The Stellar Consensus Protocol: A Federated Model for Internet-level Consensus
This paper introduces a new model for consensus called federated Byzantine agreement (FBA). FBA achieves robustness through quorum slices—individual trust decisions made by each node that together determine system-level quorums. Slices bind the system together much the way individual networks’ peering and transit decisions now unify the Internet.
Storj Releases An Additional White Paper
Having already released a white paper in November, Storj.io has swiftly released another. This time outlining partnerships that solve difficulties with Bitcoins' blockchain.
Ethereum White Paper: A Next Generation Smart Contract & Decentralized Application Platform
The intent of Ethereum is to merge together and improve upon the concepts of scripting, altcoins and on-chain meta-protocols, and allow developers to create arbitrary consensus-based applications that have the scalability, standardization, feature-completeness, ease of development and interoperability offered by these different paradigms all at the same time. Ethereum does this by building what is essentially the ultimate abstract foundational layer: a blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete programming language, allowing anyone to write smart contracts and decentralized applications where they can create their own arbitrary rules for ownership, transaction formats and state transition functions
Security of the MaidSafe Vault Network
The MaidSafe network is an open-source, decentralised, autonomous network for data storage and retrieval by end user applications. All data is stored on the network within vaults, which are member nodes of a self-managed network resembling a distributed hash table (DHT). We explore the design of the vault network, including the self-managing nature of both vaults and data, and attack vectors worth consideration and further research.
Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the first digital currency to see widespread adoption. Although payments are conducted between pseudonyms, Bitcoin cannot offer strong privacy guarantees: payment transactions are recorded in a public decentralized ledger, from which much information can be deduced. Zerocoin (Miers et al., IEEE S&P 2013) tackles some of these privacy issues by unlinking transactions from the payment’s origin. Yet it still reveals payment destinations and amounts, and is limited in functionality. In this paper, we construct a full-fledged ledger-based digital currency with strong privacy guarantees. Our results leverage recent advances in zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs).
Tether: Fiat Currencies on the Bitcoin Blockchain
A digital token backed by fiat currency provides individuals and organizations with a robust and decentralized method of exchanging value while using a familiar accounting unit. The innovation of blockchains is an auditable and cryptographically secured global ledger. Assetbacked token issuers and other market participants can take advantage of blockchain technology, along with embedded consensus systems, to transact in familiar, less volatile currencies and assets.
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending.
