Best-Possible Unpredictable Proof-of-Stake: An Impossibility and a Practical Design.

Lei Fan 0002 Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Shanghai, China Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai, China https://infosec.sjtu.edu.cn/DirectoryDetail.aspx?id=16# https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UXTrKhIAAAAJ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lei-Fan-16 https://cn.linkedin.com/in/lei-fan-01694484?trk=org-employees https://openreview.net/profile?id=~Lei_Fan5 https://dl.acm.org/profile/88159337257 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3975-091X https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q130898848 Lei Fan Lei Fan 0001 Southwest University, Chongqing, China https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1834-5088 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q59393211 Lei Fan 0003 Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5538-4684 Lei Fan 0004 Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian, China https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4654-6511 Lei Fan 0005 Northwestern University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Evanston, IL, USA Sun Yat-sen University, School of Data and Computer Science, Guangzhou, China https://leifan95.github.io/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OWMmwZQAAAAJ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lei-fan-13168a121 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37085901181 https://openreview.net/profile?id=~Lei_Fan1 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9426-7029 Lei Fan 0006 University of Houston, Department of Engineering Technology and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Houston, TX, USA University of Florida, Department of Industrial and System Engineering, Gainesville, FL, USA https://sites.google.com/view/lorelab/home https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RxQkhwIAAAAJ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37085692144 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2157-310X Lei Fan 0007 Gaozhe Technology, Hefei, China University of New South Wales, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sydney, Australia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9472-7152 Lei Fan 0008 Xidian University, School of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an, China https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=35737191600 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9784-5453 Lei Fan 0002 Jonathan Katz Zhenghao Lu Phuc Thai Hong-Sheng Zhou Best-Possible Unpredictable Proof-of-Stake: An Impossibility and a Practical Design. 480-503 2025 EuroS&P https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSP63326.2025.00035 conf/eurosp/2025 db/conf/eurosp/eurosp2025.html#FanKLTZ25 streams/conf/eurosp Siwei Cai Lei Fan 0002 Shengyun Liu Hong-Sheng Zhou EquiBFT: A Framework for Achieving Fairness in BFT Consensus. 341-351 2025 ICDCS https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS63083.2025.00041 conf/icdcs/2025 db/conf/icdcs/icdcs2025.html#Cai0LZ25 Chi Feng Lei Fan 0002 BlockLens: Detecting Malicious Transactions in Ethereum Using LLM Techniques. 581-601 2025 ISC https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-08124-7_32 conf/isw/2025 db/conf/isw/isc2025.html#FengF25 streams/conf/isw Rongji Huang Xiangzhe Wang Xiaofeng Yan Lei Fan 0002 Guangtao Xue Shengyun Liu Chitu: Avoiding Unnecessary Fallback in Byzantine Consensus. 923-942 2025 USENIX ATC https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc25/presentation/huang-rongji conf/usenix/2025 db/conf/usenix/usenix2025.html#HuangWY0XL25 Zhenghao Lu Ding Ma Lei Fan 0002 Xiuzhen Chen Yongshuai Duan Jia Zhang A Universally Composable Key Management System Using Trusted Hardware. 1681-1686 2024 TrustCom https://doi.org/10.1109/TrustCom63139.2024.00231 conf/trustcom/2024 db/conf/trustcom/trustcom2024.html#LuMFCDZ24 Lei Fan 0002 Jonathan Katz Zhenghao Lu Phuc Thai Hong-Sheng Zhou Brief Announcement: Best-Possible Unpredictable Proof-Of-Stake. 45:1-45:7 2024 DISC https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2024.45 conf/wdag/2024 db/conf/wdag/disc2024.html#0002KLTZ24

Lei Fan 0002 Zhenghao Lu Hong-Sheng Zhou Column-wise Garbling, and How to Go Beyond the Linear Model. 415 2024 2024 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/415 db/journals/iacr/iacr2024.html#FanLZ24

Lei Fan 0002 Chenhao Tang Weicheng Yang Hong-Sheng Zhou Two Halves Make a Whole: How to Reconcile Soundness and Robustness in Watermarking for Large Language Models. 2062 2024 2024 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/2062 db/journals/iacr/iacr2024.html#FanTYZ24 streams/journals/iacr

