The Bitcoin digital currency appeared in 2009. Since this time, researchers and practitioners have looked “under the hood” of the open source Bitcoin currency, and discovered that Bitcoin’s “Blockchain” software architecture is useful for non-monetary purposes too. By coalescing the research and practice on Blockchains, this work begins to unpack Blockchains as a general phenomenon, therein, ar...

The blockchain underlying Bitcoin is moving beyond money and into record keeping and law. This essay explores recent efforts to harness the ledger-like qualities of blockchains to create contracts. Along the way, it considers the forms and functions of other historical examples of ledgers, the dynamics of visibility and publicity, and shifts in the incentive structure of blockchain systems. Dis...

Bitcoin does not scale, because its synchronization mechanism, the blockchain, limits the maximum rate of transactions the network can process. However, using off-blockchain transactions it is possible to create long-lived channels over which an arbitrary number of transfers can be processed locally between two users, without any burden to the Bitcoin network. These channels may form a network ...

Analysis of blockchain data is useful for both scienti c research and commercial applications. We present BlockSci, an open-source software platform for blockchain analysis. BlockSci is versatile in its support for di erent blockchains and analysis tasks. It incorporates an in-memory, analytical (rather than transactional) database, making it several hundred times faster than existing tools. We...

Heretofore the concept of “blockchain” has not been precisely defined. Accordingly the potential useful applications of this technology have been largely inflated. This work sidesteps the question of what constitutes a blockchain as such and focuses on the architectural components of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, insofar as possible, in isolation. We consider common problems inherent in the desig...

Current blockchain platforms, especially the recent permissioned systems, have architectural limitations: smart contracts run sequentially, all node executes all smart contracts, consensus protocols are hard-coded, the trust model is static and not flexible, and non-determinism in smart-contract execution poses serious problems. Overcoming these limitations is critical for improving both functi...

Along with the increasing use of cloud services, security threats are also increasing and attack methods are becoming more diverse. However, there are still few measures and policies to deal with security incidents in the cloud environment. Although many solutions have been proposed through research on digital forensics for responding to security incidents, but it is still difficult to prove th...

Blockchain technology is expected to revolutionize the way transactions are performed, thereby affecting a vast variety of potential areas of application. While expectations are high, real world impact and benefit are still unclear. To be able to assess its impact, the first structured literature review of peer-reviewed articles is conducted. As blockchain technology is centered around a peer-t...

Increasing attention is being paid to the potential of blockchain technology to address long-standing challenges related to economic development. Blockchain proponents argue that it will expand opportunities for exchange and collaboration by reducing reliance on intermediaries and the frictions associated with them. The purpose of this paper is to provide a clear-eyed view of the technology’s p...

Much like steam engines and the internet, blockchain has emerged as a disruptive technology and a foundation for tomorrow’s businesses and ecosystem. Blockchains meld technology and economics to provide unprecedented security guarantees. As individuals seek to reduce uncertainties, economic incentives can drive human behavior, and act as the enablers of personal security, either perceived or re...