation capabilities of a trusted execution environment (TEE) and the ability to hide access patterns of oblivious random access memory (ORAM) to protect SPV clients’ requests from a potentially malicious server. The key novelty of $T^3$ lies in the optimizations introduced to conventional ORAM, tailored for expected SPV client usages. In particular, by making a natural assumption about the access patterns of SPV clients, we are able to propose a two-tree ORAM construction that overcomes the concurrency limitation associated with traditional ORAMs. We have implemented and tested our system using the current Bitcoin Unspent Transaction Output database. Our experiment shows that the system is feasible to be deployed in practice while providing strong privacy and security guarantees to Bitcoin SPV clients.
Agent-based Simulation of Blockchains
Authors: Edoardo Rosa, Gabriele D’Angelo, Stefano Ferretti
Abstract: In this paper, we describe LUNES-Blockchain, an agent-based simulator of blockchains that is able to exploit Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS) techniques to offer a high level of scalability. To assess the preliminary implementation of our simulator, we provide a simplified modelling of the Bitcoin protocol and we study the effect of a security attack on the consensus protocol in which a set of malicious nodes implements a filtering denial of service (i.e. Sybil Attack). The results confirm the viability of the agent-based modelling of blockchains implemented by means of PADS.
Blockchain-noncrypto uses
Towards the Uses of Blockchain in Mobile Health Services and Applications: A Survey
Authors: Amaral João Santos, M. R. Pedro Inácio, M. Bruno Silva
Abstract: With the advent of Bitcoin and blockchain, the growth and adaptation of cryptographic features and capabilities were quickly extended to new and underexplored areas, such as healthcare. Currently, blockchain is being implemented mainly as a mechanism to secure Electronic Health Records (EHRs). However, new studies have shown that this technology can be a powerful tool in empowering patients to control their own health data, as well for enabling a fool-proof health data history and establishing medical responsibility. With the advent of mobile health (m-Health) sustained on service-oriented architectures, the adaptation of blockchain mechanisms into m-Health applications creates the possibility for a more decentralized and available healthcare service. Hence, this paper presents a review of the current security best practices for m-Health including blockchain technologies in healthcare. Moreover, it discusses and elaborates on identified open-issues and potentialities regarding the uses of Blockchain. Finally, the paper proposes conceptual solutions for future blockchain implementations for m-Health Services and Applications.
BAFFLE : Blockchain based Aggregator Free Federated Learning
Authors: Paritosh Ramanan, Kiyoshi Nakayama, Ratnesh Sharma
Abstract: A key aspect of Federated Learning (FL) is the requirement of a centralized aggregator to select and integrate models from various user devices. However, infeasibility of an aggregator due to a variety of operational constraints could prevent FL from being widely adopted. In this paper, we introduce BAFFLE, an aggregator free FL environment. Being powered by the blockchain, BAFFLE is inherently decentralized and successfully eliminates the constraints associated with an aggregator based FL framework. Our results indicate that BAFFLE provides superior performance while circumventing critical computational bottlenecks associated with the blockchain
Blockchain of Signature Material Combining Cryptographic Hash Function and DNA Steganography
Authors: Yixin Zhang
Abstract: An ideal signature material and method, which can be used to prove the authenticity of a physical item and against forgery, should be immune to the fast developments in digital and engineering technologies. Herein, the design of signature material combining cryptographic hash function and DNA steganography is proposed. The encrypting materials are used to construct a series of time-stamped records (blockchain) associated with published hash values, while each DNA-encrypted block is associated with a set of DNA keys. The decrypted DNA information, as digital keys, can be validated through a hash function to compare with the published hash values. The blocks can also be cross-referenced among different related signatures. While both digital cryptography and DNA steganography can have large key size, automated brutal force search is far more labor intensive and expensive for DNA steganography with wet lab experiments, as compared to its digital counterpart. Moreover, the time-stamped blockchain structure permits the incorporation of new cryptographic functions and DNA steganographies over time, thus can evolve over time without losing the continuous history line.
Biometric Blockchain: A Secure Solution for Intelligent Vehicle Data Sharing
Authors: Bing Xu, Tobechukwu Agbele, Qiang Ni, Richard Jiang
Abstract: The intelligent vehicle (IV) has become a promising technology that could revolutionize our life in smart cities sooner or later. However, it yet suffers from many security vulnerabilities. Traditional security methods are incapable to secure the IV data sharing against malicious attacks. Blockchain, as expected by both research and industry communities, has emerged as a good solution to address these issues. The major issues in IV data sharing are trust, data accuracy and reliability of data sharing in the communication channel. Blockchain technology, previously working for the cryptocurrency, has recently applied to build trust and reliability in peer-to-peer networks with similar topologies of IV data sharing. In this chapter, we present a new framework, namely biometric blockchain (BBC), for secure IV data sharing. In our new scheme, biometric information is exploited as a cue to record who is responsible in the data sharing activities, while the proposed BBC technology serves as the backbone of the IV data-sharing architecture. Hence, the proposed BBC technology provides a more reliable trust environment between the vehicles while personal identities are traceable in the proposed new scheme.
