The paper empirically analyzes the impact of cross-chain interoperability on DeFi lending protocols, finding that bridge volume significantly affects performance but that increased integrations can si…

This paper analyzes the x402 payment protocol, revealing systemic vulnerabilities in state synchronization and signature design that allow attackers to exploit payment systems for resource leakage in…

This paper analyzes the x402 payment protocol, revealing critical synchronization and security flaws that allow attackers to exploit payment systems and force merchants to subsidize compute costs.

This paper analyzes high-impact Web3 security incidents to show that most losses stem from off-chain organizational and operational failures, not just smart contract bugs.

The paper proposes a Regulatory Compliance Protocol (RCP) to standardize and provide a regulatory framework for the interoperability and tokenization of assets between traditional and decentralized fi…

The paper proposes a novel nine-dimension risk assessment framework for institutional DeFi adoption, significantly enhancing existing methodologies by incorporating novel dimensions like composability…

The paper investigates whether tokenizing real-world assets actually improves liquidity, finding that liquidity is highly heterogeneous across asset types and is not reliably predicted by the outstand…

This systematic review analyzes the bidirectional integration of AI and DLT, finding that while research is growing, most studies neglect cross-layer co-design and fail to demonstrate production-scale…

The paper introduces SuperPaymaster, an Asset-Oriented Abstraction (AOA) paymaster that eliminates the need for a centralized off-chain signer, thereby improving the decentralization and efficiency of…

This paper analyzes the revenue drivers and interconnected risks of liquid restaking protocols, finding that while multi-blockchain expansion is key for adoption, the current bridge risk does not pose…

The paper analyzes Ethereum builder transactions to show that builder centralization is an emergent property of the Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) architecture, driven by specific order flow and ME…

This paper analyzes the x402 agentic payment protocol, demonstrating through five concrete, practical attacks that it is vulnerable across multiple stages of its payment workflow.

The paper proposes a compliance-aware architecture for agentic payments on stablecoin rails that embeds regulatory checks directly into the on-chain execution flow to ensure safe, low-friction transfe…

This paper analyzes the technical challenges of auditing novel cryptoassets and custody mechanisms by employing an autoethnographic framework derived from the author's multi-role professional experien…

The paper proposes n-VM, a novel Layer-1 architecture that unifies multiple heterogeneous virtual machines (VMs) onto a shared consensus and state layer, solving cross-chain fragmentation issues.

GoAT-X introduces a novel framework that structures cross-chain smart contract auditing as a Graph of Auditing Thoughts, significantly improving the detection of complex, semantic vulnerabilities in m…

The paper proposes a canonical, end-to-end validation framework to ensure secure integration of Alternative Data Availability (AltDA) systems with Ethereum Layer 2s, demonstrating that L2 integration…

This paper advances the lightweight blockchain verification protocol, FlyClient, by addressing technical challenges, introducing a new adversary model, and providing practical implementations and opti…

The paper introduces extsc{Dao$^2$}, a framework enabling secure, threshold-controlled payments from one Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to another, supporting both traceable and anonymou…

The paper systematizes the interaction between autonomous AI agents and blockchain platforms using a bidirectional trust framework, identifying significant gaps in current standards and proposing a ta…