Related papers: Incentives Don't Solve Blockchain's Problems
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…
Bitcoin mining presents a significant economic incentive for efficient hashing and broadcast of data, both parameters stemming from the Proofs of Work used to advance the network. This incentive has led to the development of Bitcoin…
Blockchains offer a decentralized and secure execution environment strong enough to host cryptocurrencies, but the state-replication model makes on-chain computation expensive. To avoid heavy on-chain workloads, systems like Truebit and…
The security of blockchain systems is fundamentally based on the decentralized consensus in which the majority of parties behave honestly, and the content verification process is essential to maintaining the robustness of blockchain…
Bitcoin and other similar digital currencies on blockchains are not ideal means for payment, because their prices tend to go up in the long term (thus people are incentivized to hoard those currencies), and to fluctuate widely in the short…
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…
Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity due to their transparency, security, and accessibility compared to traditional financial systems, with Bitcoin, introduced in 2009, leading the market. Bitcoin's security relies on blockchain…
Does the proof-of-work protocol serve its intended purpose of supporting decentralized cryptocurrency mining? To address this question, we develop a game-theoretical model where miners first invest in hardware to improve the efficiency of…
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom…
We discuss the issue of what we call {\em incentive mismatch}, a fundamental problem with public blockchains supported by economic incentives. This is an open problem, but one potential solution is to make application portable. Portability…
Blockchains have become immensely popular and are high on the list of national and international research and innovation agenda's. This is partly caused by the numerous interesting applications, combined with the promise of full…
Blockchain technology promises to democratize finance and promote social equity through decentralization, but questions remain about whether current implementations advance or hinder these goals. Through a mixed-methods study combining…
Blockchains have recently gained popularity thanks to their ability to record "digital truth". They are designed to keep persistence, security, and avoid attacks which is useful for many applications. However, they are still problematic in…
Data sharing is very important for accelerating scientific research, business innovations, and for informing individuals. Yet, concerns over data privacy, cost, and lack of secure data-sharing solutions have prevented data owners from…
Proof of work cryptocurrencies began with the promise of a more egalitarian future with a decentralized monetary system with no powerful entities in charge. While this vision is far from realized, these cryptocurrencies are still touted to…
We study game-theoretic models for capturing participation in blockchain systems. Permissionless blockchains can be naturally viewed as games, where a set of potentially interested users is faced with the dilemma of whether to engage with…
Bitcoin has witnessed a prevailing transition that employing transaction fees paid by users rather than subsidy assigned by the system as the main incentive for mining.
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…
Decentralization, which has backed the hyper growth of many blockchains, comes at the cost of scalability. To understand this fundamental limitation, this paper proposes a quantitative measure of blockchain decentralization, and discusses…
Blockchains have witnessed widespread adoption in the past decade in various fields. The growing demand makes their scalability and sustainability challenges more evident than ever. As a result, more and more blockchains have begun to adopt…