"Cryptography in the Blockchain Era"

Blockchains have sparked a lot of interest, not only because they enable the creation of new financial instruments but also because they provide alternative solutions to challenges in fault-tolerant distributed computing and cryptographic protocols. Miners maintain and build blockchains, which are used in various situations, the most well-known of which is as a distributed ledger that records all transactions between users in cryptocurrency systems like bitcoin. Many of these protocols are based on a "proof of work" (PoW), which has been widely used in cryptography and security literature for over 20 years in a number of settings, including spam mitigation, sybil attacks, and Denial-of-Service (DoS) prevention. Its involvement in the design of blockchain protocols is likely its most significant application. When miners receive new transactions, the data is entered into a new block, but adding additional blocks to the chain requires solving a PoW. A PoW is a bitcoin transaction validation algorithm generated by bitcoin miners competing to create new bitcoin by being the first to solve a complex mathematical puzzle. Solving this puzzle requires the use of expensive computers and a lot of electricity. Once a miner discovers a solution to a puzzle, they broadcast the block to the network for other miners to verify. Those who successfully solve a puzzle are rewarded with a predetermined amount of bitcoin. Despite advances in understanding the PoW primitive, determining the exact properties required to prove the security of bitcoin and associated protocols has been difficult. All existing instances of the primitive have been based on idealized assumptions. Therefore, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has identified and proven the concrete properties. Then they used those properties to build blockchain protocols that are both secure and safe. The researchers demonstrated that such PoWs could defeat adversaries and environments while owning less than half of the network's computational power, with their novel algorithms. This article continues to discuss the research on cryptography in the blockchain. 

Texas A&M University reports "Cryptography in the Blockchain Era"