1. “aPlonK: Aggregated PlonK from Multi-Polynomial Commitment Schemes” by Miguel Ambrona, Marc Beunardeau, Anne-Laure Schmitt, and Raphaël R. Toledo

TLDR:

• PlonK has been extensively covered on SCRF as a potentially ground-breaking technology for blockchains given its ability to address, simultaneously, the issues of privacy and scalability that haunt blockchains today.

• This paper introduces a variant of PlonK called aPlonK, which authors claim offers the very same benefits of the original schema, but with smaller proof sizes and shorter verification times when batching is used.

• This schema and its accompanying library can be crucial building blocks for zk-rollups, a next-generation scalability technology for Ethereum.

2. “ZKBdf: A ZKBoo-based Quantum-Secure Verifiable Delay Function with Prover-secret” by Teik Guan Tan, Vishal Sharma, Zeng Peng Li, Pawel Szalachowski, and Jianying Zhou

TLDR:

• Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) are actively being evaluated in the field of distributed PoS consensus as a better building block for so-called leader selection, the process of determining who will mine a block at a point in time.

• Leader selection today is predominantly done via random oracles, which is a concerning trend due to the potential attack vectors that emerge when you know who will mine a block ahead of time.

• This paper introduces an interesting new construct that combines VDFs and Zero-Knowledge proofs to expand the usefulness of these functions, especially in processes that require privacy.

3. “POSE: Practical Off-chain Smart Contract Execution (Full Version)” by Tommaso Frassetto, Patrick Jauernig, David Koisser, David Kretzler, Benjamin Schlosser, Sebastian Faust, and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

TLDR:

• In the majority of smart contract platforms today, developers publish the code of their applications to the blockchain. The code is transparent and its storage is socialized across all entities running nodes.

• While this structure has been successful for a plethora of applications, there are drawbacks to be considered. Since the code is public, this structure might not be well-suited for applications that require strong privacy assurances. Furthermore, the socialization of storage costs might generate negative externalities as the size of blockchains grows.

• This paper discusses an alternative schema for smart contracts where the logic of an application is stored off-chain in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). While this does entail centralization considerations, it’s an interesting schema for use-cases that require privacy, such as those that deal with sensitive user information.

4. “Detecting Arbitrage on Ethereum Through Feature Fusion and Positive-unlabeled Learning” by Hai Jin, Chenchen Li, Jiang Xiao, Teng Zhang, Xiaohai Dai, and Bo Li

TLDR:

• Modern Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) frequently rival their centralized counterparts on volume and breadth of market coverage.

• Nevertheless, there are fundamental differences between these two constructs, especially as it relates to how power users, such as high-frequency traders, drive market efficiency via arbitrage.

• This paper introduces a machine-learning model to identify the frequency of arbitrage trades in DEXs. The authors claim a 90% accuracy rate in identifying arbitrage trades on-chain.

5. “Anti-Collusion Multiparty Smart Contracts for Distributed Watchtowers in Payment Channel Networks” by Miao Du, Peng Yang, Wen Tian, and Zhu Han

TLDR:

• Payment Channel Networks (PCNs), Bitcoin’s Lightning and Ethereum’s Raiden networks, have shown promising properties for cryptoasset payments. However, there are still issues that prevent their mass adoption.

• Chief amongst these issues is the requirement for nodes to be online at all times to monitor for channel closures and malicious activity.

• This paper discusses one of the potential solutions to this issue: monitoring systems popularly called WatchTowers.

6. “Modeling Effective Lifespan of Payment Channels” by Soheil Zibakhsh Shabgahi, Seyed Mahdi Hosseini, Seyed Pooya Shariatpanahi, and Behnam Bahrak

TLDR:

• Also on the topic of Payment Channel Networks (PCNs), another issue faced relates to the management of the individual payment channels that make up a user’s total liquidity within the PCN.

• This paper provides interesting insights into how channels on the Lightning network are managed today and sheds light on their lifespan as users’ connections and routing structures change over time.

Research collected and curated by @cipherix.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.

The Smart Contract Research Forum’s (SCRF) bold mission is to advance web3 through actionable research and knowledge-sharing. To this end, SCRF connects researchers and builders, sponsors projects, and constructs collaborative forums. SCRF’s community is an active, international network of academics, industry architects, and blockchain advocates.

