Issue #79
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: MuSig2: Simple Two-Round Schnorr Multi-Signatures.
TLDR:
A novel and simple two-round multi-signature scheme variant of the MuSig scheme.
The scheme is the first multi-signature scheme that simultaneously i) is secure under concurrent signing sessions, ii) supports key aggregation, iii) outputs ordinary Schnorr signatures, iv) needs only two communication rounds, and v) has similar signer complexity as regular Schnorr signatures.
It is the first multi-signature scheme in the DL setting that supports preprocessing of all but one rounds, effectively enabling a non-interactive signing process, without forgoing security under concurrent sessions.
The combination of all these features makes the proposed solution highly practical.
The security of the proposed work is proven under the one-more discrete logarithm (OMDL) assumption in the random oracle model, and the security of a more efficient variant in the combination of the random oracle and algebraic group models.
Authors: Jonas Nick*, Tim Ruffing*, and Yannick Seurin†,
Affiliations: * Blockstream and † ANSSI.
Security:
1. Paper Title: FORTIS: FORgeable TImeStamps Thwart Selfish Mining.
Summary: Generalized formulas for the calculation of revenue and profitability from SM-type attacks and two different SM-type attacks on the state-of- the-art mitigation algorithm “Freshness Preferred”.
Authors: Osman Biçer* and Alptekin Küpçü*,
Affiliations: * Koc University.
Privacy:
1. Paper Title: Sword: An Opaque Blockchain Protocol.
Summary: A blockchain design that hides the transaction graph from Blockchain Analyzers.
Authors: Farid Elwailly*,
Affiliations: * undisclosed.
Scalability:
1. Paper Title: Towards Cross-Blockchain Smart Contracts.
Summary: A framework which allows to invoke a smart contract from another blockchain.
Authors: Markus Nissl*, Emanuel Sallinger*, Stefan Schulte*, and Michael Borkowski†,
Affiliations: * TU Wien and † German Aerospace Center.
2. Paper Title: Fundamental Properties of the Layer Below a Payment Channel Network.
Summary: For a PCN, a first layer can be used that delivers only a reduced set of properties compared to a blockchain.
Authors: Matthias Grundmann* and Hannes Hartenstein*,
Affiliations: * Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
3. Paper Title: Garou: An Efficient and Secure Off-Blockchain Multi-Party Payment Hub.
Summary: A secure N-party payment hub that allows multiple parties to perform secure off-chain coin transfers.
Authors: Yongjie Ye* and Weigang Wu*,
Affiliations: * Sun Yat-Sen University.
Proofs:
1. Paper Title: Simulation Extractable Versions of Groth’s zk-SNARK Revisited.
Summary: Revisiting two SE variants of Groth16 to get the best of both constructions.
Authors: Karim Baghery*, Zaira Pindado†, and Carla Rafols†,
Affiliations: * KU Leuven and † Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Consensus:
1. Paper Title: PoSAT: Proof-of-Work Availability and Unpredictability, without the Work.
Summary: A new PoS protocol PoSAT which can provably achieve dynamic availability fully without any additional assumptions.
Authors: Soubhik Deb†, Sreeram Kannan†, David Tse*,
Affiliations: * Stanford University and † University of Washington.
2. Paper Title: Byzantine Ordered Consensus without Byzantine Oligarchy.
Summary:
Authors: Yunhao Zhang†, Srinath Setty*, Qi Chen*, Lidong Zhou*, and Lorenzo Alvisi†
Affiliations: * Microsoft Research and † Cornell University.
3. Paper Title: On (multi-stage) Proof-of-Work blockchain protocols.
Summary: This work analyzes permissionless blockchain protocols, whose distributed consensus algorithm lies on a Proof-of-Work composed of k ≥ 1 sequential hash-puzzles.
Authors: P. D’Arco* and F. Mogavero*,
Affiliations: * University of Salerno.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: A Case for a Currencyless Economy Based on Bartering with Smart Contracts.
Summary: This work suggests the re–introduction of bartering to create a cryptocurrencyless, currencyless, and moneyless economy segment.
Authors: Carlos Molina–Jimenez*, Hazem Danny Al Nakib†, Linmao Song‡, Ioannis Sfyrakis§, and Jon Crowcroft*
Affiliations: * University of Cambridge, † University College London, ‡ Independent researcher, and § Newcastle University.
2. Paper Title: Putting Numbers on the Coins: The Pricing and Performance of Initial Coin Offerings.
Summary: This paper examines the performance of cryptocurrencies issued in initial coin offerings (ICOs) over a three-year period after the initial exchange listing.
Authors: Paul P. Momtaz*,
Affiliations: * UCLA.
Conferences, Journals, & CFPs:
October 21-23 - The second ACM conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT’20) (New York City)
Conferences’ Videos:
Jobs:
RFPs:
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