Issue #28
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Proof-of-Burn.
TLDR:
Proof-of-burn has been used as a mechanism to destroy cryptocurrency in a verifiable manner and has not been previously formally studied as a primitive.
This work introduces proof-of-burn as a cryptographic primitive for the first time and defines it as a protocol which consists of two algorithms: (i) a burn address generator and (ii) a burn address verifier.
While performing the study, foundational properties such as unspendability, binding, and uncensorability are considered.
Next, a novel and simple construction which is flexible and can be adapted for use in existing cryptocurrencies is presented.
This construction is proven secure in the Random Oracle and requires cryptocurrencies to use public key hashes for address generation.
Following that, a cryptocurrency proof-of-burn bootstrapping mechanism is presented that does not require miners to connect to external blockchain networks.
This work is validated through a comprehensively tested production grade implementation of the bootstrapping mechanism in Ethereum written in Solidity, which is also available as open source software.
In addition, experimental measurements for the cost of burn verification are presented in current Ethereum prices showing that burn verification costs $0.28 per transaction.
Authors: Kostis Karantias*, Aggelos Kiayias*‡, and Dionysis Zindros*†,
Affiliations: * IOHK, † University of Athens, and ‡ University of Edinburgh.
Security:
1. Paper Title: Encrypted Distributed Hash Tables.
Summary: This work initiates the study of end-to-end encryption in DHTs and the many systems they support.
Authors: Archita Agarwal* and Seny Kamara*
Affiliations: * Brown University.
2. Paper Title: Short Paper: Towards Characterizing Sybil Attacks in Cryptocurrency Mixers.
Summary: A closer look at Sybil attacks within the context of mixers in an attempt to characterize such attacks.
Authors: Mikerah Quintyne-Collins*,
Affiliations: * HashCloak Inc.
Privacy:
1. Paper Title: Anonymous Transactions with Revocation and Auditing in Hyperledger Fabric.
Summary: A private transaction authorization in Hyperledger Fabric based on delegatable anonymous credentials.
Authors: Dmytro Bogatov*, Angelo De Caro†, Kaoutar Elkhiyaoui†, and Bjorn Tackmann‡,
Affiliations: * Boston University, † IBM Research - Zurich, and ‡ DFINITY.
2. Paper Title: Applications on traceable range proofs from fully regulatable privacy-preserving blockchains.
Summary: Multiple modifications and applications on traceable Borromean range proof (T-BoRP) and traceable Bulletproofs range proof (TBuRP), which realize functionalities including multi-currency regulation, regulatable private assets transfer, auxiliary privacy calculation and secure joint regulation by usage of zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic commitments and MPC protocols.
Authors: Wulu Li*, Lei Chen*, Xin Lai*, Xiao Zhang*, and Jiajun Xin*,
Affiliations: * Onething.
Scalability:
1. Paper Title: Cerberus Channels: Incentivizing Watchtowers for Bitcoin.
Summary: An extension of Lightning channels, reward watchtowers that can remain secure against bribing and collusion; thus participants can safely go offline for an extended period of time.
Authors: Georgia Avarikioti*, Orfeas Stefanos Thyfronitis Litos†, and Roger Wattenhofer*,
Affiliations: * ETH Zürich and † University of Edinburgh.
2. Paper Title: SoK: Communication Across Distributed Ledgers.
Summary: The first systematic exposition of protocols for cross-chain communication.
Authors: Alexei Zamyatin*†, Mustafa Al-Bassam‡, Dionysis Zindros§$, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias✜, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez¶, Aggelos Kiayias$%, and William J. Knottenbelt*,
Affiliations: * Imperial College London, † SBA Research, ‡ University College London, § University of Athens, ✜ EPFL, ¶ TU Wien, $ IOHK, and % University of Edinburgh.
3. Paper Title: Prism: Scaling Bitcoin by 10,000×.
Summary: A throughput of over 70,000 transactions per second and confirmation latency of tens of seconds on networks of up to 1000 EC2 Virtual Machines.
Authors: Lei Yang*, Vivek Bagaria†, Gerui Wang‡, Mohammad Alizadeh*, David Tse†, Giulia Fanti§, and Pramod Viswanath‡,
Affiliations: * MIT CSAIL, † Stanford University, ‡ UIUC, and § CMU.
Proofs:
No papers.
Consensus Protocols:
1. Paper Title: KRNC: New Foundations for Permissionless Byzantine Consensus and Global Monetary Stability.
Summary: This paper applies biomimetic engineering to the problem of permissionless Byzantine consensus and achieves results that surpass the prior state of the art by four orders of magnitude.
Authors: Clinton Ehrlich* and Anna Guzova†,
Affiliations: * MGIMO University and † AO UniCredit Bank.
2. Paper Title: Redactable Proof-of-Stake Blockchain with Fast Confirmation.
Summary: A novel mechanism based on verifiable random functions to randomly select voters on different slots in a private and non-interactive way, and also offers public verifiability for redactable chains.
Authors: Jing Xu*, Xinyu Li*, Lingyuan Yin*, Bingyong Guo*, Han Feng*, and Zhenfeng Zhang*,
Affiliations: * Institute of Software - Chinese.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: Smart Contracts: Reducing Risks in Economic Exchange with No-Party Trust?
Summary: This work argues the kind of trust that underpins smart contracts and the circumstances that would facilitate novel forms of economic exchange.
Authors: Helen Eenmaa-Dimitrieva* and Maria José Schmidt-Kessen†,
Affiliations: * University of Tartu School of Law and † CBS Law.
Conferences:
Oct 05-06 Cryptoeconomic Systems Summit by MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, MA)
Oct 21-23 - Advances in Financial Technologies (Zurich) - Call for Papers
Oct 28-29 - CryptoEconomics Security Conference (Berkeley, CA) - Call for Papers
Nov 11-15 - ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (London) - Call for Papers
Jobs:
“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.”
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