Issue #71
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Decentralized Custody Scheme with Game-Theoretic Security.
TLDR:
Decentralized custody finds applications in many scenarios related to blockchain and digital finance. A motivating example is the cross-chain asset mapping service which maps cryptoassets on one blockchain to tokens on another blockchain for inter-chain operability.
This work presents a framework of decentralized asset custody scheme which is secure in the game-theoretic sense.
More specifically, custodians and assets are distributed into multiple custodian groups, where each group consists of few custodians as its members and fully controls a small portion of in safekeeping assets.
The authentication of each custodian group can be implemented with voting or threshold signature among group members. Under this framework transactions can be processed more efficiently within group members, since the computational and communicational cost is significantly reduced.
The liveness and robustness is also improved since even a single alive custodian group is able to process some transactions.
The security of the proposed custody scheme is guaranteed in a game-theoretic sense: every custodian in this scheme must offer a fund as security deposit, and the system remains secure as long as an adversary cannot steal more asset than his deposit, i.e. comparing to launching an attack the adversary would be better off by just withdrawing the security deposit of custodian nodes under his control.
For an adversary corrupting a bounded fraction of custodians, the proposed decentralized custody scheme is able to safeguard customer assets of multiple times value of the total security deposit.
Authors: Zhaohua Chen*† and Guang Yang†,
Affiliations: * Peking University and † Conflux.
Security:
1. Paper Title: A Jumping Mining Attack and Solution.
Summary: This paper presents an approach to attack against the difficulty adjustment algorithm (abbreviated as DAA) used in blockchain mining, which has a direct impact on miners’ earnings.
Authors: Muchuang Hu*, Jiahui Chen†, Wensheng Gan‡, and Chien-Ming Chen§,
Affiliations: * People’s Bank of China Guangzhou, † Guangdong University of Technology, ‡ Jinan University, and § Shandong University of Science and Technology.
2. Paper Title: An Algebraic-Topological Approach to Processing Cross-Blockchain Transactions.
Summary: This paper represents the first work on topological methods for the cross-blockchain trans- action (CBT)—one of the most critical subsystems for the widespread deployment of next-generation blockchains from different domains.
Authors: Dongfang Zhao*,
Affiliations: * University of Washington.
Privacy:
1. Paper Title: Privacy-preserving targeted mobile advertising: A Blockchain-based framework for mobile ads.
Summary: This paper presents the design of a Blockchain-based framework for advertising platform in addition to implementation of its various critical components that allows the cloud system to privately compute access policies both for mobile users and ad systems for accessing various resources, private user profiling, private billing, privately requesting ads from the advertising system based on user interests, and devising various transactions for enabling advertising operations in Blockchain.
Authors: Imdad Ullah*, Salil S. Kanhere†, and Roksana Boreli‡,
Affiliations: * Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, † UNSW, and ‡ CSIRO Data61.
Scalability:
No papers.
Proofs:
No papers.
Consensus:
1. Paper Title: Sequential Proof-of-Work for Fair Staking and Distributed Randomness Beacons.
Summary: A new Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol based on a Sequential Proof-of-Work constructed with a veri- fiable random function (VRF) and a verifiable delay function (VDF) that has the following properties: a) all addresses with positive stake can participate; b) is fair because the coin stake is proportional to the distribution of rewards; c) is resistant to several classic blockchain attacks such as Sybil attacks, “Nothing- at-stake” attacks and “Winner-takes-all” attacks.
Authors: Jose ́ I. Orlicki*,
Affiliations: * cLabs.
2. Paper Title: Governance framework for Quipuswap - automated decentralized exchange.
Summary: This paper contains an analysis of decentralized exchange gover- nance as an effective framework for voting, profit sharing baking and partially updating the system with a possibility to create new pairs for decentralized exchange with automatic market-making.
Authors: Andrey Sobol and Anastasiia Kondaurova,
Affiliations: Not disclosed.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: New Models of ‘Intelligent Investing’ for the Post-Crisis Economy.
Summary: The financially driven corporate world has been losing its appeal over recent years and an anti-corporate sentiment has become more prevalent. There is a greater demand for better standards of corporate behavior and new metrics for judging corporate success.
Authors: Mark Fenwick* and Erik P. M. Vermeulen†,
Affiliations: * Kyushu University and † Tilburg University.
2. Paper Title: China’s Digital Currency Revolution and Implications for International Business Strategy.
Summary: This article briefly discusses why and how China’s Digital Currency Electronic Payments (DCEP) is leading the digital currency revolution and what this means for international business.
Authors: Jemma Xu* and Dan Prud'homme†,
Affiliations: * RedBlock Capital and † EMLV Business School Paris.
3. Paper Title: Regulating Blockchain? A Retrospective Assessment of China’s Blockchain Policies and Regulations.
Summary: This article provides a retrospective assessment of China’s existing blockchain policies and regulations.
Authors: Jiaying Christine Jiang*,
Affiliations: * NYU Law School,
4. Paper Title: Finite Blockchain Games.
Summary: This paper studies the dynamic construction of a blockchain by competitive miners.
Authors: Christian Ewerhart*,
Affiliations: * University of Zurich.
Conferences, Journals, & CFPs:
September 17-18 - Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology (CBT’2020) (United Kingdom)
October 21-23 - The second ACM conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT’20) (New York City)
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.