Blockchain Papers 
A curated list of blockchain-related academic papers. Papers with π have been peer-reviewed and presented in academic conferences.
Table of Contents
- General
- Consensus
- Cryptography
- Block generation and mining
- Stake
- Attacks
- Wallets
- Crime
- Economics
- Marketplaces and Trust
- Privacy
- Sidechains, Higher layer and Scalability
- Payment Networks
- Fungibility
- Network
- Smart Contracts
- Formal Methods
- Proof of work
- DAG-based consensus mechanisms
- Survey, Sociological & Anthropological
- Applications
- License
General
- Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Nakamoto S. '08.
- π SoK: Research Perspectives and Challenges for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies. Bonneau J, Miller A, Clark J, Narayanan A, Kroll JA, Felten EW. S&P '15.
- Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree. Narayanan A, Clark J. ACM Queue '17.
- πA systematic literature review of blockchain-based applications: Current status, classification and open issues. Casino F, Dasaklis T, Patsakis C. T&I '18.
Consensus
- π The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol: Analysis and Applications. Garay J, Kiayias A, Leonardos N. EUROCRYPT '15.
- π The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol with Chains of Variable Difficulty. Garay J. Kiayias A, Leonardos N. '16. CRYPTO '17.
- π Analysis of the Blockchain Protocol in Asynchronous Networks. Pass R, Seeman L, shelat a. EUROCRYPT '17.
- On Trees, Chains and Fast Transactions in the Blockchain. Kiayias A, Panagiotakos G. '16.
- π "RSCoin": Centrally banked cryptocurrencies. Danezis G, Meiklejohn S. '15.
- Anonymous Byzantine Consensus from Moderately-Hard Puzzles: A Model for Bitcoin. Miller A, LaViola JJ Jr. '14.
Classic Consensus
- π The Byzantine Generals Problem. Lamport L, Shostak R., Pease M. '82. TOPLAS '82.
- π Consensus in the Presence of Partial Synchrony. Dwork S., Lynch N. '88. JACM '88.
- π Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance. Castro M., Liskov B. '99. OSDI '99.
- π The part-time parliament. Lamport L. '00. TOCS '98.
- π Paxos Made Simple Lamport L. '00, ACM SIGACT News '01.
Cryptography
- On Bitcoin as a public randomness source. Bonneau J, Clark J, Goldfeder S. '15.
- Distributed Cryptography Based on the Proofs of Work. Andrychowicz M, and Dziembowski S. '14.
- Scalable, transparent, and post-quantum secure computational integrity. Ben-Sasson E, Bentov I, Horesh Y, Riabzev M. '18.
- π Bitcoin as a Transaction Ledger: A Composable Treatment. Badertscher C., Maurer U., Tschudi D., Zikas V. '19. CRYPTO '17.
Block generation and mining
- π Bootstrapping the Blockchain - Directly. Garay JA, Kiayias A, Leonardos N, Panagiotakos G. '16.
- Speed-Security Tradeoffs in Blockchain Protocols. Kiayias A, Panagiotakos G. '15.
- π "GHOST": Secure High-Rate Transaction Processing in Bitcoin. Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. FC '15.
- π Inclusive Block Chain Protocols. Lewenberg Y, Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. FC '15.
- π On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains. Gervais A, Karame GO, WΓΌst K, Glykantzis V, Ritzdorf H, Capkun S. CCS '16.
- π Smartpool: Practical decentralized pooled mining. Luu L, Velner Y, Teutsch J, Saxena P. USENIX Security '17.
Stake
- π Ouroboros: A provably secure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol. Kiayias A, Russell A, David B, Oliynykov R. '16.
- π ALGORAND: The Efficient and Democratic Ledger. Micali S. '16.
- π "ByzCoin": Enhancing Bitcoin Security and Performance with Strong Consistency via Collective Signing. Kogias EK, Jovanovic P, Gailly N, Khoffi I, Gasser L, Ford B. USENIX '16.
