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Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (minimize…
A core task in process mining is process discovery which aims to learn an accurate process model from event log data. In this paper, we propose to use (block-) structured programs directly as target process models so as to establish…
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…
We study the strategic considerations of miners participating in the bitcoin's protocol. We formulate and study the stochastic game that underlies these strategic considerations. The miners collectively build a tree of blocks, and they are…
Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies secure a decentralized consensus protocol by incentives. The protocol participants, called miners, generate (mine) a series of blocks, each containing monetary transactions created by system users. As…
We investigate how a blockchain can distill the collective belief of its nodes regarding the trustworthiness of a (sub)set of nodes into a {\em reputation system} that reflects the probability of correctly performing a task. To address this…
The goal of this paper is to analyze distributional Markov Decision Processes as a class of control problems in which the objective is to learn policies that steer the distribution of a cumulative reward toward a prescribed target law,…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) with rewards are a widespread and well-studied model for systems that make both probabilistic and nondeterministic choices. A fundamental result about MDPs is that their minimal and maximal expected rewards…
Proof-of-stake (PoS) is a promising approach for designing efficient blockchains, where block proposers are randomly chosen with probability proportional to their stake. A primary concern with PoS systems is the "rich getting richer"…
New algorithms for computing power moments of hitting times and accumulated rewards of hitting type for semi-Markov processes. The algorithms are based on special techniques of sequential phase space reduction and recurrence relations…
We study the relation between different Markov Decision Process (MDP) frameworks in the machine learning and econometrics literatures, including the standard MDP, the entropy and general regularized MDP, and stochastic MDP, where the latter…
Cryptoeconomic incentives in the form of blockchain-based tokens are seen as an enabler of the sharing economy that could shift society towards greater sustainability. Nevertheless, knowledge of the impact of these tokens on human sharing…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the most widely adopted incentive model in current blockchain systems, which unfortunately is energy inefficient. Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is then proposed to tackle the energy issue. The rich-get-richer concern of PoS…
Stochastic gradient methods are the workhorse (algorithms) of large-scale optimization problems in machine learning, signal processing, and other computational sciences and engineering. This paper studies Markov chain gradient descent, a…
We introduce two new particle-based algorithms for learning latent variable models via marginal maximum likelihood estimation, including one which is entirely tuning-free. Our methods are based on the perspective of marginal maximum…
We lay the foundations for a blockchain scheme, whose consensus is reached via a proof of work algorithm based on the solution of consecutive discrete logarithm problems over the point group of elliptic curves. In the considered…
An important research thread in algorithmic game theory studies the design of efficient truthful mechanisms that approximate the optimal social welfare. A fundamental question is whether an \alpha-approximation algorithm translates into an…
Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical…
We model and analyze blockchain miners who seek to maximize the compound return of their mining businesses. The analysis of the optimal strategies finds a new equilibrium point among the miners and the mining pools, which predicts the…
We present a new class of interacting Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for solving numerically discrete-time measure-valued equations. The associated stochastic processes belong to the class of self-interacting Markov chains. In contrast…