Guest Editorial: Cryptography for Secure Blockchain

Abstract

Cryptographic primitives gave rise to the concept of blockchain. Blockchain underpins various cryptocurrencies and non-centralized ledger-based transactional infrastructures, which have been deployed in applications such as finance, electronic health care, legal relations, IoT, information security, signature-based smart contracts and consensus-building systems. There is a need for suitable cryptographic approaches to fulfill the existing gaps in blockchain technology. For example, fulfillment of a certain equilibrium-based consensus algorithm is undoubtedly considered as a new and disruptive technology that will shape the future of e-Commerce. On the one hand, security and trust are detrimental factors for the energy-demanding Proof(s) of Work (consensus). On the other hand, maintaining Cyber resilience through NP-hard problems is a challenging task. State-of-the-art of cryptographic techniques being deployed so far in the blockchain systems needs to be investigated as these techniques are fundamental building blocks to provide security to the blockchain. A thorough Systematization of Knowledge that offers a complete bibliographic survey of the full crypto functionalities, tools, and interactions inside the blockchain, is imperative. There is an urgent need to realize and understand the security limitations, efficacy, and performance of various types of blockchain-enabled protocols. Considering the above issues, there is a wide scope to improve the robustness of blockchain and hence utilize the blockchain for various applications.