Issue #15
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Market Design for a Blockchain-Based Financial System.
TLDR:
An extended abstract on a theory of long-run equilibrium in blockchain-based financial systems.
The developed theory elucidates the key market design features that separate proof of work and proof of stake approaches in the long run and when each design might each be appropriate.
With weak relational contracts or substantial concerns about outside interference, proof of work designs may be preferable.
With regions that have local institutions that are reliable enough to make delegation feasible, proof of stake designs can lead to efficiency gains and improvements in governance.
Authors: Christian Catalini*, Ravi Jagadeesan†, and Scott Duke Kominers†,
Affiliations: * Calibra Inc. and † Harvard University.
Security:
1. Paper Title: Temporary Censorship Attacks in the Presence of Rational Miners.
Summary: Three different bribery contracts on the blockchain where each uniquely manipulates the rewards that a rational miner would receive.
Authors: Fredrik Winzer*, Benjamin Herd*, and Sebastian Faust*,
Affiliations: * Robert Bosch GmbH.
2. Paper Title: Sucker punch makes you richer: The threat of rational miners.
Summary: Sucker Punch Attacks in Markov Decision Process
(SPA-MDP) model to present two possible cases that can break PoW-based blockchains, including migrating mining power from one chain to the other, and renting cloud mining power.
Authors: Runchao Han*†, Zhimei Sui‡, Jiangshan Yu*, Joseph Liu*, and Shiping Chen†,
Affiliations: * Monash University, † CSIRO-Data61, and ‡ East China Normal University.
3. Paper Title: DDH-based Multisignatures with Public Key Aggregation.
Summary: A new multisignature scheme with public key aggregation that is secure under the Decisional Diffie-Hellman Assumption against rogue key attacks.
Authors: Duc-Phong Le*, Guomin Yang† and Ali Ghorbani*,
Affiliations: * Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity and † University of Wollongong.
4. Paper Title: EVulHunter: Detecting Fake Transfer Vulnerabilities for EOSIO's Smart Contracts at Webassembly-level.
Summary: A static analysis tool that can be used to detect vulnerabilities from EOSIO WASM code automatically.
Authors: Lijin Quan*, Lei Wu†, and Haoyu Wang*,
Affiliations: * Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and † PeckShield.
5. Paper Title: Resolving the Multiple Withdrawal Attack on ERC20 Tokens.
Summary: This work evaluates 10 proposed mitigations for the “multiple withdrawal attack”. and develops a set of criteria that encompass backwards compatibility, interoperability, adherence to the ERC20 standard, and attack mitigation.
Authors: Reza Rahimian*, Shayan Eskandari*, and Jeremy Clark*,
Affiliations: * Concordia University.
Privacy:
No Papers.
Scalability:
No Papers.
Proofs:
1. Paper Title: Efficient Lattice-Based Zero-Knowledge Arguments with Standard Soundness: Construction and Applications.
Summary: A new user-friendly approach for constructing efficient zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge for a large class of lattice-based relations.
Authors: Rupeng Yang*†, Man Ho Au†, Zhenfei Zhang‡, Qiuliang Xu*, Zuoxia Yu†, and William Whyte§,
Affiliations: * Shandong University, † The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, ‡ Algorand, and § Qualcomm Technologies Incorporated.
Consensus Protocols:
1. Paper Title: Managed Blockchain Based Cryptocurrencies with Consensus Enforced Rules and Transparency.
Summary: A novel cryptocurrency architecture which is a hybrid approach where a managed cryptocurrency is maintained through distributed open consensus based methods.
Authors: Peter Mell*,
Affiliations: * National Institute of Standards and Technology.
2. Paper Title: SybilQuorum: Open Distributed Ledgers Through Trust Networks.
Summary: A new consensus mechanism that allows peers to establish a distributed ledger without the need for either proof-of-work, or other physical resources, or proof-of-stake to eliminate Sybil attacks.
Authors: Alberto Sonnino* and George Danezis*,
Affiliations: * University College London.