Toward a Blockchain-based Platform to Manage Cybersecurity Certification of IoT devices
Authors: Ricardo Neisse, L. José Hernández-Ramos, N. Sara Matheu, Gianmarco Baldini, Antonio Skarmeta
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to propose a blockchain-based platform to enhance transparency and traceability of cybersecurity certification information motivated by the recently adopted EU Cybersecurity Act. The proposed platform is generic and intended to support the trusted exchange of cybersecurity certification information for any electronic product, service, or process. However, for the purposes of this paper, we focus on the case study of the cybersecurity certification of IoT devices, which are explicitly referenced in the recently adopted Cybersecurity Act as one of the main domains where it is highlighted the need for an increased level of trust.
Machine Learning in/for Blockchain: Future and Challenges
Authors: Fang Chen, Hong Wan, Hua Cai, Guang Cheng
Abstract: Machine learning (including deep and reinforcement learning) and blockchain are two of the most noticeable technologies in recent years. The first one is the foundation of artificial intelligence and big data, and the second one has significantly disrupted the financial industry. Both technologies are data-driven, and thus there are rapidly growing interests in integrating them for more secure and efficient data sharing and analysis. In this paper, we review the research on combining blockchain and machine learning technologies and demonstrate that they can collaborate efficiently and effectively. In the end, we point out some future directions and expect more researches on deeper integration of the two promising technologies.
User-Controlled Privacy-Preserving User Profile Data Sharing based on Blockchain
Authors: Kumar Ajay Shrestha, Ralph Deters, Julita Vassileva
Abstract: The tremendous technological advancement in the last few decades has brought many enterprises to collaborate in a better way while making intelligent decisions. The use of Information Technology tools in obtaining data of people’s everyday life from various autonomous data sources allowing unrestricted access to user data has emerged as an important practical issue and has given rise to legal implications. Various innovative models for data sharing and management have privacy and centrality issues. To alleviate these limitations, we have incorporated blockchain in user modeling. In this paper, we constructed a decentralized data sharing architecture with MultiChain blockchain in the travel domain, which is also applicable to other similar domains including education, health, and sports. Businesses that operate in the tourism industries including travel and tour agencies, hotels and resorts, shopping malls are connected to the MultiChain and they share their user profile data via stream in the MultiChain. The paper presents the hotel booking service for an imaginary hotel as one of the enterprise nodes, which collects user profile data with proper validation and will allow users to decide which of their data to be shared thus ensuring user control over their data and the preservation of privacy. The data from the repository is converted into an open data format while sharing via stream in the blockchain so that other enterprise nodes, after receiving the data, can easily convert them and store into their own repositories. The paper presents an evaluation of the performance of the model by measuring the latency and memory consumption with three test scenarios that mostly affect the user experience. The node responded quickly in all of these cases.
Distributed creation of Machine learning agents for Blockchain analysis
Authors: Zvezdin Besarabov, Todor Kolev
Abstract: Creating efficient deep neural networks involves repetitive manual optimization of the topology and the hyperparameters. This human intervention significantly inhibits the process. Recent publications propose various Neural Architecture Search (NAS) algorithms that automate this work. We have applied a customized NAS algorithm with network morphism and Bayesian optimization to the problem of cryptocurrency predictions, where it achieved results on par with our best manually designed models. This is consistent with the findings of other teams, while several known experiments suggest that given enough computing power, NAS algorithms can surpass state-of-the-art neural network models designed by humans. In this paper, we propose a blockchain network protocol that incentivises independent computing nodes to run NAS algorithms and compete in finding better neural network models for a particular task. If implemented, such network can be an autonomous and self-improving source of machine learning models, significantly boosting and democratizing the access to AI capabilities for many industries.