- π Cryptocurrencies without Proof of Work. Bentov I, Gabizon A, Mizrahi A. FC '16.
- π Ouroboros Praos: An adaptively-secure, semi-synchronous proof-of-stake protocol. Bernardo D, Gazi P, Kiayias A, Russell A. Crypto '17.
- π Ouroboros Genesis: Composable Proof-of-Stake Blockchains with Dynamic Availability. Badertscher C, Gazi P, Kiayias A, Russell A, Zikas V. '18.
- π A Proof-of-Stake protocol for consensus on Bitcoin subchains. Bartoletti M, Lande S, & Podda A S. FC '17.
- π Snow White: Provably Secure Proofs of Stake.. Bentov I, Pass R, Shi E. FC '19.
Attacks
- π "Selfish Mining": Majority Is Not Enough: Bitcoin Mining Is Vulnerable. Eyal I, Sirer EG. FC '14.
- Theoretical Bitcoin Attacks with less than Half of the Computational Power. Bahack L. '13.
- π Optimal Selfish Mining Strategies in Bitcoin. Sapirshtein A, Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. FC '16.
- π Refund attacks on Bitcoinβs Payment Protocol. McCorry P, Shahandashti S, Hao F. FC '16.
- Low-Resource Eclipse Attacks on Ethereumβs Peer-to-Peer Network. Marcus Y, Heilman E, Goldberg S. '18.
- π Hostile blockchain takeovers. Bonneau J. FC '18.
Wallets
- π Bitcoin Covenants. MΓΆser M, Eyal I, Sirer EG. FC '16.
- π Enhancing Bitcoin Transactions with Covenants. OβConnor R, Piekarska M. FC '17.
- π Hierarchical deterministic Bitcoin wallets that tolerate key leakage. Gutoski G, Stebila D. FC '15.
Crime
- π ZombieCoin: Powering Next-Generation Botnets with Bitcoin. Ali ST, McCorry P, Lee PH, Hao F. FC '15.
- π The Bitcoin Brain Drain: A Short Paper on the Use and Abuse of Bitcoin Brain Wallets. Vasek M, Bonneau J, Castellucci R, Keith C, Moore T. FC '16.
Economics
- π On Bitcoin and Red Balloons. Babaioff M, Dobzinski S, Oren S, Zohar A. EC '12.
- π On the instability of Bitcoin without the block reward. Carlsten M, Kalodner H, Weinberg SM, Narayanan A. CCS '16.
- π The Economics of Bitcoin Mining or Bitcoin in the Presence of Adversaries. Kroll J, Davey I, Felten E. WEIS '13.
- π Trends, Tips, Tolls: A Longitudinal Study of Bitcoin Transaction Fees. MΓΆser M, BΓΆhme R. FC '15.
- π Why buy when you can rent? Bribery attacks on Bitcoin-style consensus. Bonneau J. FC '16.
- π Game-Theoretic Analysis of DDoS Attacks Against Bitcoin Mining Pools. Johnson B, Laszka A, Grossklags J, Vasek M, Moore T. FC '14.
- π When Bitcoin Mining Pools Run Dry A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Long-Term Impact of Attacks Between Mining Pools. Laszka A, Johnson B, Grossklags J. FC '15.
- π Incentive Compatibility of Bitcoin Mining Pool Reward Functions. Schrijvers O, Bonneau J, Boneh D, Roughgarden T. FC '16.
- π When cryptocurrencies mine their own business. Teutsch J, Jain S, Saxena P. FC '16.
- π Incentivizing Blockchain Forks via Whale Transactions. Liao K, Katz J. FC '17.
- π Smart Contracts Make Bitcoin Mining Pools Vulnerable. Velner Y, Teutsch J, Luu L. FC '17.
- π Mixing Coins of Different Quality: A Game-Theoretic Approach. Abramova S, SchΓΆttle P, BΓΆhme R. FC '17.