3. Paper Title: Bonded Mining: Difficulty Adjustment by Miner Commitment.
Summary: A protocol that enhances PoW mining with a proactive approach to difficulty adjustment so that inter-block times are always near their desired value despite sudden hash rate changes.
Authors: George Bissias*, David Thibodeau†, and Brian N. Levine*,
Affiliations: * UMass Amherst and † Florida Department of Corrections.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: The Strategic Role of Logistics in the Industry 4.0 Era.
Summary: The potential use of emerging technologies for transforming the logistics function from being mundane to exciting, and for enabling the logistics function as a competitive lever, a social value creator, and a sustainability enabler.
Authors: Christopher S. Tang* and Lucas P. Veelenturf†,
Affiliations: * UCLA and † Eindhoven University of Technology.
2. Paper Title: Stable Cryptocurrencies - First Order Principles.
Summary: Stable cryptocurrency designs will play increasingly important roles in the evolution of decentralized economies.
Authors: Craig Calcaterra*, Wulf A. Kaal†, and Vadhindran Rao*,
Affiliations: * Metropolitan State University and † University of St. Thomas.
3. Paper Title: Crypto-Property: Response to Public Consultation by the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce of the LawTech Delivery Panel.
Summary: Under what circumstances, if any, would the following be characterized as personal property: (i) a cryptoasset; and (ii) a private key?
Authors: Tatiana Cutts*,
Affiliations: * London School of Economics.
4. Paper Title: Brawl at the Gates: How Distributed Ledger Technology Is Transforming the Financial Services Sector.
Summary: How DTL has been influencing the traditional finance industry and to identify a set of feasible paths for the transformation of the financial services by the DLT ecosystem.
Authors: Mieszko Mazur*,
Affiliations: * IESEG School of Management.
5. Paper Title: Blockchain and Government.
Summary: We are now in the early phase of experimental adoption. However, the most interesting and disruptive developments will occur in the second phase when all of these partial adoptions begin to join up. It is at this phase that we will start to see significant innovation in government made possible by blockchain technology adoption.
Authors: Jason Potts*,
Affiliations: * RMIT University.
6. Paper Title: Decentralization - A Primer on the New Economy.
Summary: The author examines the evolution of decentralized solutions for commerce and society as well as associated opportunities and obstacles.
Authors: Wulf A. Kaal*,
Affiliations: * University of St. Thomas.
7. Paper Title: Financial Technology and Hedge Funds.
Summary: This work illustrates that the rise of blockchain applications in private investment funds already has an impact on the industry’s front office and investment functions, in the securing of crypto assets, but also in private investment fund managers’ attempts to satisfy the growth expectation of clients.
Authors: Wulf A. Kaal*,
Affiliations: * University of St. Thomas.
8. Paper Title: Blockchain-Based Securities Offerings.
Summary: The authors examine the tradeoffs between opportunities and risks of blockchain-based securities offerings.
Authors: Wulf A. Kaal* and Samuel Evans†,
Affiliations: * University of St. Thomas and † PriceWaterhouseCooper.
9. Paper Title: A Lucas Critique to the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm of the Bitcoin System.
Summary: An economic model of the Proof-of-Work based blockchain system that allows miners to pause operation when the expected reward is below the shutdown point.
Authors: Shunya Noda*, Kyohei Okumura†, Yoshinori Hashimoto‡,
Affiliations: * University of British Columbia, † University of Tokyo, and ‡ BUIDL, Ltd.
Conferences:
Sep 02-05 - International Summer School on Security & Privacy for Blockchains and Distributed Ledger Technologies (Vienna)
Oct 21-23 - Advances in Financial Technologies (Zurich) - Call for Papers
Oct 28-29 - CryptoEconomics Security Conference (Berkeley) - Call for Papers
Jobs:
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Security, Privacy, Blockchain, Machine Learning - Liquidity Network
Researcher, Security Modelling and Distributed Protocol Design - Dfinity
“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!
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