An Analysis of Bitcoin OP_RETURN Metadata

Bartoletti, Massimo; Pompianu, Livio

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70278-0_14

Cited by 92 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…With its protocol upgrade from version 1.0 to 1.1, on May 15, 2018, the OP RETURN relay size will increase to 223 bytes, only on the bitcoin-cash blockchain. [14] Information about the two blockchains has been updated, corrected and analyzed in this study, by the contributing authors, based primarily on the OpReturnTool from [42].…”

Section: A Methodology and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Embedding Metadata in Blockchain Transactions

Faisal

Courtois

Serguieva

2018

2018 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)

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The use of blockchains is growing every day, and their utility has greatly expanded from sending and receiving crypto-coins to smart-contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations. Modern blockchains underpin a variety of applications: from designing a global identity to improving satellite connectivity. In our research we look at the ability of blockchains to store metadata in an increasing volume of transactions and with evolving focus of utilization. We further show that basic approaches to improving blockchain privacy also rely on embedding metadata. This paper identifies and classifies real-life blockchain transactions embedding metadata of a number of major protocols running essentially over the bitcoin blockchain. The empirical analysis here presents the evolution of metadata utilization in the recent years, and the discussion suggests steps towards preventing criminal use. Metadata are relevant to any blockchain, and our analysis considers primarily bitcoin as a case study. The paper concludes that simultaneously with both expanding legitimate utilization of embedded metadata and expanding blockchain functionality, the applied research on improving anonymity and security must also attempt to protect against blockchain abuse.

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Section: A Methodology and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Embedding Metadata in Blockchain Transactions

Faisal

Courtois

Serguieva

2018

2018 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)

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“…Nevertheless, significant effort has recently been put into the study of using blockchains for storage of generic data, which aims at preserving the properties of data immutability and trackability in a decentralized environment. A naive approach is to "piggy-back" arbitrary data (e.g., non-transferable metadata) onto transactions in established public blockchains [187]. For example, in the Bitcoin network, nodes can use the special script instruction OP RETURN to indicate that the transaction output is unspendable and expected to be removed from the UTXO.…”

Section: A General-purpose Data Storagementioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks

et al. 2019

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The past decade has witnessed the rapid evolution in blockchain technologies, which has attracted tremendous interests from both the research communities and industries. The blockchain network was originated from the Internet financial sector as a decentralized, immutable ledger system for transactional data ordering. Nowadays, it is envisioned as a powerful backbone/framework for decentralized data processing and datadriven self-organization in flat, open-access networks. In particular, the plausible characteristics of decentralization, immutability and self-organization are primarily owing to the unique decentralized consensus mechanisms introduced by blockchain networks. This survey is motivated by the lack of a comprehensive literature review on the development of decentralized consensus mechanisms in blockchain networks. In this survey, we provide a systematic vision of the organization of blockchain networks. By emphasizing the unique characteristics of incentivized consensus in blockchain networks, our in-depth review of the state-ofthe-art consensus protocols is focused on both the perspective of distributed consensus system design and the perspective of incentive mechanism design. From a game-theoretic point of view, we also provide a thorough review on the strategy adoption for self-organization by the individual nodes in the blockchain backbone networks. Consequently, we provide a comprehensive survey on the emerging applications of the blockchain networks in a wide range of areas. We highlight our special interest in how the consensus mechanisms impact these applications. Finally, we discuss several open issues in the protocol design for blockchain consensus and the related potential research directions.

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“…On the constructive side, while the scripting language used by Bitcoin is (intentionally) limited in its functionality, Bitcoin transactions can nevertheless store small amounts of arbitrary data. This makes Bitcoin potentially useful for other applications that may require the properties of its ledger, such as certifying the ownership and timestamp of a document [3]. One mechanism that allows Bitcoin to store such data is the script opcode OP_RETURN, 2 which can be used to embed up to 80 bytes of arbitrary data.…”

Section: Distributed Ledgersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contour: A Practical System for Binary Transparency

Al-Bassam

Meiklejohn

2018

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Transparency is crucial in security-critical applications that rely on authoritative information, as it provides a robust mechanism for holding these authorities accountable for their actions. A number of solutions have emerged in recent years that provide transparency in the setting of certificate issuance, and Bitcoin provides an example of how to enforce transparency in a financial setting. In this work we shift to a new setting, the distribution of software package binaries, and present a system for so-called "binary transparency. " Our solution, Contour, uses proactive methods for providing transparency, privacy, and availability, even in the face of persistent man-in-the-middle attacks. We also demonstrate, via benchmarks and a test deployment for the Debian software repository, that Contour is the only system for binary transparency that satisfies the efficiency and coordination requirements that would make it possible to deploy today.Full version of an extended abstract published in CBT 2018.

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An Analysis of Bitcoin OP_RETURN Metadata

Cited by 92 publications

References 7 publications

The Evolution of Embedding Metadata in Blockchain Transactions

The Evolution of Embedding Metadata in Blockchain Transactions

A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks

Contour: A Practical System for Binary Transparency

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