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Ethereum Foundation

ethereumfoundation

PITTSBURGH, United states, December 6th, 2024/Chainwire/--Anaxi Labs, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab, the university’s cybersecurity and privacy institute, is announcing a compiler framework for cryptography that resolves an impasse – building scalable applications with Zero-Knowledge require fundamental trade-offs. The elusive trifecta of scalable, cryptographically-secured and decentralized applications have been considered impossible, and a barrier to mass adoption — until now. A Breakthrough in Cryptography with No Trade-Offs Blockchains such as Ethereum have been hailed as the future of decentralized infrastructure, with Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology heralded to enhance Ethereum's security and scalability beyond 120 TPS. According to the team, developing ZK proofs is complex and time-consuming, requiring thousands of hours across dozens of developers. Prioritizing speed in proof generation also means manually designing protocols, and with manual coding and tens of thousands of lines of code this introduces significant security vulnerabilities. This complicates the creation of security-sensitive decentralized applications and makes auditability and compliance a nightmare – all hindrances to widespread adoption in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and AI. A team of Carnegie Mellon researchers is collaborating with Anaxi Labs to overcome this trade-off. CMU’s recent paper presents a revolutionary way to directly compile high-level software and convert it into simpler forms (low-level representations) needed for underlying proof systems to work. And all this is done automatically, repeatable and auditable, getting rid of the manual work, drastically improving performance while cryptographically ensuring security of the process. The work achieves this by analyzing the high-level program, breaking the program into small, indivisible units, then creating low-level representation from each unit that can be easily inputted into varieties of proof systems. “This idea of breaking the computation into very specific chunks that take the place of a CPU in an automatic way is a new approach, and this is the first time that somebody has attempted this kind of approach where we avoid the full program representation for the compiler,” said Riad Wahby, assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“We’re extremely excited about it.” Unlocking New Decentralized Applications The research and the framework Anaxi Labs is building from the research are set to revolutionize industries in Web3 and beyond. In traditional and regulated finance, the performance boost while maintaining auditability enables real-time settlement of intrabank transfers like instant USD payments. In healthcare, amid challenges faced by 23andMe, secure and privacy-preserving encryption tools enabled by product being developed by Anaxi Labs, could now address critical concerns and safely utilize private genetic information by ensuring rightful ownership of one’s DNA, while enabling valuable research. Within the realm of enterprise AI and critical physical infrastructures, a decentralized solution that requires high availability and close to zero latency such as rapid fine-tuning and inference across multiple data and compute power resources becomes a reality. In the immediate term, products based on the research provide the most effective solution for Web3 companies grappling with the scalability, security and decentralization trade-offs, offering a new design paradigm for rollups and interoperability. “This research and the product we are building incorporating the research will have profound implication to many important industry applications today that need a safe solution for their massive performance overheads, such as ZK and EVM, finally bringing us to the doorstep of our vision of cryptographically-secured decentralized consensus with real-time settlement,” said Kate Shen, co-founder of Anaxi Labs. “We also like the fact that it is language and library agnostic, meaning a wide variety of projects can benefit from this without code modification. This enabled us to build an open, collaborative framework as opposed to the increasingly static, monolithic approaches today,” Shen adds. “This enables all developers to automatically choose and combine the best of the latest advancements in proof systems such as lookups, co-processors and hardware acceleration; maximizing the performance gains of each computational substrate.” Anaxi Labs and CyLab, a Game-Changing Partnership Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab has been at the center of cutting-edge research that’s served as the foundation for blockchain development – including Zero-Knowledge. Notable faculty researchers from CyLab include esteemed professor Bryan Parno, a critical contributor to the history of ZK whose lab produced the widely cited Nova paper series, and assistant professor Riad Wahby, whose findings resulted in new cryptographic technologies that realized visions of the Ethereum Foundation (and more recently, the pathbreaking Jolt zkVM implementation by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division, a16z crypto). The findings set forth in this compiler framework are the result of the second research project originating from the symbiotic partnership between Anaxi Labs and CyLab through the CMU Secure Blockchain Initiative. This partnership enables CMU academics to collaborate and learn from the insights gleaned from the commercial deployments of their blockchain research, spearheaded by Anaxi Labs, for both Web3 and Web 2.0 applications. It enables them to find commercial solutions to major existing issues with blockchain that fails to bridge the gap between the known benefits of blockchain technology, and mass adoption. And it also serves as a springboard for CMU students to launch their careers in Web3. “Anaxi Labs’ partnership with CyLab advances CMU researchers’ ability to work on projects with direct, real-world applications, ensuring that their work has practical relevance and potential for impact,” said Michael Lisanti, CyLab’s Senior Director of Partnerships. To learn more about Anaxi Labs: https://www.anaxilabs.com/ To learn more about Anaxi Labs and CyLab’s latest work: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ To learn more about CyLab’s partnership with Anaxi Labs: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/news/2024/07/17-anaxi-labs-strategic-partner.html About Anaxi Labs Anaxi Labs is a new kind of research and development lab that bridges the worlds of advanced academic theory and mass adoption. They are dedicated to producing original, cutting-edge research, building enterprise-grade, safe and scalable decentralized infrastructure, and catalyzing the next generation of decentralized applications powered by cryptography. Anaxi Labs work with world's top minds in cryptography research and world-class engineers who have experience building and operating household-name products with hundreds of millions of users. They are the industry partner of top academic institutions in cryptography such as Carnegie Mellon University. Together, they are committed to transforming the future of the internet by unlocking the power of what science can do for people, society and the planet. Website: https://www.anaxilabs.com/ About CyLab Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab is the university's security and privacy research institute. They bring together experts from all schools across the University, encompassing the fields of engineering, computer science, public policy, information systems, business, financial information risk management, humanities, and social sciences. Our mission is to catalyze, support, promote, and strengthen collaborative security and privacy research and education across departments, disciplines, and geographic boundaries to achieve significant impact on research, education, public policy, and practice. Website: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ Contact PR Daisy Leung daisy@11.international This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here PITTSBURGH, United states, December 6th, 2024/Chainwire/--Anaxi Labs, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab, the university’s cybersecurity and privacy institute, is announcing a compiler framework for cryptography that resolves an impasse – building scalable applications with Zero-Knowledge require fundamental trade-offs. The elusive trifecta of scalable, cryptographically-secured and decentralized applications have been considered impossible, and a barrier to mass adoption — until now. A Breakthrough in Cryptography with No Trade-Offs Blockchains such as Ethereum have been hailed as the future of decentralized infrastructure, with Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology heralded to enhance Ethereum's security and scalability beyond 120 TPS. According to the team, developing ZK proofs is complex and time-consuming, requiring thousands of hours across dozens of developers. Prioritizing speed in proof generation also means manually designing protocols, and with manual coding and tens of thousands of lines of code this introduces significant security vulnerabilities. This complicates the creation of security-sensitive decentralized applications and makes auditability and compliance a nightmare – all hindrances to widespread adoption in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and AI. A team of Carnegie Mellon researchers is collaborating with Anaxi Labs to overcome this trade-off. CMU’s recent paper presents a revolutionary way to directly compile high-level software and convert it into simpler forms (low-level representations) needed for underlying proof systems to work. And all this is done automatically, repeatable and auditable, getting rid of the manual work, drastically improving performance while cryptographically ensuring security of the process. The work achieves this by analyzing the high-level program, breaking the program into small, indivisible units, then creating low-level representation from each unit that can be easily inputted into varieties of proof systems. “This idea of breaking the computation into very specific chunks that take the place of a CPU in an automatic way is a new approach, and this is the first time that somebody has attempted this kind of approach where we avoid the full program representation for the compiler,” said Riad Wahby, assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “We’re extremely excited about it.” “This idea of breaking the computation into very specific chunks that take the place of a CPU in an automatic way is a new approach, and this is the first time that somebody has attempted this kind of approach where we avoid the full program representation for the compiler,” said Riad Wahby, assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering . Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering “We’re extremely excited about it.” Unlocking New Decentralized Applications The research and the framework Anaxi Labs is building from the research are set to revolutionize industries in Web3 and beyond. In traditional and regulated finance, the performance boost while maintaining auditability enables real-time settlement of intrabank transfers like instant USD payments. In healthcare, amid challenges faced by 23andMe, secure and privacy-preserving encryption tools enabled by product being developed by Anaxi Labs, could now address critical concerns and safely utilize private genetic information by ensuring rightful ownership of one’s DNA, while enabling valuable research. Within the realm of enterprise AI and critical physical infrastructures, a decentralized solution that requires high availability and close to zero latency such as rapid fine-tuning and inference across multiple data and compute power resources becomes a reality. In the immediate term, products based on the research provide the most effective solution for Web3 companies grappling with the scalability, security and decentralization trade-offs, offering a new design paradigm for rollups and interoperability. “This research and the product we are building incorporating the research will have profound implication to many important industry applications today that need a safe solution for their massive performance overheads, such as ZK and EVM, finally bringing us to the doorstep of our vision of cryptographically-secured decentralized consensus with real-time settlement,” said Kate Shen, co-founder of Anaxi Labs. “This research and the product we are building incorporating the research will have profound implication to many important industry applications today that need a safe solution for their massive performance overheads, such as ZK and EVM, finally bringing us to the doorstep of our vision of cryptographically-secured decentralized consensus with real-time settlement,” said Kate Shen, co-founder of Anaxi Labs. “We also like the fact that it is language and library agnostic, meaning a wide variety of projects can benefit from this without code modification. This enabled us to build an open, collaborative framework as opposed to the increasingly static, monolithic approaches today,” Shen adds. “We also like the fact that it is language and library agnostic, meaning a wide variety of projects can benefit from this without code modification. This enabled us to build an open, collaborative framework as opposed to the increasingly static, monolithic approaches today,” Shen adds. “This enables all developers to automatically choose and combine the best of the latest advancements in proof systems such as lookups, co-processors and hardware acceleration; maximizing the performance gains of each computational substrate.” “This enables all developers to automatically choose and combine the best of the latest advancements in proof systems such as lookups, co-processors and hardware acceleration; maximizing the performance gains of each computational substrate.” Anaxi Labs and CyLab, a Game-Changing Partnership Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab has been at the center of cutting-edge research that’s served as the foundation for blockchain development – including Zero-Knowledge. Notable faculty researchers from CyLab include esteemed professor Bryan Parno, a critical contributor to the history of ZK whose lab produced the widely cited Nova paper series , and assistant professor Riad Wahby, whose findings resulted in new cryptographic technologies that realized visions of the Ethereum Foundation (and more recently, the pathbreaking Jolt zkVM implementation by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division, a16z crypto). Nova paper series Nova paper series the Ethereum Foundation the Ethereum Foundation Jolt zkVM Jolt zkVM The findings set forth in this compiler framework are the result of the second research project originating from the symbiotic partnership between Anaxi Labs and CyLab through the CMU Secure Blockchain Initiative. This partnership enables CMU academics to collaborate and learn from the insights gleaned from the commercial deployments of their blockchain research, spearheaded by Anaxi Labs, for both Web3 and Web 2.0 applications. It enables them to find commercial solutions to major existing issues with blockchain that fails to bridge the gap between the known benefits of blockchain technology, and mass adoption. And it also serves as a springboard for CMU students to launch their careers in Web3. “Anaxi Labs’ partnership with CyLab advances CMU researchers’ ability to work on projects with direct, real-world applications, ensuring that their work has practical relevance and potential for impact,” said Michael Lisanti, CyLab’s Senior Director of Partnerships. “Anaxi Labs’ partnership with CyLab advances CMU researchers’ ability to work on projects with direct, real-world applications, ensuring that their work has practical relevance and potential for impact,” said Michael Lisanti, CyLab’s Senior Director of Partnerships. To learn more about Anaxi Labs: https://www.anaxilabs.com/ https://www.anaxilabs.com/ https://www.anaxilabs.com/ To learn more about Anaxi Labs and CyLab’s latest work: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ To learn more about CyLab’s partnership with Anaxi Labs: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/news/2024/07/17-anaxi-labs-strategic-partner.html https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/news/2024/07/17-anaxi-labs-strategic-partner.html https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/news/2024/07/17-anaxi-labs-strategic-partner.html About Anaxi Labs Anaxi Labs is a new kind of research and development lab that bridges the worlds of advanced academic theory and mass adoption. Anaxi Labs Anaxi Labs They are dedicated to producing original, cutting-edge research, building enterprise-grade, safe and scalable decentralized infrastructure, and catalyzing the next generation of decentralized applications powered by cryptography. Anaxi Labs work with world's top minds in cryptography research and world-class engineers who have experience building and operating household-name products with hundreds of millions of users. They are the industry partner of top academic institutions in cryptography such as Carnegie Mellon University . Together, they are committed to transforming the future of the internet by unlocking the power of what science can do for people, society and the planet. Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University Website: https://www.anaxilabs.com/ https://www.anaxilabs.com/ https://www.anaxilabs.com/ About CyLab Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab is the university's security and privacy research institute. CyLab CyLab They bring together experts from all schools across the University, encompassing the fields of engineering, computer science, public policy, information systems, business, financial information risk management, humanities, and social sciences. Our mission is to catalyze, support, promote, and strengthen collaborative security and privacy research and education across departments, disciplines, and geographic boundaries to achieve significant impact on research, education, public policy, and practice. Website: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/ Contact PR Daisy Leung daisy@11.international This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here here here

