Related papers: Competitive equilibria between staking and on-chai…
Blockchain, the technology behind the popular Bitcoin, is considered a "security by design" system as it is meant to create security among a group of distrustful parties yet without a central trusted authority. The security of blockchain…
A soft control of the network activity through varying reward in a proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency is reported. Rewards are the necessity to incent the contributors activities (i.e., mining) in order to maintain the PoW network. Contrary…
Blockchain relay schemes enable cross-chain state proofs without requiring trusted intermediaries. This is achieved by applying the source blockchain's consensus validation protocol on the target blockchain. Existing chain relays allow for…
Blockchain consensus mechanisms must balance security, decentralization, and efficiency while ensuring fair participation. Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS) is a cooperative consensus mechanism designed to address the energy inefficiencies and…
We improve the fundamental security threshold of eventual consensus Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain protocols under the longest-chain rule by showing, for the first time, the positive effect of rounds with concurrent honest leaders. Current…
This paper introduces Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS), a novel consensus algorithm designed to address the significant energy inefficiencies inherent in traditional Proof of Work (PoW) systems. PoTS shifts the consensus mechanism from an…
Zero-Knowledge Proof-of-Identity from trusted public certificates (e.g., national identity cards and/or ePassports; eSIM) is introduced here to permissionless blockchains in order to remove the inefficiencies of Sybil-resistant mechanisms…
We study Nash-dynamics in the context of blockchain protocols. We introduce a formal model, within which one can assess whether the Nash dynamics can lead utility-maximizing participants to defect from the "honest" protocol operation,…
Restaking protocols expand validator responsibilities beyond consensus, but their security depends on resistance to Sybil attacks. We introduce a formal framework for Sybil-proofness in restaking networks, distinguishing between two types…
The security of many Proof-of-Stake (PoS) payment systems relies on quorum-based State Machine Replication (SMR) protocols. While classical analyses assume purely Byzantine faults, real-world systems must tolerate both arbitrary failures…
Bitcoin is the first fully-decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol to achieve a high level of security, but at the expense of poor throughput and latency. Scaling the performance of Bitcoin has a been a major recent direction of…
Bitcoin uses blockchain technology and proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism where nodes spend computing resources and earn rewards in return for spending these resources. This incentive system has caused power to be significantly biased towards a…
A hard-fork reconfiguration of the peer to peer Bitcoin network is described that substitutes tamper-evident logs and proof-of-stake consensus for proof-of-work consensus. The block creation rewards and transaction fees are reallocated to…
On several proof-of-stake blockchains, agents engaged in validating transactions can open a pool to which others can delegate their stake in order to earn higher returns. We develop a model of staking pool formation in the presence of…
Blockchain applications often rely on lightweight clients to access and verify on-chain data efficiently without the need to run a resource-intensive full node. These light clients must maintain robust security to protect the blockchain's…
Regardless of their variations, blockchains require a consensus mechanism to validate transactions, supervise added blocks, maintain network security, synchronize the network state, and distribute incentives. Proof-of-Work (PoW), one of the…
As cryptographic tokens and altcoins are increasingly being built to serve as utility tokens, the notion of useful work consensus protocols, as opposed to number-crunching PoW consensus, is becoming ever more important. In such contexts,…
Cryptocurrency exchanges use proofs of liabilities (PoLs) to prove to their customers their liabilities committed on-chain, thereby enhancing their trust in the service. Unfortunately, a close examination of currently deployed and academic…
Proof-of-Work mining is intended to provide blockchains with robustness against double-spend attacks. However, an economic analysis that follows from Budish (2018), which considers free entry conditions together with the ability to rent…
In the white book of Bitcion, Satoshi Nakamoto described a bitcoin system that can realize point-to-point online payment without a third-party organization. After supporting this magical application scenario and subverting the traditional…