Related papers: Towards Overcoming the Undercutting Problem
We compute the revenue ratio of the Trail Stubborn mining strategy in the Bitcoin network and compare its profitability to other block-withholding strategies. We use for this martingale techniques and a classical analysis of the hiker…
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…
In recent years, cryptocurrencies have attracted growing attention from both private investors and institutions. Among them, Bitcoin stands out for its impressive volatility and widespread influence. This paper explores the predictability…
Grover's algorithm confers on quantum computers a quadratic advantage over classical computers for searching in an arbitrary data set, a scenario that describes Bitcoin mining. It has previously been argued that the only side-effect of…
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…
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…
Bitcoin is the first successful decentralized global digital cash system. Its mining process requires intense computational resources, therefore its usefulness remains a disputable topic. We aim to solve three problems with Bitcoin and…
In the face of limited block size, miners (e.g., in Bitcoin) prioritize high-bid transactions, forming a large part of their revenue. If the block size were to expand significantly, meeting all transaction demand due to infrastructure or…
We study selfish mining attacks in longest-chain blockchains like Bitcoin, but where the proof of work is replaced with efficient proof systems -- like proofs of stake or proofs of space -- and consider the problem of computing an optimal…
Bitcoin is firmly becoming a mainstream asset in our global society. Its highly volatile nature has traders and speculators flooding into the market to take advantage of its significant price swings in the hope of making money. This work…
BitCoin transactions are malleable in a sense that given a transaction an adversary can easily construct an equivalent transaction which has a different hash. This can pose a serious problem in some BitCoin distributed contracts in which…
Off-Chain transactions allow for the immediate transfer of Cryptocurrency between two parties, without delays or unavoidable transaction fees. Such capabilities are critical for mainstream Cryptocurrency adaption. They allow for the…
We review the so called selfish mining strategy in the Bitcoin network and compare its profitability to honest mining.We build a rigorous profitability model for repetition games. The time analysis of the attack has been ignored in the…
To allocate transactions to blocks, cryptocurrencies use an auction-like transaction fee mechanism (TFM). A conjecture of Roughgarden [44] asks whether there is a TFM that is incentive compatible for both the users and the miner, and is…
An emerging blockchain protocol design pattern leverages the asymmetry between the computational effort in performing versus verifying tasks. For example, cryptographic validity proofs (e.g., SNARKS) require the prover to expend significant…
As the core technology behind Bitcoin, Blockchain's decentralized, tamper-proof, and traceable features make it the preferred platform for organizational innovation. In current Bitcoin, block reward is halved every four years, and…
Low transaction throughput and poor scalability are significant issues in public blockchain consensus protocols such as Bitcoins. Recent research efforts in this direction have proposed shard-based consensus protocols where the key idea is…
The Bitcoin protocol is a significant milestone in the history of money. However, its adoption is currently constrained by the transaction limits of the system. As the chief problem of blockchain technology, the scaling issue has attracted…
We present a strategy for a single quantum miner with relatively low hashing power, with the same ramifications as a 51% attack. Bitcoin nodes consider the chain with the highest cumulative proof-of-work to be the valid chain. A quantum…
We argue that the current POW based consensus algorithm of the Bitcoin network suffers from a fundamental economic discrepancy between the real world transaction (txn) costs incurred by miners and the wealth that is being transacted. Put…