Blockchain Papers 
A curated list of blockchain-related academic papers.
Contents
- General
- Consensus
- Cryptography
- Block generation parameters
- Stake
- Attacks
- Wallets
- Crime
- Economics
- Marketplaces and Trust
- Privacy
- Sidechains, Higher layer and Scalability
- Fungibility
- Network
- Smart Contracts
- Formal Methods
- Proof of work
- Survey, Sociological & Anthropological
- License
General
- Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Nakamoto S. '08.
- SoK: Research Perspectives and Challenges for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies. Bonneau J, Miller A, Clark J, Narayanan A, Kroll JA, Felten EW. S&P '15.
Consensus
- The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol: Analysis and Applications. Garay J, Kiayias A, Leonardos N. EUROCRYPT '15.
- The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol with Chains of Variable Difficulty. Garay J. Kiayias A, Leonardos N. '16.
- Analysis of the Blockchain Protocol in Asynchronous Networks. Pass R, Seeman L, shelat a. EUROCRYPT '17.
- On Trees, Chains and Fast Transactions in the Blockchain. Kiayias A, Panagiotakos G. '16.
- "RSCoin": Centrally banked cryptocurrencies. Danezis G, Meiklejohn S. '15.
Cryptography
- On Bitcoin as a public randomness source. Bonneau J, Clark J, Goldfeder S. '15.
- Distributed Cryptography Based on the Proofs of Work. Andrychowicz M, and Dziembowski S. '14.
Block generation parameters
- Bootstrapping the Blockchain - Directly. Garay JA, Kiayias A, Leonardos N, Panagiotakos G. '16.
- Speed-Security Tradeoffs in Blockchain Protocols. Kiayias A, Panagiotakos G. '15.
- "GHOST": Secure High-Rate Transaction Processing in Bitcoin. Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. FC '15.
- Inclusive Block Chain Protocols. Lewenberg Y, Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. FC '15.
- On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains. Gervais A, Karame GO, Wüst K, Glykantzis V, Ritzdorf H, Capkun S. CCS '16.
Stake
- Ouroboros: A provably secure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol. Kiayias A, Russell A, David B, Oliynykov R. '16.
- ALGORAND: The Efficient and Democratic Ledger. Micali S. '16.
- "ByzCoin": Enhancing Bitcoin Security and Performance with Strong Consistency via Collective Signing. Kogias EK, Jovanovic P, Gailly N, Khoffi I, Gasser L, Ford B. USENIX '16.
- Cryptocurrencies without Proof of Work. Bentov I, Gabizon A, Mizrahi A. FC '16.
Attacks
- "Selfish Mining": Majority Is Not Enough: Bitcoin Mining Is Vulnerable. Eyal I, Sirer EG. FC '14.
- Theoretical Bitcoin Attacks with less than Half of the Computational Power. Bahack L. '13.
- Optimal Selfish Mining Strategies in Bitcoin. Sapirshtein A, Sompolinsky Y, Zohar A. FC '16.
- Refund attacks on Bitcoin’s Payment Protocol. McCorry P, Shahandashti S, Hao F. FC '16.
Wallets
- Bitcoin Covenants. Möser M, Eyal I, Sirer EG. FC '16.
- Enhancing Bitcoin Transactions with Covenants. O’Connor R, Piekarska M. FC '17.
- Hierarchical deterministic Bitcoin wallets that tolerate key leakage. Gutoski G, Stebila D. FC '15.
Crime
- ZombieCoin: Powering Next-Generation Botnets with Bitcoin. Ali ST, McCorry P, Lee PH, Hao F. FC '15.
- The Bitcoin Brain Drain: A Short Paper on the Use and Abuse of Bitcoin Brain Wallets. Vasek M, Bonneau J, Castellucci R, Keith C, Moore T. FC '16.
Economics
- On Bitcoin and Red Balloons. Babaioff M, Dobzinski S, Oren S, Zohar A. EC '12.
- On the instability of Bitcoin without the block reward. Carlsten M, Kalodner H, Weinberg SM, Narayanan A. CCS '16.
- Trends, Tips, Tolls: A Longitudinal Study of Bitcoin Transaction Fees. Möser M, Böhme R. FC '15.
- Why buy when you can rent? Bribery attacks on Bitcoin-style consensus. Bonneau J. FC '16.
- Game-Theoretic Analysis of DDoS Attacks Against Bitcoin Mining Pools. Johnson B, Laszka A, Grossklags J, Vasek M, Moore T. FC '14.
- When Bitcoin Mining Pools Run Dry A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Long-Term Impact of Attacks Between Mining Pools. Laszka A, Johnson B, Grossklags J. FC '15.
- Incentive Compatibility of Bitcoin Mining Pool Reward Functions. Schrijvers O, Bonneau J, Boneh D, Roughgarden T. FC '16.