Blockchain-Powered Software Defined Network-Enabled Networking Infrastructure for Cloud Management
Authors: Praveen Fernando, Jin Wei
Abstract: Cloud architecture has become a valuable solution for different applications, such as big data analytics, due to its high-degree of availability, scalability and strategic value. However, there still remain challenges in managing cloud architecture, in areas such as cloud security. In this paper, we exploit software-defined networking (SDN) and blockchain technologies to secure cloud management platforms from a networking perspective. We develop a blockchain-powered SDN-enabled networking infrastructure in which the integration between blockchain-based security and autonomy management layer and multi-controller SDN networking layer is defined to enhance the integrity of the control and management messages. Furthermore, our proposed networking infrastructure also enables the autonomous bandwidth provisioning to enhance the availability of cloud architecture. In the simulation section, we evaluate the performance of our proposed blockchain-powered SDN-enabled networking infrastructure by considering different scenarios.
Usage of Permissioned Blockchain Architecture for Big Data in Electronic Medical Records
Authors: Projjal Gupta
Abstract: With the advent of blockchain technology, multiple research avenues and platforms for dialogue have opened up. However technology transfer to the pubic has not been implemented, such that regular public can access and make use of secure and decentralized software. Most blockchain solutions till date deal with financial applications or monetary transactions, which may not be helpful or be accessible to the general public, especially the lower levels of the financial society. Medi-Chain is a people-first medical blockchain with a usable desktop application and interface which makes use of cutting-edge blockchain technology along with BFT consensus protocols to ensure highly secure and private medical data records. This paper aims to bring about a change in how blockchains-as-a-service is perceived and how adoption of new technology is largely based on usability and ease of adoption.
Ethereum
Techniques and Applications for Crawling, Ingesting and Analyzing Blockchain Data
Authors: Evan Brinckman, Andrey Kuehlkamp, Jarek Nabrzyski, J. Ian Taylor
Abstract: As the public Ethereum network surpasses half a billion transactions and enterprise Blockchain systems becoming highly capable of meeting the demands of global deployments, production Blockchain applications are fast becoming commonplace across a diverse range of business and scientific verticals. In this paper, we reflect on work we have been conducting recently surrounding the ingestion, retrieval and analysis of Blockchain data. We describe the scaling and semantic challenges when extracting Blockchain data in a way that preserves the original metadata of each transaction by cross referencing the Smart Contract interface with the on-chain data. We then discuss a scientific use case in the area of Scientific workflows by describing how we can harvest data from tasks and dependencies in a generic way. We then discuss how crawled public blockchain data can be analyzed using two unsupervised machine learning algorithms, which are designed to identify outlier accounts or smart contracts in the system. We compare and contrast the two machine learning methods and cross correlate with public Websites to illustrate the effectiveness such approaches.
On the Ethereum Blockchain Structure: a Complex Networks Theory Perspective
Authors: Stefano Ferretti, Gabriele D’Angelo
Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the Ethereum blockchain using the complex networks modeling framework. Accounts acting on the blockchain are represented as nodes, while the interactions among these accounts, recorded on the blockchain, are treated as links in the network. Using this representation, it is possible to derive interesting mathematical characteristics that improve the understanding of the actual interactions happening in the blockchain. Not only, by looking at the history of the blockchain, it is possible to verify if radical changes in the blockchain evolution happened.
Financial
Estimating the volatility of Bitcoin using GARCH models
Authors: Asante Samuel Gyamerah
Abstract: In this paper, an application of three GARCH-type models (sGARCH, iGARCH, and tGARCH) with Student t-distribution, Generalized Error distribution (GED), and Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution are examined. The new development allows for the modeling of volatility clustering effects, the leptokurtic and the skewed distributions in the return series of Bitcoin. Comparative to the two distributions, the normal inverse Gaussian distribution captured adequately the fat tails and skewness in all the GARCH type models. The tGARCH model was the best model as it described the asymmetric occurrence of shocks in the Bitcoin market. That is, the response of investors to the same amount of good and bad news are distinct. From the empirical results, it can be concluded that tGARCH-NIG was the best model to estimate the volatility in the return series of Bitcoin. Generally, it would be optimal to use the NIG distribution in GARCH type models since time series of most cryptocurrency are leptokurtic.
