The Cryptography, Security and Privacy Research (CrySPR) lab in the CS Dept. at NMSU has a new NSF-funded project! PI: Dr. Vishwanathan. The project is broadly in the area of designing cryptographic protocols for building secure blockchains and blockchain-enabled applications. The project is funded under the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program of NSF.

As blockchains continue to grow, in terms of number of users and applications that rely on blockchains, current blockchains are unable to sustain the increasing demand and usage. The consequences are reflected in very low transaction throughput of cryptocurrencies and other applications that are built on the blockchain. This has accentuated the need for secure scaling solutions that can help increase transaction throughput, and support a large number of users and diverse applications built on blockchains. Layer 2 is a set of off-chain transaction processing mechanisms that help scale blockchains in a modular way. A prominent Layer 2 mechanism is a payment channel network (PCN), where several thousands of financial transactions can be processed with minimal blockchain read/writes, and with no changes required to the blockchain's underlying consensus mechanism. This project’s novelties are in solving fundamental research challenges in payment channel networks and designing novel cryptographic protocols of independent interest. The project’s broader significance and importance are in training students in critical cybersecurity topics such as applied cryptography and secure decentralized finance. More information about the project is provided on the NSF webpage pertaining to this project.