Longest-chain Attacks: Difficulty Adjustment and Timestamp Verifiability

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15312v1
• Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:59:42 GMT
• Title: Longest-chain Attacks: Difficulty Adjustment and Timestamp Verifiability
• Authors: Tzuo Hann Law, Selman Erol, Lewis Tseng,
• Abstract summary: We study an adversary who attacks a Proof-of-Work (POW) blockchain by selfishly constructing an alternative longest chain. We characterize optimal strategies employed by the adversary when a difficulty adjustment rule ala Bitcoin applies. We conclude that an adversary who faces a difficulty adjustment rule will find a longest-chain attack very challenging when timestamps are verifiable.
• Score: 1.414642081068942
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: We study an adversary who attacks a Proof-of-Work (POW) blockchain by selfishly constructing an alternative longest chain. We characterize optimal strategies employed by the adversary when a difficulty adjustment rule al\`a Bitcoin applies. As time (namely the times-tamp specified in each block) in most permissionless POW blockchains is somewhat subjective, we focus on two extreme scenarios: when time is completely verifiable, and when it is completely unverifiable. We conclude that an adversary who faces a difficulty adjustment rule will find a longest-chain attack very challenging when timestamps are verifiable. POW blockchains with frequent difficulty adjustments relative to time reporting flexibility will be substantially more vulnerable to longest-chain attacks. Our main fining provides guidance on the design of difficulty adjustment rules and demonstrates the importance of timestamp verifiability.