- π Decentralized Prediction Market without Arbiters. Bentov I, Mizrahi A, Rosenfeld M. FC '17.
- π "Zeus": Analyzing Safety of Smart Contracts. Kalra S, Goel S, Dhawan M, Sharma S. NDSS '18.
- π How to Use Bitcoin to Design Fair Protocols. Bentov I, Kumaresan R. CRYPTO '14.
- π The Gap Game. Tsabary I., Eyal I. ACM CCS '18.
Marketplaces and Trust
- π Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem. Soska K, Christin N. USENIX '15.
- π Escrow protocols for cryptocurrencies: How to buy physical goods using Bitcoin. Goldfeder S, Bonneau J, Gennaro R, Narayanan A. FC '17.
- π Trust Is Risk: A Decentralized Financial Trust Platform. Thyfronitis Litos OS, Zindros D. FC '17.
- Trust in decentralized anonymous marketplaces. Zindros D. '15.
- Money as IOUs in social trust networks & a proposal for a decentralized currency network protocol. Fugger R. '04.
- The Ripple protocol consensus algorithm. Schwartz D, Youngs N, Britto A. '14.
- The stellar consensus protocol: A federated model for internet-level consensus. Mazières D. '15.
- π Thereβs No Free Lunch, Even Using Bitcoin: Tracking the Popularity and Profits of Virtual Currency Scams. Vasek M, Moore T. FC '15.
- π Challenges and Opportunities Associated with a Bitcoin-based Transaction Rating System. Vandervort D. FC '14.
Privacy
- π Zerocoin: Anonymous distributed e-cash from bitcoin. Miers I, Garman C, Green M, Rubin AD. S&P '13.
- π Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from bitcoin. Sasson EB, Chiesa A, Garman C, Green M, Miers I, Tromer E, Virza M. S&P '14.
- "Monero": CryptoNote v2.0. Saberhagen N. '13?
- π Rational Zero: Economic Security for Zerocoin with Everlasting Anonymity. Garman C, Green M, Miers I, Rubin A. FC '14.
- Mixcoin: Anonymity for bitcoin with accountable mixes. Bonneau J, Narayanan A, Miller A, Clark J, Kroll JA, Felten EW. '14.
- TumbleBit: An untrusted Bitcoin-compatible anonymous payment hub. Heilman E, Alshenibr L, Baldimtsi F, Scafuro A, Goldberg S. '16.
- Blindly Signed Contracts: Anonymous On-Blockchain and Off-Blockchain Bitcoin Transactions. Heilman E, Baldimtsi F, Goldberg S. FC '16.
- π Coinshuffle: Practical decentralized coin mixing for bitcoin. Ruffing T, Moreno-Sanchez P, Kate A. ESORICS '14.
- π Quantitative analysis of the full bitcoin transaction graph. Ron D, Shamir A. FC '13.
- π How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth?. Ron D, Shamir A. FC '14.
- "MoneroLink": An Empirical Analysis of Linkability in the Monero Blockchain. Miller A, MΓΆser M, Lee K, Narayanan A. '17.
- π Provisions: Privacy-preserving proofs of solvency for Bitcoin exchanges. Dagher GG, BΓΌnz B, Bonneau J, Clark J, Boneh D. CCS '15.
- π Increasing Anonymity in Bitcoin. Saxena A, Misra J, Dhar A. FC '14.
- π Blindcoin Blinded, Accountable Mixes for Bitcoin. Valenta L, Rowan B. FC '15.
- π Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts. Kosba A, Miller A, Shi E, Wen Z, Papamanthou C. SP '16
- π Could Network Information Facilitate Address Clustering in Bitcoin?. Neudecker T, Hartenstein H. FC '17.
- π Blind signatures for untraceable payments. Chaum D. CRYPTO '83.
- π Exchange Pattern Mining in the Bitcoin Transaction Directed Hypergraph. Ranshous S, Joslyn A, Kreyling S, Nowak K, Samatova N, West C, Winters C. FC '17.
