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SEPoW: Secure and Efficient Proof of Work Sidechains

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Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 13157))

Abstract

Since the advent of sidechains in 2014, they have been acknowledged as the key enabler of blockchain interoperability and upgradability. However, sidechains suffer from significant challenges such as centralization, inefficiency and insecurity, meaning that they are rarely used in practice. In this paper, we present SEPoW, a secure and efficient sidechains construction that is suitable for proof of work (PoW) sidechain systems. The drawbacks for the centralized exchange of cross-chain assets in the participating blockchains are overcome by our decentralized SEPoW. To reduce the size of a cross-chain proof, we introduce merged mining into our SEPoW such that the proof consists of two Merkle tree paths regardless of the size of the current blockchain. We prove that the proposed SEPoW achieves the desirable security properties that a secure sidechains construction should have. As an exemplary concrete instantiation we propose SEPoW for a PoW blockchain system consistent with Bitcoin. We evaluate the size of SEPoW proof and compare it with the state-of-the-art PoW sidechains protocols. Results demonstrate that SEPoW achieves a proof size of 416 bytes which is roughly 123\(\times \), 510\(\times \) and 62000\(\times \) smaller than zkRelay proof, PoW sidechains proof and BTCRelay proof, respectively.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See https://blockchair.com/zh/bitcoin/charts/total-transaction-count.

  2. 2.

    See https://github.com/01007467319/sepow.git.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of ICA3PP 2021 for their insightful suggestions. This work is partially supported by the Shandong Provincial Key Research and Development Program under Grant Number 2019JZZY020127.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Information Security, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Taotao Li, Mingsheng Wang, Zhihong Deng & Dongdong Liu

  2. School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Taotao Li, Mingsheng Wang & Dongdong Liu

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  1. Taotao Li
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  3. Zhihong Deng
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  4. Dongdong Liu
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Correspondence to Taotao Li .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Yongxuan Lai

  2. Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, China

    Tian Wang

  3. Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Min Jiang

  4. Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Guangquan Xu

  5. Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Wei Liang

  6. University of Naples Parthenope, Naples, Italy

    Aniello Castiglione

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Li, T., Wang, M., Deng, Z., Liu, D. (2022). SEPoW: Secure and Efficient Proof of Work Sidechains. In: Lai, Y., Wang, T., Jiang, M., Xu, G., Liang, W., Castiglione, A. (eds) Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing. ICA3PP 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13157. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95391-1_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95391-1_24

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