Issue #46
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Bitcoin Crypto–Bounties for Quantum Capable Adversaries.
TLDR:
In Bitcoin, the mechanism for ensuring ownership of funds relies on ECDSA. Bitcoin’s cryptography must be updated; in fact there are plenty post-quantum cryptographic schemes to choose from if one is willing to sacrifice speed and storage.
Such a scheme will be implemented in Bitcoin at some point and the majority of users will be able to safely lock their funds with quantum resistant signatures.
However, in the extreme scenario of a Quantum Computer appearing without notice, not all users would be able to benefit from this upgrade. Interestingly, the recommended practices in Bitcoin would offer some level of quantum resistance that allows re- covering funds safely, but unfortunately, many users do not follow these.
This paper analyses Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for the amount of funds secured by exposed public keys; or, from the perspective of a quantum research group, the “crypto–bounty” for engineering a powerful quantum computer.
It first describes the setting in which a quantum enabled adversary would operate if it were to start attacking the Bitcoin network considering developers and users take immediate measures to protect their funds and recover the network.
Next, it presents two models of attackers: one that can run Shor’s algorithm virtually instantly and a slower one that might be more realistic for the first generations of attackers.
The paper also describes attack vectors for maximising the crypto–bounty, i.e. the amount of funds that are impossible to recover by legitimate users in the presence of the attacker.
Lastly, a study of the evolution of the crypto–bounty in Bitcoin and its most significant fork, Bitcoin Cash, is presented.
Authors: Dragos I. Ilie*, Kostis Karantias†, and William J. Knottenbelt*,
Affiliations: * Imperial College London and † IOHK.
Security:
1. Paper Title: Securing Proof-of-Work Ledgers via Checkpointing.
Summary: The first rigorous study of checkpointing as a mechanism to protect PoW ledgers from 51% attacks.
Authors: Dimitris Karakostas*† and Aggelos Kiayias*†,
Affiliations: * University of Edinburgh and † IOHK.
2. Paper Title: Fair and Decentralized Exchange of Digital Goods.
Summary: A solution to the problem of trading real-world private information using only cryptographic protocols and a public blockchain to guarantee the fairness of transactions.
Authors: Ariel Futoransky*, Carlos Sarraute†‡, Daniel Fernandez†, Matias Travizano†, and Ariel Waissbein*,
Affiliations: * Disarmista, †Wibson, and Grandata‡.
3. Paper Title: Proof of Necessary Work: Succinct State Verification with Fairness Guarantees.
Summary: A new distributed payment system which uses Incrementally Verifi- able Computation (IVC) to enable constant-time verification.
Authors: Assimakis A. Kattis* and Joseph Bonneau*,
Affiliations: * NYU.
4. Paper Title: SodsBC: Stream of Distributed Secrets for Quantum-safe Blockchain.
Summary: SodsBC uses only quantum-safe cryptographic tools and copes with at most f malicious (aka Byzantine) participants, where the number of all participants n = 3f + 1.
Authors: Shlomi Dolev* and Ziyu Wang*†,
Affiliations: * Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and † Beihang University.
5. Paper Title: Characterizing EOSIO Blockchain.
Summary: A large-scale measurement study of the EOSIO blockchain and its associated DApps.
Authors: Yuheng Huang*, Haoyu Wang*, Lei Wu†, Gareth Tyson‡, Xiapu Luo§, Run Zhang*, Xuanzhe Liu✜, Gang Huang✜, and Xuxian Jiang$,
Affiliations: * Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, † Zhejiang University, ‡ Queen Mary University of London, § The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, ✜ Peking University, and $PeckShield, Inc.
6. Paper Title: On the Feasibility of Sybil Attacks in Shard-Based Permissionless Blockchains.
Summary: An analytical model to calculate the probability of successful Sybil attack to shard-based permissionless blockchains.
Authors: Tayebeh Rajab*, Mohammad Hossein Manshaei*‡, Mohammad Dakhilalian*, Murtuza Jadliwala†, and Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman‡,
Affiliations: * Isfahan University of Technology, † University of Texas at San Antonio, and ‡ Florida International University.
7. Paper Title: Congestion Attacks in Payment Channel Networks.
Summary: This paper evaluates an attack that locks funds in channels between honest participants that are potentially far away from the attacker, giving the attacker the ability to disrupt the transfer of payments throughout the network
Authors: Ayelet Mizrahi* and Aviv Zohar*,
Affiliations: * The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Privacy:
1. Paper Title: Phantom: An Efficient Privacy Protocol Using zk-SNARKs Based on Smart Contracts.
Summary: This paper presents an efficient privacy protocol using zk-SNARKs based on smart contracts.
Authors: Xing Li*, Yi Zheng†, Kunxian Xia*, Tongcheng Sun‡, and John Beyler†,
Affiliations: * Unita Technology, † Qtum Chain Foundation, and ‡ Peking University.
Scalability:
1. Paper Title: Ethna: Channel Network with Dynamic Internal Payment Splitting.
Summary: A new technique that allows the intermediaries in the network to split the payments into several sub-payments.
Authors: Stefan Dziembowski* and Paweł Kędzior*,
Affiliations: * University of Warsaw.
Proofs:
No papers.
Consensus:
1. Paper Title: Blockchain using Proof-of-Interaction.
Summary: A better alternative to PoW which requires negligible computational power.
Authors: Jean-Philippe Abegg*†, Quentin Bramas*, and Thomas Noel*
Affiliations: * University of Strasbourg and † Transchain.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: Reports of a Blockchain Revolution in Trade Finance Are Greatly Exaggerated.
Summary: Belief in the potential of blockchain (or “distributed ledger”) technologies to revolutionize financial markets appears in some quarters to border on religious fanaticism.
Authors: Jane K. Winn*
Affiliations: * University of Washington.
2. Paper Title: A Regulatory Framework for Cryptocurrency.
Summary: The paper examines cryptocurrency in the crypto-finance ecosystem and identifies areas in which regulatory intervention is required.
Authors: Joseph Lee* and Florian Lheureux*,
Affiliations: * University of Exeter.
Upcoming Conferences:
Feb 19-21 - Stanford Blockchain Conference 2020 (Palo Alto)
March 07-08 - Cryptoeconomic Systems Conference 2020 by MIT Press (Boston)
April 13-16 - The 2nd IEEE International Conference on Decentralized Applications and Infrastructures (IEEE DAPPS 2020) (Oxford)
Past Conferences’ Videos:
Jobs:
RFPs:
“Significant research in the blockchain space is constantly being achieved by academic researchers. Unfortunately, a lot of this research is overlooked due to the massive numbers of papers being generated and the way they are being promoted and published. We’ve put together a categorized list of academic papers that can guide our subscribers and keep them up to date.”
Thanks for reading! If we missed anything, shoot us an email so that we can feature it in our next newsletter!
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.