Anaxi Labs And Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Unveil a Breakthrough Proof System

የአናክሲ ቤተሙከራዎች እና የካርኔጊ ሜሎን ዩኒቨርሲቲ ሳይላብ የፍተሻ ማረጋገጫ ስርዓትን ይፋ አድርገዋል።

Anaxi Labs y CyLab de la Universidad Carnegie Mellon presentan un innovador sistema de pruebas

Anaxi Labs-ek eta Carnegie Mellon Unibertsitateko CyLab-ek aurrerapen froga sistema bat aurkeztu dute

Anaxi Labs ו-CyLab של אוניברסיטת קרנגי מלון חושפים מערכת הוכחה פורצת דרך

Anaxi Labs dan CyLab milik Carnegie Mellon University Meluncurkan Sistem Pembuktian Terobosan

Anaxi Labs e CyLab della Carnegie Mellon University svelano un sistema di prova rivoluzionario

Anaxi Labsとカーネギーメロン大学のCyLabが画期的な証明システムを発表

Anaxi Labs жана Карнеги Меллон университетинин CyLab проспективдүү далил тутумун ачты

Anaxi Labs sy Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab dia namoaka rafitra porofon'ny fandrosoana

Anaxi Labs и CyLab на Универзитетот Карнеги Мелон открија систем за доказ за пробив

Anaxi Labs र Carnegie Mellon University को CyLab ले एक सफलता प्रमाण प्रणाली अनावरण गर्यो

Anaxi Labs și CyLab de la Universitatea Carnegie Mellon dezvăluie un sistem de dovezi inovatoare

What does mainstream adoption even mean? This post is taking part in the Devconflict x Kiwi writing contest At Devconflict, a side event of Devcon 2024, a global conference held by the Ethereum Foundation, there was a debate about the best way to scale blockchain-based products and services. The primary purpose of the debate was to determine the best way to scale or finally achieve an escape velocity that makes blockchain products more accessible to the masses. Here’s the debate for full context: https://youtu.be/o0m5PNJ5JK0?embedable=true Two core arguments emerged from the debate: Onchain products should be built to serve billions.
Building for scale helps get your product or service in front of more people. Building for scale also helps with things like user experience and distribution strategies.This helps new users or entry-level users, but it also helps more sophisticated users find new and interesting ways to use the underlying product or service, which then helps fuel more adoption.