Related papers

• On the (in)security of Proofs-of-Space based Longest-Chain Blockchains [1.9934605058107087]
  We consider a security game in which the honest parties at any point control $phi>1$ times more space than the adversary.<n>We prove that no matter what chain selection rule is used, in this game the adversary can create a fork of length $phi2cdot rho / varepsilon$ that will be picked as the winner by the chain selection rule.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-05-20T20:35:00Z)
• Timestamp Manipulation: Timestamp-based Nakamoto-style Blockchains are Vulnerable [12.5487593380479]
  We introduce the Staircase-Unrestricted Uncle Maker (SUUM) the first block withholding attack targeting the timestamp-based Nakamoto-style blockchain.<n>Through block withholding, timestamp manipulation, and difficulty risk control, SUUM adversaries are capable of launching persistent attacks with zero cost and minimal difficulty risk characteristics.<n>This creates a self-reinforcing cycle that threatens the security of blockchains.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-05-08T15:20:19Z)
• CoT-Valve: Length-Compressible Chain-of-Thought Tuning [50.196317781229496]
  We introduce a new tuning and inference strategy named CoT-Valve, designed to allow models to generate reasoning chains of varying lengths. We show that CoT-Valve successfully enables controllability and compressibility of the chain and shows better performance than the prompt-based control.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-02-13T18:52:36Z)
• Zaptos: Towards Optimal Blockchain Latency [52.30047458198369]
  We introduce Zaptos, a parallel pipelined architecture designed to minimize end-to-end latency. Zaptos achieves a throughput of 20,000 transactions per second with sub-second latency.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-01-18T00:22:22Z)
• BlockFound: Customized blockchain foundation model for anomaly detection [47.04595143348698]
  BlockFound is a customized foundation model for anomaly blockchain transaction detection. We introduce a series of customized designs to model the unique data structure of blockchain transactions. BlockFound is the only method that successfully detects anomalous transactions on Solana with high accuracy.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-10-05T05:11:34Z)
• The Latency Price of Threshold Cryptosystem in Blockchains [52.359230560289745]
  We study the interplay between threshold cryptography and a class of blockchains that use Byzantine-fault tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols. Existing approaches for threshold cryptosystems introduce a latency overhead of at least one message delay for running the threshold cryptographic protocol. We propose a mechanism to eliminate this overhead for blockchain-native threshold cryptosystems with tight thresholds.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-07-16T20:53:04Z)
• Aegis: Tethering a Blockchain with Primary-Chain Stake [9.499962065972483]
  We present a tethered-chain protocol called Aegis. Aegis uses references from its blocks to primary blocks to define committees, checkpoints on the primary chain to perpetuate decisions, and resets to establish new committees when previous ones become obsolete.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-06-09T19:53:48Z)
• What Blocks My Blockchain's Throughput? Developing a Generalizable Approach for Identifying Bottlenecks in Permissioned Blockchains [0.3495246564946556]
  We develop a more unified and graphical approach for identifying bottlenecks in permissioned blockchains. We conduct in-depth case studies on Hyperledger Fabric and Quorum, two widely used permissioned blockchains.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-04-02T13:00:50Z)
• Tie-Breaking Rule Based on Partial Proof of Work in a Blockchain [2.9281463284266973]
  We propose another countermeasure that can be easily applied to existing proof of work blockchain systems. By using the characteristic of partial proof of work, the proposed method enables miners to choose the last-generated block in a chain tie. Only weak synchrony, which is already met by existing systems such as Bitcoin, is required for effective functioning.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-03-22T08:24:12Z)
• Generative AI-enabled Blockchain Networks: Fundamentals, Applications, and Case Study [73.87110604150315]
  Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has emerged as a promising solution to address challenges of blockchain technology. In this paper, we first introduce GAI techniques, outline their applications, and discuss existing solutions for integrating GAI into blockchains.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-01-28T10:46:17Z)
• How Hard is Takeover in DPoS Blockchains? Understanding the Security of Coin-based Voting Governance [10.452241620239814]
  Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) blockchains are governed by a committee of block producers elected via a coin-based voting system. This paper presents the first large-scale empirical study of the passive takeover resistance of EOSIO, Steem and TRON.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-10-28T05:22:54Z)
• ADESS: A Proof-of-Work Protocol to Deter Double-Spend Attacks [0.0]
  A principal vulnerability of a proof-of-work ("PoW") blockchain is that an attacker can re-write the history of transactions. We propose a modification to PoW protocols, called ADESS, that contains two novel features.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-09-25T21:50:23Z)
• Bitcoin-Enhanced Proof-of-Stake Security: Possibilities and Impossibilities [45.90740335615872]
  Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain in the world, supported by the immense hash power of its Proof-of-Work miners. Proof-of-Stake chains are energy-efficient, have fast finality but face several security issues. We show that these security issues are inherent in any PoS chain without an external trusted source. We propose a new protocol, Babylon, where an off-the-shelf PoS protocol checkpoints onto Bitcoin to resolve these issues.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-07-18T06:01:25Z)
• Towards Malicious address identification in Bitcoin [3.646526715728388]
  We generate the temporal and non-temporal feature set and train the Machine Learning (ML) algorithm over different temporal granularities to validate methods. A comparative analysis of results show that the behavior of addresses in and Bitcoin is similar with respect to in-degree, out-degree and inter-event time. We identify 3 suspects that showed malicious behavior across different temporal granularities.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-12-22T08:11:58Z)
• Quantum-resistance in blockchain networks [46.63333997460008]
  This paper describes the work carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank, the IDB Lab, LACChain, Quantum Computing (CQC), and Tecnologico de Monterrey to identify and eliminate quantum threats in blockchain networks. The advent of quantum computing threatens internet protocols and blockchain networks because they utilize non-quantum resistant cryptographic algorithms.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-06-11T23:39:25Z)
• Quantum Multi-Solution Bernoulli Search with Applications to Bitcoin's Post-Quantum Security [67.06003361150228]
  A proof of work (PoW) is an important cryptographic construct enabling a party to convince others that they invested some effort in solving a computational task. In this work, we examine the hardness of finding such chain of PoWs against quantum strategies. We prove that the chain of PoWs problem reduces to a problem we call multi-solution Bernoulli search, for which we establish its quantum query complexity.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-12-30T18:03:56Z)
• Learning from History for Byzantine Robust Optimization [52.68913869776858]
  Byzantine robustness has received significant attention recently given its importance for distributed learning. We show that most existing robust aggregation rules may not converge even in the absence of any Byzantine attackers.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-12-18T16:22:32Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.