Are Bitcoins price predictable? Evidence from machine learning techniques using technical indicators
Authors: Asante Samuel Gyamerah
Abstract: The uncertainties in future Bitcoin price make it difficult to accurately predict the price of Bitcoin. Accurately predicting the price for Bitcoin is therefore important for decision-making process of investors and market players in the cryptocurrency market. Using historical data from 01/01/2012 to 16/08/2019, machine learning techniques (Generalized linear model via penalized maximum likelihood, random forest, support vector regression with linear kernel, and stacking ensemble) were used to forecast the price of Bitcoin. The prediction models employed key and high dimensional technical indicators as the predictors. The performance of these techniques were evaluated using mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and coefficient of determination (R-squared). The performance metrics revealed that the stacking ensemble model with two base learner (random forest and generalized linear model via penalized maximum likelihood) and support vector regression with linear kernel as meta-learner was the optimal model for forecasting Bitcoin price. The MAPE, RMSE, MAE, and R-squared values for the stacking ensemble model were 0.0191%, 15.5331 USD, 124.5508 USD, and 0.9967 respectively. These values show a high degree of reliability in predicting the price of Bitcoin using the stacking ensemble model. Accurately predicting the future price of Bitcoin will yield significant returns for investors and market players in the cryptocurrency market.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Pushing Software-Defined Blockchain Components onto Edge Hosts
Authors: Mayra Samaniego, Ralph Deters
Abstract: With the advent of blockchain technology, some management tasks of IoT networks can be moved from central systems to distributed validation authorities. Cloud-centric blockchain implementations for IoT have shown satisfactory performance. However, some features of blockchain are not necessary for IoT. For instance, a competitive consensus. This research presents the idea of customizing and encapsulating the features of blockchain into software-defined components to host them on edge devices. Thus, blockchain resources can be provisioned by edge devices (e-miners) working together closer to the things layer in a cooperative manner. This research uses Edison SoC as e-miners to test the software-defined blockchain components.
IoT based Smart Access Controlled Secure Smart City Architecture Using Blockchain
Authors: Rourab Paul, Nimisha Ghosh, Suman Sau, Amlan Chakrabarti, Prasant Mahaoatra
Abstract: Standard security protocols like SSL, TLS, IPSec etc. have high memory and processor consumption which makes all these security protocols unsuitable for resource constrained platforms such as Internet of Things (IoT). Blockchain (BC) finds its efficient application in IoT platform to preserve the five basic cryptographic primitives, such as confidentiality, authenticity, integrity, availability and non-repudiation. Conventional adoption of BC in IoT platform causes high energy consumption, delay and computational overhead which are not appropriate for various resource constrained IoT devices. This work proposes a machine learning (ML) based smart access control framework in a public and a private BC for a smart city application which makes it more efficient as compared to the existing IoT applications. The proposed IoT based smart city architecture adopts BC technology for preserving all the cryptographic security and privacy issues. Moreover, BC has very minimal overhead on IoT platform as well. This work investigates the existing threat models and critical access control issues which handle multiple permissions of various nodes and detects relevant inconsistencies to notify the corresponding nodes. Comparison in terms of all security issues with existing literature shows that the proposed architecture is competitively efficient in terms of security access control.
Mathematical
Barracuda: The Power of $\ell$-polling in Proof-of-Stake Blockchains
Authors: Giulia Fanti, Jiantao Jiao, Ashok Makkuva, Sewoong Oh, Ranvir Rana, Pramod Viswanath
Abstract: A blockchain is a database of sequential events that is maintained by a distributed group of nodes. A key consensus problem in blockchains is that of determining the next block (data element) in the sequence. Many blockchains address this by electing a new node to propose each new block. The new block is (typically) appended to the tip of the proposer’s local blockchain, and subsequently broadcast to the rest of the network. Without network delay (or adversarial behavior), this procedure would give a perfect chain, since each proposer would have the same view of the blockchain. A major challenge in practice is forking. Due to network delays, a proposer may not yet have the most recent block, and may, therefore, create a side chain that branches from the middle of the main chain. Forking reduces throughput, since only one a single main chain can survive, and all other blocks are discarded. We propose a new P2P protocol for blockchains called Barracuda, in which each proposer, prior to proposing a block, polls $\ell$ other nodes for their local blocktree information. Under a stochastic network model, we prove that this lightweight primitive improves throughput as if the entire network were a factor of $\ell$ faster. We provide guidelines on how to implement Barracuda in practice, guaranteeing robustness against several real-world factors.
A Generic Sharding Scheme for Blockchain Protocols
Authors: Zuphit Fidelman
Abstract: This thesis introduces a formal general framework for scaling blockchain protocols by sharding. The framework is modular and it can be adjusted for different needs or sets of assumptions. We prove that sharded protocols obtained by following our scheme (with correct modules in place) live up to the same safety and liveness guarantees as their non-sharded counterparts. The proof is general and relies on well-defined specifications of certain components. This lays the ground for simple proofs of correctness for sharded protocols obtained by following the proposed scheme.
The framework is not left as an obscure specification of some high level structure; explicit use is demonstrated by applying it to shard Algorand. As part of this concrete construction, a tamper-proof mechanism to assign nodes to shards is introduced. This mechanism is constructed by using verifiable random functions and can safely withstand a powerful adaptive adversary.
