Tootfinder

Looks like blockchains have finally found a serious use case, just maybe not the one predicted/hoped for...
This article is about #Glassworm, the latest major exploit in JavaScript-land, targetting VSCode and using #Solana as command infrastructure and Google Calendar events as backup. It'…

GlassWorm: First Self-Propagating Worm Using Invisible Code Hits OpenVSX Marketplace | Koi Blog

The one undeniable positive AI impact has had is how much less I hear about blockchains now.

🫵 Nation-state hackers deliver malware from “bulletproof” blockchains
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/10/hackers-bullet-proof-hosts-deliver-malware-from-blockchains/

Nation-state hackers deliver malware from “bulletproof” blockchains
Malicious payloads stored on Ethereum and BNB blockchains are immune to takedowns.

Google says North Korea hackers are using "EtherHiding" to embed malware on blockchains, the first time it has seen a nation-state threat actor using the method (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/secu

VeilAudit: Breaking the Deadlock Between Privacy and Accountability Across Blockchains
Minhao Qiao, Iqbal Gondal, Hai Dong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12153 https://

VeilAudit: Breaking the Deadlock Between Privacy and Accountability Across Blockchains
Cross chain interoperability in blockchain systems exposes a fundamental tension between user privacy and regulatory accountability. Existing solutions enforce an all or nothing choice between full anonymity and mandatory identity disclosure, which limits adoption in regulated financial settings. We present VeilAudit, a cross chain auditing framework that introduces Auditor Only Linkability, which allows auditors to link transaction behaviors that originate from the same anonymous entity withou…

BlockSDN-VC: A SDN-Based Virtual Coordinate-Enhanced Transaction Broadcast Framework for High-Performance Blockchains
Wenyang Jia, Jingjing Wang, Kai Lei
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00306

BlockSDN-VC: A SDN-Based Virtual Coordinate-Enhanced Transaction Broadcast Framework for High-Performance Blockchains
Modern blockchains need fast, reliable propagation to balance security and throughput. Virtual-coordinate methods speed dissemination but rely on slow iterative updates, leaving nodes out of sync. We present BlockSDN-VC, a transaction-broadcast protocol that centralises coordinate computation and forwarding control in an SDN controller, delivering global consistency, minimal path stretch and rapid response to churn or congestion. In geo-distributed simulations, BlockSDN-VC cuts median latency b…

Understanding How Network Geometry Influences Diffusion Processes in Complex Networks: A Focus on Cryptocurrency Blockchains and Critical Infrastructure Networks
S M Mustaquim, Asim K. Dey, Abhijit Mandal
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23450

Understanding How Network Geometry Influences Diffusion Processes in Complex Networks: A Focus on Cryptocurrency Blockchains and Critical Infrastructure Networks
This study provides essential insights into how diffusion processes unfold in complex networks, with a focus on cryptocurrency blockchains and infrastructure networks. The structural properties of these networks, such as hub-dominated, heavy-tailed topology, network motifs, and node centrality, significantly influence diffusion speed and reach. Using epidemic diffusion models, specifically the Kertesz threshold model and the Susceptible-Infected (SI) model, we analyze key factors affecting diff…

Pseudo-MDPs: A Novel Framework for Efficiently Optimizing Last Revealer Seed Manipulations in Blockchains
Maxime Reynouard
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07080 https://

Pseudo-MDPs: A Novel Framework for Efficiently Optimizing Last Revealer Seed Manipulations in Blockchains
This study tackles the computational challenges of solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) for a restricted class of problems. It is motivated by the Last Revealer Attack (LRA), which undermines fairness in some Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains such as Ethereum (\$400B market capitalization). We introduce pseudo-MDPs (pMDPs) a framework that naturally models such problems and propose two distinct problem reductions to standard MDPs. One problem reduction provides a novel, counter-intuitive per…

LI.FI, which provides businesses with price comparisons of crypto exchange rates and bridging fees, raised $29M, bringing its total funding to ~$52M (Carlos Garcia/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/11/exclusive-crypto-startup-li-fi-raises-29-million/

Exclusive: Crypto startup LI.FI raises $29 million for cross-blockchain price discovery tool
The company aims to make moving across blockchains more efficient.

