Seminar on Blockchains and Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Blockchain Research Group

Saarland University, SS 2023

All information is subject to change.

April 19, 2023 (16:00 - 18:00) at E1 5 room 005: Introduction

Optional readings:
1. Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the open blockchain. Andreas M. Antonopoulos and others.
2. Mastering Ethereum. Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood, and others.
3. MOOC: Decentralized Finance. Dan Boneh, Arthur Gervais, Andrew Miller, Christine Parlour, and Dawn Song.
4. Bitcoin and Beyond: A Technical Survey on Decentralized Digital Currencies
   Florian Tschorsch and Björn Scheuermann. In IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (COMST 2016).
• Additional reading: Bitcoin White paper. Satoshi Nakamoto. White paper.
5. Ethereum Yellowpaper. Gavin Wood and others. White paper

May 17, 2023 (16:00 - 18:00) at E1 5 room 029: Background of blockchains

1. Do you need a Blockchain?
   Karl Wüst and Arthur Gervais. (Crypto Valley '18).
2. Polkadot: Vision for a Heterogeneous Multi-chain Framework
   Gavin wood. White paper.
3. Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies.
   Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, Nickolai Zeldovich. Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 2017).
4. TxProbe: Discovering Bitcoin's Network Topology Using Orphan Transactions
   Sergi Delgado-Segura, Surya Bakshi, Cristina Pérez-Solà, James Litton, Andrew Pachulski, Andrew Miller, and Bobby Bhattacharjee. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2019).

June 21, 2023 (16:00 - 18:00) at E1 5 room 005: (Dis-)Incentives for Consensus

1. Majority is not Enough
   Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2014).
2. Stick a fork in it: Analyzing the Ethereum Network Partition
   Lucianna Kiffer, Dave Levin, and Alan Mislove. ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets 2017)
3. On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward
   Miles Carlsten, Harry Kalodner, S. Matthew Weinberg, and Arvind Narayanan. ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2016).
4. On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains
   Arthur Gervais, Ghassan O. Karame, Karl Wüst, Vasileios Glykantzis, Hubert Ritzdorf, and Srdjan Čapkun. ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2016).

July 19, 2023 (16:00 - 18:00) at E1 5 room 005: Transaction prioritization

1. Selfish & Opaque Transaction Ordering in the Bitcoin Blockchain: The Case for Chain Neutrality
   Johnnatan Messias, Mohamed Alzayat, Balakrishnan Chandrasekaran, Krishna P. Gummadi, Patrick Loiseau, and Alan Mislove. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2021).
• Additional reading: Dissecting Bitcoin and Ethereum Transactions: On the Lack of Transaction Contention and Prioritization Transparency in Blockchains
  Johnnatan Messias, Vabuk Pahari, Balakrishnan Chandrasekaran, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Patrick Loiseau. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2023).
2. Frontrunner Jones and the Raiders of the DarkForest: An Empirical Study of Frontrunning on the Ethereum Blockchain
   Christof Ferreira Torres, Ramiro Camino, and Radu State. USENIX Security Symposium.
3. Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges
   Philip Daian, Steven Goldfeder, Tyler Kell, Yunqi Li, Xueyuan Zhao, Iddo Bentov, Lorenz Breidenbach, Ari Juels. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P 2020)
• Additional reading: A Flash(bot) in the Pan: Measuring Maximal Extractable Value in Private Pools
  Ben Weintraub, Christof Ferreira Torres, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, and Radu State. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2022)
4. MAD-HTLC: Because HTLC is Crazy-Cheap to Attack
   Itay Tsabary, Matan Yechieli, Alex Manuskin, and Ittay Eyal. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P 2021)
• Additional reading: He-HTLC: Revisiting Incentives in HTLC
  Sarisht Wadhwa, Jannis Stöter, Fan Zhang, Kartik Nayak.

August 16, 2023 (16:00 - 18:00) at E1 5 room 005: Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications

1. Attacking the DeFi Ecosystem with Flash Loans for Fun and Profit
   Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Benjamin Livshits, and Arthur Gervais. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2021).
2. An Empirical Study of DeFi Liquidations: Incentives, Risks, and Instabilities
   Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Pablo Gamito, Philipp Jovanovic, and Arthur Gervais. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2021).
3. Understanding Security Issues in the NFT Ecosystem
   Dipanjan Das, Priyanka Bose, Nicola Ruaro, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna. ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2022).
4. Chainlink Off-chain Reporting Protocol
   Lorenz Breidenbach, Christian Cachin, Alex Coventry, Ari Juels, and Andrew Miller.