New protocol makes Bitcoin transactions more secure and faster than Lightning
A protocol has been developed at TU Wien that makes transactions with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin faster and more secure.
2021-05-04
(Press-News.org) Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are becoming increasingly popular. At first glance, they have many advantages: Transactions are usually anonymous, fast and inexpensive. But sometimes there are problems with them. In certain situations, fraud is possible, users can discover information about other users that should be kept secret, and sometimes delays occur.
The research unit "Security and Privacy" at TU Wien (Lukas Aumayr and his supervisor Prof. Matteo Maffei) in collaboration with the IMDEA Software Institute (Prof. Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, previously postdoc at TU Wien) and the Purdue University (Prof. Aniket Kate) analyzed these problems and developed an improved protocol. It has now been published and will be presented this year at the USENIX Security Symposium - one of the "Big Four" IT security conferences worldwide, which are considered very prestigious.
The bottleneck of Bitcoin
"It has long been known that Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies have a scalability problem: There can only be a maximum of ten transactions per second," says Lukas Aumayr of the Security and Privacy research unit at TU Wien. "That's very few compared to credit card companies, for example, which perform tens of thousands of transactions per second worldwide."
An approach to solve this problem is the "Lightning Network" - an additional network of payment channels between blockchain users. For example, if two people want to process many transactions in a short period of time, they can exchange payments directly between each other in this way, without each individual transaction being published on the blockchain. Only at the beginning and end of this series of transactions is there an official entry in the blockchain.
These "side branches" of the blockchain can also be made relatively complicated, with chains of multiple users. "Problems can arise in the process," says Lukas Aumayr. "In certain cases, users can then get hold of data about other users. In addition, everyone in this chain has to contribute a certain amount of money, which is locked as collateral. Sometimes a transaction fails, and then a lot of money can remain locked for a relatively long time - the more people involved, the longer."
Mathematically ruling out vulnerabilities
The research team at TU Wien analyzed how this transaction protocol can be improved and developed an alternative construction. "You can analyze the security of such protocols using formal methods. So we can mathematically prove that our new protocol does not allow certain errors and problems in any situation," says Aumayr.
This makes it possible to rule out very specific security-critical attacks that were previously possible, and also to prevent long-term money blocking: "Previously, two rounds of communication were necessary: In the first round, the money is locked, in the second round it is released - or refunded if there were problems. That could mean an extra day of delay for each user in that chain. With our protocol, the communication chain only has to be run through once," explains Lukas Aumayr.
Simulation proves practicality
However, it is not only the fundamental logical structure of the new protocol that is important, but also its practicality. Therefore, the team simulated in a payment channel network how the new technology behaves compared to the previous Lightning network. The advantages of the new protocol became particularly apparent: depending on the situation, such as whether or not there are attacks and fraud attempts, the new protocol results in a factor of 4 to 33 fewer failed transactions than with the conventional Lightning network.
The TU Wien team is already in contact with the Lightning network's development organizations. "Of course, we hope that our technology will be quickly deployed, or at least offered as a more secure alternative to the current technology," says Lukas Aumayr. "Technically, this could be implemented immediately."
INFORMATION:
Contact
Lukas Aumayr
Forschungsbereich „Security and Privacy
Institut für Logic and Computation
TU Wien
Favoritenstraße 9-11, 1040 Wien, Österreich
+43 1 58801 192611
lukas.aumayr@tuwien.ac.at
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-04
Sea turtles in the Cayman Islands are recovering from the brink of local extinction, new research shows.
Monitoring from 1998-2019 shows loggerhead and green turtle nest numbers increased dramatically, though hawksbill turtle nest numbers remain low.
In the first counts in 1998-99, just 39 sea turtle nests were found in total on the three islands. By 2019, the figure was 675.
Captive breeding of green turtles and inactivity of a traditional turtle fishery due to tightening of restrictions in 2008 contributed to this - but populations remain far below historical levels and still face threats including ...
2021-05-04
In the field of molecular epidemiology, the worldwide scientific community has been steadily sleuthing to solve the riddle of the early history of SARS-CoV-2. Despite recent efforts by the World Health Organization, no one to date has identified the first case of human transmission, or "patient zero" in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finding the earliest possible case is needed to better understand how the virus may have jumped from its animal host first to infect humans as well as the history of how the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome has mutated over time and spread globally.
