Smart Contracts That Are Smart and Can Function As Legal Contracts A
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Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget
Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith Ethereum Foundation Abstract We introduce Casper, a proof of stake-based finality system which overlays an existing proof of work blockchain. Casper is a partial consensus mechanism combining proof of stake algorithm research and Byzantine fault tolerant consensus theory. We introduce our system, prove some desirable features, and show defenses against long range revisions and catastrophic crashes. The Casper overlay provides almost any proof of work chain with additional protections against block reversions. 1. Introduction Over the past few years there has been considerable research into “proof of stake” (PoS) based blockchain consensus algorithms. In a PoS system, a blockchain appends and agrees on new blocks through a process where anyone who holds coins inside of the system can participate, and the influence an agent has is proportional to the number of coins (or “stake”) it holds. This is a vastly more efficient alternative to proof of work (PoW) “mining” and enables blockchains to operate without mining’s high hardware and electricity costs. There are two major schools of thought in PoS design. The first, chain-based proof of stake[1, 2], mimics proof of work mechanics and features a chain of blocks and simulates mining by pseudorandomly assigning the right to create new blocks to stakeholders. This includes Peercoin[3], Blackcoin[4], and Iddo Bentov’s work[5]. The other school, Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) based proof of stake, is based on a thirty-year-old body of research into BFT consensus algorithms such as PBFT[6]. BFT algorithms typically have proven mathematical 2 properties; for example, one can usually mathematically prove that as long as > 3 of protocol participants are following the protocol honestly, then, regardless of network latency, the algorithm cannot finalize conflicting blocks. -
Beauty Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder
Insight Consumer and Wealth Management Digital Assets: Beauty Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder Parsing the Beauty from the Beast. Investment Strategy Group | June 2021 Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani Chief Investment Officer Investment Strategy Group Goldman Sachs The co-authors give special thanks to: Farshid Asl Managing Director Matheus Dibo Shahz Khatri Vice President Vice President Brett Nelson Managing Director Michael Murdoch Vice President Jakub Duda Shep Moore-Berg Harm Zebregs Vice President Vice President Vice President Shivani Gupta Analyst Oussama Fatri Yousra Zerouali Vice President Analyst ISG material represents the views of ISG in Consumer and Wealth Management (“CWM”) of GS. It is not financial research or a product of GS Global Investment Research (“GIR”) and may vary significantly from those expressed by individual portfolio management teams within CWM, or other groups at Goldman Sachs. 2021 INSIGHT Dear Clients, There has been enormous change in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology since we first wrote about it in 2017. The number of cryptocurrencies has increased from about 2,000, with a market capitalization of over $200 billion in late 2017, to over 8,000, with a market capitalization of about $1.6 trillion. For context, the market capitalization of global equities is about $110 trillion, that of the S&P 500 stocks is $35 trillion and that of US Treasuries is $22 trillion. Reported trading volume in cryptocurrencies, as represented by the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, has increased sixfold, from an estimated $6.8 billion per day in late 2017 to $48.6 billion per day in May 2021.1 This data is based on what is called “clean data” from Coin Metrics; the total reported trading volume is significantly higher, but much of it is artificially inflated.2,3 For context, trading volume on US equity exchanges doubled over the same period. -
Validation of Smart Contracts Through Automated Tooling
Faculty of Sciences and Tecnology Department of Informatics Engineering Validation of Smart Contracts Through Automated Tooling Tom´asMorgado de Carvalho Concei¸c~ao Internship Report in the context of the Master in Informatics Engineering, Specialization in Software Engineering advised by Professor Raul Barbosa and Eng. Jo~aoBarbosa and presented to the Department of Informatics Engineering / Faculty of Sciences and Technology January 2019 Acknowledgements I would first like to thank Professor Raul Barbosa, my advisor at the University of Coimbra, for, with his valuable experience and insights, guiding me through this process and always challenging me to do better. I would like to thank my advisor, Jo~aoBarbosa, not only for his technical contributions to this dissertation but for always ensuring that I had my priorities straight and was managing my time properly. Thank you for pushing me to always make healthy choices regarding my work-life balance. I want to thank the members of my jury, Professor Fernando Jos´eBarros and Professor C´esarAlexandre Domingues Teixeira, for their input and suggestions for improvement, and their constructive criticism. I would like to thank Whitesmith and Blocksmith, and in particular Gon¸caloLouzada, Maria Jo~aoFerreira and Rafael Jegundo, for accepting me on this internship, providing me with all the tools and conditions to achieve my goals and for inviting me to take part on other projects during this year. I would also like to thank my co-workers, who, since the first day and without exception, made me feel welcome and at home. I have learned something new with every single one of you. -
Evmpatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts
EVMPatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts Michael Rodler Wenting Li Ghassan O. Karame University of Duisburg-Essen NEC Laboratories Europe NEC Laboratories Europe Lucas Davi University of Duisburg-Essen Abstract some of these contracts hold, smart contracts have become an appealing target for attacks. Programming errors in smart Recent attacks exploiting errors in smart contract code had contract code can have devastating consequences as an attacker devastating consequences thereby questioning the benefits of can exploit these bugs to steal cryptocurrency or tokens. this technology. It is currently highly challenging to fix er- rors and deploy a patched contract in time. Instant patching is Recently, the blockchain community has witnessed several especially important since smart contracts are always online incidents due smart contract errors [7, 39]. One especially due to the distributed nature of blockchain systems. They also infamous incident is the “TheDAO” reentrancy attack, which manage considerable amounts of assets, which are at risk and resulted in a loss of over 50 million US Dollars worth of often beyond recovery after an attack. Existing solutions to Ether [31]. This led to a highly debated hard-fork of the upgrade smart contracts depend on manual and error-prone pro- Ethereum blockchain. Several proposals demonstrated how to defend against reentrancy vulnerabilities either by means of cesses. This paper presents a framework, called EVMPATCH, to instantly and automatically patch faulty smart contracts. offline analysis at development time or by performing run-time validation [16, 23, 32, 42]. Another infamous incident is the EVMPATCH features a bytecode rewriting engine for the pop- ular Ethereum blockchain, and transparently/automatically parity wallet attack [39]. -
Blockchain Interoperability (Part 3) Polkadot
December 2020 Blockchain Interoperability (Part 3) Polkadot The Digital Investor Redefining Finance for the New Economy The Digital Investor January 2021 Table of Contents Abstract 2 1. Introduction 3 2. The foundation of Web 3.0 3 3. Architecture 4 4. Consensus mechanism 4 5. Stakeholders 5 6. Economics 5 7. Valuation 7 8. Conclusion 9 Abstract Polkadot is a promising project that should interest investors. First, interoperability increas- es digital asset utilisation, and Polkadot offers all the broadest type of interoperability. The success of DeFi, as a specific interoperability application, shows the potential of these types of solutions. Second, Polkadot and its framework Substrate democratise blockchain Authors development. We expect developers to use this platform to populate the ecosystem with new applications. Both these points together are likely to help Polkadot achieve higher Yves Longchamp network effect. Head of Research SEBA Bank AG Saurabh Deshpande Research Analyst B&B Analytics Private Limited Contact [email protected] 2 Blockchain Interoperability (Part 3) Polkadot 1. Interoperability may take Introduction many forms. In this edition of the Digital Investor, we focus In the November 2020 Digital Investor, we introduced blockchain interoperability or block- on interoperability in a broad chains’ ability to exchange information between different ecosystems. We concluded that interoperability facilitates secure and trustless value exchange, and we expect interop- sense. Polkadot aims to erability solutions to capture value in the future. Therefore, we think that interoperability connect all types of solutions demand investor attention. blockchains and transfer all Interoperability may take many forms. In this edition of The Digital Investor, we focus on types of messages between interoperability in a broad sense. -
Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement."
ARTICLE 1 - PROVISIONS 17-31-101. Short title. This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Wyoming Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement." 17-31-102. Definitions. (a) As used in this chapter: (i) "Blockchain" means as defined in W.S. 34-29- 106(g)(i); (ii) "Decentralized autonomous organization" means a limited liability company organized under this chapter; (iii) "Digital asset" means as defined in W.S. 34-29- 101(a)(i); (iv) "Limited liability autonomous organization" or "LAO" means a decentralized autonomous organization; (v) "Majority of the members," means the approval of more than fifty percent (50%) of participating membership interests in a vote for which a quorum of members is participating. A person dissociated as a member as set forth in W.S. 17-29-602 shall not be included for the purposes of calculating the majority of the members; (vi) "Membership interest" means a member's ownership share in a member managed decentralized autonomous organization, which may be defined in the entity's articles of organization, smart contract or operating agreement. A membership interest may also be characterized as either a digital security or a digital consumer asset as defined in W.S. 34-29-101, if designated as such in the organization's articles of organization or operating agreement; (vii) "Open blockchain" means a blockchain as defined in W.S. 34-29-106(g)(i) that is publicly accessible and its ledger of transactions is transparent; (viii) "Quorum" means a minimum requirement on the sum of membership interests participating in a vote for that vote to be valid; 1 (ix) "Smart contract" means an automated transaction, as defined in W.S. -
