The Blockchain Journal

In May, Diode’s CTO Dominic Letz published a paper introducing BlockQuick, a super light client protocol for blockchain validation on constrained devices. The paper shows that unlike other existing approaches such as proofs of proof-of-work (PoPoW) and FlyClient, Diode’s BlockQuick super light client protocol is capable of protecting against eclipse attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks on a peer-to-peer network. But what is an eclipse attack? Is it possible to prevent...

If you’ve been following our blog, you will have heard us mentioning the term decentralized public key infrastructure before. But you probably don’t know what it is or how it works, let alone why it matters so much. In this post, we will examine current approaches to the traditional centralized PKI, explore the basics of decentralized public key infrastructure (DPKI), and then show how blockchain-based DPKI can make an impact as the industry transitions...

- Click here if you just want to read the Paper -

In the last two posts of this series, we first introduced the governance issues in PKI and then the circular dependency between establishing trust in PKI certificates and establishing the current time on a connected device.

So let’s break that circular dependency between time and trust. The difference between trusting a person/an entity and trusting data is key here. How...

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network virtualization have been the disruptor technologies that were fundamental to the success of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Compute, and Azure during the last decade. Before that, there were plenty of rival cloud providers - for most of them, changing network configurations, adding/removing machines to a network required human interaction and would take hours or sometimes days. Dedicated networking, networking...

The Diode Network enables practical distributed trust for IoT communications (and for other modalities as well). The implications of this for distributed IT infrastructure are significant. However, as the reality of distributed infrastructure emerges, other more immediate applications on the way to fully distributed infrastructure are also interesting. One of these applications is distributed wireless network operations.

For star topology wireless networks, as exists in today’s cellular communications paradigm, there are four primary things...

[Note: This post requires background knowledge in blockchain technology. We have provided links to background information.]

After determining a blockchain project’s reason for existence, the next most important decision developers and entrepreneurs must consider is the mechanism through which their network will arrive at consensus. There are many different types of consensus protocols, but the vast majority of them can be placed into one of two buckets, Proof-of-Work (POW) or Proof-of-Stake (POS). Many...

“If you knew Time as well as I do,” said the Hatter, “ you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.”
“ I don’t know what you mean,” said Alice.
“ Of course you don’t !” the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. “ I dare say you never even spoke to Time ! Alice in Wonderland

In order to trust a time source, we need to validate its...

You may not be aware of this but if you are browsing the web or running IoT devices in your business or at your home, you are being protected by a 30-year-old security infrastructure. In this post, we will uncover the history of the internet PKI that holds most of the internet together today and highlight some of the most obvious threats and known flaws. This article is the first in a series investigating the...

In Today’s internet, the authenticity of content is secured by the internet PKI system and the domain name registries. To make it all work first the domain name server (DNS), second you - holding the certificate and the corresponding private key and third a certificate authority which signed your certificate all have to agree on the same data to create this security.

A single miss like a domain name server pointing to a different server...

The public was aghast back in early 2018 when PwC Bitcoin specialist Alex de Vries estimated that Bitcoin servers consume more than 22 terawatt-hours of electricity per year which is comparable to entire countries such as Austria and Ireland.

To many, this was a brewing crisis that if left unchecked would render blockchains unscalable and unsustainable Even Bitcoin’s strongest supporters recognized that the energy consumption issue presented a barrier to growth and mainstream...

On Monday, Bleeping Computer published an article about the disturbing revelation that Dark Matter, a cybersecurity firm based in the United Arab Emirates, has aspirations to become a trusted root certificate authority in one of the world’s most popular web browsers.

A certificate authority (CA) plays an important role in the public key infrastructure (PKI) which ensures secure communication over the internet. CAs are trusted entities that manage, issue and sign digital security certificates that...

After months of incubation we’re excited to start talking about our new, we believe groundbreaking, initiative: Diode^SM Incubating within Exosite, we’ve been working hard to fix some of the fundamental shortcomings of PKI that are underlying 99% of all Internet communication today.

For the first time now it becomes practical, with Diode, to use blockchain technology to eradicate the issues with PKI for IoT devices. Our technologies work even on low-end embedded devices and...