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Cryptocurrencies, arguably the most prominent application of blockchains, have been on the rise with a wide mainstream acceptance. A central concept in cryptocurrencies is "mining pools", groups of cooperating cryptocurrency miners who…
In a PoW-based blockchain network, mining pools (the solo miner could be regarded as a mining pool containing one miner) compete to successfully mine blocks to pursue rewards. Generally, the rewards include the fixed block subsidies and…
A recent trend in multi-party computation is to achieve cryptographic fairness via monetary penalties, i.e. each honest player either obtains the output or receives a compensation in the form of a cryptocurrency. We pioneer another type of…
The rise of computational power has led to unprecedented performance gains for deep learning models. As more data becomes available and model architectures become more complex, the need for more computational power increases. On the other…
We propose a mean field game model to study the question of how centralization of reward and computational power occur in Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Miners compete against each other for mining rewards by increasing their computational…
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…
The Decentralized-Consistent-Scale (DCS) Triangle defines three dimensions that illustrate the tradeoffs of the blockchain consensus mechanism. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid consensus protocol, called Deterministic Proof of Work…
In cryptocurrencies, the block reward is meant to serve as the incentive mechanism for miners to commit resources to create blocks and in effect secure the system. Existing systems primarily divide the reward in proportion to expended…
Illicit crypto-mining leverages resources stolen from victims to mine cryptocurrencies on behalf of criminals. While recent works have analyzed one side of this threat, i.e.: web-browser cryptojacking, only commercial reports have partially…
We study an adversary who attacks a Proof-of-Work (POW) blockchain by selfishly constructing an alternative longest chain. We characterize optimal strategies employed by the adversary when a difficulty adjustment rule al\`a Bitcoin applies.…
Popular distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems using proof-of-work (PoW) for Sybil attack resistance have extreme energy requirements, drawing stern criticism from academia, businesses, and the media. DLT systems building on…
Our aim in this paper is to investigate the profitability of double-spending (DS) attacks that manipulate an a priori mined transaction in a blockchain. It was well understood that a successful DS attack is established when the proportion…
Permissionless blockchains achieve consensus while allowing unknown nodes to join and leave the system at any time. They typically come in two flavors: proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS), and both are vulnerable to attacks. PoS…
Stratum, the de-facto mining communication protocol used by blockchain based cryptocurrency systems, enables miners to reliably and efficiently fetch jobs from mining pool servers. In this paper we exploit Stratum's lack of encryption to…
We study a game-theoretic model of blockchain mining economies and show that griefing, a practice according to which participants harm other participants at some lesser cost to themselves, is a prevalent threat at its Nash equilibria. The…
Since Bitcoin's inception in 2008, it has became attractive investments for both trading and mining. To mine Bitcoins, a miner has to invest in computing power and pay for electricity to solve cryptographic puzzles for rewards, if it…
Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a new form of digital money that has not escaped the eyes of cyber-attackers. Traditionally, they have been maliciously used as a medium of exchange for proceeds of crime in the cyber dark-market by…
Using Wilf-Zeilberger algorithmic proof theory, we continue pioneering work of Meni Rosenfeld (followed up by interesting work by Cyril Grunspan and Ricardo Perez-Marco) and study the probability and duration of successful bitcoin attacks,…
Cryptographic Self-Selection is a common primitive underlying leader-selection for Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocols. The concept was first popularized in Algorand [CM19], who also observed that the protocol might be manipulable. [FHWY22]…
A proof of the security of the Bitcoin protocol is made rigorous, and simplified in certain parts. A computational model in which an adversary can delay transmission of blocks by time $\Delta$ is considered. The protocol is generalized to…