Related papers: On profitability of selfish mining
Traditionally, peer-to-peer systems have relied on altruism and reciprocity. Although incentive-based models have gained prominence in new-generation peer-to-peer systems, it is essential to recognize the continued importance of cooperative…
This work proposes a novel proof-of-work blockchain incentive scheme such that, barring exogenous motivations, following the protocol is guaranteed to be the optimal strategy for miners. Our blockchain takes the form of a directed acyclic…
We study to what extent the Bitcoin blockchain security permanently depends on the underlying distribution of cryptocurrency market outcomes. We use daily blockchain and Bitcoin data for 2014-2019 and employ the ARDL approach. We test three…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) is designed to improve the scalability of blockchain systems by using off-chain payment paths to settle transactions in a faster, cheaper, and more private manner. This work aims to empirically study LN's…
This paper presents a stochastic model for block arrival times based on the difficulty retargeting rule used in Bitcoin, as well as other proof-of-work blockchains. Unlike some previous work, this paper explicitly models the difficulty…
A blockchain, such as Bitcoin, is an append-only, secure, transparent, distributed ledger. A fair blockchain is expected to have healthy metrics; high honest mining power, low processing latency, i.e., low wait times for transactions and…
Bitcoin has become the leading cryptocurrency system, but the limit on its transaction processing capacity has resulted in increased transaction fees and delayed transaction confirmation. As such, it is pertinent to understand and probably…
Proof-of-Stake consensus protocols give rise to complex modeling challenges. We analyze the recently-updated Tezos Proof-of-Stake protocol and demonstrate that, under certain conditions, rational participants are incentivized to behave…
In the area of blockchain, numerous methods have been proposed for suppressing intentional forks by attackers more effectively than the random rule. However, all of them, except for the random rule, require major updates, rely on a trusted…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography which has recently gained excessive popularity. Scientific research on bitcoin is less abundant. A paper at Financial Cryptography 2012…
What are the optimal times for an Internet of Things (IoT) device to act as a blockchain miner? The aim is to minimize the energy consumed by low-power IoT devices that log their data into a secure (tamper-proof) distributed ledger. We…
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…
The emerging cryptocurrency market has lately received great attention for asset allocation due to its decentralization uniqueness. However, its volatility and brand new trading mode have made it challenging to devising an acceptable…
This paper develops a formal game-theoretic model to examine how protocol mutability disrupts cooperative mining behaviour in blockchain systems. Using a repeated game framework with stochastic rule shocks, we show that even minor…
Bitcoin mining is a wasteful and resource-intensive process. To add a block of transactions to the blockchain, miners spend a considerable amount of energy. The Bitcoin protocol, named 'proof of work' (PoW), resembles a lottery and the…
In Proof-of-Work blockchains, difficulty algorithms serve the crucial purpose of maintaining a stable transaction throughput by dynamically adjusting the block difficulty in response to the miners' constantly changing computational power.…
What happens to mining when the Bitcoin price changes, when there are mining supply shocks, the price of energy changes, or hardware technology evolves? We give precise answers based on the technical forces and incentives in the system. We…
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…
Incentive mechanisms are central to the functionality of permissionless blockchains: they incentivize participants to run and secure the underlying consensus protocol. Designing incentive-compatible incentive mechanisms is notoriously…
An open distributed system can be secured by requiring participants to present proof of work and rewarding them for participation. The Bitcoin digital currency introduced this mechanism, which is adopted by almost all contemporary digital…