1. “aPlonK: Aggregated PlonK from Multi-Polynomial Commitment Schemes” by Miguel Ambrona, Marc Beunardeau, Anne-Laure Schmitt, and Raphaël R. Toledo

TLDR:

• PlonK has been extensively covered on SCRF as a potentially ground-breaking technology for blockchains given its ability to address, simultaneously, the issues of privacy and scalability that haunt blockchains today.

• This paper introduces a variant of PlonK called aPlonK, which authors claim offers the very same benefits of the original schema, but with smaller proof sizes and shorter verification times when batching is used.

• This schema and its accompanying library can be crucial building blocks for zk-rollups, a next-generation scalability technology for Ethereum.

2. “ZKBdf: A ZKBoo-based Quantum-Secure Verifiable Delay Function with Prover-secret” by Teik Guan Tan, Vishal Sharma, Zeng Peng Li, Pawel Szalachowski, and Jianying Zhou

TLDR:

• Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) are actively being evaluated in the field of distributed PoS consensus as a better building block for so-called leader selection, the process of determining who will mine a block at a point in time.

• Leader selection today is predominantly done via random oracles, which is a concerning trend due to the potential attack vectors that emerge when you know who will mine a block ahead of time.

• This paper introduces an interesting new construct that combines VDFs and Zero-Knowledge proofs to expand the usefulness of these functions, especially in processes that require privacy.

3. “POSE: Practical Off-chain Smart Contract Execution (Full Version)” by Tommaso Frassetto, Patrick Jauernig, David Koisser, David Kretzler, Benjamin Schlosser, Sebastian Faust, and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

TLDR:

• In the majority of smart contract platforms today, developers publish the code of their applications to the blockchain. The code is transparent and its storage is socialized across all entities running nodes.

• While this structure has been successful for a plethora of applications, there are drawbacks to be considered. Since the code is public, this structure might not be well-suited for applications that require strong privacy assurances. Furthermore, the socialization of storage costs might generate negative externalities as the size of blockchains grows.

• This paper discusses an alternative schema for smart contracts where the logic of an application is stored off-chain in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). While this does entail centralization considerations, it’s an interesting schema for use-cases that require privacy, such as those that deal with sensitive user information.

4. “Detecting Arbitrage on Ethereum Through Feature Fusion and Positive-unlabeled Learning” by Hai Jin, Chenchen Li, Jiang Xiao, Teng Zhang, Xiaohai Dai, and Bo Li

TLDR:

• Modern Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) frequently rival their centralized counterparts on volume and breadth of market coverage.

• Nevertheless, there are fundamental differences between these two constructs, especially as it relates to how power users, such as high-frequency traders, drive market efficiency via arbitrage.

• This paper introduces a machine-learning model to identify the frequency of arbitrage trades in DEXs. The authors claim a 90% accuracy rate in identifying arbitrage trades on-chain.

5. “Anti-Collusion Multiparty Smart Contracts for Distributed Watchtowers in Payment Channel Networks” by Miao Du, Peng Yang, Wen Tian, and Zhu Han

TLDR:

• Payment Channel Networks (PCNs), Bitcoin’s Lightning and Ethereum’s Raiden networks, have shown promising properties for cryptoasset payments. However, there are still issues that prevent their mass adoption.

• Chief amongst these issues is the requirement for nodes to be online at all times to monitor for channel closures and malicious activity.

• This paper discusses one of the potential solutions to this issue: monitoring systems popularly called WatchTowers.

6. “Modeling Effective Lifespan of Payment Channels” by Soheil Zibakhsh Shabgahi, Seyed Mahdi Hosseini, Seyed Pooya Shariatpanahi, and Behnam Bahrak

TLDR:

• Also on the topic of Payment Channel Networks (PCNs), another issue faced relates to the management of the individual payment channels that make up a user’s total liquidity within the PCN.

• This paper provides interesting insights into how channels on the Lightning network are managed today and sheds light on their lifespan as users’ connections and routing structures change over time.

Research collected and curated by @cipherix.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.

The Smart Contract Research Forum’s (SCRF) bold mission is to advance web3 through actionable research and knowledge-sharing. To this end, SCRF connects researchers and builders, sponsors projects, and constructs collaborative forums. SCRF’s community is an active, international network of academics, industry architects, and blockchain advocates.