Zixuan Chen Lei Fan 0002 Shengyun Liu Marko Vukolic Xiangzhe Wang Jingjing Zhang 0002 Bridging the Gap of Timing Assumptions in Byzantine Consensus. 178-191 2023 Middleware https://doi.org/10.1145/3590140.3629114 conf/middleware/2023 db/conf/middleware/middleware2023.html#ChenFLVWZ23 Shengyun Liu Wenbo Xu 0002 Chen Shan Xiaofeng Yan Tianjing Xu Bo Wang 0116 Lei Fan 0002 Fuxi Deng Ying Yan 0002 Hui Zhang 0002 Flexible Advancement in Asynchronous BFT Consensus. 264-280 2023 SOSP https://doi.org/10.1145/3600006.3613164 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q130898852 conf/sosp/2023 db/conf/sosp/sosp2023.html#LiuXS0XWFDYZ23 Chenkai Shen Lei Fan 0002 Pldb: Protecting LSM-based Key-Value Store using Trusted Execution Environment. 762-771 2023 TrustCom https://doi.org/10.1109/TrustCom60117.2023.00111 conf/trustcom/2023 db/conf/trustcom/trustcom2023.html#ShenF23

Lei Fan 0002 Jonathan Katz Phuc Thai Hong-Sheng Zhou A Permissionless Proof-of-Stake Blockchain with Best-Possible Unpredictability. 660 2021 2021 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/660 db/journals/iacr/iacr2021.html#FanKTZ21

Tuyet Duong Lei Fan 0002 Jonathan Katz Phuc Thai Hong-Sheng Zhou 2-hop Blockchain: Combining Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake Securely. 697-712 2020 ESORICS (2) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59013-0_34 conf/esorics/2020-2 db/conf/esorics/esorics2020-2.html#DuongFKTZ20 Dilu Zhang Lei Fan 0002 Cerberus: Privacy-Preserving Computation in Edge Computing. 43-49 2020 INFOCOM Workshops https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS50562.2020.9162942 conf/infocom/2020w db/conf/infocom/infocom2020w.html#ZhangF20 Yanyang Lu Lei Fan 0002 An Efficient and Robust Aggregation Algorithm for Learning Federated CNN. 1-7 2020 SPML https://doi.org/10.1145/3432291.3432303 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q130956694 conf/spml/2020 db/conf/spml/spml2020.html#LuF20 Jianjian Yu Lei Fan 0002 Gongliang Chen A New Structure of Blockchain to Simplify the Verification. 33-46 2019 BlockSys https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2777-7_3 conf/blocksys/2019 db/conf/blocksys/blocksys2019.html#YuFC19 Tuyet Duong Alexander Chepurnoy Lei Fan 0002 Hong-Sheng Zhou TwinsCoin: A Cryptocurrency via Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake. 1-13 2018 BCC@AsiaCCS https://doi.org/10.1145/3205230.3205233 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q111688024 conf/ccs/2018bcc db/conf/ccs/bcc2018.html#DuongCFZ18 Yangyizhou Wang Lan Li Lei Fan 0002 A Binary Feature Extraction Based Data Provenance System Implemented on Flink Platform. 2018 CyberC https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberC.2018.00045 conf/cyberc/2018 db/conf/cyberc/cyberc2018.html#WangLF18 Phuc Thai Laurent Njilla Tuyet Duong Lei Fan 0002 Hong-Sheng Zhou A Generic Paradigm for Blockchain Design. 460-469 2018 MobiQuitous https://doi.org/10.1145/3286978.3286982 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q130868072 conf/mobiquitous/2018 db/conf/mobiquitous/mobiquitous2018.html#ThaiNDFZ18 Yanxue Jia Lei Fan 0002 Generate Public Randomness Based on Blockchain. 263-270 2018 SmartWorld/SCALCOM/UIC/ATC/CBDCom/IOP/SCI https://doi.org/10.1109/SmartWorld.2018.00080 conf/uic/2018 db/conf/uic/uic2018.html#JiaF18