The counterpoint is that onchain products and services should be built for specific niche audiences — or tailored to groups of people with specialized needs outside of the mainstream.
The point here is mainly that building for billions requires making too many trade-offs and that onchain products and services will start to feel too much like the web2 stack.The logic here is that to reach a billion users and beyond you really need command and control structures like global corporations running things. On the flip side, building for specific use cases is more aligned with the spirit of decentralization.The goal here is to build technologies that can be combined or remixed to reach internet scale via supporting communities. The crux of the debate is whether or not onchain technologies can really scale in a way that allows them to maintain the values of what makes them unique or alternative in the first place. Here’s a quick breakdown of the two scaling strategies and then a take on which route makes the most sense. Maybe the best scaling solution is more time. SOURCE Build for Bilions The build-for-billions mentality makes sense when thinking about internet scale. One of the great things about building for the internet is that, for the first time in human history, you can build goods and services that are global and universal in a way. Another advantage is network effects or the idea that an app or service becomes more valuable the more people use it. During the Devconflict debate, both sides kept pointing toward messaging services like WhatsApp that have successfully reached a billion users. To reach that scale requires getting a lot of things right. Maybe the thing that a product like WhatsApp got right is solving a fundamental need. Messaging apps are a great example because they solve the fundamental problem of making it easy and cheap to communicate with other people. What’s interesting about a product like WhatsApp is that the real utility — the end-to-end encryption is not the main feature that helped onboard its billion users. Instead, people use WhatsApp because it’s easy to use and it’s easy to find other people to connect with. Likewise, like messaging, many onchain products solve fundamental needs like making it easy and cost-effective to send, receive, or collect digital assets. In the spirit of build-for-billions, blockchain-based services should abstract away friction points like wallet key management or interoperability issues that make it complex to navigate between one product and the next. The issue is that a lot of the complexity inherent in the product design of blockchain-based services is there for a reason. The risk is that oversimplifying something like wallet key management requires handing control back over to a company or organization rather than an individual user, which could potentially lead back to a web2 user experience. So the tricky part with onchain products and services is to build for billions but in ways that empower users rather than just recreate new versions of already existing technologies. After all, while it is true that one of the fundamental reasons a service like WhatsApp was able to reach a billion users is because it is essentially “free.” But the app is monetized via data collection for targeted advertising, which doesn’t exactly fit into the ethos or principles of building onchain. Build for niches of engaged users The alternative to building new internet technologies that don’t require billions of users to become successful is to build more precise solutions for a smaller group of users. Building specific solutions enables two things: Products can be tailored, customized, or precise to solve a well-defined issue.
Products and services can exist that aren’t necessarily billion-dollar businesses, but still generate a lot of value for end-users and the people creating them. Building a successful product that is used and loved by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people can be really useful, but is it mainstream or even a name brand? And does that even matter? Probably what matters more is if the product can operate in a way that is sustainable and can create value for the team who created and maintain it. One of the promises of building onchain is that it enables new kinds of economies — more internet-native economies — that don’t require the same kind of big box store, mainstream media, kind of approach to success. Put another way, maybe the goal of building for billions is antiquated — or like the Walmart of the digital age. Maybe instead the goal should be to build small specialized stacks of products that can be easily stacked and combined with related products to build suites of services that leverage things like network effects and global access, but do it in a way that is also extremely custom and bespoke. How to achieve internet scale while staying true to open, permissionless access and non-custodial control? The most obvious answer to the question about how to scale new kinds of internet services is just to build products that are better than anything that exists right now. For people concerned about privacy, that means building the best privacy product — one that delivers both the best user experience and the best alignment with privacy-preserving principles. For people with concerns about having their retirement funds rugged by banks, it means building a streamlined non-custodial experience — one where key management becomes as easy as saving a username and password. For people worried about the rise in nationalism and closing borders, it means building technologies that are global and multicultural at the foundation — where there is no off switch available to politicians or people pretending to be politicians. Maybe the key to scale is not so much thinking about success in the traditional web2 context of milestones of millions of users. Maybe the right way to think about scale for onchain services and beyond is to think about how the product is composable, durable, and accessible. If the answer is yes then it can become part of the fabric of the open internet. The product or service might even get remixed into something else or used by some other project. After all, the internet works best when it operates as networks of networks — guided by rails of common protocols — but is also dynamic, open, and adaptable. This post is part of the Open Money project. What does mainstream adoption even mean? What does mainstream adoption even mean? This post is taking part in the Devconflict x Kiwi writing contest This post is taking part in the Devconflict x Kiwi writing contest This post is taking part in the Devconflict x Kiwi writing contest At Devconflict, a side event of Devcon 2024, a global conference held by the Ethereum Foundation, there was a debate about the best way to scale blockchain-based products and services. The primary purpose of the debate was to determine the best way to scale or finally achieve an escape velocity that makes blockchain products more accessible to the masses. Here’s the debate for full context: https://youtu.be/o0m5PNJ5JK0?embedable=true https://youtu.be/o0m5PNJ5JK0?embedable=true Two core arguments emerged from the debate: Onchain products should be built to serve billions.
Building for scale helps get your product or service in front of more people. Building for scale also helps with things like user experience and distribution strategies.This helps new users or entry-level users, but it also helps more sophisticated users find new and interesting ways to use the underlying product or service, which then helps fuel more adoption. The counterpoint is that onchain products and services should be built for specific niche audiences — or tailored to groups of people with specialized needs outside of the mainstream.
The point here is mainly that building for billions requires making too many trade-offs and that onchain products and services will start to feel too much like the web2 stack.The logic here is that to reach a billion users and beyond you really need command and control structures like global corporations running things. On the flip side, building for specific use cases is more aligned with the spirit of decentralization.The goal here is to build technologies that can be combined or remixed to reach internet scale via supporting communities. Onchain products should be built to serve billions. Building for scale helps get your product or service in front of more people. Building for scale also helps with things like user experience and distribution strategies. This helps new users or entry-level users, but it also helps more sophisticated users find new and interesting ways to use the underlying product or service, which then helps fuel more adoption. Onchain products should be built to serve billions. Onchain Building for scale helps get your product or service in front of more people. Building for scale also helps with things like user experience and distribution strategies. This helps new users or entry-level users, but it also helps more sophisticated users find new and interesting ways to use the underlying product or service, which then helps fuel more adoption. The counterpoint is that onchain products and services should be built for specific niche audiences — or tailored to groups of people with specialized needs outside of the mainstream. The point here is mainly that building for billions requires making too many trade-offs and that onchain products and services will start to feel too much like the web2 stack. The logic here is that to reach a billion users and beyond you really need command and control structures like global corporations running things. On the flip side, building for specific use cases is more aligned with the spirit of decentralization. The goal here is to build technologies that can be combined or remixed to reach internet scale via supporting communities. The counterpoint is that onchain products and services should be built for specific niche audiences — or tailored to groups of people with specialized needs outside of the mainstream. The point here is mainly that building for billions requires making too many trade-offs and that onchain products and services will start to feel too much like the web2 stack. The logic here is that to reach a billion users and beyond you really need command and control structures like global corporations running things. On the flip side, building for specific use cases is more aligned with the spirit of decentralization. The goal here is to build technologies that can be combined or remixed to reach internet scale via supporting communities. The crux of the debate is whether or not onchain technologies can really scale in a way that allows them to maintain the values of what makes them unique or alternative in the first place. Here’s a quick breakdown of the two scaling strategies and then a take on which route makes the most sense. Maybe the best scaling solution is more time. SOURCE SOURCE Build for Bilions The build-for-billions mentality makes sense when thinking about internet scale. One of the great things about building for the internet is that, for the first time in human history, you can build goods and services that are global and universal in a way. Another advantage is network effects or the idea that an app or service becomes more valuable the more people use it. network effects During the Devconflict debate, both sides kept pointing toward messaging services like WhatsApp that have successfully reached a billion users. To reach that scale requires getting a lot of things right. Maybe the thing that a product like WhatsApp got right is solving a fundamental need. Messaging apps are a great example because they solve the fundamental problem of making it easy and cheap to communicate with other people. What’s interesting about a product like WhatsApp is that the real utility — the end-to-end encryption is not the main feature that helped onboard its billion users. Instead, people use WhatsApp because it’s easy to use and it’s easy to find other people to connect with. Likewise, like messaging, many onchain products solve fundamental needs like making it easy and cost-effective to send, receive, or collect digital assets. In the spirit of build-for-billions, blockchain-based services should abstract away friction points like wallet key management or interoperability issues that make it complex to navigate between one product and the next. The issue is that a lot of the complexity inherent in the product design of blockchain-based services is there for a reason. The risk is that oversimplifying something like wallet key management requires handing control back over to a company or organization rather than an individual user, which could potentially lead back to a web2 user experience. wallet key management So the tricky part with onchain products and services is to build for billions but in ways that empower users rather than just recreate new versions of already existing technologies. After all, while it is true that one of the fundamental reasons a service like WhatsApp was able to reach a billion users is because it is essentially “free.” But the app is monetized via data collection for targeted advertising, which doesn’t exactly fit into the ethos or principles of building onchain. Build for niches of engaged users The alternative to building new internet technologies that don’t require billions of users to become successful is to build more precise solutions for a smaller group of users. Building specific solutions enables two things: Products can be tailored, customized, or precise to solve a well-defined issue. Products and services can exist that aren’t necessarily billion-dollar businesses, but still generate a lot of value for end-users and the people creating them. Products can be tailored, customized, or precise to solve a well-defined issue. Products and services can exist that aren’t necessarily billion-dollar businesses, but still generate a lot of value for end-users and the people creating them. Building a successful product that is used and loved by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people can be really useful, but is it mainstream or even a name brand? And does that even matter? Probably what matters more is if the product can operate in a way that is sustainable and can create value for the team who created and maintain it. One of the promises of building onchain is that it enables new kinds of economies — more internet-native economies — that don’t require the same kind of big box store, mainstream media, kind of approach to success. Put another way, maybe the goal of building for billions is antiquated — or like the Walmart of the digital age. Maybe instead the goal should be to build small specialized stacks of products that can be easily stacked and combined with related products to build suites of services that leverage things like network effects and global access, but do it in a way that is also extremely custom and bespoke. How to achieve internet scale while staying true to open, permissionless access and non-custodial control? The most obvious answer to the question about how to scale new kinds of internet services is just to build products that are better than anything that exists right now. For people concerned about privacy, that means building the best privacy product — one that delivers both the best user experience and the best alignment with privacy-preserving principles. For people with concerns about having their retirement funds rugged by banks, it means building a streamlined non-custodial experience — one where key management becomes as easy as saving a username and password. For people worried about the rise in nationalism and closing borders, it means building technologies that are global and multicultural at the foundation — where there is no off switch available to politicians or people pretending to be politicians. Maybe the key to scale is not so much thinking about success in the traditional web2 context of milestones of millions of users. Maybe the right way to think about scale for onchain services and beyond is to think about how the product is composable , durable, and accessible. composable If the answer is yes then it can become part of the fabric of the open internet. The product or service might even get remixed into something else or used by some other project. After all, the internet works best when it operates as networks of networks — guided by rails of common protocols — but is also dynamic, open, and adaptable. This post is part of the Open Money project. Open Money

