Related papers: Bitcoin: A Natural Oligopoly
Mining blocks on a blockchain equipped with a proof of work consensus protocol is well-known to be resource-consuming. A miner bears the operational cost, mainly electricity consumption and IT gear, of mining, and is compensated by a…
Bitcoin-NG is an extensible blockchain protocol based on the same trust model as Bitcoin. It divides each epoch into one Key-Block and multiple Micro-Blocks, effectively improving transaction processing capacity. Bitcoin-NG adopts a special…
Consider a set of parties invited to execute a protocol $\Pi$. The protocol will incur some cost to run while in the end (or at regular intervals), it will populate and update local tables that assign (virtual) rewards to participants. Each…
In blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, users compete in a transaction fee auction to get their transactions confirmed in the next block. A line of recent works set forth the desiderata for a "dream" transaction fee mechanism (TFM),…
In January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto gave rise to the "Bitcoin Block Chain" creating the first block of the chain hashing on his computers central processing unit (CPU). Since then, the hash calculations to mine Bitcoin have been getting…
In this study, we examine the behavior and profitability of modern malware that mines cryptocurrency. Unlike previous studies, we look at the cryptocurrency market as a whole, rather than just Bitcoin. We not only consider PCs, but also…
The goal of cryptocurrencies is decentralization. In principle, all currencies have equal status. Unlike traditional stock markets, there is no default currency of denomination (fiat), thus the trading pairs can be set freely. However, it…
We describe and analyze perishing mining, a novel block-withholding mining strategy that lures profit-driven miners away from doing useful work on the public chain by releasing block headers from a privately maintained chain. We then…
Attracted by the inherent security and privacy protection of the blockchain, incorporating blockchain into Internet of Things (IoT) has been widely studied in these years. However, the mining process requires high computational power, which…
It is widely accepted that Ethereum mining is highly centralized. Nonetheless, centralization has been mostly characterized by exclusively looking at the influence that independent miners or mining pools can have over the network. Moreover,…
Blockchain protocols incentivize participation through monetary rewards, assuming rational actors behave honestly to maximize their gains. However, attackers may attempt to harm others even at personal cost. These denial of profit attacks…
Transaction fees represent a major incentive in many blockchain systems as a way to incentivize processing transactions. Unfortunately, they also introduce an enormous amount of incentive asymmetry compared to alternatives like fixed block…
In the face of limited block size, miners (e.g., in Bitcoin) prioritize high-bid transactions, forming a large part of their revenue. If the block size were to expand significantly, meeting all transaction demand due to infrastructure or…
It is an important decision-making problem for a miner in the blockchain networks if he/she participates in the mining so that he/she earns a reward by creating a new block earlier than other miners. We formulate this decision-making…
Trading on decentralized exchanges has been one of the primary use cases for permissionless blockchains with daily trading volume exceeding billions of U.S.~dollars. In the status quo, users broadcast transactions and miners are responsible…
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are realized using distributed systems and hence critically rely on the performance and security of the interconnecting network. The requirements on these networks and their usage, however can differ…
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…
Bitcoin is a popular digital currency for online payments, realized as a decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin keeps a ledger of all transactions; the majority of the participants decides on the correct ledger. Since…
A decade long thrive of cryptocurrency has shown its potential as a source of alternative-finance and the security and the robustness of the underpinning blockchain technology. However, most cryptocurrencies fail to show inimitability and…
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…