Issue #77
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Decentralized Custody Scheme with Game-Theoretic Security.
TLDR:
Traditional custody service is typically endorsed by centralized authorities while decentralized custody scheme has become technically feasible since the emergence of digital assets, and furthermore it is badly needed by new applications such as blockchain and DeFi (Decentralized Finance).
This work proposes a framework of decentralized asset custody scheme that is able to support a large number of custodians and safely hold customer assets of multiple times value of the total security deposit.
The proposed custody scheme distributes custodians and assets into many custodian groups via combinatorial designs and random sampling, where each group fully controls the assigned assets.
Since every custodian group is small, the overhead cost is significantly reduced.
The liveness is also improved because even a single alive group would be able to process transactions.
The security of this custody scheme is guaranteed in the game-theoretic sense, such that any adversary corrupting a bounded fraction of custodians cannot move assets more than his own security deposit.
The security and performance of the constructions are analyzed, giving explicit examples with concrete numbers and figures for a better understanding of the results.
Authors: Zhaohua Chen*† and Guang Yang†,
Affiliations: * Peking University and † Conflux.
Security:
1. Paper Title: Practical Post-Quantum Few-Time Verifiable Random Function with Applications to Algorand.
Summary: The first practical post-quantum verifiable random function (VRF) that relies on well-known (module) lattice problems, namely Module-SIS and Module-LWE.
Authors: Muhammed F. Esgin*†, Veronika Kuchta*, Amin Sakzad*, Ron Steinfeld*, Zhenfei Zhang‡, Shifeng Sun*, and Shumo Chu§,
Affiliations: * Monash University, † Data61, CSIRO, ‡ Algorand, and § University of California, Santa Barbara.
2. Paper Title: CoVer: Collaborative Light-Node-Only Verification and Data Availability for Blockchains.
Summary: A decentralized protocol that allows a group of light nodes to collaboratively verify blocks even under a dishonest majority, achieving the same level of security for block validation as full nodes while only requiring a fraction of the work.
Authors: Steven Cao*, Swanand Kadhe*, and Kannan Ramchandran*.
Affiliations: * University of California, Berkeley.
3. Paper Title: EVMPatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts.
Summary: A framework to instantly and automatically patch faulty smart contracts.
Authors: Michael Rodler*, Wenting Li†, Ghassan O. Karame†, and Lucas Davi*,
Affiliations: * University of Duisburg-Essen and † NEC Laboratories Europe.
4. Paper Title: Ethna: Analyzing the Underlying Peer-to-Peer Network of the Ethereum Blockchain.
Summary: This work presents the Ethereum Network Analyzer (Ethna), a tool that probes and analyzes the P2P network of the Ethereum blockchain.
Authors: Taotao Wang*, Chonghe Zhao*, Qing Yang*, and Shengli Zhang*,
Affiliations: * Shenzhen University.
5. Paper Title: Computationally sound Bitcoin tokens.
Summary: A secure and efficient implementation of fungible tokens on Bitcoin.
Authors: Massimo Bartoletti*, Stefano Lande*, and Roberto Zunino*,
Affiliations: * Universita` degli Studi di Cagliari and † Universita` degli Studi di Trento.
6. Paper Title: Frontrunning on Automated Decentralized Exchange in Proof Of Stake Environment.
Summary: The analysis of frontrunning potential on Quipuswap - a decentralized exchange with automated marketmaking in the context of the Proof Of Stake family consensus algo over Tezos protocol, and a proposal to boost the frontrunning resistance of the protocol via the implementation of commit reveal scheme.
Authors: Andrey Sobol*,
Affiliations: * Madfish Solutions.
Privacy:
1. Paper Title: An Anonymous Trust-Marking Scheme on Blockchain Systems.
Summary: An anonymous trust-marking scheme on blockchain systems that is universally applicable to any cryptocurrency.
Authors: Teppei Sato*, Keita Emura†, Tomoki Fujitani*†, Kazumasa Omote*†,
Affiliations: * University of Tsukuba and † National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.
2. Paper Title: AMR: Autonomous Coin Mixer with Privacy Preserving Reward Distribution.
Summary: The first censorship resilient mixer, which can reward its users in a privacy-preserving manner for participating in the system.
Authors: Duc V. Le* and Arthur Gervais†,
Affiliations: * Purdue University and † Imperial College London.
Scalability:
No papers.
Proofs:
No papers.
Consensus:
1. Paper Title: Specification of the Giskard Consensus Protocol.
Summary: A rigorous specification of Giskard, suitable to serve as a reference in protocol implementation and in formal verification.
Authors: Elaine Li*, Karl Palmskog†, Mircea Sebe*, and Grigore Roşu*,
Affiliations: * Runtime Verification, Inc. and † KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: Facebook’s Libra: The Next Tax Challenge for the Digital Economy.
Summary: This paper lays out Facebook Libra’s original design concept, the problems it sought to solve, and the potential implications its successful launch would have on the redesign of the global tax system that is already in progress.
Authors: Allison Christians* and Mahwish Tazeem*
Affiliations: * McGill University.
2. Paper Title: Regulating Blockchain? A Retrospective Assessment of China’s Blockchain Policies and Regulations.
Summary: The assessment consists of three steps by asking the following: (1) What were the problems before any policies and regulations were issued? (2) What are the objectives of the existing policies and regulations? (3) Have these objectives been fulfilled?
Authors: Jiaying Christine Jiang*,
Affiliations: * NYU Law School.
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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