1. “Voting Mechanism Selection for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations” by Winsome Kurniawan
TLDR:
The term Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) refers to a new type of organization governed entirely by its constituents in a decentralized fashion. While all DAOs share the same high-level structure, not all DAOs are created equally. There are fundamental differences in how DAOs are implemented and maintained.
This paper attempts to taxonomize the different types of DAOs in existence and provide interesting insights into their underlying governance mechanisms.
Beyond categorization, this paper also presents a selection model that can be used by the creators of DAOs to select appropriate governance frameworks based on their prerequisites.
2. “zkBridge: Trustless Cross-chain Bridges Made Practical” by Tiancheng Xie, Jiaheng Zhang, Zerui Cheng, Fan Zhang, Yupeng Zhang, Yongzheng Jia, Dan Boneh, and Dawn Song
TLDR:
Blockchain Interoperability is the idea that users and applications can move from one blockchain to another without usability frictions, via so-called cross-chain ridges.
This idea is seen as a building block for the future of cryptoassets whereby users are not siloed to specific blockchains. Nevertheless, bridges continue to face substantial security issues that have led to over a billion dollars worth of stolen funds.
This paper presents a novel approach to building safer bridges using Zero Knowledge Proofs, a scheme authors call zkBridge. While it remains to be seen whether the complexity of ZKPs will in fact improve the security of cross-chain bridges, this work is promising as the use of ZKPs may unlock additional functionality cross-chain, such as transaction-graph privacy.
3. “Axioms for Automated Market Makers: A Mathematical Framework in FinTech and Decentralized Finance” by Maxim Bichuch and Zachary Feinstein
TLDR:
Popular Decentralized Exchanges such as Uniswap and Curve are implemented under a general market model called Automated Market Maker (AMMs). AMMs are the backbone of trading in DeFi, but much remains to be understood about their behavior.
This paper analyzes the fundamental properties of AMMs, especially as it relates to fee structures and transaction sizing. The authors propose a new fee structure that makes AMMs indifferent to transaction splitting, which is the idea of splitting a swap into many transactions.
As discussed on SCRF in the past, there are several potential benefits of transaction splitting, such as differential privacy as well as diminished susceptibility to so-called sandwich attacks. However, these benefits have not been realized because splitting is disincentivized from a fee perspective in existing models.
4. “DCert: Towards Secure, Efficient, and Versatile Blockchain Light Clients” by Yang Ji, Cheng Xu, Ce Zhang, and Jianliang Xu
TLDR:
The overwhelming majority of users interact with their blockchain of choice via light clients, a type of wallet that does not verify all blockchain transactions for practical purposes. Instead, light clients store block headers that effectively “summarize” what happened within a block.
Block headers continue to increase in size, which introduces critical bottlenecks to light clients that will likely impact their usability.
One approach currently being evaluated by wallet developers is called checkpointing, whereby a set of trusted parties store historical data on behalf of light client users which circumvents the requirement for these users to store that data.
This paper introduces such a system called DCert. The authors propose using secure enclaves (e.g. Intel SGX) to certify large chunks of blockchain history on behalf of their users.
5. “Automatic Generation of Attacker Contracts in Solidity” by Ignacio Ballesteros, Clara Benac-Earle, Luis Eduardo Bueso de Barrio, Lars-Åke Fredlund, Ángel Herranz, and Julio Mariño
TLDR:
Most approaches to smart contract security involve code audits and exhaustive analysis prior to the contract’s deployment. However, there are various security techniques that can be used concurrently to diminish the impact of critical bugs.
This paper introduces an interesting schema whereby if a vulnerability is found while the smart contract is live and user funds can be stolen, an “attacker” contract that exploits that vulnerability is automatically derived and funds are extracted into a “white hat” address.
Research collected and curated by @cipherix.
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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.
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