Toward a Secure and Private Cross-Chain Protocol Based on Encrypted Communication

Blockchain technology is becoming more prominent and is being used in many different industries. Data islands have emerged as a result of the difficulty in transferring assets and exchanging information between blockchains because of differences in the underlying technology. Cross-chain technology i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inElectronics (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 16; p. 3116
Main Authors Wang, Yuli, Chen, Zhuo, Ma, Ruihe, Ma, Bin, Xian, Yongjin, Li, Qi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2024
Subjects
Accounting systems
Blockchain
Consortia
Control algorithms
Data security
Decentralization
Digital currencies
Encryption
Exchanging
Privacy
Privacy, Right of
Protocol
Safety and security measures
Security
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Summary:Blockchain technology is becoming more prominent and is being used in many different industries. Data islands have emerged as a result of the difficulty in transferring assets and exchanging information between blockchains because of differences in the underlying technology. Cross-chain technology is becoming increasingly prevalent as a solution to the data security problem. Decentralized blockchain networks frequently use the Hashed Timelock Contract (HTLC) to solve the problem of balancing atomicity and time sensitivity. However, it suffers from drawbacks such as limited security and privacy protection capabilities. To overcome these limitations, a secure and fully functional system named the Exchange Smart Contract (ExchangeSC) has been developed; the ExchangeSC can integrate smart contracts and Paillier homomorphic encryption into the Mid-Account HTLC (MA-HTLC) cross-chain protocol. This integration effectively resolves the problem of low security and privacy protection in the HTLC cross-chain protocol. Specifically, the locked information in the solution is encrypted using homomorphic encryption before uploading to the blockchain, which is operated by participating nodes in the ciphertext domain. The ExchangeSC demonstrates reasonable performance on the official testing network’s EVM platform. Further evaluation of the ExchangeSC-based HTLC cross-chain reveals its superior security and lower time cost compared to the BitXHub cross-chain project.
ISSN:2079-9292
2079-9292
DOI:10.3390/electronics13163116