- π Confidential Assets. Poelstra A, Back A, Friedenbach M, Maxwell G, Wuille P. FC '17.
- π Mixing Confidential Transactions: Comprehensive Transaction Privacy for Bitcoin. Ruffing T, Moreno-Sanchez P. FC '17.
- π Switch Commitments: A Safety Switch for Confidential Transactions. Ruffing T, Malavolta G. FC '17.
- π CoinParty: Secure Multi-Party Mixing of Bitcoins. Ziegeldorf, J.H., Grossmann, F., Henze, M., Inden, N. and Wehrle, K. CODASPY '15.
- Data-Driven De-Anonymization in Bitcoin. Nick J. Diss. ETH-ZΓΌrich, '15.
- π Deanonymisation of Clients in Bitcoin P2P Network. Biryukov A, Khovratovich D, Pustogarov I. CCS '14.
- π Transferable Anonymous Payments via TumbleBit in Permissioned Blockchains. Ferretti C, Leporati A, Mariot L, Nizzardo L. DLT '19.
Sidechains, Higher layer and Scalability
- Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains. Back A, Corallo M, Dashjr L, Friedenbach M, Maxwell G, Miller A, Poelstra A, TimΓ³n J, Wuille P. '14.
- π Proofs of Proofs of Work with Sublinear Complexity. Kiayias A, Lamprou N, Stouka AP. FC '16.
- π Bitcoin-NG: A Scalable Blockchain Protocol. Eyal I, Gencer AE, Sirer EG, Van Renesse R. USENIX '16.
- π On the Malleability of Bitcoin Transactions. Andrychowicz M, Dziembowski S, Malinowski D, Mazurek Ε. FC '15.
- π On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains. Croman K, Decker C, Eyal I, Gencer AE, Juels A, Kosba A, Miller A, Saxena P, Shi E, Sirer EG, Song D. FC '16.
- π "Elastico": A secure sharding protocol for open blockchains. Luu L, Narayanan V, Zheng C, Baweja K, Gilbert S, Saxena P. CCS '16.
- π Improving Authenticated Dynamic Dictionaries, with Applications to Cryptocurrencies. Reyzin L, Meshkov D, Chepurnoy A, Ivanov S. FC '17.
- π Service-Oriented Sharding for Blockchains. Gencer AE, Van Renesse R, Sirer EG. FC '17.
- Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work. Kiayias A, Miller A, Zindros D. '17.
- π Proof-of-Stake Sidechains. GaΕΎi P, Kiayias A, Zindros D. S&P '19.
- π Proof-of-Work Sidechains. Kiayias A, Zindros D. FC WTSC '19.
- FlyClient: Super-Light Clients for Cryptocurrencies. B BΓΌnz, L Kiffer, L Luu, M Zamani. '19.
- PolyShard: Coded Sharding Achieves Linearly Scaling Efficiency and Security Simultaneously. Li S, Yu M, Avestimehr S, Kannan S, Viswanath P. '18.
- π ForkBase: An Efficient Storage Engine for Blockchain and Forkable Applications. Wang S, Dinh TT, Lin Q, Xie Z, Zhang M, Cai Q, Chen G, Ooi BC, Ruan P. PVLDB '18.
Payment Networks
- π A Fast and Scalable Payment Network with Bitcoin Duplex Micropayment Channels. Decker C, Wattenhofer R. SSS '15.
- The bitcoin lightning network: Scalable off-chain instant payments. Poon J, Dryja T. '15.
- "Deployable Lightning": Reaching The Ground With Lightning. Russell R. '15.
- π Teechan: Payment Channels Using Trusted Execution Environments. Lind J, Eyal I, Pietzuch P, Sirer EG. FC BITCOIN '17.
- π Revive: Rebalancing Off-Blockchain Payment Networks. Khalil, R., & Gervais, A. CCS '17.
- NOCUST β A Non-Custodial 2nd-Layer Financial Intermediary. Khalil R, Gervais, A. '18.
