Issue #54
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Can a Blockchain Keep a Secret?
TLDR:
Imagine posting an encrypted will to a blockchain to be opened only when the blockchain reaches consensus that the subject died. This work investigates the functionality of keeping a secret on the blockchain, in the context of public proof-of-stake blockchains.
In this context, to achieve a scalable solution we need the “will of the blockchain” to be represented by a small committee. At the same time, we need the solution to remain secure even against a mobile adversary that can corrupt different participants at different times, as long as it corrupts no more than a set fraction of the total stake at any single time interval.
However, this presents a challenge: If we use small committees, the adversary would have enough “corruption budget” to corrupt them all. One approach for addressing this challenge is using the player replacability property of systems such as Algorand where the members remain completely anonymous.
This work uses proactive secret sharing techniques, where the secret is shared among members of a dynamic committee which is refreshed every few rounds. Whenever the committee changes, a handover protocol is executed in which members of the current committee re-share the secret among the members of the next one, in a way that prevents the adversary from combining shares from different committees.
By the time the attacker learns the identities, there is no point in compromising these parties.
Authors: Fabrice Benhamouda*, Craig Gentry*, Sergey Gorbunov†✜, Shai Halevi*, Hugo Krawczyk*, Chengyu Lin‡, Tal Rabin*, and Leonid Reyzin†§
Affiliations: * Algorand Foundation, † Algorand Inc., ‡ Columbia University, § Boston University, and ✜ University of Waterloo.
Security:
1. Paper Title: Distributed Auditing Proofs of Liabilities.
Summary: The aim of the document is to serve as a point of reference for implementing interoperable systems that prove the total liabilities and obligations of an entity in a distributed way, where every user can check inclusion of their values/balances in the total amount reported.
Authors: Konstantinos Chalkias*, Kevin Lewi*, Payman Mohassel, and Valeria Nikolaenko,
Affiliations: * Facebook.
2. Paper Title: A Retrospective Analysis of User Exposure to (Illicit) Cryptocurrency Mining on the Web.
Summary: Analyzez the exposure of Web users to cryptocurrency mining.
Authors: Ralph Holz*, Diego Perino†, Matteo Varvello‡, Johanna Amann§, Andrea Continella*, Nate Evans✜, Ilias Leontiadis¶, Christopher Natoli, Quirin Scheitle^,
Affiliations: * University of Twente, † Telefonica, ‡ Brave Inc., § ICSI, ✜ University of Denver, ¶ Samsung AI, & University of Sydney, and ^ Technical University of Munich.
Privacy:
No papers.
Scalability:
1. Paper Title: Generalized Bitcoin-Compatible Channels.
Summary: The notion of generalized channels, which generalizes payment channels to support any application expressed in the scripting language of the underlying blockchain, thereby enhancing their expressiveness.
Authors: Lukas Aumayr*, Oguzhan Ersoy†, Andreas Erwig‡, Sebastian Faust‡, Kristina Hostakova‡, Matteo Maffei*, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez*, and Siavash Riahi‡,
Affiliations: * TU Wien, † TU Delft, and ‡ TU Darmstadt.
Proofs:
No papers.
Consensus:
1. Paper Title: Bracing A Transaction DAG with A Backbone Chain.
Summary: A novel two-layer framework of consensus, with a ledger in the form of a transaction DAG built on top of a delicately designed PoW- based backbone chain.
Authors: Shuyang Tang*‡, Qingzhao Zhang†, Zhengfeng Gao*, Jilai Zheng*, and Dawu Gu*,
Affiliations: * Shanghai Jiao Tong University, † University of Michigan, and ‡ Cryptape Information Technology Co.
2. Paper Title: Proof of Review (PoR): A New Consensus Protocol for Deriving Trustworthiness of Reputation Through Reviews.
Summary: Combined concepts from proof of stake and proof of reputation to ensure a blockchain system comes to consensus on an honest (non-malicious) congruent review.
Authors: Zachary Zaccagni* and Ram Dantu*,
Affiliations: * University of North Texas.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: Cryptocurrencies as Property: Ruscoe and Moore v Cryptopia Limited (In Liquidation) [2020] NZHC 728.
Summary: This note outlines the approach taken to ‘the property question’.
Authors: Paul Babie*, David Brown*, Ryan Catterwell†, and Mark Giancaspro*
Affiliations: * The University of Adelaide and † The University of Queensland.
2. Paper Title: Libra: A Concentrate of 'Blockchain Antitrust'.
Summary: This article aims to analyze the pro- and anticompetitive risks of the Li- bra project to address the overall desirability of the European Commission and the House of Representatives’ adversarial approaches.
Authors: Thibault Schrepel*
Affiliations: * Harvard.
Conferences & CFPs:
August 3-6 - The 2nd IEEE International Conference on Decentralized Applications and Infrastructures (IEEE DAPPS 2020) (Oxford)
October 21-23 - The second ACM conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT’20) (New York City)
Past Conferences’ Videos:
Jobs:
RFPs:
This newsletter is for informational purposes only. This content does not in any way constitute an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any investment solution or recommendation to buy or sell a security; nor it is to be taken as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. In fact, none of the information in this or other content on zk Capital should be relied on in any manner as advice. None of the authors, contributors, or anyone else connected with zk Capital, in any way whatsoever, can be responsible for your use of the information contained in this newsletter.