Short Selling Attack: a Self-Destructive but Profitable 51% Attack on Pos Blockchains
Short Selling Attack: A Self-Destructive But Profitable 51% Attack On PoS Blockchains Suhyeon Lee and Seungjoo Kim CIST (Center for Information Security Technologies), Korea University, Korea Abstract—There have been several 51% attacks on Proof-of- With a PoS, the attacker needs to obtain 51% of the Work (PoW) blockchains recently, including Verge and Game- cryptocurrency to carry out a 51% attack. But unlike PoW, Credits, but the most noteworthy has been the attack that saw attacker in a PoS system is highly discouraged from launching hackers make off with up to $18 million after a successful double spend was executed on the Bitcoin Gold network. For this reason, 51% attack because he would have to risk of depreciation the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm, which already has advantages of his entire stake amount to do so. In comparison, bad of energy efficiency and throughput, is attracting attention as an actor in a PoW system will not lose their expensive alternative to the PoW algorithm. With a PoS, the attacker needs mining equipment if he launch a 51% attack. Moreover, to obtain 51% of the cryptocurrency to carry out a 51% attack. even if a 51% attack succeeds, the value of PoS-based But unlike PoW, attacker in a PoS system is highly discouraged from launching 51% attack because he would have to risk losing cryptocurrency will fall, and the attacker with the most stake his entire stake amount to do so. Moreover, even if a 51% attack will eventually lose the most. For these reasons, those who succeeds, the value of PoS-based cryptocurrency will fall, and attempt to attack 51% of the PoS blockchain will not be the attacker with the most stake will eventually lose the most. -
Ethereum Introduction
Cryptocurrencies & Security on the Blockchain Ethereum Introduction Prof. Tom Austin San José State University Some Brief Ethereum Facts • Number 2 cryptocurrency by market cap. – Not why we are studying it • Core developers – Vitalik Buterin (creator) – Gavin Wood • Block 0 mined July 30, 2015 Ethereum Prehistory: Mastercoin • Protocol layer on top of Bitcoin • Focused on financial contracts – Two-party contracts with enforced terms • October 2013: Vitalik suggested a more flexible scripting language – More limited vision – Not Turing-complete December 2013: Ethereum Proposal • The name "Ethereum" first appears in print • Transaction fees for different actions included – Computational steps paid for in ether (this concept changed later) – Once fees exhausted, processing stops • Contracts became accounts in their own right More History • Gavin Wood joins project – Designs the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). – Writes "The Yellow Paper" in 2014. • Gas model changes – Miners explicitly vote on gas price. – Previous approaches allowed them to implicitly do this anyway. Account Types • Externally owned accounts (EOAs) – Equivalent to accounts in Bitcoin – Have a private key • Contract accounts – Have contract code – No private key • Cannot initiate transactions – Can react to transactions and call other contracts – Contain data Common Features with Bitcoin • Digital currency – Called ether (ETH) • Not "ethereum" – Smallest unit: wei • Proof-of-work blockchain – Ethash – designed to be ASIC-resistant – Much quicker: 14-15 second block time – Plans to move to proof-of-stake (Casper) • Peer-to-peer network Differences from Bitcoin • Turing-complete virtual machine – Almost… – Brings up a lot of security issues • Gas – Prevents denial-of-service attacks – Transactions specify • ETH earmarked for gas • gas-rate • Less conservative development culture – "Move fast and break things" – More frequent hard-forks – Expect changes Lab, Part 1 Create Ethereum MetaMask wallet. -
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation Third Edition Contributing Editor: Josias N. Dewey Global Legal Insights Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation 2021, Third Edition Contributing Editor: Josias N. Dewey Published by Global Legal Group GLOBAL LEGAL INSIGHTS – BLOCKCHAIN & CRYPTOCURRENCY REGULATION 2021, THIRD EDITION Contributing Editor Josias N. Dewey, Holland & Knight LLP Head of Production Suzie Levy Senior Editor Sam Friend Sub Editor Megan Hylton Consulting Group Publisher Rory Smith Chief Media Officer Fraser Allan We are extremely grateful for all contributions to this edition. Special thanks are reserved for Josias N. Dewey of Holland & Knight LLP for all of his assistance. Published by Global Legal Group Ltd. 59 Tanner Street, London SE1 3PL, United Kingdom Tel: +44 207 367 0720 / URL: www.glgroup.co.uk Copyright © 2020 Global Legal Group Ltd. All rights reserved No photocopying ISBN 978-1-83918-077-4 ISSN 2631-2999 This publication is for general information purposes only. It does not purport to provide comprehensive full legal or other advice. Global Legal Group Ltd. and the contributors accept no responsibility for losses that may arise from reliance upon information contained in this publication. This publication is intended to give an indication of legal issues upon which you may need advice. Full legal advice should be taken from a qualified professional when dealing with specific situations. The information contained herein is accurate as of the date of publication. Printed and bound by TJ International, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall, PL28 8RW October 2020 PREFACE nother year has passed and virtual currency and other blockchain-based digital assets continue to attract the attention of policymakers across the globe. -