The Fallacy of Onboarding the Next Billion Users

Devcon 2024: The Historic Event for Ethereum Community and The Future of Web3

Devcon 2024: Istorijski događaj za Ethereum zajednicu i budućnost Web3

Devcon 2024: el evento histórico para la comunidad Ethereum y el futuro de la Web3

Devcon 2024: Ethereum komunitatearen gertaera historikoa eta Web3-ren etorkizuna

Devcon 2024: رویداد تاریخی برای انجمن اتریوم و آینده Web3

Devcon 2024: l'evento storico per la comunità Ethereum e il futuro di Web3

Devcon 2024: Ethereum コミュニティと Web3 の未来にとっての歴史的なイベント

„Devcon 2024“: istorinis „Ethereum“ bendruomenės įvykis ir „Web3“ ateitis

Devcon 2024: Peristiwa Bersejarah untuk Komuniti Ethereum dan Masa Depan Web3

Devcon 2024: د ایتیریم ټولنې لپاره تاریخي پیښه او د ویب 3 راتلونکی

Devcon 2024: Ҳодисаи таърихӣ барои ҷомеаи Ethereum ва ояндаи Web3

Devcon 2024: ታሪኻዊ ፍጻመ ንማሕበረሰብ ኤትሪዩምን መጻኢ ዌብ3ን።

I-Devcon 2024: Isiganeko seMbali ye-Ethereum Community kunye nekamva leWeb3

Trader Loses $26M in ezETH Tokens: Media Blames User, Hacker Calls Out ERC-20 Flaws

Trader mister $26M i ezETH-tokens: Media Blames User, Hacker Call Out ERC-20 Flaws

Un comerciante pierde 26 millones de dólares en tokens ezETH: los medios culpan al usuario y un pirata informático denuncia las fallas de ERC-20

Machann pèdi $ 26M nan ezETH Tokens: Medya blame itilizatè, Hacker rele defo ERC-20

トレーダーが ezETH トークンで 2,600 万ドルを失う: メディアはユーザーを非難、ハッカーは ERC-20 の欠陥を指摘

ពាណិជ្ជករបាត់បង់ 26 លានដុល្លារនៅក្នុង ezETH Tokens: ប្រព័ន្ធផ្សព្វផ្សាយបន្ទោសអ្នកប្រើប្រាស់, Hacker ហៅកំហុស ERC-20

Prekybininkas praranda 26 mln. USD ezETH žetonų: žiniasklaida kaltina vartotoją, įsilaužėlis praneša apie ERC-20 trūkumus

व्यापारीले ezETH टोकनहरूमा $ 26M गुमायो: मिडियाले प्रयोगकर्तालाई दोष दिन्छ, ह्याकरले ERC-20 त्रुटिहरू बोलाउँछ

Comerciante $26M ezETH Tokens kaqpi chinkachin: Medios de comunicación Usuariota huchachan, Hacker ERC-20 pantaykunata waqyan

Mutengesi Anorasikirwa nemadhora 26M mu ezETH Tokens: Media Inopomera Mushandisi, Hacker Anodaidza ERC-20 Makanganiso

Trader förlorar 26 miljoner dollar i ezETH-tokens: Media skyller på användare, hackare kallar ut ERC-20-brister

Treyder ezETH tokenlarida 26 million dollar yo‘qotdi: OAV foydalanuvchini ayblaydi, xaker ERC-20 kamchiliklarini chaqiradi

Umrhwebi Ulahlekelwa yi-26M yeedola kwiiMpawu ze-EZETH: I-Media Blames User, i-Hacker ibiza i-ERC-20 iimpazamo

