Related papers: Economically Viable Randomness
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…
Using blockchain technology, it is possible to create contracts that offer a reward in exchange for a trained machine learning model for a particular data set. This would allow users to train machine learning models for a reward in a…
Since the Merge update upon which Ethereum transitioned to Proof of Stake, it has been touted that it resulted in lower power consumption and increased security. However, even if that is the case, can this state be sustained? In this paper,…
Decentralised organisations use blockchains as a basis for governance: they use on-chain transactions to allocate voting weight, publish proposals, cast votes, and enact the results. However, blockchain-based governance structures have…
Machine learning has recently enabled large advances in artificial intelligence, but these tend to be highly centralized. The large datasets required are generally proprietary; predictions are often sold on a per-query basis; and published…
We study the problem of computing an $\epsilon$-Nash equilibrium in repeated games. Earlier work by Borgs et al. [2010] suggests that this problem is intractable. We show that if we make a slight change to their model---modeling the players…
The successive generations of consensus algorithms have progressively shifted the performance bottleneck of blockchains to the execution layer. While recent works address this by parallelizing transaction execution, they often overlook the…
Blockchain plays a crucial role in ensuring the security and integrity of decentralized systems, with the proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism being fundamental for achieving distributed consensus. As PoW blockchains see broader adoption, an…
Smart contracts are computer programs that can be consistently executed by a network of mutually distrusting nodes, without the arbitration of a trusted authority. Because of their resilience to tampering, smart contracts are appealing in…
Democracies are built upon secure and reliable voting systems. Electronic voting systems seek to replace ballot papers and boxes with computer hardware and software. Proposed electronic election schemes have been subjected to scrutiny, with…
The multi-chain future is upon us. Modular architectures are coming to maturity across the ecosystem to scale bandwidth and throughput of cryptocurrency. One example of such is the Ethereum modular architecture, with its beacon chain, its…
Ethereum is one of the most popular blockchain systems that supports more than half a million transactions every day and fosters miscellaneous decentralized applications with its Turing-complete smart contract machine. Whereas it remains…
The thesis addresses the problem of scalability in decentralized blockchains in the context of the trade-off between transaction throughput and hardware requirements to participate in the network. Rollups are presented, that is technologies…
Despite the popularity and practical applicability of blockchains, there is very limited work on the theoretical foundation of blockchains: The lack of rigorous theory and analysis behind the curtain of blockchains has severely staggered…
The adoption of blockchain based distributed ledgers is growing fast due to their ability to provide reliability, integrity, and auditability without trusted entities. One of the key capabilities of these emerging platforms is the ability…
Recent years have witnessed explosive growth in blockchain smart contract applications. As smart contracts become increasingly popular and carry trillion dollars worth of digital assets, they become more of an appealing target for…
Cryptocurrency miners have great latitude in deciding which transactions they accept, including their own, and the order in which they accept them. Ethereum miners in particular use this flexibility to collect MEV-Miner Extractable Value-by…
As a trusted middleware connecting the blockchain and the real world, the blockchain oracle can obtain trusted real-time price information for financial applications such as payment and settlement, and asset valuation on the blockchain.…
Many high-stakes AI deployments proceed only if every stakeholder deems the system acceptable relative to their own minimum standard. With randomization over a finite menu of options, this becomes a feasibility question: does there exist a…
Blockchains rely on economic incentives to ensure secure and decentralised operation, making incentive compatibility a core design concern. However, protocols are rarely deployed in isolation. Applications interact with the underlying…