Rationally Analyzing Shelby: Proving Incentive Compatibility in a Decentralized Storage Network
Michael Crystal, Guy Goren, Scott Duke Kominers
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11866 …

Rationally Analyzing Shelby: Proving Incentive Compatibility in a Decentralized Storage Network
Decentralized storage is one of the most natural applications built on blockchains and a central component of the Web3 ecosystem. Yet despite a decade of active development -- from IPFS and Filecoin to more recent entrants -- most of these storage protocols have received limited formal analysis of their incentive properties. Claims of incentive compatibility are sometimes made, but rarely proven. This gap matters: without well-designed incentives, a system may distribute storage but fail to tru…

Assessing the Impact of Post-Quantum Digital Signature Algorithms on Blockchains
Alison Gon\c{c}alves Schemitt (PUCRS), Henrique Fan da Silva (UNIPAMPA), Roben Castagna Lunardi (PUCRS, IFRS), Diego Kreutz (UNIPAMPA), Rodrigo Brand\~ao Mansilha (UNIPAMPA), Avelino Francisco Zorzo (PUCRS)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09271

Assessing the Impact of Post-Quantum Digital Signature Algorithms on Blockchains
The advent of quantum computing threatens the security of traditional encryption algorithms, motivating the development of post-quantum cryptography (PQC). In 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standardized several PQC algorithms, marking an important milestone in the transition toward quantum-resistant security. Blockchain systems fundamentally rely on cryptographic primitives to guarantee data integrity and transaction authenticity. However, widely used algorithms…

Circle launches USDCx, a privacy-focused version of its USDC stablecoin on the Aleo blockchain, to give users "banking-level privacy" with a "compliance record" (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/09/circle-privacy-stablecoin-aleo-uds…

Exclusive: Circle stablecoin for ‘banking-level privacy’ to launch on Aleo blockchain
Blockchains make data public, but Aleo founder Howard Wu hopes to lure big banks and institutions to crypto through semi-private stablecoins.

Commonware, which develops open-source code for launching blockchains, raised $25M led by Tempo, a stablecoin-focused blockchain backed by Stripe and Paradigm (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/11/07/stripe-paradigm-tempo-commonware-…

Exclusive: Stripe-backed startup Tempo leads $25 million raise for crypto infrastructure firm Commonware
This is the high-profile startup’s first venture investment since Tempo was founded this year.

A Time-Bound Signature Scheme for Blockchains
Benjamin Marsh, Paolo Serafino
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03697 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.03697

A Time-Bound Signature Scheme for Blockchains
We introduce a modified Schnorr signature scheme to allow for time-bound signatures for transaction fee auction bidding and smart contract purposes in a blockchain context, ensuring an honest producer can only validate a signature before a given block height. The immutable blockchain is used as a source of universal time for the signature scheme. We show the use of such a signature scheme leads to lower MEV revenue for builders. We then apply our time-bound signatures to Ethereum's EIP-1559 and…

Odontoceti: Ultra-Fast DAG Consensus with Two Round Commitment
Preston Vander Vos
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01216 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.01216

Odontoceti: Ultra-Fast DAG Consensus with Two Round Commitment
Users of blockchains value scalability, expecting fast confirmations and immediate transaction processing. Odontoceti, the latest in DAG-based consensus, addresses these concerns by prioritizing low latency and high throughput, making a strategic trade-off in security by operating with a 20% fault tolerance instead of the established 33% level. It is the first DAG-based protocol to achieve commitment in just two communication rounds, delivering median latency of 300 milliseconds while processin…