How to Monitor Blockchain Transactions in Realtime With dRPC and Web3.js

Sachin Kumar is Keeping Blockchain Honest With Smart Contracts That Respect Your Essential Right to Privacy The blockchain runs on codes and contracts, passing information and valuable data through processes that execute when certain conditions are met. It needs to be simplified to be understood in brief. Fortunately, experts like Sachin Kumar have invested years of passion into ensuring it all works to your advantage and even place value on your right to privacy. Something that zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and smart contracts are best at. Why ZKPs Are Integral in Advancing the Blockchain When people talk about crypto, they talk about blockchain technology, which increasingly means smart contracts. This represents a technological progression. Smart contracts are agreements that execute automatically when their conditions are met, and those can be sales, transfers, or other deals. A ZKP can trigger a smart contract without providing identifying information about the trigger, allowing people (and systems) to conduct business without sacrificing their privacy and security. It's next-generation internet security, and even if you don't deal with blockchains, you want this to be robust for the sake of the global economy. Thanks go to Sachin Kumar, one of the figures who ensured that ZKPs became the integral security feature they've become. Beginning with a fellowship from the University of California and the OpenMined nonprofit, Kumar turned his "Deep-seated belief in privacy as a fundamental human right" into a passion for applied cryptography that would shape the development of smart contracts and ZKPs. The Invention of zkp2p: Applying Cryptography to Smart Contracts While developing smart contracts between 2021 and 2023, Kumar began work on zkp2p. This open-source project would benefit from grants from the Ethereum Foundation. In 2023, Kumar will co-found P2P Labs Inc. to continue advancing this privacy-centric technology. A peer-to-peer solution that embodies the principles of "trust minimization, speed, and accessibility," says Kumar, who explains that zkp2p was "conceived to address the need for reliable and efficient digital currency exchanges, especially in high-inflation regions." It's already touched your economies, being "integrated with fiat platforms in countries like the USA, India, and Turkey," where crypto is closely tied to traditional currency's value. The quick, secure movement of real value on blockchains in some of the world's biggest economies has already "significantly contributed to mitigating the challenges posed by inflation in these areas." Keeping Blockchains Honest and Secure "Working on zkp2p has been a professionally fulfilling journey," says Kumar. "This project has not only allowed me to contribute to the cryptocurrency ecosystem meaningfully but also to advance the state of privacy and security in digital transactions." Kumar has also had the opportunity to speak for these values at events like the ZK10 in London and Progcrypto in Istanbul, and he's set to serve as a mentor at the Ethereum Amsterdam conference and judge at the ZK Hack hackathon in Kraków. Sachin Kumar has done much work in the last few years. "I committed to enhancing blockchain systems with my work in applied cryptography in order to see what can be done to ensure privacy and trustworthy systems," he says. His strong motivation and commitment to the value of preserving privacy through next-generation technological solutions have given him significant influence in this moment of incredible innovation. Keeping blockchain technology honest and secure is essential, and the world has seen the benefit of Kumar's focus. Sachin Kumar is Keeping Blockchain Honest With Smart Contracts That Respect Your Essential Right to Privacy Sachin Kumar is Keeping Blockchain Honest With Smart Contracts That Respect Your Essential Right to Privacy The blockchain runs on codes and contracts, passing information and valuable data through processes that execute when certain conditions are met. It needs to be simplified to be understood in brief. Fortunately, experts like Sachin Kumar have invested years of passion into ensuring it all works to your advantage and even place value on your right to privacy. Something that zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and smart contracts are best at. Sachin Kumar Sachin Kumar Why ZKPs Are Integral in Advancing the Blockchain When people talk about crypto, they talk about blockchain technology, which increasingly means smart contracts. This represents a technological progression. Smart contracts are agreements that execute automatically when their conditions are met, and those can be sales, transfers, or other deals. A ZKP can trigger a smart contract without providing identifying information about the trigger, allowing people (and systems) to conduct business without sacrificing their privacy and security. It's next-generation internet security, and even if you don't deal with blockchains, you want this to be robust for the sake of the global economy. Thanks go to Sachin Kumar , one of the figures who ensured that ZKPs became the integral security feature they've become. Beginning with a fellowship from the University of California and the OpenMined nonprofit, Kumar turned his "Deep-seated belief in privacy as a fundamental human right" into a passion for applied cryptography that would shape the development of smart contracts and ZKPs. Sachin Kumar Sachin Kumar The Invention of zkp2p: Applying Cryptography to Smart Contracts While developing smart contracts between 2021 and 2023, Kumar began work on zkp2p . This open-source project would benefit from grants from the Ethereum Foundation. In 2023, Kumar will co-found P2P Labs Inc. to continue advancing this privacy-centric technology. A peer-to-peer solution that embodies the principles of "trust minimization, speed, and accessibility," says Kumar, who explains that zkp2p was "conceived to address the need for reliable and efficient digital currency exchanges, especially in high-inflation regions." zkp2p zkp2p zkp2p zkp2p It's already touched your economies, being "integrated with fiat platforms in countries like the USA, India, and Turkey," where crypto is closely tied to traditional currency's value. The quick, secure movement of real value on blockchains in some of the world's biggest economies has already "significantly contributed to mitigating the challenges posed by inflation in these areas." Keeping Blockchains Honest and Secure "Working on zkp2p has been a professionally fulfilling journey," says Kumar. "This project has not only allowed me to contribute to the cryptocurrency ecosystem meaningfully but also to advance the state of privacy and security in digital transactions." Kumar has also had the opportunity to speak for these values at events like the ZK10 in London and Progcrypto in Istanbul, and he's set to serve as a mentor at the Ethereum Amsterdam conference and judge at the ZK Hack hackathon in Kraków. Sachin Kumar has done much work in the last few years. "I committed to enhancing blockchain systems with my work in applied cryptography in order to see what can be done to ensure privacy and trustworthy systems," he says. His strong motivation and commitment to the value of preserving privacy through next-generation technological solutions have given him significant influence in this moment of incredible innovation. Keeping blockchain technology honest and secure is essential, and the world has seen the benefit of Kumar's focus.

