Related papers: Close Latency--Security Trade-off for the Nakamoto…
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…
Owing to Satoshi Nakamoto's brilliant idea, a P2P public ledger is shown to be implementable in anonymous network. Any Internet user can then join the anonymous network and contribute to the P2P public ledger by providing their computing…
Blockchain (BC), the technology behind the Bitcoin crypto-currency system, is considered to be both alluring and critical for ensuring enhanced security and (in some implementations, non-traceable) privacy for diverse applications in many…
We present three very simple variants of the classic Heads or Tails game using chips, each of which contributes to our understanding of the Bitcoin protocol. The first variant addresses the issue of temporary Bitcoin forks, which occur when…
This discussion applies quantitative finance methods and economic arguments to cryptocurrencies in general and bitcoin in particular -- as there are about $10,000$ cryptocurrencies, we focus (unless otherwise specified) on the most…
Distributed ledgers are common in the industry. Some of them can use blockchains as their underlying infrastructure. A blockchain requires participants to agree on its contents. This can be achieved via a consensus protocol, and several BFT…
Bitcoins and Blockchain technologies are attracting the attention of different scientific communities. In addition, their widespread industrial applications and the continuous introduction of cryptocurrencies are also stimulating the…
Bitcoin has become the leading cryptocurrency system, but the limit on its transaction processing capacity has resulted in increased transaction fees and delayed transaction confirmation. As such, it is pertinent to understand and probably…
Bitcoin demonstrated the possibility of a financial ledger that operates without the need for a trusted central authority. However, concerns persist regarding its security and considerable energy consumption. We assess the consensus…
Blockchain has received great attention in recent years and motivated innovations in different scenarios. However, many vital issues which affect its performance are still open. For example, it is widely convinced that high level of…
We study the incentives behind double-spend attacks on Nakamoto-style Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies. In these systems, miners are allowed to choose which transactions to reference with their block, and a common strategy for selecting…
The blockchain data structure maintained via the longest-chain rule---popularized by Bitcoin---is a powerful algorithmic tool for consensus algorithms. Such algorithms achieve consistency for blocks in the chain as a function of their depth…
Bitcoin is the most successful cryptocurrency so far. This is mainly due to its novel consensus algorithm, which is based on proof-of-work combined with a cryptographically-protected data structure and a rewarding scheme that incentivizes…
Transaction throughput, confirmation latency and confirmation reliability are fundamental performance measures of any blockchain system in addition to its security. In a decentralized setting, these measures are limited by two underlying…
Authorization is challenging in distributed systems that cannot rely on the identification of nodes. Proof-of-work offers an alternative gate-keeping mechanism, but its probabilistic nature is incompatible with conventional security…
Blockchain consensus is a state whereby each node in a network agrees on the current state of the blockchain. Existing protocols achieve consensus via a contest or voting procedure to select one node as a dictator to propose new blocks.…
We correct the double spend race analysis given in Nakamoto's foundational Bitcoin article and give a closed-form formula for the probability of success of a double spend attack using the Regularized Incomplete Beta Function. We give a…
This paper develops a model to evaluate the viability of blockchain markets as the sole venue for price formation. Blockchains clear at discrete intervals called block time, and transactions are executed sequentially according to priority…
Blockchain technology is an interlinked systematic chain of blocks that contains transaction history and other user data. It works under the principle of decentralized distributed digital ledger. This technology enables cryptographically…
Selfish mining, which is an attack on the integrity of the Bitcoin network, was first proposed by Cornell researchers Emin Gun Sirer and Ittay Eyal in 2013. Selfish mining attack also exists in most Nakamoto consensus protocols. Generally…