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Applied Sciences
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Advanced Blockchain Architectures: Cryptographic Privacy and Cybersecurity Mechanisms
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Advanced Blockchain Architectures: Cryptographic Privacy and Cybersecurity Mechanisms

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 2278

Editors

Dr. Liang Xue

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Information Technology, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
Interests: blockchain security and privacy; cybersecurity; applied cryptography
Dr. Yannan Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
Interests: data security; cryptography; security and privacy preservation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid advancement of blockchain technology has spurred the development of increasingly sophisticated architectures designed to meet the growing demands of privacy, security, scalability, and interoperability in decentralized environments. With the proliferation of blockchain applications across sectors such as finance, healthcare, logistics, and IoT, ensuring cryptographic privacy and robust cybersecurity mechanisms has become a critical challenge. Modern blockchain systems must not only support transparent and tamper-resistant records but also incorporate advanced cryptographic tools to protect user identity, transactional data, and smart contract logic. Additionally, as blockchain networks scale and become interconnected, secure consensus, cross-chain communication, and resistance to emerging cyber threats are key to ensuring trust and performance.

In this regard, cryptographic protocols, privacy-enhancing technologies, consensus mechanisms, and secure multi-party computation techniques form the technical foundation of next-generation blockchain architectures. This Special Issue aims to publish high-quality papers exploring novel frameworks and security mechanisms that advance the theoretical and practical capabilities of blockchain systems.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Blockchain architecture for privacy and security;
  • Privacy-enhancing technologies in blockchain;
  • Decentralized identity and privacy-preserving authentication;
  • Blockchain-based access control and secure data sharing and data trading;
  • Smart contract security and vulnerability detection;
  • Post-quantum cryptography for blockchain;
  • Secure consensus protocols;
  • Cross-chain protocols and interoperability with security guarantees;
  • Adversarial modeling, attack detection, and mitigation in blockchain networks;
  • Integration of blockchain with AI, IoT, and edge computing.

Dr. Liang Xue
Dr. Yannan Li
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • blockchain
  • security and privacy
  • cybersecurity

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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17 pages, 524 KB  
Article
Anonymous E-Voting on Hyperledger Fabric: Practical Mitigation of the Verification Paradox and Coercion Resistance
by Yoon-Nyoung Jung, Su-Been Cho, Seo-Hyun Yun and Hwa-Jeong Seo
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(14), 6953; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16146953 - 10 Jul 2026
Viewed by 363
Abstract
Electronic voting systems inherently encompass a structural tension among ballot secrecy, verifiability, and coercion resistance. Voters must be able to verify whether their votes have been included; however, if such verification information can serve as evidence presentable to a third party, it becomes [...] Read more.
Electronic voting systems inherently encompass a structural tension among ballot secrecy, verifiability, and coercion resistance. Voters must be able to verify whether their votes have been included; however, if such verification information can serve as evidence presentable to a third party, it becomes a basis for post-election intimidation. Existing studies have focused primarily on performance evaluation or data separation, and have not comprehensively addressed the structural tension between verifiability and coercion resistance. This study defines this tension as the verification paradox and designs and implements an electronic voting prototype on a three-organization consortium based on Hyperledger Fabric 2.5, combining a 2-of-3 endorsement policy, nullifier-based anonymity, Exponential ElGamal homomorphic tallying, zero-knowledge proof (ZKP)-based ballot validity verification, panic-password-based deniable verification, and Private Data Collection (PDC)-based coerced vote separation. Quantitative evaluation results confirm a server latency overhead of +0.9% for ElGamal relative to the AES performance baseline, statistical indistinguishability between normal and panic responses (p>0.05), and a peak throughput of approximately 40.7 TPS (with an error rate of 0%) under 1000 concurrent voters. Through this prototype implementation and quantitative evaluation, we show the potential of permissioned blockchains to partially and practically mitigate the verification paradox. This study, however, does not provide a formal security proof, and it is subject to a trust assumption on PDC as well as to the experimental limitations of a single evaluation environment and a limited load range. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Blockchain Architectures: Cryptographic Privacy and Cybersecurity Mechanisms)
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30 pages, 1669 KB  
Article
Blockchain-Based Detection of Invalid Vehicle Numbers While Preserving Privacy
by Rathish Prabhu and Seung Yeob Nam
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(12), 5985; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16125985 - 13 Jun 2026
Viewed by 517
Abstract
A blockchain-based framework is proposed for secure vehicle registration and real-time authenticity verification in vehicular networks. To mitigate the risks of fake and stolen license plates, vehicle identification data is protected using a modular arithmetic-based cryptographic mechanism and indexed within an on-chain hash [...] Read more.
A blockchain-based framework is proposed for secure vehicle registration and real-time authenticity verification in vehicular networks. To mitigate the risks of fake and stolen license plates, vehicle identification data is protected using a modular arithmetic-based cryptographic mechanism and indexed within an on-chain hash table structure. Role-based access control ensures system integrity by restricting all registration and modification operations to authorized government entities, while enabling public verifiers to validate vehicle legitimacy through privacy-preserving verification. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the system achieves low verification latency, minimal storage overhead, and stable throughput. Furthermore, scalability and denial-of-service (DoS) resilience analyses confirm consistent performance under high verification demand. This framework offers an efficient and privacy-preserving solution for the secure and real-time verification of vehicle legitimacy in vehicular networks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Blockchain Architectures: Cryptographic Privacy and Cybersecurity Mechanisms)
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Other

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21 pages, 1447 KB  
Systematic Review
Threat Landscape in Decentralized Systems: Sybil Attacks, Related Vulnerabilities, and Blockchain Security Evolution (2015–2025)
by Andrei Alexandru Bordeianu and Daniela Elena Popescu
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(14), 6929; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16146929 - 10 Jul 2026
Viewed by 832
Abstract
Blockchain technology has profoundly revolutionized decentralized applications across financial systems, global supply chains, and applied informatics. However, it remains susceptible to systemic security hazards. This systematic review comprehensively evaluates core architectural vulnerabilities within blockchain infrastructures, consensus mechanisms, and peer-to-peer (P2P) network layers spanning [...] Read more.
Blockchain technology has profoundly revolutionized decentralized applications across financial systems, global supply chains, and applied informatics. However, it remains susceptible to systemic security hazards. This systematic review comprehensively evaluates core architectural vulnerabilities within blockchain infrastructures, consensus mechanisms, and peer-to-peer (P2P) network layers spanning the decade from 2015 to 2025. We focus primarily on the mechanics, operational taxonomy, and evolutionary trajectories of Sybil attacks, wherein malicious actors forge multiple pseudonymous identities to gain disproportionate systemic influence. By synthesizing the foundational academic literature with real-world empirical case studies, such as automated airdrop farming exploits in Layer-2 ecosystems (e.g., Arbitrum, zkSync) and decentralized finance (DeFi) governance manipulations, we analyze attack mechanisms, quantifiable impacts, and mitigation vectors. Our findings chart the structural evolution of Sybil strategies from rudimentary P2P routing disruptions to complex, economically driven application-layer interventions. Finally, we evaluate contemporary defenses, such as Proof-of-Personhood (PoP) systems and zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography, offering actionable recommendations for the integration of W3C-compliant decentralized identity (DID) frameworks and behavioral analytics to enhance systemic fault tolerance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Blockchain Architectures: Cryptographic Privacy and Cybersecurity Mechanisms)
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