Unlocking the Power of Zero-Knowledge Proofs

জিরো-নলেজ প্রুফের শক্তি আনলক করা

Die Leistungsfähigkeit von Zero-Knowledge-Beweisen freisetzen

Desbloqueando el poder de las pruebas de conocimiento cero

Libérer la puissance des preuves à connaissance nulle

शून्य-ज्ञान प्रमाण की शक्ति को अनलॉक करना

ゼロ知識証明の力を解き放つ

제로 지식 증명의 힘 잠금 해제

Desbloqueando o poder das provas de conhecimento zero

Раскрытие силы доказательств с нулевым разглашением

Sıfır Bilgi Kanıtlarının Gücünün Kilidini Açmak

Mở khóa sức mạnh của Bằng chứng không kiến thức

释放零知识证明的力量

The King of DAOs - A Bitcoin Justice Department

Table of Links Abstract and I. Introduction II. Expectations of Blockchain Accessibility III. Approach I: Maintain a Ledger Locally - Run a Full Node IV. Approach II: Query a Third-Party Ledger-Node-As-A-Service (NAAS) V. Approach III: Light Node - External Query & Local Verification VI. Concluding Remark and References VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS Ultimately, any blockchain accessibility solution has to decide on a split of responsibilities: either the user does most of the computation necessary or some third party does. A spectrum of solutions may be developed based on different types and needs of users, from a full node to a full third-party service. However, we consider that any solution must still adhere to reasonable security expectations: integrity, availability, and privacy. Most blockchain research is based on the assumption that users run their local nodes. This means the fact that running a full node is still the best way to provide integrity, availability, and privacy. Indeed we surveyed third-party service providers in the field and noted the lack of a data integrity guarantee when the provider is not trusted. We also recalled events that render the providers unable to provide service. These facts mean that third-party service providers can and do fail, and thus relying on them can become risky. At the same time, considering the high cost of running a full node locally, we believe that users should have more choice that does not impact the security guarantees. We observe the emergence of so-called ultralight nodes, which provides a way for third-party services to give a verifiable statement that requires little hardware power from the client. Many open questions remain regarding the accessibility of blockchains, even regarding full-node solutions and third-party providers. Any number of light node protocols can also be built to serve different users’ needs. We reiterate that ensuring the accessibility of blockchains is paramount for the technology. If we believe that blockchains are a common good, then making them accessible to all in a secure and available manner is critical for the future development of Web3 technology. Any information is as useful as how it can be read, and such reasoning also applies to blockchains. REFERENCES [1] AL-BASSAM, M., SONNINO, A., AND BUTERIN, V. Fraud and data availability proofs: Maximising light client security and scaling blockchains with dishonest majorities. arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.09044 (2018). [2] ALCHEMY. Alchemy. https://alchemy.com/, 2022. [3] ALL THAT NODE. All That Node. https://allthatnode.com/, 2022. [4] ANKR. Ankr. https://www.ankr.com/, 2022. [5] BADDOUR, R. Setting up a Litecoin super node: A complete step-bystep recipe that anyone can follow. https://medium.com/@baddour/sett ing-up-a-litecoin-full-node-a-complete-step-by-step-recipe-that-anyon e-can-follow-fb18b82d5cfe, 2022. [6] BINANCE. Binance. https://www.binance.us/, 2022. [7] BITCOIN PROJECT. Minimum requirements. https://bitcoin.org/en/ful l-node#minimum-requirements, 2022. [8] BITCOIN PROJECT. RPC API reference. https://developer.bitcoin.org/ reference/rpc/#, 2022. [9] BLOCKDAEMON. BlockDeamon. https://blockdaemon.com/, 2022. [10] BUNZ, B., KIFFER, L., LUU, L., AND ZAMANI, M. Flyclient: Superlight clients for cryptocurrencies. In 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) (2020), IEEE, pp. 928–946. [11] CHAINSTACK. Chainstack. https://chainstack.com/, 2022. [12] CHATZIGIANNIS, P., BALDIMTSI, F., AND CHALKIAS, K. Sok: Blockchain light clients. In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (2022), Springer, pp. 615–641. [13] CLEPER, Y., AND BINDER, G. Lava: A decentralized RPC network for blockchains - litepaper v0.1. Tech. rep., Lava Protocol Inc., 2022. [14] COINCASHEW. How to run your own Monero node. https://www.co incashew.com/coins/overview-xmr/guide-or-how-to-run-a-full-node, 2022. [15] CONSENSYS. Privacy policy. http://web.archive.org/web/2022112109 5716/https://consensys.net/privacy-policy/, 2022. [16] CRYPTO.COM. Crypto.com. https://crypto.com/us, 2022. [17] DAIAN, P., GOLDFEDER, S., KELL, T., LI, Y., ZHAO, X., BENTOV, I., BREIDENBACH, L., AND JUELS, A. Flash boys 2.0: Frontrunning in decentralized exchanges, miner extractable value, and consensus instability. In 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) (2020), IEEE, pp. 910–927. [18] DASH CORE GROUP. Masternode requirements. https://docs.dash.org/ en/stable/masternodes/understanding.html#masternode-requirements, 2022. [19] DATAHUB. DataHub. https://datahub.figment.io/, 2022. [20] DENNIS, R., AND DISSO, J. P. An analysis into the scalability of bitcoin and ethereum. In Third International Congress on Information and Communication Technology (2019), Springer, pp. 619–627. [21] ELECTRIC COIN COMPANY. Troubleshooting guide. https://zcash.read thedocs.io/en/latest/rtd pages/troubleshooting guide.html, 2022. [22] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Ethereum portal network. https://www.ethp ortal.net/, 2022. [23] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Light Ethereum subprotocol (LES). https: //github.com/ethereum/devp2p/blob/master/caps/les.md, 2022. [24] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Light node. https://ethereum.org/en/develo pers/docs/nodes-and-clients/#light-node, 2022. [25] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Node as a service. https://ethereum.org/en/ developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/nodes-as-a-service/, 2022. [26] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Requirements. https://ethereum.org/en/deve lopers/docs/nodes-and-clients/run-a-node/#requirements, 2022. [27] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Who should run a node? https://ethereum .org/en/run-a-node/, 2022. [28] FANTI, G., KOGAN, L., AND VISWANATH, P. Economics of proof-ofstake payment systems, 2019. [29] GETBLOCK. GetBlock. https://getblock.io/, 2022. [30] GOES, C. The interblockchain communication protocol: An overview. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.15918 (2020). [31] GRIFFITH, E. Why the crypto collapse matters. The New York Times (Nov 2022). [32] INFSTONES. InfStones. https://infstones.com/, 2022. [33] INFURA. Infura. https://infura.io/, 2022. [34] KALEIDO. Kaleido. https://kaleido.io/, 2022. [35] LI, K., CHEN, J., LIU, X., TANG, Y. R., WANG, X., AND LUO, X. As strong as its weakest link: How to break blockchain dapps at rpc service. In NDSS (2021). [36] MALWA, S. Two Polygon, Fantom front ends hit by DNS attack. https: //www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/07/01/two-polygon-fantom-front-end s-hit-by-dns-attack/, 2022. [37] MEE, D. Bitcoin full node on RBP3 (revised). https://medium.com/@ meeDamian/bitcoin-full-node-on-rbp3-revised-88bb7c8ef1d1, 2017. [38] MEE, D. Litecoin full node on RBP3. https://medium.com/@meeDam ian/litecoin-full-node-on-rbp3-69f851f74f1b, 2017. [39] METAMASK SUPPORT. Why Infura cannot serve certain areas. https: //metamask.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059386712-Why-MetaM ask-and-Infura-cannot-serve-certain-areas, 2022. [40] MORALIS. Moralis. https://moralis.io/, 2022. [41] NAKAMOTO, S. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Decentralized Business Review (2008), 21260. [42] NELSON, B. J. Remote procedure call. PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, 1981. [43] NOWNODES. NOWNodes. https://nownodes.io/, 2022. [44] PAAVOLAINEN, S., AND CARR, C. Security properties of light clients on the ethereum blockchain. IEEE Access 8 (2020), 124339–124358. [45] POCKET NETWORK. Pocket Network. https://www.pokt.network/, 2022. [46] QUICKNODE. QuickNode. https://www.quicknode.com/, 2022. [47] RIVET. Rivet. https://rivet.cloud/, 2022. [48] SENSEINODE. SenseiNode. https://senseinode.com/, 2022. [49] SETTLEMINT. SettleMint. https://console.settlemint.com/, 2022. [50] SOLANA FOUNDATION. Validator requirements. https://docs.solana.co m/running-validator/validator-reqs, 2022. [51] SONG, Y.-D., AND ASTE, T. The cost of bitcoin mining has never really increased. Frontiers in Blockchain (2020), 44. [52] WATCHDATA. WatchData. https://watchdata.io/, 2022. [53] XRP LEDGER. System requirements. https://xrpl.org/system-requireme nts.html, 2022. [54] YAISH, A., AND ZOHAR, A. Correct cryptocurrency asic pricing: Are miners overpaying. arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.11064 (2020). [55] ZMOK. ZMOK. https://zmok.io/, 2022. Authors:
(1) Zhongtang Luo, Purdue University (luo401@purdue.edu);
(2) Rohan Murukutla, Supra (r.murukutla@supraoracles.com);
