Related papers: Pricing Security in Proof-of-Work Systems
We analyze the economic incentives generated by the proof-of-stake mechanism discussed in the Ethereum Casper upgrade proposal. Compared with proof-of-work, proof-of-stake has a different cost structure for attackers. In Budish (2018),…
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…
The security of blockchain systems depends on the distribution of mining power across participants. If sufficient mining power is controlled by one entity, they can force their own version of events. This may allow them to double spend…
Blockchain technology enables secure, transparent data management in decentralized systems, supporting applications from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to tokenizing real-world assets like property. Its scalability and sustainability hinge…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) systems face critical challenges, including excessive energy consumption and the centralization of mining power among entities with expensive hardware. Static mining pools exacerbate these issues by reducing competition…
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…
A blockchain is a decentralized ledger where all transactions are recorded. For having a reliable blockchain and double-spending prevention, we need a decentralized consensus and agreement on a blockchain. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work (PoW).…
Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains burn a lot of energy. Proof-of-work algorithms are expensive by design and often only serve to compute blockchains. In some sense, carbon-based and non-carbon based regional electric power is fungible. So the…
While Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the most widely used consensus mechanism for blockchain, it received harsh criticism due to its massive waste of energy for meaningless hash calculation. Some studies have introduced Proof-of-Stake to address…
Many blockchain systems today, including Bitcoin, rely on Proof of Work (PoW). Proof of work is crucial to the liveness and security of cryptocurrencies. The assumption when using PoW is that a lot of trial and error is required on average…
This paper opts to mitigate the energy-inefficiency of the Blockchain Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm by rationally repurposing the power spent during the mining process. The original PoW mining scheme is designed to consider one…
Blockchain stores information into a chain of "blocks", whose integrity is usually guaranteed by Proof of Work (PoW). In many blockchain applications (including cryptocurrencies), users compete with each other to win the ownership of the…
Bitcoin blockchain uses hash-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) that prevents unwanted participants from hogging the network resources. Anyone entering the mining game has to prove that they have expended a specific amount of computational power.…
Security analysis of blockchain technology is an active domain of research. There has been both cryptographic and game-theoretic security analysis of Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains. Prominent work includes the cryptographic security…
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…
Although Bitcoin was intended to be a decentralized digital currency, in practice, mining power is quite concentrated. This fact is a persistent source of concern for the Bitcoin community. We provide an explanation using a simple model to…
We present the new mining protocol Proof-of-Reputation (PoR) for decentralized Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains, in particular for Bitcoin. PoR combines the classical PoW with the new ingredient of cryptographic reputation. The same level of…
Mining is a central operation of all proof-of-work (PoW) based cryptocurrencies. The vast majority of miners today participate in "mining pools" instead of "solo mining" in order to lower risk and achieve a more steady income. However, this…
Does the proof-of-work protocol serve its intended purpose of supporting decentralized cryptocurrency mining? To address this question, we develop a game-theoretical model where miners first invest in hardware to improve the efficiency of…
Blockchains have recently gained popularity thanks to their ability to record "digital truth". They are designed to keep persistence, security, and avoid attacks which is useful for many applications. However, they are still problematic in…