Distributed ledger technology, such as blockchains, has become more prevalent across a variety of contexts over the past decade. The premise is that blockchains operate securely without any centralized control and that they are immutable or unsusceptible to change.
Given its mission to create and prevent technological surprise, DARPA endeavored to understand those security assumptions and determine to what degree blockchains are actually decentralized. As such, the agency engaged cybersecurity research and consulting firm Trail of Bits to examine the fundamental properties of blockchains and the cybersecurity risks associated with them.