(3) Aniket Kate, Purdue University / Supra (aniket@purdue.edu). This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. Table of Links Abstract and I. Introduction Abstract and I. Introduction II. Expectations of Blockchain Accessibility II. Expectations of Blockchain Accessibility III. Approach I: Maintain a Ledger Locally - Run a Full Node III. Approach I: Maintain a Ledger Locally - Run a Full Node IV. Approach II: Query a Third-Party Ledger-Node-As-A-Service (NAAS) IV. Approach II: Query a Third-Party Ledger-Node-As-A-Service (NAAS) V. Approach III: Light Node - External Query & Local Verification V. Approach III: Light Node - External Query & Local Verification VI. Concluding Remark and References VI. Concluding Remark and References VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS Ultimately, any blockchain accessibility solution has to decide on a split of responsibilities: either the user does most of the computation necessary or some third party does. A spectrum of solutions may be developed based on different types and needs of users, from a full node to a full third-party service. However, we consider that any solution must still adhere to reasonable security expectations: integrity, availability, and privacy. Most blockchain research is based on the assumption that users run their local nodes. This means the fact that running a full node is still the best way to provide integrity, availability, and privacy. Indeed we surveyed third-party service providers in the field and noted the lack of a data integrity guarantee when the provider is not trusted. We also recalled events that render the providers unable to provide service. These facts mean that third-party service providers can and do fail, and thus relying on them can become risky. At the same time, considering the high cost of running a full node locally, we believe that users should have more choice that does not impact the security guarantees. We observe the emergence of so-called ultralight nodes, which provides a way for third-party services to give a verifiable statement that requires little hardware power from the client. Many open questions remain regarding the accessibility of blockchains, even regarding full-node solutions and third-party providers. Any number of light node protocols can also be built to serve different users’ needs. We reiterate that ensuring the accessibility of blockchains is paramount for the technology. If we believe that blockchains are a common good, then making them accessible to all in a secure and available manner is critical for the future development of Web3 technology. Any information is as useful as how it can be read, and such reasoning also applies to blockchains. REFERENCES [1] AL-BASSAM, M., SONNINO, A., AND BUTERIN, V. Fraud and data availability proofs: Maximising light client security and scaling blockchains with dishonest majorities. arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.09044 (2018). [2] ALCHEMY. Alchemy. https://alchemy.com/, 2022. [3] ALL THAT NODE. All That Node. https://allthatnode.com/, 2022. [4] ANKR. Ankr. https://www.ankr.com/, 2022. [5] BADDOUR, R. Setting up a Litecoin super node: A complete step-bystep recipe that anyone can follow. https://medium.com/@baddour/sett ing-up-a-litecoin-full-node-a-complete-step-by-step-recipe-that-anyon e-can-follow-fb18b82d5cfe, 2022. [6] BINANCE. Binance. https://www.binance.us/, 2022. [7] BITCOIN PROJECT. Minimum requirements. https://bitcoin.org/en/ful l-node#minimum-requirements, 2022. [8] BITCOIN PROJECT. RPC API reference. https://developer.bitcoin.org/ reference/rpc/#, 2022. [9] BLOCKDAEMON. BlockDeamon. https://blockdaemon.com/, 2022. [10] BUNZ, B., KIFFER, L., LUU, L., AND ZAMANI, M. Flyclient: Superlight clients for cryptocurrencies. In 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) (2020), IEEE, pp. 928–946. [11] CHAINSTACK. Chainstack. https://chainstack.com/, 2022. [12] CHATZIGIANNIS, P., BALDIMTSI, F., AND CHALKIAS, K. Sok: Blockchain light clients. In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (2022), Springer, pp. 615–641. [13] CLEPER, Y., AND BINDER, G. Lava: A decentralized RPC network for blockchains - litepaper v0.1. Tech. rep., Lava Protocol Inc., 2022. [14] COINCASHEW. How to run your own Monero node. https://www.co incashew.com/coins/overview-xmr/guide-or-how-to-run-a-full-node, 2022. [15] CONSENSYS. Privacy policy. http://web.archive.org/web/2022112109 5716/https://consensys.net/privacy-policy/, 2022. [16] CRYPTO.COM. Crypto.com. https://crypto.com/us, 2022. [17] DAIAN, P., GOLDFEDER, S., KELL, T., LI, Y., ZHAO, X., BENTOV, I., BREIDENBACH, L., AND JUELS, A. Flash boys 2.0: Frontrunning in decentralized exchanges, miner extractable value, and consensus instability. In 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) (2020), IEEE, pp. 910–927. [18] DASH CORE GROUP. Masternode requirements. https://docs.dash.org/ en/stable/masternodes/understanding.html#masternode-requirements, 2022. [19] DATAHUB. DataHub. https://datahub.figment.io/, 2022. [20] DENNIS, R., AND DISSO, J. P. An analysis into the scalability of bitcoin and ethereum. In Third International Congress on Information and Communication Technology (2019), Springer, pp. 619–627. [21] ELECTRIC COIN COMPANY. Troubleshooting guide. https://zcash.read thedocs.io/en/latest/rtd pages/troubleshooting guide.html, 2022. [22] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Ethereum portal network. https://www.ethp ortal.net/, 2022. [23] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Light Ethereum subprotocol (LES). https: //github.com/ethereum/devp2p/blob/master/caps/les.md, 2022. [24] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Light node. https://ethereum.org/en/develo pers/docs/nodes-and-clients/#light-node, 2022. [25] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Node as a service. https://ethereum.org/en/ developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/nodes-as-a-service/, 2022. [26] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Requirements. https://ethereum.org/en/deve lopers/docs/nodes-and-clients/run-a-node/#requirements, 2022. [27] ETHEREUM FOUNDATION. Who should run a node? https://ethereum .org/en/run-a-node/, 2022. [28] FANTI, G., KOGAN, L., AND VISWANATH, P. Economics of proof-ofstake payment systems, 2019. [29] GETBLOCK. GetBlock. https://getblock.io/, 2022. [30] GOES, C. The interblockchain communication protocol: An overview. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.15918 (2020). [31] GRIFFITH, E. Why the crypto collapse matters. The New York Times (Nov 2022). [32] INFSTONES. InfStones. https://infstones.com/, 2022. [33] INFURA. Infura. https://infura.io/, 2022. [34] KALEIDO. Kaleido. https://kaleido.io/, 2022. [35] LI, K., CHEN, J., LIU, X., TANG, Y. R., WANG, X., AND LUO, X. As strong as its weakest link: How to break blockchain dapps at rpc service. In NDSS (2021). [36] MALWA, S. Two Polygon, Fantom front ends hit by DNS attack. https: //www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/07/01/two-polygon-fantom-front-end s-hit-by-dns-attack/, 2022. [37] MEE, D. Bitcoin full node on RBP3 (revised). https://medium.com/@ meeDamian/bitcoin-full-node-on-rbp3-revised-88bb7c8ef1d1, 2017. [38] MEE, D. Litecoin full node on RBP3. https://medium.com/@meeDam ian/litecoin-full-node-on-rbp3-69f851f74f1b, 2017. [39] METAMASK SUPPORT. Why Infura cannot serve certain areas. https: //metamask.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059386712-Why-MetaM ask-and-Infura-cannot-serve-certain-areas, 2022. [40] MORALIS. Moralis. https://moralis.io/, 2022. [41] NAKAMOTO, S. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Decentralized Business Review (2008), 21260. [42] NELSON, B. J. Remote procedure call. PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, 1981. [43] NOWNODES. NOWNodes. https://nownodes.io/, 2022. [44] PAAVOLAINEN, S., AND CARR, C. Security properties of light clients on the ethereum blockchain. IEEE Access 8 (2020), 124339–124358. [45] POCKET NETWORK. Pocket Network. https://www.pokt.network/, 2022. [46] QUICKNODE. QuickNode. https://www.quicknode.com/, 2022. [47] RIVET. Rivet. https://rivet.cloud/, 2022. [48] SENSEINODE. SenseiNode. https://senseinode.com/, 2022. [49] SETTLEMINT. SettleMint. https://console.settlemint.com/, 2022. [50] SOLANA FOUNDATION. Validator requirements. https://docs.solana.co m/running-validator/validator-reqs, 2022. [51] SONG, Y.-D., AND ASTE, T. The cost of bitcoin mining has never really increased. Frontiers in Blockchain (2020), 44. [52] WATCHDATA. WatchData. https://watchdata.io/, 2022. [53] XRP LEDGER. System requirements. https://xrpl.org/system-requireme nts.html, 2022. [54] YAISH, A., AND ZOHAR, A. Correct cryptocurrency asic pricing: Are miners overpaying. arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.11064 (2020). [55] ZMOK. ZMOK. https://zmok.io/, 2022. Authors: (1) Zhongtang Luo, Purdue University (luo401@purdue.edu); (2) Rohan Murukutla, Supra (r.murukutla@supraoracles.com); (3) Aniket Kate, Purdue University / Supra (aniket@purdue.edu). Authors: Authors: (1) Zhongtang Luo, Purdue University (luo401@purdue.edu); (2) Rohan Murukutla, Supra (r.murukutla@supraoracles.com); (3) Aniket Kate, Purdue University / Supra (aniket@purdue.edu). This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