Creation and Resilience of Decentralized Brands: Bitcoin & The
Creation and Resilience of Decentralized Brands: Bitcoin & the Blockchain Syeda Mariam Humayun A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Administration Schulich School of Business York University Toronto, Ontario March 2019 © Syeda Mariam Humayun 2019 Abstract: This dissertation is based on a longitudinal ethnographic and netnographic study of the Bitcoin and broader Blockchain community. The data is drawn from 38 in-depth interviews and 200+ informal interviews, plus archival news media sources, netnography, and participant observation conducted in multiple cities: Toronto, Amsterdam, Berlin, Miami, New York, Prague, San Francisco, Cancun, Boston/Cambridge, and Tokyo. Participation at Bitcoin/Blockchain conferences included: Consensus Conference New York, North American Bitcoin Conference, Satoshi Roundtable Cancun, MIT Business of Blockchain, and Scaling Bitcoin Tokyo. The research fieldwork was conducted between 2014-2018. The dissertation is structured as three papers: - “Satoshi is Dead. Long Live Satoshi.” The Curious Case of Bitcoin: This paper focuses on the myth of anonymity and how by remaining anonymous, Satoshi Nakamoto, was able to leave his creation open to widespread adoption. - Tracing the United Nodes of Bitcoin: This paper examines the intersection of religiosity, technology, and money in the Bitcoin community. - Our Brand Is Crisis: Creation and Resilience of Decentralized Brands – Bitcoin & the Blockchain: Drawing on ecological resilience framework as a conceptual metaphor this paper maps how various stabilizing and destabilizing forces in the Bitcoin ecosystem helped in the evolution of a decentralized brand and promulgated more mainstreaming of the Bitcoin brand. ii Dedication: To my younger brother, Umer. -
Article Friis Glaser
International Journal of Community Currency Research 2018 VOLUME 22 (SUMMER) EXTENDING BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY TO HOST CUSTOMIZA- BLE AND INTEROPERABLE COMMUNITY CURRENCIES Gustav R.B. Friis* and Florian Glaser** * Brainbot Technologies AG, Mainz ** Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to propose an open platform for secure and interoperable virtual community currencies. We follow the established information systems design-science approach to develop a prototype that aims to combine best practices for building mutual-credit community currencies with the unique features of blockchain technology. The result is a specification of an open Internet platform that enables users to join and to host customized community currencies. The hosted currencies can be classified as credit-based future type of money with decentralized issuance. Furthermore, we describe how the transparency, security and interoperability properties of blockchain technology offer a solution to the inherent problems of existing, centrally operated community currency software. The characteristics of the prototype and its ability to fulfil the design-objectives are examined by a relative evaluation against existing payment and currency systems like Bitcoin, LETS and M-Pesa. KEYWORDS Virtual community currencies; blockchain technology; mutual-credit; LETS; Trustlines Network To cite this article: Friis, Gustav R.B. and Glaser, Florian (2018) ‘Extending Blockchain Technology to host Customizable and Interoperable Community Currencies’ International Journal of Community Currency Research 2018 Volume 22 (Summer) 71-84 <www.ijccr.net> ISSN 1325-9547. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.15133/j.ijccr.2018.017 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY CURRENCY RESEARCH 2018 VOLUME 22 (SUMMER) 71-84 FRIIS & GLASER 1. -
More Legal Aspects of Smart Contract Applications
More Legal Aspects of Smart Contract Applications Token Sales, Capital Markets, Supply Chain Management, Government and Smart Cities, Real Estate Registries, and Enabling Self-Sovereign Identity J. DAX HANSEN | PARTNER LAURIE ROSINI | ASSOCIATE CARLA L. REYES | ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAW +1.206.359.6324 +1.206.359.3052 Director of Legal RnD - Michigan State University College of Law [email protected] [email protected] Faculty Associate - Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University [email protected] PerkinsCoie.com/Blockchain Perkins Coie LLP | October 2018 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3 I. A (VERY) BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO SMART CONTRACTS ............................................................................................... 3 THE ORIGINS OF SMART CONTRACTS ........................................................................................................................................................................... 3 SMART CONTRACTS IN A DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY WORLD ....................................................................................................... 4 II. CURRENT ACADEMIC LITERATURE AND INDUSTRY INITIATIVES RELATING TO SMART CONTRACTS .................... 6 SMART CONTRACTS AND CONTRACT LAW ................................................................................................................................................................