Related papers: The Gap Game
Blockchain plays a crucial role in ensuring the security and integrity of decentralized systems, with the proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism being fundamental for achieving distributed consensus. As PoW blockchains see broader adoption, an…
Optimistic rollups rely on fraud proofs -- interactive protocols executed on Ethereum to resolve conflicting claims about the rollup's state -- to scale Ethereum securely. To mitigate against potential censorship of protocol moves, fraud…
Payment networks were introduced to address the limitation on the transaction throughput of popular blockchains. To open a payment channel one has to publish a transaction on-chain and pay the appropriate transaction fee. A transaction can…
Users bid in a transaction fee mechanism (TFM) to get their transactions included and confirmed by a blockchain protocol. Roughgarden (EC'21) initiated the formal treatment of TFMs and proposed three requirements: user incentive…
Proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies rely on a balance of security and fairness in order to maintain a sustainable ecosystem of miners and users. Users demand fast and consistent transaction confirmation, and in exchange drive the adoption…
We analyze bribing attacks in Proof-of-Stake distributed ledgers from a game theoretic perspective. In bribing attacks, an adversary offers participants a reward in exchange for instructing them how to behave, with the goal of attacking the…
Blockchain is rapidly emerging as an important class of network application, with a unique set of trust, security and transparency properties. In a blockchain system, participants record and update the `server-side' state of an application…
In blockchain networks adopting the proof-of-work schemes, the monetary incentive is introduced by the Nakamoto consensus protocol to guide the behaviors of the full nodes (i.e., block miners) in the process of maintaining the consensus…
It is known that a player in a noncooperative game can benefit by publicly restricting his possible moves before play begins. We show that, more generally, a player may benefit by publicly committing to pay an external party an amount that…
Motivated by emerging decentralized applications, the \emph{game of coding} framework has been recently introduced to address scenarios where the adversary's control over coded symbols surpasses the fundamental limits of traditional coding…
Bitcoin is a digital currency designed to rely on a decentralized, trustless network of anonymous agents. Using a pseudonymous-address-linking procedure that achieves >99% sensitivity and >99% specificity, we reveal that between launch…
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…
Despite the popularity and practical applicability of blockchains, there is very limited work on the theoretical foundation of blockchains: The lack of rigorous theory and analysis behind the curtain of blockchains has severely staggered…
Systems and blockchains often have security vulnerabilities and can be attacked by adversaries, with potentially significant negative consequences. Therefore, infrastructure providers increasingly rely on bug bounty programs, where external…
We model the ultimate price paid by users of a decentralized ledger as resulting from a two-stage game where Miners (/Proposers/etc.) first purchase blockspace via a Tullock contest, and then price that space to users. When analyzing our…
Many of today's crypto currencies use blockchains as decentralized ledgers and secure them with proof of work. In case of a fork of the chain, Bitcoin's rule for achieving consensus is selecting the longest chain and discarding the other…
Graph games lie at the algorithmic core of many automated design problems in computer science. These are games usually played between two players on a given graph, where the players keep moving a token along the edges according to…
We propose a framework for threshold cryptosystems under a permissionless-economic model in which the participants are rational profit-maximizing entities. To date, threshold cryptosystems have been considered under permissioned settings…
The energy sustainability of blockchains, whose consensus protocol rests on the Proof-of-Work, nourishes a heated debate. The underlying issue lies in a highly energy-consuming process, defined as mining, required to validate crypto-asset…
The security of most existing cryptocurrencies is based on a concept called Proof-of-Work, in which users must solve a computationally hard cryptopuzzle to authorize transactions (`one unit of computation, one vote'). This leads to enormous…