Proof of Work (PoW) alternatives
Artificial Intelligence BlockCloud (AIBC) Technical Whitepaper
Authors: Qi Deng
Abstract: The AIBC is an Artificial Intelligence and blockchain technology based large-scale decentralized ecosystem that allows system-wide low-cost sharing of computing and storage resources. The AIBC consists of four layers: a fundamental layer, a resource layer, an application layer, and an ecosystem layer.
The AIBC implements a two-consensus scheme to enforce upper-layer economic policies and achieve fundamental layer performance and robustness: the DPoEV incentive consensus on the application and resource layers, and the DABFT distributed consensus on the fundamental layer. The DABFT uses deep learning techniques to predict and select the most suitable BFT algorithm in order to achieve the best balance of performance, robustness, and security. The DPoEV uses the knowledge map algorithm to accurately assess the economic value of digital assets.
The AIBC is task-driven with a “blocks track task” dynamic sharding structure. It is a 2D BlockCloudwith side chains originated from the super nodes that track the progress of tasks. The 2D implementation makes it extremely efficient to evaluate the incremental economic value of additional knowledge contributed by each task. The dynamic sharding feature resolves the scalability issue and improves the efficiency further.
The AIBC has a dual-token implementation. In addition to the system-wide unified measure of value and transaction medium CFTX, each DSOL will have a separate numbering interval as a single distinguishable token, DSOLxxxx. The dual-token approach allows the CFTX be used for the entire AIBC ecosystem, while enables the transfer of DSOL ownership through auctions of DSOLxxxx tokens.
Prism: Scaling Bitcoin by 10,000x
Authors: Lei Yang, Vivek Bagaria, Gerui Wang, Mohammad Alizadeh, David Tse, Giulia Fanti, Pramod Viswanath
Abstract: Bitcoin is the first fully decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol and achieves a high level of security: the ledger it maintains has guaranteed liveness and consistency properties as long as the adversary has less compute power than the honest nodes. However, its throughput is only 7 transactions per second and the confirmation latency can be up to hours. Prism is a new blockchain protocol which is designed to achieve a natural scaling of Bitcoin’s performance while maintaining its full security guarantees. We present an implementation of Prism which achieves a throughput of 70,000 transactions per second and confirmation latencies of tens of seconds.
ABC: Asynchronous Blockchain without Consensus
Authors: Jakub Sliwinski, Roger Wattenhofer
Abstract: There is a preconception that a blockchain needs consensus. But consensus is a powerful distributed property with a remarkably high price tag. So one may wonder whether consensus is at all needed. We introduce a new blockchain architecture called ABC that functions despite not establishing consensus, and comes with an array of advantages: ABC is permissionless, deterministic, and resilient to complete asynchrony. ABC features finality and does not rely on costly proof-of-work. Without establishing consensus, ABC cannot support certain applications, in particular smart contracts that are open for interaction with unknown agents. However, our system is an advantageous solution for many important use cases, such as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
PUFchain: Hardware-Assisted Blockchain for Sustainable Simultaneous Device and Data Security in the Internet of Everything (IoE)
Authors: P. Saraju Mohanty, P. Venkata Yanambaka, Elias Kougianos, Deepak Puthal
Abstract: This article presents the first-ever blockchain which can simultaneously handle device and data security, which is important for the emerging Internet-of-Everything (IoE). This article presents a unique concept of blockchain that integrates hardware security primitives called Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to solve scalability, latency, and energy requirement challenges and is called PUFchain. Data management and security (and privacy) of data, devices, and individuals, are some of the issues in the IoE architectures that need to be resolved. Integrating the blockchain into the IoE environment can help solve these issues and helps in the aspects of data storage and security. This article introduces a new blockchain architecture called PUFchain and introduces a new consensus algorithm called “Proof of PUF-Enabled Authentication” (PoP) for deployment in PUFchain. The proposed PoP is the PUF integration into our previously proposed Proof-of-Authentication (PoAh) consensus algorithm and can be called “Hardware-Assisted Proof-of-Authentication (HA-PoAh)”. However, PUF integration is possible in the existing and new consensus algorithms. PoP utilizes PUFs which are responsible for generating a unique key that cannot be cloned and hence provide the highest level of security. A PUF uses the nanoelectronic manufacturing variations that are introduced during the fabrication of an integrated circuit to generate the keys. Hence, once generated from a PUF module, the keys cannot be cloned or generated from any other module. PUFchain uses a PUF and Hashing module which performs the necessary cryptographic functions. Hence the mining process is offloaded to the hardware module which reduces the processing times. PoP is approximately 1,000X faster than the well-established Proof-of-Work (PoW) and 5X faster than Proof-of-Authentication (PoAh).
Leave a Comment