- When cryptocurrencies mine their own business. Teutsch J, Jain S, Saxena P. FC '16.
- Incentivizing Blockchain Forks via Whale Transactions. Liao K, Katz J. FC '17.
- Smart Contracts Make Bitcoin Mining Pools Vulnerable. Velner Y, Teutsch J, Luu L. FC '17.
- Mixing Coins of Different Quality: A Game-Theoretic Approach. Abramova S, Schöttle P, Böhme R. FC '17.
- Decentralized Prediction Market without Arbiter. Bentov I, Mizrahi A, Rosenfeld M. FC '17.
Marketplaces and Trust
- Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem. Soska K, Christin N. USENIX '15.
- Escrow protocols for cryptocurrencies: How to buy physical goods using Bitcoin. Goldfeder S, Bonneau J, Gennaro R, Narayanan A. FC '17.
- Trust Is Risk: A Decentralized Financial Trust Platform. Thyfronitis Litos OS, Zindros D. FC '17.
- Trust in decentralized anonymous marketplaces. Zindros D. '15.
- Money as IOUs in social trust networks & a proposal for a decentralized currency network protocol. Fugger R. '04.
- The Ripple protocol consensus algorithm. Schwartz D, Youngs N, Britto A. '14.
- The stellar consensus protocol: A federated model for internet-level consensus. Mazières D. '15.
- There’s No Free Lunch, Even Using Bitcoin: Tracking the Popularity and Profits of Virtual Currency Scams. Vasek M, Moore T. FC '15.
- Challenges and Opportunities Associated with a Bitcoin-based Transaction Rating System. Vandervort D. FC '14.
Privacy
- Zerocoin: Anonymous distributed e-cash from bitcoin. Miers I, Garman C, Green M, Rubin AD. S&P '13.
- Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from bitcoin. Sasson EB, Chiesa A, Garman C, Green M, Miers I, Tromer E, Virza M. S&P '14.
- "Monero": CryptoNote v2.0. Saberhagen N. '13?
- Rational Zero: Economic Security for Zerocoin with Everlasting Anonymity. Garman C, Green M, Miers I, Rubin A. FC '14.
- Mixcoin: Anonymity for bitcoin with accountable mixes. Bonneau J, Narayanan A, Miller A, Clark J, Kroll JA, Felten EW. '14.
- TumbleBit: An untrusted Bitcoin-compatible anonymous payment hub. Heilman E, Alshenibr L, Baldimtsi F, Scafuro A, Goldberg S. '16.
- Blindly Signed Contracts: Anonymous On-Blockchain and Off-Blockchain Bitcoin Transactions. Heilman E, Baldimtsi F, Goldberg S. FC '16.
- Coinshuffle: Practical decentralized coin mixing for bitcoin. Ruffing T, Moreno-Sanchez P, Kate A. ESORICS '14.
- Quantitative analysis of the full bitcoin transaction graph. Ron D, Shamir A. FC '13.
- How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth?. Ron D, Shamir A. FC '14.
- "MoneroLink": An Empirical Analysis of Linkability in the Monero Blockchain. Miller A, Möser M, Lee K, Narayanan A. '17.
- Provisions: Privacy-preserving proofs of solvency for Bitcoin exchanges. Dagher GG, Bünz B, Bonneau J, Clark J, Boneh D. CCS '15.
- Increasing Anonymity in Bitcoin. Saxena A, Misra J, Dhar A. FC '14.
- Blindcoin Blinded, Accountable Mixes for Bitcoin. Valenta L, Rowan B. FC '15.
- Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts. Kosba A, Miller A, Shi E, Wen Z, Papamanthou C. SP '16
- Could Network Information Facilitate Address Clustering in Bitcoin?. Neudecker T, Hartenstein H. FC '17.
- Blind signatures for untraceable payments. Chaum D. CRYPTO '83.
- Exchange Pattern Mining in the Bitcoin Transaction Directed Hypergraph. Ranshous S, Joslyn A, Kreyling S, Nowak K, Samatova N, West C, Winters C. FC '17.
- Confidential Assets. Poelstra A, Back A, Friedenbach M, Maxwell G, Wuille P. FC '17.
- Mixing Confidential Transactions: Comprehensive Transaction Privacy for Bitcoin. Ruffing T, Moreno-Sanchez P. FC '17.
- Switch Commitments: A Safety Switch for Confidential Transactions. Ruffing T, Malavolta G. FC '17.
Sidechains, Higher layer and Scalability
- Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains. Back A, Corallo M, Dashjr L, Friedenbach M, Maxwell G, Miller A, Poelstra A, Timón J, Wuille P. '14.
- Proofs of Proofs of Work with Sublinear Complexity. Kiayias A, Lamprou N, Stouka AP. FC '16.
- A Fast and Scalable Payment Network with Bitcoin Duplex Micropayment Channels. Decker C, Wattenhofer R. SSS '15.
