Related papers: The Miner's Dilemma
Low transaction throughput and poor scalability are significant issues in public blockchain consensus protocols such as Bitcoins. Recent research efforts in this direction have proposed shard-based consensus protocols where the key idea is…
In Aug. 2017, Bitcoin was split into the original Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Since then, miners have had a choice between BTC and BCH mining because they have compatible proof-of-work algorithms. Therefore, they can freely choose…
Grover's algorithm confers on quantum computers a quadratic advantage over classical computers for searching in an arbitrary data set, a scenario that describes Bitcoin mining. It has previously been argued that the only side-effect of…
Proof-of-Work is a consensus algorithm where miners solve cryptographic puzzles to mine blocks and obtain a reward through some Block Reward Mechanism (BRM). PoW blockchain faces the problem of centralization due to the formation of mining…
Most popular blockchain solutions, like Bitcoin, rely on proof-of-work, guaranteeing that the output of the consensus is agreed upon with high probability. However, this probability depends on the delivery of messages and that the…
The problem of how to achieve cooperation among rational peers in order to discourage free riding is one that has received a lot of attention in peer-to-peer computing and is still an important one. The field of game theory is applied to…
It has been known for some time that the Nakamoto consensus as implemented in the Bitcoin protocol is not totally aligned with the individual interests of the participants. More precisely, it has been shown that block withholding mining…
Blockchain systems benefit from lessons in prior art such as fault tolerance, distributed systems, peer-to-peer systems, and game theory. In this paper we argue that blockchain algorithms should tolerate both rational (self-interested)…
We propose DIPS Difficulty-based Incentives for Problem Solving), a simple modification of the Bitcoin proof-of-work algorithm that rewards blockchain miners for solving optimization problems of scientific interest. The result is a…
Today's world is organized based on merit and value. A single global currency that's decentralized is needed for a global economy. Bitcoin is a partial solution to this need, however it suffers from scalability problems which prevent it…
It is interesting but difficult and challenging to study Ethereum with multiple mining pools. One of the main difficulties comes from not only how to represent such a general tree with multiple block branches (or sub-chains) related to the…
Mining processes of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies are currently incentivized with voluntary transaction fees and fixed block rewards which will halve gradually to zero. In the setting where optional and arbitrary transaction fee…
Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain systems, especially those that allow stakeholders to organize themselves in ``stake-pools'', have emerged as a compelling paradigm for the deployment of large scale distributed ledgers. A stake-pool operates…
Bitcoin is the first successful decentralized global digital cash system. Its mining process requires intense computational resources, therefore its usefulness remains a disputable topic. We aim to solve three problems with Bitcoin and…
Cryptocurrencies have garnered much attention in recent years, both from the academic community and industry. One interesting aspect of cryptocurrencies is their explicit consideration of incentives at the protocol level. Understanding how…
Bitcoin was recently introduced as a peer-to-peer electronic currency in order to facilitate transactions outside the traditional financial system. The core of Bitcoin, the Blockchain, is the history of the transactions in the system…
Cryptocurrency achieves distributed consensus using proof of work (PoW). Prior research in blockchain security identified financially incentivized attacks based on withholding blocks which have the attacker compromise a victim pool and pose…
The security of Bitcoin protocols is deeply dependent on the incentives provided to miners, which come from a combination of block rewards and transaction fees. As Bitcoin experiences more halving events, the protocol reward converges to…
One of the most important features of blockchain protocols is decentralization, as their main contribution is that they formulate a distributed ledger that will be maintained and extended without the need of a trusted party. Bitcoin has…
In the last few years several papers investigated selfish mine attacks, most of which assumed that every miner that is not part of the selfish mine pool will continue to mine honestly. However, in reality, remaining honest is not always…