[PhD Thesis] Emancipation of the bitcoin outcasts: addressing overlooked elements of the bitcoin network for improving security and efficiency

Author: Federico Franzoni

Supervisor: Vanesa Daza

During the last decade, cryptocurrencies have revolutionized the financial industry. In these systems, participants communicate by means of a peer-to-peer protocol. Today, many of such protocols take Bitcoin as a reference model, making its study particularly important. This thesis explores some important aspects of the Bitcoin network, related to its security and efficiency, that received limited coverage in research. Firstly, properties of the Testnet network are explored, showing they can be exploited for malicious activities. Secondly, security aspects of an open network topology are studied, arguing against the current obfuscated approach, and designing a viable monitoring system. Then, unreachable nodes are considered, showing their relevance in the network, and proposing changes to the protocol that improve efficiency and security. Finally, a new transaction relay protocol is proposed, which improves anonymity. The results obtained show that the aspects we analyze are not sufficiently covered in research and deserve more deep investigation.

Link to manuscript: http://hdl.handle.net/10803/671853