|
Greetings IC3 Friends😊!
As we embrace the autumn season with knowledge, connections, and fresh academic perspectives, we're excited to wrap up an eventful month at IC3. Our Member & Friends Reception at SBC 2023 was an incredible success, fostering collaboration and inspiration. We're also thrilled to announce a new faculty member joining our ranks, and our researchers are gearing up for captivating academic presentations in upcoming events. Enjoy reading!😎
| |
We are delighted to extend a warm welcome to Prof. Christian Cachin from the University of Bern as the newest addition to our distinguished faculty team at IC3!
| |
|
Christian Cachin is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Bern, where he has been leading the Cryptology and Data Security Research Group since 2019. With a background in cryptography, he is interested in all aspects of security in distributed systems and especially in cryptographic protocols, consistency, consensus, blockchains, and cloud-computing security.
| |
-
The authors highlighted a limitation in current distributed or "threshold" cryptographic primitives, in which all parties are treated as identical, and correlated corruptions cannot be described. This study introduces a practical approach to generalize distributed cryptography to non-threshold assumptions.This enables administrators to define trust models using Boolean formula, which is then transformed into cryptographic encodings suitable for cryptographic primitives. By covering three general distributed cryptographic schemes: verifiable secret sharing, a common coin, and distributed signatures, the research showed that these schemes offer richer expressibility at no or insignificant extra cost.
Eating sandwiches: Modular and lightweight elimination of transaction reordering attacks by Orestis Alpos (University of Bern), Ignacio Amores-Sesar (University of Bern, IC3), Christian Cachin (University of Bern, IC3), Michelle Yeo (IST, Austria):
- The authors illustrated transaction-order randomization for preventing front-running or sandwich attacks, which are examples of the MEV problem in DeFi. The idea of using a randomized order has been folklore in the field, but no secure schemes have been presented so far. This paper addresses sandwich attacks through a novel construction that takes as input a blockchain protocol and outputs a new blockchain protocol with the same security, but in which sandwich attacks are not profitable. The protocol is fully decentralized with no trusted third parties or heavy cryptographic primitives and it relies on an economic security argument.
F3B: A Low-Overhead Blockchain Architecture with Per-Transaction Front-Running Protection by Haoqian Zhang (EPFL, IC3), Louis-Henri Merino (EPFL, IC3), Ziyan Qu (EPFL), Mahsa Bastankhah (EPFL), Vero Estrada-Galiñanes (EPFL, IC3), Bryan Ford (EPFL, IC3):
- The authors introduced Flash Freezing Flash Boys (F3B), a solution designed to counter front-running attacks in the blockchain ecosystem, especially in decentralized finance. F3B uses threshold cryptography, allowing users to encrypt transactions with a symmetric key. This key is revealed by a decentralized secret-management committee only after the consensus layer finalizes the transaction, preventing adversaries from exploiting advanced knowledge of pending transactions. Unlike other systems, F3B ensures transaction privacy. It also addresses front-running at the execution layer, making it compatible with various consensus algorithms and existing smart contracts.
QuePaxa: Escaping the Tyranny of Timeouts in Consensus by Pasindu Tennage (EPFL, IC3), Cristina Basescu (EPFL, IC3 Alum), Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias (IST Austria, Mysten Labs, IC3 Alum), Ewa Syta (Trinity College), Philipp Jovanovic (UCL, IC3 Alum), Vero Estrada-Galinanes (EPFL, IC3), Bryan Ford (EPFL, IC3):
- The authors introduced QuePaxa, the first consensus protocol that operates with outstanding efficiency in typical conditions without relying on timeouts. This innovative protocol utilizes advanced techniques to handle adverse scenarios like DoS attacks. QuePaxa enables multiple proposers to work concurrently without interference and uses short hedging delays. By employing a multi-armed-bandit optimization approach for leader selection, QuePaxa also adapts to changing conditions effectively. Experimental results demonstrate that QuePaxa achieves LAN and WAN throughputs comparable to Multi-Paxos and maintains robust performance in challenging conditions such as DoS attacks.
The Locality of Memory Checking by Weijie Wang (Yale University), Yujie Lu (Yale University), Charalampos Papamanthou (Yale University), Fan Zhang (Yale University, IC3 Alum):
- The authors investigated the fundamental relationship between locality and other complexity metrics. The research proved a lower bound on locality, and it also suggested several methods to bypass the lower bound at the cost of increasing other complexity.
| |
🌟Prof. Elaine Shi (CMU, IC3) delivered an insightful talk on how ORAM evolved from theory to large-scale real-world applications at a16z crypto research. Watch the full talk below. | |
🌟Prof. Ari Juels (Cornell, IC3) unveiled remarkable insights on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and introduced the Sting Framework (the security sentinel for TEEs & privacy-preserving systems) at a16z crypto research. Watch the full talk below and learn details via this blog post from IC3 Medium blog. | |
|
IC3 is proudly sponsoring AFT 2023 (Princeton University, New Jersey) this year and our community members are bringing workshops and research presentations to the conference! Don't miss the following opportunities to learn from IC3 researchers!
🌟Decentralized Credit Networks Workshop
IC3 Associate Director, Prof. Andrew Miller (IC3, UIUC) jointly with Prof. Aniket Kate (Duke University) will host a new "Decentralized Credit Networks" workshop on October 26th at AFT 2023.
🌟IC3 Talks at AFT 2023
-
QuePaxa: Escaping the Tyranny of Timeouts in Consensus by Pasindu Tennage (EPFL, IC3), Cristina Basescu (EPFL, IC3 Alum), Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias (IST Austria, Mysten Labs, IC3 Alum), Ewa Syta (Trinity College), Philipp Jovanovic (UCL, IC3 Alum), Vero Estrada-Galinanes (EPFL, IC3), Bryan Ford (EPFL, IC3).
🤩IC3 2024 Winter Retreat
Get ready for an immersive experience featuring enlightening blockchain panels, discussions, and engaging social activities. Stay tuned for the dates, location and more details, including sponsorship application information. Meanwhile, you can catch a glimpse of the 2023 Winter Retreat here.
|  | |
FC'24 will be hosted at Curacao Marriott Beach Resort, Willemstad, Curaçao from March 4-8, 2024. IC3 faculty member Prof. Elaine Shi (CMU) is co-chairing this wonderful opportunity to engage with blockchain researchers from all over the globe!
| |
|
🌟Join Arbitrum Foundation!
Arbitrum Foundation is looking for talents to fill the following roles:
- Developer Relations
- Technical Researcher
See job descriptions and apply here.
| |
|
🌟Join Flashbots!
Flashbots is hiring SGX Engineers to build SUAVE, learn more and apply here.
🌟Deadline Countdowns for Blockchain Research Opportunities
Curious about the most up-to-date opportunities for submitting your blockchain research and keeping tabs on the deadlines? Stanford researchers and numerous contributors have put together a website to serve your needs. This resource offers deadline countdowns for esteemed academic venues that are particularly pertinent to blockchain research. 📚⏳🔗
| |
|
Copyright © 2017-2023
The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3)
| | | | |
