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Cryptocash, cryptocurrencies, and cryptocontracts

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Abstract

One of the central challenges for mathematical cryptography is to create a payment system that provides the advantages of cash in a digital world. In this expository article we describe two very different solutions to this problem. The first is an elliptic-curve-based version of a construction of Brands, and the second is Bitcoin. We also discuss a generalization of Bitcoin that supports peer-to-peer contracts.

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Notes

  1. A Bitcoin address is derived from the public key but is not identical to it, since it is convenient to shorten the address by hashing. However, we shall disregard such features of Bitcoin in the interest of simplicity.

  2. The reward will be halved every 210,000 blocks until the year 2140, when the total number of bitcoins will reach 21 million; after that, the only incentive to miners will be the transaction fees.

  3. http://www.collegefootballstore.com/CFS_Arizona_State_Sun_Devils_T-Shirts.

  4. http://ethereum.org, A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform (2015). http://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper (accessed 18 Nov 2015).

  5. http://www.sdss.org.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Washington, Box 354350, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Neal Koblitz

  2. Department of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Alfred J. Menezes

Authors
  1. Neal Koblitz
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  2. Alfred J. Menezes
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Correspondence to Alfred J. Menezes.

Additional information

This is one of several papers published in Designs, Codes and Cryptography comprising the 25th Anniversary Issue.

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Koblitz, N., Menezes, A.J. Cryptocash, cryptocurrencies, and cryptocontracts. Des. Codes Cryptogr. 78, 87–102 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10623-015-0148-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10623-015-0148-5

Keywords

Mathematics Subject Classification