Balancing Blockchain Access: Local Nodes vs. Third-Party Services

Table of Links Abstract and I. Introduction II. Expectations of Blockchain Accessibility III. Approach I: Maintain a Ledger Locally - Run a Full Node IV. Approach II: Query a Third-Party Ledger-Node-As-A-Service (NAAS) V. Approach III: Light Node - External Query & Local Verification VI. Concluding Remark and References IV. APPROACH II: QUERY A THIRD-PARTY LEDGER - NODE-AS-A-SERVICE (NAAS) If a user cannot afford to run a full node themselves, they must outsource the synchronization of blockchains to some third party. While typical users may be tempted to entrust their crypto coins and assets to an all-in-one cryptocurrency exchange, such as Crypto.com [16] and Binance [6], for exchange of easy accessibility, we consider the approach fundamentally flawed. Because the user has no access to the asset without the consent of the exchange, they cannot claim that they effectively own the asset: the recent collapse of FTX [31] reveals the risk of the exchange being insolvent and the user’s asset being lost. Therefore, if the user wants to keep his private key and still maintain reasonable access to the blockchain, one approach is to purchase a third-party service that answers RPC queries, colloquially known as Node-as-a-service (NAAS) or an RPC node. The clients can interact with the third-party service just as they would with a full node (see Fig. 3). Many active NAAS providers exist in the field, including Alchemy, Ankr, BlockDaemon, etc. Table II provides a list of providers, as advertised by the Ethereum Foundation [25]. While we recognize that different providers offer services with different features and have different pricing plans, which makes an accurate comparison challenging, we pick four uniform measurements to understand the provider: the number of protocols supported, whether there is a free tier, the minimum amount the user needs to pay for a paid tier (per month), and whether or not the provider developed an exclusive API (such as one that handles the NFT) for the service in addition to traditional RPC calls. A. Pros and Cons The main benefit of using a NAAS service is that it is more affordable than running one’s own full node because the service provider can build an infrastructure that handles a high workload efficiently. Many providers also have a free tier that allows a limited number of queries. It is also noteworthy that most providers allow users to access more than one blockchain, which would traditionally require running one full node for each blockchain. Some providers offer exclusive pre-made APIs to handle common use cases, such as NFT. While using such API may reduce the program’s portability, it increases the development efficiency. The drawback of the approach is also significant: the security assumption of the model now depends on the service provider as a trusted party. Consider the case of Bitcoin’s RPC call getbalance. The client has no way to verify the numerical result because RPC is not designed to ensure data integrity: every user is expected to run a node themselves. There is also no privacy guarantee when the service provider is untrusted: the service provider can see all parameters of an RPC call, thus increasing the risk associated, such as frontrunning [17]. Besides, any attack and incident of the service provider can impact users’ access to blockchain information, thus affecting availability. Ankr was hit by a DNS attack in July 2022, which disrupted its users’ access to two blockchains and placed their funds at risk [36]. Similarly, Infura was forced to censor Venezuelan users due to a US sanction in March 2022 [39]. These cases illustrate that a centralized service provider can become a single point of failure, and additional considerations are needed to ensure the accessibility of blockchains. B. Open Questions Node-as-a-service providers form a competitive market: there are 19 providers advertised on the Ethereum Foundation website. However, there is little study on the market: who are the main users? Which service has a better cost-performance ratio for a specific type of user? How profitable can the providers be? An empirical study on this growing market is a challenging topic. The design of the RPC protocol in this scenario can be particularly challenging since the current RPC protocol assumes the complete trust of the server. However, with the recent advancement of verification methods, such as Flyclient [10], a verifiable RPC protocol may be possible from a minimal-sized root of trust, solving the issue of integrity in the face of an untrusted service provider. We also observe that it is standard industry practice to employ several services so that at least one is available at any time. Since many providers exist in the field, a unified structure that features a collaboration between providers may provide an improved availability guarantee and some degree of privacy and anonymity to users. For instance, Lava [13] is an ongoing proposal to design a decentralized RPC network blockchain that allows a group of NAAS providers to join together to provide services to users. The users will be charged in LAVA, a new type of coin specific to the network. Both NAAS providers and blockchain validators will stake LAVA to use the system. Unfortunately, Lava’s whitepaper lacks a formal description of security, instead claiming that slashing the funds from bad actors can stop them from providing compromised information. Authors:
(1) Zhongtang Luo, Purdue University (luo401@purdue.edu);
(2) Rohan Murukutla, Supra (r.murukutla@supraoracles.com);
(3) Aniket Kate, Purdue University / Supra (aniket@purdue.edu). This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. Table of Links Abstract and I. Introduction Abstract and I. Introduction II. Expectations of Blockchain Accessibility II. Expectations of Blockchain Accessibility III. Approach I: Maintain a Ledger Locally - Run a Full Node III. Approach I: Maintain a Ledger Locally - Run a Full Node IV. Approach II: Query a Third-Party Ledger-Node-As-A-Service (NAAS) IV. Approach II: Query a Third-Party Ledger-Node-As-A-Service (NAAS) V. Approach III: Light Node - External Query & Local Verification V. Approach III: Light Node - External Query & Local Verification VI. Concluding Remark and References VI. Concluding Remark and References IV. APPROACH II: QUERY A THIRD-PARTY LEDGER - NODE-AS-A-SERVICE (NAAS) If a user cannot afford to run a full node themselves, they must outsource the synchronization of blockchains to some third party. While typical users may be tempted to entrust their crypto coins and assets to an all-in-one cryptocurrency exchange, such as Crypto.com [16] and Binance [6], for exchange of easy accessibility, we consider the approach fundamentally flawed. Because the user has no access to the asset without the consent of the exchange, they cannot claim that they effectively own the asset: the recent collapse of FTX [31] reveals the risk of the exchange being insolvent and the user’s asset being lost. Therefore, if the user wants to keep his private key and still maintain reasonable access to the blockchain, one approach is to purchase a third-party service that answers RPC queries, colloquially known as Node-as-a-service (NAAS) or an RPC node. The clients can interact with the third-party service just as they would with a full node (see Fig. 3). Many active NAAS providers exist in the field, including Alchemy, Ankr, BlockDaemon, etc. Table II provides a list of providers, as advertised by the Ethereum Foundation [25]. While we recognize that different providers offer services with different features and have different pricing plans, which makes an accurate comparison challenging, we pick four uniform measurements to understand the provider: the number of protocols supported, whether there is a free tier, the minimum amount the user needs to pay for a paid tier (per month), and whether or not the provider developed an exclusive API (such as one that handles the NFT) for the service in addition to traditional RPC calls. A. Pros and Cons A. Pros and Cons The main benefit of using a NAAS service is that it is more affordable than running one’s own full node because the service provider can build an infrastructure that handles a high workload efficiently. Many providers also have a free tier that allows a limited number of queries. It is also noteworthy that most providers allow users to access more than one blockchain, which would traditionally require running one full node for each blockchain. Some providers offer exclusive pre-made APIs to handle common use cases, such as NFT. While using such API may reduce the program’s portability, it increases the development efficiency. The drawback of the approach is also significant: the security assumption of the model now depends on the service provider as a trusted party. Consider the case of Bitcoin’s RPC call getbalance. The client has no way to verify the numerical result because RPC is not designed to ensure data integrity: every user is expected to run a node themselves. There is also no privacy guarantee when the service provider is untrusted: the service provider can see all parameters of an RPC call, thus increasing the risk associated, such as frontrunning [17]. Besides, any attack and incident of the service provider can impact users’ access to blockchain information, thus affecting availability. Ankr was hit by a DNS attack in July 2022, which disrupted its users’ access to two blockchains and placed their funds at risk [36]. Similarly, Infura was forced to censor Venezuelan users due to a US sanction in March 2022 [39]. These cases illustrate that a centralized service provider can become a single point of failure, and additional considerations are needed to ensure the accessibility of blockchains. B. Open Questions B. Open Questions Node-as-a-service providers form a competitive market: there are 19 providers advertised on the Ethereum Foundation website. However, there is little study on the market: who are the main users? Which service has a better cost-performance ratio for a specific type of user? How profitable can the providers be? An empirical study on this growing market is a challenging topic. The design of the RPC protocol in this scenario can be particularly challenging since the current RPC protocol assumes the complete trust of the server. However, with the recent advancement of verification methods, such as Flyclient [10], a verifiable RPC protocol may be possible from a minimal-sized root of trust, solving the issue of integrity in the face of an untrusted service provider. We also observe that it is standard industry practice to employ several services so that at least one is available at any time. Since many providers exist in the field, a unified structure that features a collaboration between providers may provide an improved availability guarantee and some degree of privacy and anonymity to users. For instance, Lava [13] is an ongoing proposal to design a decentralized RPC network blockchain that allows a group of NAAS providers to join together to provide services to users. The users will be charged in LAVA, a new type of coin specific to the network. Both NAAS providers and blockchain validators will stake LAVA to use the system. Unfortunately, Lava’s whitepaper lacks a formal description of security, instead claiming that slashing the funds from bad actors can stop them from providing compromised information. Authors: (1) Zhongtang Luo, Purdue University (luo401@purdue.edu); (2) Rohan Murukutla, Supra (r.murukutla@supraoracles.com); (3) Aniket Kate, Purdue University / Supra (aniket@purdue.edu). Authors: Authors: (1) Zhongtang Luo, Purdue University (luo401@purdue.edu); (2) Rohan Murukutla, Supra (r.murukutla@supraoracles.com); (3) Aniket Kate, Purdue University / Supra (aniket@purdue.edu). This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

Navigating the Node-as-a-Service Market: Benefits, Risks, and Open Questions

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