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Implementing a Protocol Native Managed Cryptocurrency

Authors:
Peter Mell
Aurelien Delaitre
Frederic de Vaulx
Philippe Dessauw

Keywords: Fiat Currency, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Abstract:
Previous work presented a theoretical model based on the implicit Bitcoin specification for how an entity might issue a protocol native cryptocurrency that mimics features of fiat currencies. Protocol native means that it is built into the blockchain platform itself and is not simply a token running on another platform. Novel to this work were mechanisms by which the issuing entity could manage the cryptocurrency but where their power was limited and transparency was enforced by the cryptocurrency being implemented using a publicly mined blockchain. In this work we demonstrate the feasibility of this theoretical model by implementing such a managed cryptocurrency architecture through forking the Bitcoin code base. We discovered that the theoretical model contains several vulnerabilities and security issues that needed to be mitigated. It also contains architectural features that presented significant implementation challenges; some aspects of the proposed changes to the Bitcoin specification were not practical or even workable. In this work we describe how we mitigated the security vulnerabilities and overcame the architectural hurdles to build a working prototype.

Pages: 110 to 117

Copyright: Copyright (c) The Government of USA, 2019. Used by permission to IARIA.

Publication date: November 24, 2019

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-752-8

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 24, 2019 to November 28, 2019