Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles

Adrian Fuertes Blanco; Zeshun Shi; Debraj Roy; Zhiming Zhao

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1

Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles

Adrian Fuertes Blanco, Zeshun Shi, Debraj Roy, Zhiming Zhao^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Cyber Security

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

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Abstract

The emergence of blockchain technologies has created the possibility of transforming business processes in the form of immutable agreements called smart contracts. Smart contracts suffer from a major limitation; they cannot authenticate the trustworthiness of real-world data sources, creating the need for intermediaries called oracles. Oracles are trusted entities that connect on-chain systems with off-chain data, allowing smart contracts to operate on real-world inputs in a trustworthy manner. A popular oracle protocol is a crowdsourced oracle, where unrelated individuals attest to facts through voting mechanisms in smart contracts. Crowdsourced oracles have unique challenges: the trustworthiness and correctness of outcomes cannot be explicitly verified. These problems are aggravated by inherent vulnerabilities to attacks, such as Sybil attacks. To address this weakness, this paper proposes a reputation-based mechanism, where oracles are given a reputation value depending on the implied correctness of their actions over time. This reputation score is used to eliminate malicious agents from the participant pool. Additionally, two reputation-based voting mechanisms are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is evaluated using an agent-based simulation of a crowdsourced oracle platform, where a pool of oracles performs evaluate Boolean queries.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Computational Science – ICCS 2023 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings
Editors	Jiří Mikyška, Clélia de Mulatier, Valeria V. Krzhizhanovskaya, Peter M.A. Sloot, Maciej Paszynski, Jack J. Dongarra
Publisher	Springer
Pages	3-17
Number of pages	15
ISBN (Print)	9783031359941
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1
Publication status	Published - 2023
Event	23rd International Conference on Computational Science, ICCS 2023 - Prague, Czech Republic Duration: 3 Jul 2023 → 5 Jul 2023

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	14073 LNCS
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	23rd International Conference on Computational Science, ICCS 2023
Country/Territory	Czech Republic
City	Prague
Period	3/07/23 → 5/07/23

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

Blockchain
Decentralized oracle
Reputation-based consensus
Voting

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10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1

978-3-031-35995-8_1Final published version, 419 KB

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Blanco, A. F., Shi, Z., Roy, D., & Zhao, Z. (2023). Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles. In J. Mikyška, C. de Mulatier, V. V. Krzhizhanovskaya, P. M. A. Sloot, M. Paszynski, & J. J. Dongarra (Eds.), Computational Science – ICCS 2023 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings (pp. 3-17). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 14073 LNCS). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1

Blanco, Adrian Fuertes ; Shi, Zeshun ; Roy, Debraj et al. / Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles. Computational Science – ICCS 2023 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings. editor / Jiří Mikyška ; Clélia de Mulatier ; Valeria V. Krzhizhanovskaya ; Peter M.A. Sloot ; Maciej Paszynski ; Jack J. Dongarra. Springer, 2023. pp. 3-17 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

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abstract = "The emergence of blockchain technologies has created the possibility of transforming business processes in the form of immutable agreements called smart contracts. Smart contracts suffer from a major limitation; they cannot authenticate the trustworthiness of real-world data sources, creating the need for intermediaries called oracles. Oracles are trusted entities that connect on-chain systems with off-chain data, allowing smart contracts to operate on real-world inputs in a trustworthy manner. A popular oracle protocol is a crowdsourced oracle, where unrelated individuals attest to facts through voting mechanisms in smart contracts. Crowdsourced oracles have unique challenges: the trustworthiness and correctness of outcomes cannot be explicitly verified. These problems are aggravated by inherent vulnerabilities to attacks, such as Sybil attacks. To address this weakness, this paper proposes a reputation-based mechanism, where oracles are given a reputation value depending on the implied correctness of their actions over time. This reputation score is used to eliminate malicious agents from the participant pool. Additionally, two reputation-based voting mechanisms are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is evaluated using an agent-based simulation of a crowdsourced oracle platform, where a pool of oracles performs evaluate Boolean queries.",

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Blanco, AF, Shi, Z, Roy, D & Zhao, Z 2023, Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles. in J Mikyška, C de Mulatier, VV Krzhizhanovskaya, PMA Sloot, M Paszynski & JJ Dongarra (eds), Computational Science – ICCS 2023 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 14073 LNCS, Springer, pp. 3-17, 23rd International Conference on Computational Science, ICCS 2023, Prague, Czech Republic, 3/07/23. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1

Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles. / Blanco, Adrian Fuertes; Shi, Zeshun; Roy, Debraj et al.
Computational Science – ICCS 2023 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings. ed. / Jiří Mikyška; Clélia de Mulatier; Valeria V. Krzhizhanovskaya; Peter M.A. Sloot; Maciej Paszynski; Jack J. Dongarra. Springer, 2023. p. 3-17 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 14073 LNCS).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Roy, Debraj

AU - Zhao, Zhiming

N1 - Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - The emergence of blockchain technologies has created the possibility of transforming business processes in the form of immutable agreements called smart contracts. Smart contracts suffer from a major limitation; they cannot authenticate the trustworthiness of real-world data sources, creating the need for intermediaries called oracles. Oracles are trusted entities that connect on-chain systems with off-chain data, allowing smart contracts to operate on real-world inputs in a trustworthy manner. A popular oracle protocol is a crowdsourced oracle, where unrelated individuals attest to facts through voting mechanisms in smart contracts. Crowdsourced oracles have unique challenges: the trustworthiness and correctness of outcomes cannot be explicitly verified. These problems are aggravated by inherent vulnerabilities to attacks, such as Sybil attacks. To address this weakness, this paper proposes a reputation-based mechanism, where oracles are given a reputation value depending on the implied correctness of their actions over time. This reputation score is used to eliminate malicious agents from the participant pool. Additionally, two reputation-based voting mechanisms are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is evaluated using an agent-based simulation of a crowdsourced oracle platform, where a pool of oracles performs evaluate Boolean queries.

AB - The emergence of blockchain technologies has created the possibility of transforming business processes in the form of immutable agreements called smart contracts. Smart contracts suffer from a major limitation; they cannot authenticate the trustworthiness of real-world data sources, creating the need for intermediaries called oracles. Oracles are trusted entities that connect on-chain systems with off-chain data, allowing smart contracts to operate on real-world inputs in a trustworthy manner. A popular oracle protocol is a crowdsourced oracle, where unrelated individuals attest to facts through voting mechanisms in smart contracts. Crowdsourced oracles have unique challenges: the trustworthiness and correctness of outcomes cannot be explicitly verified. These problems are aggravated by inherent vulnerabilities to attacks, such as Sybil attacks. To address this weakness, this paper proposes a reputation-based mechanism, where oracles are given a reputation value depending on the implied correctness of their actions over time. This reputation score is used to eliminate malicious agents from the participant pool. Additionally, two reputation-based voting mechanisms are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is evaluated using an agent-based simulation of a crowdsourced oracle platform, where a pool of oracles performs evaluate Boolean queries.

KW - Blockchain

KW - Decentralized oracle

KW - Reputation-based consensus

KW - Voting

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DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85164942044

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T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

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Blanco AF, Shi Z, Roy D, Zhao Z. Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles. In Mikyška J, de Mulatier C, Krzhizhanovskaya VV, Sloot PMA, Paszynski M, Dongarra JJ, editors, Computational Science – ICCS 2023 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings. Springer. 2023. p. 3-17. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-35995-8_1

Improving the Resiliency of Decentralized Crowdsourced Blockchain Oracles

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