SaTC: CORE: Small: Towards Trustworthy and Performant Decentralized Resource Markets in the Blockchain Era

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Driven by the movement toward the decentralized Internet, Web 3.0, recent cryptocurrency systems build decentralized and transparent markets for trading digital resources. Yet, there is a big gap between the promise of these markets and their practical viability. To bridge this gap, this project introduces secure frameworks that are specific for promoting scalability and efficiency of blockchain-based resource markets, but generic enough to be used with any service type. The project’s novelties include, first, developing a secure architecture and protocols for sidechains (secondary chains tied to a main blockchain) that have a dependence relation with the mainchain and which permit exchanging arbitrary data. And second, introducing a provable security paradigm for formalizing and analyzing security of resource markets and sidechains. The project’s impacts include achieving secure and efficient schemes that permit utilizing the advantages of blockchains in real-world applications, developing foundational understanding of sidechain covering new dependency models and previously-unexplored use cases, and promoting provable-security of large-scale distributed systems. The investigator integrates their research in both undergraduate and graduate level courses, is committed to mentoring and advising students at all levels, and works closely with under-represented groups in computer science.The project involves four directions. First, chainBoost, a scheme that expedites service delivery, reduces the amount of data to be logged on the blockchain, and extends system capability while preserving compatibility. Second, chainScale, a scheme for improving scalability in terms of throughput and number of supported users. This is done by splitting the modules and workload needed to run a decentralized service among several sidechains, devising a block summary and pruning technique, and building mechanisms to handle cross-sidechain operations, syncing the mainchain, and handling interruptions. Third, formulating a security notion for resource markets and sidechains to capture various dependency relationships with the mainchain, and formally proving the security of chainBoost and chainScale based on this notion. Lastly, building proof-of-concept prototypes and use them in conducting thorough benchmarks and empirical experiments to assess efficiency gains.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.