Etherless Ethereum Tokens: Simulating Native Tokens in Ethereum

John Andrews, Michele Ciampi*, Vassilis Zikas

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Standardized Ethereum tokens, e.g., ERC-20 tokens, have become the norm in fundraising (through ICOs) and kicking off blockchain-based DeFi applications. However, they require the user’s wallet to hold both tokens and ether to pay the gas fee for making a transaction. This makes for a cumbersome user experience, and complicates, from the user perspective, the process of transitioning to a different smart-contract enabled blockchain, or to a newly launched blockchain. We formalize, instantiate, and analyze in a composable manner a system that we call Etherless Ethereum Tokens (in short, EETs), which allows the token users to transact in a closed-economy manner, i.e., having only tokens on their wallet and paying any transaction fees in tokens rather than Ether/Gas. In the process, we devise a methodology for capturing Ethereum token-contracts in the Universal Composability (UC) framework, which can be of independent interest. Our system can be seen as a targeted instance of the more general paradigm put forth—without a formal study—by the Ethereum Gas Station Network (GSN). We have implemented and benchmarked our system and compared it to GSN. In addition to being the first system with a rigorous security analysis, we demonstrate that EETs are far easier to deploy and less gas intensive than the GSN.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCyber Security, Cryptology, and Machine Learning - 6th International Symposium, CSCML 2022, Proceedings
EditorsShlomi Dolev, Amnon Meisels, Jonathan Katz
PublisherSpringer, Cham
Pages388-407
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-07689-3
ISBN (Print)978-3-031-07688-6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Jun 2022
Event6th International Symposium on Cyber Security Cryptography and Machine Learning, CSCML 2022 - Beer Sheva, Israel
Duration: 30 Jun 20221 Jul 2022

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
PublisherSpringer Cham
Volume13301
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference6th International Symposium on Cyber Security Cryptography and Machine Learning, CSCML 2022
Country/TerritoryIsrael
CityBeer Sheva
Period30/06/221/07/22

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Etherless Ethereum Tokens: Simulating Native Tokens in Ethereum'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this