---
_id: '10325'
abstract:
- lang: eng
text: Since the inception of Bitcoin, a plethora of distributed ledgers differing
in design and purpose has been created. While by design, blockchains provide no
means to securely communicate with external systems, numerous attempts towards
trustless cross-chain communication have been proposed over the years. Today,
cross-chain communication (CCC) plays a fundamental role in cryptocurrency exchanges,
scalability efforts via sharding, extension of existing systems through sidechains,
and bootstrapping of new blockchains. Unfortunately, existing proposals are designed
ad-hoc for specific use-cases, making it hard to gain confidence in their correctness
and composability. We provide the first systematic exposition of cross-chain communication
protocols. We formalize the underlying research problem and show that CCC is impossible
without a trusted third party, contrary to common beliefs in the blockchain community.
With this result in mind, we develop a framework to design new and evaluate existing
CCC protocols, focusing on the inherent trust assumptions thereof, and derive
a classification covering the field of cross-chain communication to date. We conclude
by discussing open challenges for CCC research and the implications of interoperability
on the security and privacy of blockchains.
acknowledgement: 'We would like express our gratitude to Georgia Avarikioti, Daniel
Perez and Dominik Harz for helpful comments and feedback on earlier versions of
this manuscript. We also thank Nicholas Stifter, Aljosha Judmayer, Philipp Schindler,
Edgar Weippl, and Alistair Stewart for insightful discussions during the early stages
of this research. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments that helped improve the presentation of our results. This research was
funded by Bridge 1 858561 SESC; Bridge 1 864738 PR4DLT (all FFG); the Christian
Doppler Laboratory for Security and Quality Improvement in the Production System
Lifecycle (CDL-SQI); the competence center SBA-K1 funded by COMET; Chaincode Labs
through the project SLN: Scalability for the Lightning Network; and by the Austrian
Science Fund (FWF) through the Meitner program (project M-2608). Mustafa Al-Bassam
is funded by a scholarship from the Alan Turing Institute. Alexei Zamyatin conducted
the early stages of this work during his time at SBA Research, and was supported
by a Binance Research Fellowship.'
alternative_title:
- LNCS
article_processing_charge: No
author:
- first_name: Alexei
full_name: Zamyatin, Alexei
last_name: Zamyatin
- first_name: Mustafa
full_name: Al-Bassam, Mustafa
last_name: Al-Bassam
- first_name: Dionysis
full_name: Zindros, Dionysis
last_name: Zindros
- first_name: Eleftherios
full_name: Kokoris Kogias, Eleftherios
id: f5983044-d7ef-11ea-ac6d-fd1430a26d30
last_name: Kokoris Kogias
- first_name: Pedro
full_name: Moreno-Sanchez, Pedro
last_name: Moreno-Sanchez
- first_name: Aggelos
full_name: Kiayias, Aggelos
last_name: Kiayias
- first_name: William J.
full_name: Knottenbelt, William J.
last_name: Knottenbelt
citation:
ama: 'Zamyatin A, Al-Bassam M, Zindros D, et al. SoK: Communication across distributed
ledgers. In: 25th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data
Security. Vol 12675. Springer Nature; 2021:3-36. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-64331-0_1'
apa: 'Zamyatin, A., Al-Bassam, M., Zindros, D., Kokoris Kogias, E., Moreno-Sanchez,
P., Kiayias, A., & Knottenbelt, W. J. (2021). SoK: Communication across distributed
ledgers. In 25th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data
Security (Vol. 12675, pp. 3–36). Virtual: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64331-0_1'
chicago: 'Zamyatin, Alexei, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Dionysis Zindros, Eleftherios Kokoris
Kogias, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, Aggelos Kiayias, and William J. Knottenbelt. “SoK:
Communication across Distributed Ledgers.” In 25th International Conference
on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 12675:3–36. Springer Nature,
2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64331-0_1.'
ieee: 'A. Zamyatin et al., “SoK: Communication across distributed ledgers,”
in 25th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security,
Virtual, 2021, vol. 12675, pp. 3–36.'
ista: 'Zamyatin A, Al-Bassam M, Zindros D, Kokoris Kogias E, Moreno-Sanchez P, Kiayias
A, Knottenbelt WJ. 2021. SoK: Communication across distributed ledgers. 25th International
Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC: Financial Cryptography,
LNCS, vol. 12675, 3–36.'
mla: 'Zamyatin, Alexei, et al. “SoK: Communication across Distributed Ledgers.”
25th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security,
vol. 12675, Springer Nature, 2021, pp. 3–36, doi:10.1007/978-3-662-64331-0_1.'
short: A. Zamyatin, M. Al-Bassam, D. Zindros, E. Kokoris Kogias, P. Moreno-Sanchez,
A. Kiayias, W.J. Knottenbelt, in:, 25th International Conference on Financial
Cryptography and Data Security, Springer Nature, 2021, pp. 3–36.
conference:
end_date: 2021-03-05
location: Virtual
name: 'FC: Financial Cryptography'
start_date: 2021-03-01
date_created: 2021-11-21T23:01:29Z
date_published: 2021-10-23T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2023-08-14T12:59:26Z
day: '23'
department:
- _id: ElKo
doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-64331-0_1
external_id:
isi:
- '000712016200001'
isi: 1
language:
- iso: eng
main_file_link:
- open_access: '1'
url: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1128
month: '10'
oa: 1
oa_version: Preprint
page: 3-36
publication: 25th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security
publication_identifier:
eisbn:
- 978-3-662-64331-0
eissn:
- 1611-3349
isbn:
- 9-783-6626-4330-3
issn:
- 0302-9743
publication_status: published
publisher: Springer Nature
quality_controlled: '1'
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: 'SoK: Communication across distributed ledgers'
type: conference
user_id: 4359f0d1-fa6c-11eb-b949-802e58b17ae8
volume: '12675 '
year: '2021'
...