Since the first SARS-CoV-2 virus infection was detected in December 2019, well over a million genomes of SARS-CoV-2 have been sequenced worldwide, ...
2021-05-04
May 04, 2021 - In its latest clinical practice guideline on community-acquired pneumonia the American Thoracic Society's guidelines panel addresses the use of nucleic acid-based testing for non-influenza viral pathogens. The guideline was published online in the May 1 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. An explainer video may be viewed here.
Community-acquired pneumonia is caused by a wide range of respiratory pathogens, prominently including viruses. However, the only viral pathogen addressed by the 2019 clinical practice guideline was influenza. The panel determined that, given the increasing recognition of non-influenza viral causes ...
2021-05-04
DAVIS, CA, May 4, 2021 - In a randomized, controlled study* published online in the journal, Nutrients, researchers found that including mixed tree nuts in a weight management program resulted in significant weight loss and improved satiety.
Researchers at UCLA compared 95 overweight/obese men and women (BMI 27.0-35.0 kg/m2) ages 30-68 years who consumed either 1.5 ounces of mixed tree nuts or a pretzel snack. Both snacks provided the same number of calories, as part of a hypocaloric weight loss diet (500 calories less than resting metabolic rate) over 12 weeks. This was followed by an isocaloric weight maintenance program for an additional ...
2021-05-04
Cancer of the colon and rectum is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, and has in recent years affected growing numbers of young people. In the largest registry study to date, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Harvard University in the USA demonstrate a possible connection between colorectal polyps in close relatives and the risk of developing colorectal cancer. The study, which is published in the British Medical Journal, is of potential consequence for different countries' screening procedures.
Colorectal cancer is the second deadliest form of cancer in the world, according to the World Health ...
2021-05-04
Nearly one in five older adults say their mental health has gotten worse since the pandemic began in March 2020, and an equal percentage say their sleep has suffered in that time too. More than one in four say they're more anxious or worried than before the COVID-19 era, according to a new poll of people age 50 to 80.
Women, people in their 50s and early 60s, and older adults who have a college degree or higher were more likely than others to report worse mental health than before the pandemic, according to the END ...
2021-05-04
DALLAS, May 4, 2021 -- A meta-analysis of 14 air pollution studies from around the world found that exposure to high levels of air pollutants during childhood increases the likelihood of high blood pressure in children and adolescents, and their risk for high blood pressure as adults. The study is published in a special issue on air pollution in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association.
Other studies look at: the effects of diesel exhaust on the muscle sympathetic nerve; the impact of pollutants on high blood pressure; rates of hospital readmission for heart failure among those exposed ...
2021-05-04
Osaka, Japan --Straight-line constant-speed propagation in free space is a basic characteristic of light. In a recent study published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University discovered the phenomenon of reciprocating propagation of laser pulse intensity in free space.
Spatiotemporal couplings have been recently used to produce light with tunable group-velocity, direction, and trajectory in free space. For example, the flying focus (a moving laser pulse intensity in the extended Rayleigh length), where longitudinal chromatism and temporal chirp are combined to control the spectrum-dependent focus-separation ...
2021-05-04
Scientists have revealed how an antibiotic of 'last resort' kills bacteria.
The findings, from Imperial College London and the University of Texas, may also reveal a potential way to make the antibiotic more powerful.
The antibiotic colistin has become a last resort treatment for infections caused by some of the world's nastiest superbugs. However, despite being discovered over 70 years ago, the process by which this antibiotic kills bacteria has, until now, been something of a mystery.
Now, researchers have revealed that colistin punches holes in bacteria, causing them to pop like balloons. The work, funded by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust, and published in the journal eLife, also identified a way of making the antibiotic more effective at killing bacteria.
Colistin ...
2021-05-04
New Edith Cowan University (ECU) research has found that by eating just one cup of nitrate-rich vegetables each day people can significantly reduce their risk of heart disease.
The study investigated whether people who regularly ate higher quantities of nitrate-rich vegetables, such as leafy greens and beetroot, had lower blood pressure, and it also examined whether these same people were less likely to be diagnosed with heart disease many years later.
Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death globally, taking around 17.9 million lives each year.
Researchers examined data from over 50,000 people residing in Denmark taking part in the Danish Diet, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] New protocol makes Bitcoin transactions more secure and faster than Lightning
A protocol has been developed at TU Wien that makes transactions with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin faster and more secure.