- The bitcoin lightning network: Scalable off-chain instant payments. Poon J, Dryja T. '15.
- "Deployable Lightning": Reaching The Ground With Lightning. Russell R. '15.
- Bitcoin-NG: A Scalable Blockchain Protocol. Eyal I, Gencer AE, Sirer EG, Van Renesse R. USENIX '16.
- On the Malleability of Bitcoin Transactions. Andrychowicz M, Dziembowski S, Malinowski D, Mazurek Ł. FC '15.
- Teechan: Payment Channels Using Trusted Execution Environments. Lind J, Eyal I, Pietzuch P, Sirer EG. FC '17.
- On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains. Croman K, Decker C, Eyal I, Gencer AE, Juels A, Kosba A, Miller A, Saxena P, Shi E, Sirer EG, Song D. FC '16.
- "Elastico": A secure sharding protocol for open blockchains. Luu L, Narayanan V, Zheng C, Baweja K, Gilbert S, Saxena P. CCS '16.
- Improving Authenticated Dynamic Dictionaries, with Applications to Cryptocurrencies. Reyzin L, Meshkov D, Chepurnoy A, Ivanov S. FC '17.
- Service-Oriented Sharding for Blockchains. Gencer AE, Van Renesse R, Sirer EG. FC '17.
Fungibility
- Towards Risk Scoring of Bitcoin Transactions. Möser M, Böhme R, Breuker D. FC '14.
Network
- The Bitcoin P2P network. Donet Donet JA, Perez-Sola C, Herrera-Joancomart J. FC '14.
- Empirical Analysis of Denial-of-Service Attacks in the Bitcoin Ecosystem. Vasek M, Thornton M, Moore T. FC '14.
- Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin's Peer-to-Peer Network. Heilman E, Kendler A, Zohar A, Goldberg S. USENIX '15.
- Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies. Apostolaki M, Zohar A, Vanbever L. S&P '17.
- Stressing Out: Bitcoin “Stress Testing”. Baqer K, Yuxing Huang D, McCoy D, Weaver N. FC '16.
- The Honey Badger of BFT Protocols. Miller A, Xia Y, Croman K, Shi E, Song D. CCS '16.
Smart Contracts
- "Ethereum": A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform. Vitalik Buterin. '14.
- Ethereum: A secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger. Wood G. '14.
- Fair Two-Party Computations via Bitcoin Deposits. Andrychowicz M, Dziembowski S, Malinowski D, Mazurek Ł. FC '14.
- Step by Step Towards Creating a Safe Smart Contract: Lessons and Insights from a Cryptocurrency Lab. Delmolino K, Arnett M, Kosba A, Miller A, Shi E. FC '16.
- EthIKS: Using Ethereum to audit a CONIKS key transparency log. Bonneau J. FC '16.
- "Oyente": Making Smart Contracts Smarter. Luu L, Chu DH, Olickel H, Saxena P, Hobor A. CCS '16.
- The Ring of Gyges: Investigating the Future of Criminal Smart Contracts. Juels A, Kosba A, Shi E. CCS '16.
- Town crier: An authenticated data feed for smart contracts. Zhang F, Cecchetti E, Croman K, Juels A, Shi E. CCS '16.
- A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy. McCorry P, Shahandashti SF, Hao F. FC '17.
- Constant-deposit multiparty lotteries on Bitcoin. Bartoletti M, Zunino R. FC '17.
Formal Methods
- Automated Verification of Electrum Wallet. Turuani M, Voegtlin T, Rusinowitch M. FC '16.
Proof of work
- "Proof-of-work": Pricing via processing or combatting junk mail. Dwork C, Naor M. '92.
- Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure. Back A. '02.
- Cuckoo Cycle: a memory bound graph-theoretic proof-of-work. Tromp J. FC '15.
- PieceWork: Generalized Outsourcing Control for Proofs of Work. Daian P, Eyal I, Juels A, Sirer EG. FC '17.
- Permacoin: Repurposing bitcoin work for data preservation. Miller A, Juels A, Shi E, Parno B, Katz J. Permacoin. S&P '14.
Survey, Sociological & Anthropological
- Issues in Designing a Bitcoin-Like Community Currency. Vandervort D, Gaucas D, St Jacques R. FC '15.
- The Bitcoin Market Potential Index. Hileman G. FC '15.
- Cryptographic Currencies from a Tech-Policy Perspective: Policy Issues and Technical Direction. McReynolds E, Lerner A, Scott W, Roesner F, Kohno T. FC '15.
- The Other Side of the Coin: User Experiences with Bitcoin Security and Privacy. Krombholz K, Judmayer A, Gusenbauer M, Weippl E. FC '16.
- An analysis of Bitcoin OP_RETURN metadata. Bartoletti M, Pompianu L. FC '17.
License
This list is released into the public domain.