Home Technology Portfolio of Patents to Differentiate and Protect Theta Technology (THETA) and Ecosystem

Portfolio of Patents to Differentiate and Protect Theta Technology (THETA) and Ecosystem

Theta Patent

Theta awarded patent application approval for USPTO Number 17/224,109 (“THETA-1005”) — Preventing denial-of-service attacks in decentralized edge networks using verifiable delay functions (VDFs) to prevent malicious attacks.
Theta Labs were excited about having received their patent application approval for USPTO Application Number 17/224,109 (“THETA-1005”): “Preventing denial-of-service attacks in decentralized edge networks using verifiable delay functions (VDFs).”

This invention introduces improved protection versus attacks for decentralized networks like Theta Network.
Previously patents were issued for decentralized data streaming and delivery, ultra-high transaction throughput micropayments, methods and systems for peer node discovery, and decentralized DRM via NFTs.

Thus there is already a portfolio of patents to differentiate and protect the Theta technology and ecosystem.
Client-server and peer-to-peer blockchain networks are likely to be vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. A DoS attack is a technique that disrupts legitimate users from being able to access the network.

This attack is performed by overloading one or more nodes of the network with massive data requests, which leads to network congestion.

The proposed systems in the current patent are used to reduce DoS attacks.

The patent recognizes the use of VDFs, which points to functions that need a predetermined number of computational cycles to complete. The VDFs and PoW/PoS require that an evaluator spends some time computing a puzzle.
The VDFs will involve sequential computations that cannot be parallelized by making specialized hardware unable to improve and speed up the puzzle computation substantially.

This mechanism will further be extendable to a blockchain that is supported by a decentralized peer-to-peer data delivery network with digital rights management (DRM), non-fungible tokens (NFT), and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

Client-server networks, fully decentralized peer-to-peer networks, and hybrid networks use this method. Thus, if a server detects a client is issuing higher-than-normal frequency requests, the server will initiate a VDF puzzle using a random seed, which is known as a “challenge” to the client.

The next request from the client will have to consist of the correct solution to the VDF puzzle before the server can serve the subsequent client request. The advantage of making use of the VDF over Proof-of-Work (PoW) is that the VDF computation which is not parallelizable.

The VDF-based rate-limiting is used in a client-server context and also in decentralized peer-to-peer networks. When there are malicious peer nodes in the network launch like a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on an honest node, the honest node will be able to use the VDF-based rate-limiting mechanism to keep the adversary away.

Read more about:
Share on

Maheen Hernandez

A finance graduate, Maheen Hernandez has been drawn to cryptocurrencies ever since Bitcoin first emerged in 2009. Nearly a decade later, Maheen is actively working to spread awareness about cryptocurrencies as well as their impact on the traditional currencies. Appreciate the work? Send a tip to: 0x75395Ea9a42d2742E8d0C798068DeF3590C5Faa5

Crypto newsletter

Get the latest Crypto & Blockchain News in your inbox.

By clicking Subscribe, you agree to our Privacy Policy.

Get the latest updates from our Telegram channel.

Telegram Icon Join Now ×