StarveSpam: Mitigating Spam with Local Reputation in Permissionless Blockchains
Rowdy Chotkan, Bulat Nasrulin, J\'er\'emie Decouchant, Johan Pouwelse
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23427

StarveSpam: Mitigating Spam with Local Reputation in Permissionless Blockchains
Spam poses a growing threat to blockchain networks. Adversaries can easily create multiple accounts to flood transaction pools, inflating fees and degrading service quality. Existing defenses against spam, such as fee markets and staking requirements, primarily rely on economic deterrence, which fails to distinguish between malicious and legitimate users and often exclude low-value but honest activity. To address these shortcomings, we present StarveSpam, a decentralized reputation-based protoc…

The Impact of Sanctions on decentralised Privacy Tools: A Case Study of Tornado Cash
Raffaele Cristodaro, Benjamin Kramer, Claudio J. Tessone
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09443 ht…

The Impact of Sanctions on decentralised Privacy Tools: A Case Study of Tornado Cash
This paper investigates the impact of sanctions on Tornado Cash, a smart contract protocol designed to enhance transaction privacy. Following the U.S. Department of the Treasury's sanctions against Tornado Cash in August 2022, platform activity declined sharply. We document a significant and sustained reduction in transaction volume, user diversity, and overall protocol utilization after the sanctions were imposed. Our analysis draws on transaction data from three major blockchains: Ethereum, B…

On the Limits of Consensus under Dynamic Availability and Reconfiguration
Joachim Neu, Javier Nieto, Ling Ren
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03625 https://arxi…

On the Limits of Consensus under Dynamic Availability and Reconfiguration
Proof-of-stake blockchains require consensus protocols that support Dynamic Availability and Reconfiguration (so-called DAR setting), where the former means that the consensus protocol should remain live even if a large number of nodes temporarily crash, and the latter means it should be possible to change the set of operating nodes over time. State-of-the-art protocols for the DAR setting, such as Ethereum, Cardano's Ouroboros, or Snow White, require unrealistic additional assumptions, such as…

Multiple Concurrent Proposers: Why and How
Pranav Garimidi, Joachim Neu, Max Resnick
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23984 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.23984

Multiple Concurrent Proposers: Why and How
Traditional single-proposer blockchains suffer from miner extractable value (MEV), where validators exploit their serial monopoly on transaction inclusion and ordering to extract rents from users. While there have been many developments at the application layer to reduce the impact of MEV, these approaches largely require auctions as a subcomponent. Running auctions efficiently on chain requires two key properties of the underlying consensus protocol: selective-censorship resistance and hiding.…

Universally Composable Termination Analysis of Tendermint
Zhixin Dong, Xian Xu, Yuhang Zeng, Mingchao Wan, Chunmiao Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01097 https://

Universally Composable Termination Analysis of Tendermint
Modern blockchain systems operating in adversarial environments require robust consensus protocols that guarantee both safety and termination under network delay attacks. Tendermint, a widely adopted consensus protocol in consortium blockchains, achieves high throughput and finality. However, previous analysis of the safety and termination has been done in a standalone fashion, with no consideration of the composition with other protocols interacting with it in a concurrent manner. Moreover, th…

Secret Leader Election in Ethereum PoS: An Empirical Security Analysis of Whisk and Homomorphic Sortition under DoS on the Leader and Censorship Attacks
Tereza Burianov\'a, Martin Pere\v{s}\'ini, Ivan Homoliak
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24955

Secret Leader Election in Ethereum PoS: An Empirical Security Analysis of Whisk and Homomorphic Sortition under DoS on the Leader and Censorship Attacks
Proposer anonymity in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains is a critical concern due to the risk of targeted attacks such as malicious denial-of-service (DoS) and censorship attacks. While several Secret Single Leader Election (SSLE) mechanisms have been proposed to address these threats, their practical impact and trade-offs remain insufficiently explored. In this work, we present a unified experimental framework for evaluating SSLE mechanisms under adversarial conditions, grounded in a simplified…