- Counterfactual: Generalized state channels. Coleman J, Horne L, Xuanji L. '18.
- Sprites and State Channels: Payment Networks that Go Faster than Lightning Miller A, Bentov I, Kumaresan R, Cordi C, McCorry P. '17.
- π Perun: Virtual payment hubs over cryptocurrencies Dziembowski S, Eckey L, Faust S, Malinowski D. IEEE S&P '19.
- π General State Channel Networks Dziembowski S, Faust S, HostΓ‘kovΓ‘ K. CCS '18.
- Bolt: Anonymous Payment Channels for Decentralized Currencies Green M, Miers I. '16.
- Flare: An Approach to Routing in Lightning Network. Prihodko P, Zhigulin S, Sahno M, Ostrovskiy A, Osuntokyn O. '16.
- On the Difficulty of Hiding the Balance of Lightning Network Channels. Herrera-JoancomartΓ J, Navarro-Arribas G, Ranchal-Pedrosa A, PΓ©rez-SolΓ C, Garcia-Alfaro J. '19.
- Pisa: Arbitration Outsourcing for State Channels. McCorry P, Bakshi S, Bentov I, Meiklejohn S, Miller A. '18.
- π Concurrency and Privacy with Payment-Channel Networks. Malavolta G, Moreno-Sanchez P, Kate A, Maffei M, Ravi S. CCS '17.
- eltoo: A Simple Layer2 Protocol for Bitcoin. Decker C, Russell R, Osuntokun O. '18.
- SoK: A Taxonomy for Layer-2 Scalability Related Protocols for Cryptocurrencies. Jourenko M, Kurazumi K, Larangeira M, Tanaka K. '19.
- SoK: Off The Chain Transactions. Gudgeon L, Moreno-Sanchez P, Roos S, McCorry P, Gervais A. '19.
- Nitro Protocol. Close T. '19.
- π Two-Party State Channels with Assertions. Buckland C, McCorry P. FC '19.
- Anonymous Multi-Hop Locks for Blockchain Scalability and Interoperability. Malavolta G, Moreno-Sanchez P, Schneidewind C, Kate A, Maffei M. NDSS '19.
Fungibility
- π Towards Risk Scoring of Bitcoin Transactions. MΓΆser M, BΓΆhme R, Breuker D. FC '14.
Network
- π The Bitcoin P2P network. Donet Donet JA, Perez-Sola C, Herrera-Joancomart J. FC '14.
- π Empirical Analysis of Denial-of-Service Attacks in the Bitcoin Ecosystem. Vasek M, Thornton M, Moore T. FC '14.
- π Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin's Peer-to-Peer Network. Heilman E, Kendler A, Zohar A, Goldberg S. USENIX '15.
- π Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies. Apostolaki M, Zohar A, Vanbever L. S&P '17.
- π Stressing Out: Bitcoin βStress Testingβ. Baqer K, Yuxing Huang D, McCoy D, Weaver N. FC '16.
- π The Honey Badger of BFT Protocols. Miller A, Xia Y, Croman K, Shi E, Song D. CCS '16.
- Information Propagation in the Bitcoin Network. Decker C., Wattenhofer R. IEEE P2P '13.
Smart Contracts
- "Ethereum": A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform. Vitalik Buterin. '14.
- Ethereum: A secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger. Wood G. '14.
- π Fair Two-Party Computations via Bitcoin Deposits. Andrychowicz M, Dziembowski S, Malinowski D, Mazurek Ε. FC '14.
- π Step by Step Towards Creating a Safe Smart Contract: Lessons and Insights from a Cryptocurrency Lab. Delmolino K, Arnett M, Kosba A, Miller A, Shi E. FC '16.
- π EthIKS: Using Ethereum to audit a CONIKS key transparency log. Bonneau J. FC '16.
- π "Oyente": Making Smart Contracts Smarter. Luu L, Chu DH, Olickel H, Saxena P, Hobor A. CCS '16.
