Blockly2Hooks: Smart Contracts for Everyone with the XRP Ledger and Google Blockly

Scientific Conference (2023)

Recent technologies such as inter-ledger payments, non-fungible tokens, and smart contracts are all fruited from the ongoing development of Distributed Ledger Technologies. The foreseen trend is that they ... [more ▼]

Recent technologies such as inter-ledger payments, non-fungible tokens, and smart contracts are all fruited from the ongoing development of Distributed Ledger Technologies. The foreseen trend is that they will play an increasingly visible role in daily life, which will have to be backed by appropriate operational resources. For example, due to increasing demand, smart contracts could soon face a shortage of knowledgeable users and tools to handle them in practice. Widespread smart contract adoption is currently limited by security, usability and costs aspects. Because of a steep learning curve, the handling of smart contracts is currently performed by specialised developers mainly, and most of the research effort is focusing on smart contract security, while other aspects like usability being somewhat neglected. Specific tools would lower the entry barrier, enabling interested non-experts to create smart contracts. In this paper we designed and developed Blockly2Hooks, a solution towards filling this gap even in challenging scenarios such as when the smart contracts are written in an advanced language like C. With the XRP Ledger as a concrete working case, Blockly2Hooks helps interested non-experts from the community to learn smart contracts easily and adopt the technology, through leveraging well-proven teaching methodologies like Visual Programming Languages, and more specifically, the Blockly Visual Programming library from Google. The platform was developed and tested and the results are promising to make learning smart contract development smoother. [less ▲]

HSM-based Key Management Solution for Ethereum Blockchain

in IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, 3-6 May 2021 (2021, May 03)

The security of distributed applications backed by blockchain technology relies mainly on keeping the associated cryptographic keys (i.e. private keys) in well-protected storage. Since they are the unique ... [more ▼]

The security of distributed applications backed by blockchain technology relies mainly on keeping the associated cryptographic keys (i.e. private keys) in well-protected storage. Since they are the unique proof of ownership of the underlying digital assets. If the keys are stolen or lost, there is no way to recover the assets. The cold wallet is a good candidate for basic use cases, but it has a substantial challenge for more complex applications as it does not scale. Warm and hot wallets are more convenient options for blockchain-based solutions that aim to transact in a cloud environment. In this work, we focus on Hardware Security Module (HSM) based wallet. The HSM is the de-facto standard device designed to manage high-value cryptographic keys and to protect them against hacks. In this demonstration, we present an HSM-based working prototype that secures the entire life cycle of Ethereum public and private keys. [less ▲]

BlockPGP: A Blockchain-based Framework for PGP Key Servers

in International Journal of Networking and Computing (2020), 10(1), 1-24

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is one of the most prominent cryptographic standards offering end-to-end encryption for email messages and other sensitive information exchange. PGP allows to verify the identity ... [more ▼]

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is one of the most prominent cryptographic standards offering end-to-end encryption for email messages and other sensitive information exchange. PGP allows to verify the identity of the correspondent in information exchange as well as the information integrity. PGP implements asymmetric encryption with certificates shared through a network of PGP key servers. In this paper, we propose a new PGP management framework with the key servers infrastructure implemented using blockchain technology. Our approach offers fast propagation of certificate revocation among PGP key servers and elimination of man-in-the-middle risks. It also grants users the required access control to update their own PGP certificates, which is not the case with the current PGP key servers. A prototype has been implemented using Ethereum blockchain and an open source key server, named Hockeypuck. Finally, we evaluated the prototype with extensive experiments. Our results show that our solution is practical and it could be integrated with the existing public PGP key servers infrastructure. [less ▲]

Demo: Blockchain for the Simplification and Automation of KYC Result Sharing

in IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2019) (2019, May 14)

Know Your Customer (KYC) processes performed by banks on their customers are redundant, cumbersome and costly. Therefore, a system is proposed to automate menial tasks and allow sharing of data related to ... [more ▼]

Know Your Customer (KYC) processes performed by banks on their customers are redundant, cumbersome and costly. Therefore, a system is proposed to automate menial tasks and allow sharing of data related to KYC. A blockchain dictates the collaboration between different participants and several services are built around it to support the functionality of the system as a whole. An access control system is used to share data legitimately. [less ▲]

Blockchain-Based, Decentralized Access Control for IPFS

in The 2018 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain-2018) (2018, July 30)

Large files cannot be efficiently stored on blockchains. On one hand side, the blockchain becomes bloated with data that has to be propagated within the blockchain network. On the other hand, since the ... [more ▼]

Large files cannot be efficiently stored on blockchains. On one hand side, the blockchain becomes bloated with data that has to be propagated within the blockchain network. On the other hand, since the blockchain is replicated on many nodes, a lot of storage space is required without serving an immediate purpose, especially if the node operator does not need to view every file that is stored on the blockchain. It furthermore leads to an increase in the price of operating blockchain nodes because more data needs to be processed, transferred and stored. IPFS is a file sharing system that can be leveraged to more efficiently store and share large files. It relies on cryptographic hashes that can easily be stored on a blockchain. Nonetheless, IPFS does not permit users to share files with selected parties. This is necessary, if sensitive or personal data needs to be shared. Therefore, this paper presents a modified version of the InterPlanetary Filesystem (IPFS) that leverages Ethereum smart contracts to provide access controlled file sharing. The smart contract is used to maintain the access control list, while the modified IPFS software enforces it. For this, it interacts with the smart contract whenever a file is uploaded, downloaded or transferred. Using an experimental setup, the impact of the access controlled IPFS is analyzed and discussed. [less ▲]

Blockchain Orchestration and Experimentation Framework: A Case Study of KYC

in The First IEEE/IFIP International Workshop on Managing and Managed by Blockchain (Man2Block) colocated with IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2018 (2018)

Conducting experiments to evaluate blockchain applications is a challenging task for developers, because there is a range of configuration parameters that control blockchain environments. Many public ... [more ▼]

Conducting experiments to evaluate blockchain applications is a challenging task for developers, because there is a range of configuration parameters that control blockchain environments. Many public testnets (e.g. Rinkeby Ethereum) can be used for testing, however, we cannot adjust their parameters (e.g. Gas limit, Mining difficulty) to further the understanding of the application in question and of the employed blockchain. This paper proposes an easy to use orchestration framework over the Grid'5000 platform. Grid'5000 is a highly reconfigurable and controllable large-scale testbed. We developed a tool that facilitates nodes reservation, deployment and blockchain configuration over the Grid'5000 platform. In addition, our tool can fine-tune blockchain and network parameters before and between experiments. The proposed framework offers insights for private and consortium blockchain developers to identify performance bottlenecks and to assess the behavior of their applications in different circumstances. [less ▲]