Cryptocurrency Research

at UMass Amherst

Newest Work:

  • Using Economic Risk to Model Miner Hash Rate Allocation in Cryptocurrencies. George Biassias, Brian Neil Levine, and David Thibodeau. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology (CBT'18), September 2018. [pdf]

Low Variance, High Security PoW Mining

  • Bobtail: A Proof-of-Work Target that Minimizes Blockchain Mining Variance. George Bissias and Brian Neil Levine. Technical Report arXiv:1709.08750, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, September 2017. [pdf]

Smart Contract Security

  • Securing the Assets of Decentralized Applications using Financial Derivatives. George Bissias, Brian Neil Levine, and Nikunj Kapadia. In Proc. of New Security Paradigms Workshop [draft version was: arXiv:1701.03945], October 2017. [pdf]

Efficient Block Propagation

  • Graphene: A New Protocol for Block Propagation Using Set Reconciliation. A. Pinar Ozisik, Gavin Andresen, George Bissias, Amir Houmansadr, and Brian Neil Levine. In Proc. of International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology (ESORICS Workshop), September 2017. [pdf]
  • A Secure, Efficient, and Transparent Network Architecture for Bitcoin. A. Pinar Ozisik, Gavin Andresen, George Bissias, Amir Houmansadr, and Brian Neil Levine. Technical Report UM-CS-2016-006, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, October 2016. [pdf]

Tutorials

  • An Explanation of Nakamoto's Analysis of Double-spend Attacks. A. Pinar Ozisik and Brian Neil Levine. Technical Report arXiv:1701.03977, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, January 2017. [pdf]

Models of Miner Activity

  • Estimation of Miner Hash Rates and Consensus on Blockchains. A. Pinar Ozisik, George Bissias, and Brian Neil Levine. Technical Report arXiv:1707.00082, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, July 2017. [pdf]
  • An Analysis of Attacks on Blockchain Consensus. George Bissias, Brian Neil Levine, A. Pinar Ozisik, and Gavin Andresen. Technical Report arXiv:1610.07985, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, October 2016. [pdf]

Privacy

  • Sybil-Resistant Mixing for Bitcoin. George Bissias, A. Pinar Ozisik, Brian Neil Levine, and Marc Liberatore. In Proc. ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, November 2014. [pdf]