- π The Ring of Gyges: Investigating the Future of Criminal Smart Contracts. Juels A, Kosba A, Shi E. CCS '16.
- Town crier: An authenticated data feed for smart contracts. Zhang F, Cecchetti E, Croman K, Juels A, Shi E. CCS '16.
- π A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy. McCorry P, Shahandashti SF, Hao F. FC '17.
- π Constant-deposit multiparty lotteries on Bitcoin. Bartoletti M, Zunino R. FC '17.
Formal Methods
- π Automated Verification of Electrum Wallet. Turuani M, Voegtlin T, Rusinowitch M. FC '16.
Proof of work
- "Proof-of-work": Pricing via processing or combatting junk mail. Dwork C, Naor M. '92.
- Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure. Back A. '02.
- π Cuckoo Cycle: a memory bound graph-theoretic proof-of-work. Tromp J. FC '15.
- π PieceWork: Generalized Outsourcing Control for Proofs of Work. Daian P, Eyal I, Juels A, Sirer EG. FC '17.
- π Permacoin: Repurposing bitcoin work for data preservation. Miller A, Juels A, Shi E, Parno B, Katz J. Permacoin. S&P '14.
DAG-based consensus
- SPECTRE: A Fast and Scalable Cryptocurrency Protocol. Sompolinsky Y, Lewenberg Y, Zohar A. '16.
- "PHANTOM": A Scalable BlockDAG protocol. Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. '18.
- Snowflake to Avalanche: A Novel Metastable Consensus Protocol Family for Cryptocurrencies. Team Rocket. '18.
- Scaling Nakamoto Consensus to Thousands of Transactions per Second. Li C, Li P, Zhou D, Xu W, Long F, Chi-Chih Yao A. '18.
- Blockchain-Free Cryptocurrencies: A Framework for Truly Decentralised Fast Transactions Boyen X, Carr C, Haines T. '16.
- DAGcoin Whitepaper Ribero Y, Raissar D. '15.
- Byteball: A Decentralized System for Storage and Transfer of Value Churyumov A. '16.
Survey, Sociological & Anthropological
- π Issues in Designing a Bitcoin-Like Community Currency. Vandervort D, Gaucas D, St Jacques R. FC '15.
- π The Bitcoin Market Potential Index. Hileman G. FC '15.
- π Cryptographic Currencies from a Tech-Policy Perspective: Policy Issues and Technical Direction. McReynolds E, Lerner A, Scott W, Roesner F, Kohno T. FC '15.
- π The Other Side of the Coin: User Experiences with Bitcoin Security and Privacy. Krombholz K, Judmayer A, Gusenbauer M, Weippl E. FC '16.
- π An analysis of Bitcoin OP_RETURN metadata. Bartoletti M, Pompianu L. FC '17.
Applications
- Blockstack Technical Whitepaper. Muneeb A., Ryan S., Jude N, Michael F. '17
- Storj A Peer-to-Peer Cloud Storage Network. Shawn W., Tome B., Josh B., James P., Gordon H., Patrick G., Philip H., Chris P. '18
- IPFS - Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System. Benet J. '15
- BigchainDB: A Scalable Blockchain Database. McConaghy T, Marques R, MΓΌller A, De Jonghe D, McConaghy T, McMullen G, Henderson R, Bellemare S, Granzotto A. '17
- π Commitcoin: Carbon dating commitments with bitcoin. Clark J, Essex A. FC '12.
- OpenTimestamps: Securing Software Updates using the Bitcoin Blockchain Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Todd P, Halpin H. (FC Poster '17)
- π Decentralized trusted timestamping using the crypto currency bitcoin. Gipp B., Meuschke N., Gernandt A. iConference 2015
- π Fair and Robust Multi-Party Computation using a Global Transaction Ledger. Kiayias A., Zhouh S., Zikas V. EUROCRYPT '16.
License
This list is released into the public domain.
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