117 research outputs found
A privacy-preserving, decentralized and functional Bitcoin e-voting protocol
Bitcoin, as a decentralized digital currency, has caused extensive research
interest. There are many studies based on related protocols on Bitcoin,
Bitcoin-based voting protocols also received attention in related literature.
In this paper, we propose a Bitcoin-based decentralized privacy-preserving
voting mechanism. It is assumed that there are n voters and m candidates. The
candidate who obtains t ballots can get x Bitcoins from each voter, namely nx
Bitcoins in total. We use a shuffling mechanism to protect voter's voting
privacy, at the same time, decentralized threshold signatures were used to
guarantee security and assign voting rights. The protocol can achieve
correctness, decentralization and privacy-preservings. By contrast with other
schemes, our protocol has a smaller number of transactions and can achieve a
more functional voting method.Comment: 5 pages;3 figures;Smartworld 201
Secure Computation with Non-Equivalent Penalties in Constant Rounds
It is known that Bitcoin enables to achieve fairness in secure computation by imposing a monetary penalty on adversarial parties. This functionality is called secure computation with penalties. Bentov and Kumaresan (Crypto 2014) showed that it could be realized with O(n) rounds and O(n) broadcasts for any function, where n is the number of parties. Kumaresan and Bentov (CCS 2014) posed an open question: "Is it possible to design secure computation with penalties that needs only O(1) rounds and O(n) broadcasts?" In this work, we introduce secure computation with non-equivalent penalties, and design a protocol achieving this functionality with O(1) rounds and O(n) broadcasts only. The new functionality is the same as secure computation with penalties except that every honest party receives more than a predetermined amount of compensation while the previous one requires that every honest party receives the same amount of compensation. In particular, both are the same if all parties behave honestly. Thus, our result gives a partial answer to the open problem with a slight and natural modification of functionality
An empirical analysis of smart contracts: platforms, applications, and design patterns
Smart contracts are computer programs that can be consistently executed by a
network of mutually distrusting nodes, without the arbitration of a trusted
authority. Because of their resilience to tampering, smart contracts are
appealing in many scenarios, especially in those which require transfers of
money to respect certain agreed rules (like in financial services and in
games). Over the last few years many platforms for smart contracts have been
proposed, and some of them have been actually implemented and used. We study
how the notion of smart contract is interpreted in some of these platforms.
Focussing on the two most widespread ones, Bitcoin and Ethereum, we quantify
the usage of smart contracts in relation to their application domain. We also
analyse the most common programming patterns in Ethereum, where the source code
of smart contracts is available.Comment: WTSC 201
A Novel Framework to Teach Hands-on Laboratory Exercises in Blockchains
With the growing demand for blockchain developers there are few hands-on labs/ modules available for training current students, the future developer professionals. Our goal is to develop series of hands-on labs that would address every application of blockchain and thus provide practical tools to educate Cybersecurity professionals and equip them to address the cyber security in blockchain. The labs developed will be a part of a new Cyber Security educational framework. There will be a modularized approach to the lab development, to focus development on the skills for each aspect of blockchain and app. The labs will also include integration of all the aspects of blockchain, along with its application. This approach will help students to systematically learn and comprehend the fundamental concepts. The labs would be built based on real-life scenarios, to enhance their ability to understand and solve real-life cybersecurity problems. This integrated approach would expose the students to the cost to risk involved at each stage of the blockchain application, arming them with required information to educate the management
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