Short Paper: An Exploration of Code Diversity in the Cryptocurrency Landscape

Reibel, Pierre; Yousaf, Haaroon; Meiklejohn, Sarah

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-32101-7_5

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This paper further analyzed correlation coefficients between market capitalization and code maintenance activities, unpatched security vulnerabilities, and code similarity, respectively. Reibel et al [34] analyzed the code diversity of cryptocurrencies' open-source code repositories. Their study is similar to ours in some ways because both exploit project information extracted from repositories to evaluate the originality of crypto projects.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attack of the Clones: Measuring the Maintainability, Originality and Security of Bitcoin 'Forks' in the Wild

Choi¹,

Choi²,

Aiken³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Since Bitcoin appeared in 2009, over 6,000 different cryptocurrency projects have followed. The cryptocurrency world may be the only technology where a massive number of competitors offer similar services yet claim unique benefits, including scalability, fast transactions, and security. But are these projects really offering unique features and significant enhancements over their competitors? To answer this question, we conducted a large-scale empirical analysis of code maintenance activities, originality and security across 592 crypto projects. We found that about half of these projects have not been updated for the last six months; over two years, about three-quarters of them disappeared, or were reported as scams or inactive. We also investigated whether 11 security vulnerabilities patched in Bitcoin were also patched in other projects. We found that about 80% of 510 C-language-based cryptocurrency projects have at least one unpatched vulnerability, and the mean time taken to fix the vulnerability is 237.8 days. Among those 510 altcoins, we found that at least 157 altcoins are likely to have been forked from Bitcoin, about a third of them containing only slight changes from the Bitcoin version from which they were forked. As case studies, we did a deep dive into 20 altcoins (e.g., Litecoin, FujiCoin, and Feathercoin) similar to the version of Bitcoin used for the fork. About half of them did not make any technically meaningful change -failing to comply with the promises (e.g., about using Proof of Stake) made in their whitepapers.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attack of the Clones: Measuring the Maintainability, Originality and Security of Bitcoin 'Forks' in the Wild

Choi¹,

Choi²,

Aiken³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Similarly to us, others have started to analyze reuse in the altcoin economy. Reibel et al analyse the code overlap in cryptocurrencies [6]. They found a significant amount of overlap in entire code files shared across multiple coins.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting Text Reuse in Cryptocurrency Whitepapers

Morin

Vasek

Moore

2021

2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC)

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Thousands of new cryptocurrencies have been introduced in recent years. Most are introduced with a so-called "whitepaper" containing a mix of technical documentation, legal boilerplate and marketing material. Notably, many proposed currencies reuse text from previous established cryptocurrencies. We analyze the whitepapers from 1 260 actively traded cryptocurrencies and 2 039 ICOs. We develop two measures of similarity. Moderately similar papers reuse text in a portion of the paper, often the legal disclaimers. By contrast, some highly similar whitepapers appear to copy most of the text. 4% of coin and 19% of ICO whitepapers are highly similar to those of traded coins. The fraction rises to 64% for coins and 67% for ICOs when we consider moderate text reuse.

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“…Presumably, this can be explained by the direct and measurable connection to the supporters' financial wealth and the often minor technical differences between coins. The latter is a result of widespread code reuse, 28 which puts disclosers into the delicate position of deciding which among many competing projects to inform responsibly. Due to the lack of formally defined roles and responsibilities, it is moreover often difficult to identify who to notify within each project.…”

Section: Review Articlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsible vulnerability disclosure in cryptocurrencies

et al. 2020

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Software weaknesses in cryptocurrencies create unique challenges in responsible revelations. BY RAINER BÖHME, LISA ECKEY, TYLER MOORE, NEHA NARULA, TIM RUFFING, AND AVIV ZOHAR key insights ˽ Cryptocurrency software is complex and vulnerabilities can be readily, and anonymously, monetized. ˽ Responsible vulnerability disclosure in cryptocurrencies is hard because decentralized systems, by design, give no single party authority to push code updates. ˽ This review of case studies informs recommendations for preventing catastrophic cryptocurrency failures.

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Short Paper: An Exploration of Code Diversity in the Cryptocurrency Landscape

Cited by 12 publications

References 33 publications

Attack of the Clones: Measuring the Maintainability, Originality and Security of Bitcoin 'Forks' in the Wild

Attack of the Clones: Measuring the Maintainability, Originality and Security of Bitcoin 'Forks' in the Wild

Detecting Text Reuse in Cryptocurrency Whitepapers

Responsible vulnerability disclosure in cryptocurrencies

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