Alexander Chepurnoy Tuyet Duong Lei Fan 0002 Hong-Sheng Zhou TwinsCoin: A Cryptocurrency via Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake. 232 2017 2017 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. http://eprint.iacr.org/2017/232 db/journals/iacr/iacr2017.html#ChepurnoyDFZ17

Lei Fan 0002 Hong-Sheng Zhou iChing: A Scalable Proof-of-Stake Blockchain in the Open Setting (or, How to Mimic Nakamoto's Design via Proof-of-Stake). 656 2017 2017 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. http://eprint.iacr.org/2017/656 db/journals/iacr/iacr2017.html#FanZ17

Tuyet Duong Lei Fan 0002 Thomas Veale Hong-Sheng Zhou Securing Bitcoin-like Backbone Protocols against a Malicious Majority of Computing Power. 716 2016 2016 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. http://eprint.iacr.org/2016/716 db/journals/iacr/iacr2016.html#DuongFVZ16

Huangmiao Chen Xiuzhen Chen Lei Fan 0002 Changsong Chen 0002 Classified security protection evaluation for vehicle information system. 1-6 2015 SSIC https://doi.org/10.1109/SSIC.2015.7245673 conf/ssic/2015 db/conf/ssic/ssic2015.html#ChenCF015 Lianghong Qian Lei Fan 0002 Jianhua Li 0001 Implementing quasi-parallel breadth-first search in MapReduce for large-scale social network mining. 7-14 2013 CASoN https://doi.org/10.1109/CASoN.2013.6622606 conf/cason/2013 db/conf/cason/cason2013.html#QianFL13

Shiyong Zhang Gongliang Chen Lei Fan 0002 The Algorithm of AAES. 116 2013 2013 IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/116 db/journals/iacr/iacr2013.html#ZhangCF13

Shaojun Zhang Jianhua Li 0001 Xiuzhen Chen Lei Fan 0002 Building network attack graph for alert causal correlation. 188-196 2008 27 Comput. Secur. 5-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2008.05.005 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q115061890 db/journals/compsec/compsec27.html#ZhangLCF08

Lan Li Shaojun Zhang Lei Fan 0002 Behavior-Aware Role Based Trust Management. 1919-1924 2008 ICYCS https://doi.org/10.1109/ICYCS.2008.266 https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ICYCS.2008.266 conf/icycs/2008 db/conf/icycs/icycs2008.html#LiZF08 Jie Liu Lei Fan 0002 Jianhua Li 0001 Cryptanalysis and improvement on Yang-Shieh authentication schemes. 64 2006 PST https://doi.org/10.1145/1501434.1501509 conf/pst/2006 db/conf/pst/pst2006.html#LiuFL06 Yingjie Wang Jianhua Li 0001 Lei Fan 0002 Cryptanalysis on a Blind Signature Scheme Based on ElGamal Signature. 349-351 2004 conf/scam/2004 SNPD db/conf/snpd/snpd2004.html#WangLF04

Lei Fan 0002 Jianhua Li 0001 HongWen Zhu An enhancement of timestamp-based password authentication scheme. 665-667 2002 21 Comput. Secur. 7 db/journals/compsec/compsec21.html#FanLZ02 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-4048(02)01118-5 https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q114656205

Siwei Cai Changsong Chen 0002 Gongliang Chen Huangmiao Chen Xiuzhen Chen Zixuan Chen Alexander Chepurnoy Fuxi Deng Yongshuai Duan Tuyet Duong Chi Feng Rongji Huang Yanxue Jia Jonathan Katz Jianhua Li 0001 Lan Li Jie Liu Shengyun Liu Yanyang Lu Zhenghao Lu Ding Ma Laurent Njilla Lianghong Qian Chen Shan Chenkai Shen Chenhao Tang Phuc Thai Thomas Veale Marko Vukolic Bo Wang 0116 Xiangzhe Wang Yangyizhou Wang Yingjie Wang Tianjing Xu Wenbo Xu 0002 Guangtao Xue Xiaofeng Yan Ying Yan 0002 Weicheng Yang Jianjian Yu Dilu Zhang Hui Zhang 0002 Jia Zhang Jingjing Zhang 0002 Shaojun Zhang Shiyong Zhang Hong-Sheng Zhou HongWen Zhu